The Coming Disruption: Teen Knowledge Work

May 23, 2011 by 1 Comment

Dale Stephens is 19. If you or your business would like to consult with him for a day, his published rate on his website is $5,000. Imagine that, a 19 year old who is confident enough to charge Kshs 400,000/- a day for his consulting services.

Dale’s story is from an interesting articles titled The Coming Disruption: Teen Knowledge Work (click to read it).

The article describes the phenomenon that is young people (mostly barely out of their teens) are no longer getting employed but choose to try their hand at starting businesses. This is a very major change from just a generation ago when our parents would seek and hold on to jobs for most of their lives.

What do you think of this new trend? I’m all for it – instead of adding onto the high unemployment numbers, young people should instead try to create jobs – ama?

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Lazyweb, Online Jobs

Updates on Receiving Payments Online in Kenya

May 17, 2011 by 23 Comments


We recently wrote about two new ways to convert money in your PayPal account into money in your hands in Kenya. These were:

But there is bad news. It seems the currency exchange method may be risky in that you can get scammed. As for Babawatoto.com, at least on Like Chapaa reader has complained that babawatoto.com do not accept requests originating from within Kenya.

We reached out to babawatoto.com for their views on this issue and this is the response that we got:

Kevin,

Thanks for your email.Due to past and current fraud concerns,we dont process any orders originating from Kenya or with a Kenyan paypal address.

Regards,

Customer Support,
Babawatoto Online
Email: Info@babawatoto.com
Web link:http://babawatoto.com

SO there you have it. If you live in Kenya then babawatoto.com will not help you and, indeed, there are literally no ways to withdraw your PayPal money from within Kenya. How sad. 🙁

As far as receiving payments online from within Kenya, here is the situation thus far (thanks to yeronly):

  1. Paypal – there’s a comprehensive review about this in this (likechapaa) website. The best we have come to withdrawing in kenya without minimal hustles, from reviews of products offered, is babawatoto (sending money to ones mobile) whose advantages are those of mobile money transfer, and disadvantages include a bit expensive and quite low limit (upper limit is ksh. 20,000 for which the charge, at current exchange rate of ksh. 82/dollar is around ksh. 2,300 ). However, babawatoto.com has confirmed that they do not serve requests originating from Kenya.
  2. Moneybookers – Allows wire transfers to local banks; could get challenges being paid by US clients from this. some (entities) will deduct as much as 5% if this is the mode of payment. With your P. O box number, they send a confirmation code to P. O box (received one within a month’s time), once confirmed, your transfer limit is increased.
  3. Alertpay – allows wire transfers; main undoing, as is for moneybookers, is that most clients in the US will prefer Paypal.
  4. Payoneer – this is a mastercard that is issued via partner websites (e.g. Elance, freelancer.com, etc; one must be a member at one of such partner sites to apply). one applies via a street address (e.g. Ngong road, Mombasa road, Kikuyu; then one provides ones post office box – via email – for shipping purposes). Waiting time varies, but received their card within a month. Withdraws in any mastercard supported ATMs (recently since barclays never charges for ATM withdraws, it is the best bet). Card activation $ 12. Standard loading i.e. depositing money to card (2 days) they charge $ 2; some other premium loading – immediate loading i.e within 2hrs they charge $5. monthly maintenance $ 3 Paypal does not allow withdrawing to this card unless you create a virtual US account at Payoneer which attracts additional charges.
  5. Wire transfer – used only one bank for this and it charged ksh. 600 and exchanged at lower-than-market rates. The best option here: create a dollar (foreign currency) account, withdraw money once in, exchange in a forex bureau (their rates are a bit high than banks’), deposit your ksh back if you please.

And that’s how it is! Currently.

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Safaricon Uncovered!

May 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Safaricon

Safaricon

Look at the above image keenly….introducing Safaricon.co.ke! This is a whole website dedicated to nothing but the bashing of Safaricom. Notice the close similarity to Safaricom’s own website www.safaricom.co.ke It seems the big green giant has really annoyed some people…

What do you think of this? A stroke of genius, or just misguided miscreants?

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Is it Hard to Make Kshs 100,000/- A Month Online?

May 15, 2011 by 5 Comments

Here’s a very interestiing answer to that question (from Quora.com):

How difficult this will be is all relative, of course, but it is definitely possible. Being a developer already should remove the biggest barrier. I would break this up into a few different stages.

Ideate a Profitable Product
It’s easy to come up with an idea that seems good to you. Finding an idea that can be profitable is a lot harder. While sometimes people simply stumble upon them, there is a process to finding good ideas. I recommend you read this article by Paul Graham on the topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas

The easiest way to come up with something is to find something in your daily or weekly routine that could be improved. “I always wish this product did X” or “If only I had a product that could do Y for me.”

Identify a problem and come up with a solution. Sometimes this is a product that is entirely new, but usually it’s an improvement of an existing product. This is key: you don’t have to revolutionize a market, you simply have to do one thing better than everyone else.

Apple’s products aren’t inherently better than others on the market, but they sell because of their image. Zappos is so successful because of their customer service. Find a problem, come up with a good solution, then figure out how you can set yourself apart.

Building the Product
This part should be fairly cut and dry for you, but don’t think it’s easy. If you have always worked as a developer in a team, especially a corporation, you’re in for a shock when you have to build everything yourself. In regards to a web app, this likely means creating the database structure and interactions, server side logic, front end programming and design.

Keep in mind that you will be the one maintaining the code. You can’t simply pawn it off to someone else, or expect others to track down bugs. So take the time to write good, quality code. This is the best tip I have for saving time later (once you get users bugs mean support requests, upset customers, and maybe refunds).

If you are a developer but not a designer, you might want to spend a little money to either hire a designer or pay for a theme for the front end. Presenting your product in a professional, attractive manner is of huge importance for gaining paying customers. No one wants to break out a credit card for a site with a poor design.

Marketing the Product (Getting your first customers)
This is another area that people often think will be easy. The “if you build it, they will come” mentality only works if you’re Kevin Costner. Getting your site listed on Hacker News and the dozens of “startup” listing sites that have popped up is valuable – it gets you some good backlinks and maybe a little buzz. Don’t expect to get any paying customers from that exposure unless they are your target audience.

Finding where your target audience is and meeting them is really the key. If your customers are going to be single mothers, hanging out on Hacker News might connect you with a handful of them, but you need to find out where your customer spends their time online. Do whatever it takes to ingratiate yourself to them. Don’t dive in head first advertising your product, but spend a little time getting to know those social circles each day while you are still building the product. This will pay off ten fold.

Write. Write a lot. Not only about your product, but about your market, what they’re interested in, what they hate, what they find useful, etc. Have about 10 blog posts ready to go when you launch your product, and publish no fewer than 1 a week afterward. If you’re building a web app, chances are there isn’t much for search engines to index. So you need a blog.

Supporting the Product
The biggest area for supporting a product is customer complaints or questions or support. Have a good system setup using UserVoice or GetSatisfaction.

Ask them for valuable feedback. Don’t ever stop asking, and when they tell you respond to them. It doesn’t always have to be a “I’ll add that next week,” but even a “that feedback doesn’t mesh well with the goal of my product” will win over customers.

I recommend reading through this short article series by Tom Buck:
Building a web business that makes $500 a month – It’s one of the most ‘down to earth’ accounts of a single person building a profitable side project.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Make Money

The Content Business in Kenya

May 9, 2011 by 7 Comments

By ‘content’, this post refers to movies/videos, music, computer games and other similar media but NOT “text-based” content.*

Now, the question is: can a ‘content based’ business thrive survive in Kenya? The sad truth may very well be a big NO.

Case in point: Silverbird Kenya. This once vibrant cimena company looks like it is shutting down in Kenya! If you look at the image below, you will see that their website has been suspended adn their Twitter account (@silverbirdkenya) lies dormant. What could have happened? What may have caused this company’s downfall.

Silverbird Kenya Offline

Silverbird Kenya Offline


Well, there is this court case.

Additionally, I believe it is very difficult to run a content-based business successfully in Kenya. Here, piracy is rampant – you can get DVDs of brand new movies at Kshs 40/- in town!! How can you compete with that? Indeed there is a thread over at Skunkworks Kenya that makes this very point. It would seem that “competing” with piracy is one of the reasons of Silverbird’s failure in Kenya. How sad. 🙁

But can any other content based business survive in this market? Music and games are equally well-pirated in Kenya. I would estimate hardly anyone in Kenya ever buys an original game or music album. Although we must note that this is the case not just in Kenya but pretty much everywhere.

However, local music seems to be doing ‘okay’ and I would attribute that ‘success’ to the very strict attitude towards the piracy of local music. It is sad that this same attitude is not extended to cover other forms of content. I believe this shines some light on what needs to be done for ‘content’ businesses to thrive in Kenya. Very strict anti-piracy laws have to be introduced and enforced in this market or the producers and legitimate distributors of the content we consume so voraciously will continue to suffers.

However, even as we talk about anti-piracy measures, we must face the truth: it is much, much easier to get your hands on pirated stuff than to buy it legitimately. This means that the type of content that consumers will get will be the one that is easier to find i.e. the pirated stuff. This is not a “Kenyan thing”. It is the same everywhere. Even so, in the face of overwhelming piracy worldwide some content producers have found ways to survive and maybe even thrive. Surely we can learn from this?

The main idea here is that we’re in a new era – one in which it is easier to get pirated stuff than to get the legitimate content. This means that the old rules of the content business are changing or have changed. It is time for the players to change how they play. You can stand and shout all day waiting for the government to intervene to save your business but there are better ways to spend your energy – you can build your content business in a way that is is as immune to piracy as possible. It requires that you change they way you think about how to run a content business.

For example, a music band in the US realised that their album sales were plummeting because people could just download their music for free. What did they do? They started giving away their music for free online. More often than not, people who download your music actually like you and if you give them a way to access your content as easily as through piracy, they will pick the legitimate way. This particular music band’s strategy let them build a huge online fanbase. But how did they make their money? Well, now that they had so many fans, whenever they performed at concerts they almost always had the tickets sold out. I would call that “thinking outside the box”.

Another example is Netflix. In the USA, piracy also thrives. Netflix is a company that allows very easy access to legitimate (i.e. not pirated) movies. Well, guess what? Now that one can get movies easily and legitimately through Netflix, online movie piracy rates are going down in the USA. Interesting, eh?

While I believe that piracy is wrong, I also believe that it is not going away any time soon. Content producers should realise this. We’re in a new age that requires new ways of doing business.

The only way to decrease piracy is to compete with it and offer products that are superior to their pirated counterparts.

Something to ponder: the introduction of strict anti piracy law in Kenya will definitely lead to the immediate bankruptcy of hundreds of people who make their living by selling pirated content. Is this a good thing?

*In my view, the ‘textual content’ business is very different and deserves to be treated as such.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Make Money Tagged With: ,

Another Way to Withdraw Money From PayPal in Kenya

April 28, 2011 by 16 Comments

Following our recent article on how to withdraw cash from PayPal via Liberty Reserve, we found another much easier way. This is thanks to bonchisdecha.

Update: PayMPESA Helps Withdraw Your PayPal Funds to MPESA


Babawatoto.com
BabaWatoto.com have an innovative service which they call “Tuma Pesa“. This is tailored for Kenyans in the diaspora who want to send money back home. However, nothing restricts you from using the service to send money to yourself – ama?

Babawatoto.com will let you send money to anyone in Kenya and he will receive it on his mobile phone. The useful thing is that Babawatoto.com will let you pay via PayPal. This means one could easily send, say Kshs 20,000/-, through Babawatoto.com to his own mobile number and pay via PayPal. This will effectively mean that you have transferred money from your PayPal account into your mobile phone – ready to use locally!

You just need to visit this page to get started.

Kudos to Babawatoto.com for providing such a needed service.

Update 17 May 2011 – The above method does NOT work from within Kenya. Learn more. 🙁

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Make Money Tagged With:

Is Your Business Failing?

March 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

“1. Is the site live yet?

Yes: you’re likely failing, but at least you’ve got a chance of getting some feedback from real, live users, which may, if you’re smart and perceptive, decrease your chance of failure a little bit.

No: you’re failing.

2. Do you have free customers yet?

Yes: well, now you have a shot to establish relationships. And if you listen carefully and not pridefully, you just may have a tiny chance of hearing them correctly and improving your customer experience from awful to plausibly bearable.

No: you’re failing.

3. Do you have paying customers yet?

Yes: congratulations! You have reduced your chances of failing from 100% to 99%. There are many more chances to fail along the way, but you have graduated to some of the more interesting ones. Good show!

No: you’re failing.

If, when you wake up in the morning, the answer to any of the above questions is “no”, then you’re failing. Not failing tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but failing right now, today. As you read this…. Now.

And what you need to do, what you must do, is to spend your entire day focused on changing the answers to yes. Desperately, immediately, fully.”

The above is taken from How can I tell if I am failing at my entrepreneurial venture or start-up? Which is a very inspiring article on how to tell if your online business is failing.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Tips Hacking and Reviews