A Time To Sow

Internet usage growth rate

Internet usage growth rate

Have a look at the graph above. Go ahead, you can click on it to make it bigger. As you can see, the internet usage rate in Kenya is growing rapidly, especially when compared to other countries which are slowing down. In those countries, the internet is already mainstream meaning that a lot of people make money online. However it also means that it is much harder to make money online because there is a lot of competition. Compare this to Kenya and you realise that while at the moment you may not be able to make much money online, it is much easier to launch something and have it do well in Kenya. But this will not last forever.

I think that now is the time for aspiring internet entrepreneurs to attack and completely own internet business niches. It may take a while before you get super-impressive results but if you invest in online business now and take root, you will be reaping huge rewards as more and more people and businesses get online in Kenya.

So what are the best niches to invest in? Going by what works in other places the following, in my opinion, are some of the most lucrative areas to invest in:

e-Commerce
Online shopping in Kenya is nothing to write home about at the moment. But as the number of people who are online grows, it will definitely become very lucrative. Just as Amazon.com grew from nothing to one of the largest and most powerful businesses, you can grow a small little online shop to massive proportions and potentially millions in the bank.

Food
Food, recipes and cooking tips are traditionally very popular. This is a saturated market in more developed countries but is quite accessible locally. You should get creative but the basic idea would some website that provides tips on cooking and recipes from around Kenya and possibly the world.

Making Money (or Saving Money)
I think it would be safe to say that literally everyone has an interest in how to make more money, save more money or reduce their expenses. Why not position yourself to cater to this need? There are so many different ways to approach this. Some are:

  • Insurance
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Loans
  • Investments
  • Personal finance

Self Help
Almost everyone has some thing that they want to improve about themselves. In fact, in developed countries, there are countless online “gurus” providing information and guidance on things as diverse as healthy living, career advice, money management, relationships, etc. Your job would be to motivate and instruct others on how to improve their lives in a certain way.

The “Supernatural”
Believe it or not, this is big online. I’m thinking that as big as it is in other countries, it could be even bigger locally. I put the word supernatural in quotes because it can cover many different things from horroscopes to planets aligning with your birth date to psychic readings and even witchcraft/wizardry.

Like me, you may not believe in this stuff but lots of people do and an opportunity exists for you to fill their need. As usual, do not do anything illegal. 🙂

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So there you have it. We are at a point in time where you can take root in an industry early and absolutely dominate it as it grows. I am sure a lot of smart people are already diving in and establishing themselves. What are you waiting for?

If I missed any important opportunities, don’t worry. My list is not conclusive. 😉

The Cesspit That is Kenyan “Job Sites”

So, recently, a friend of mine who had struggled for a long time looking for an employee, decided to send the job details to one of the many Kenyan job sites out there. They had a notice on their homepage that if you sent job details to them via email, they would post the job to an audience of thousands. They were right.

Soon, my friend’s inbox was flooded with job applicants. He’s extremely happy and cannot thank the Kenyan job sites enough. He’s still sorting through them and is certain that he will get what he needs.

This intrigued me a little and I had a deeper look at what had happened. Not only had his little job advert appeared on the site he posted too, but it had “magically” spread through Kenyan web space like you would not believe. It was suddenly on all Kenyan job sites, it seems. Big sites, small sites – they did not seem to care.

What might interest you, though, is that his ad also ‘magically’ appeared on heavy-hitters N-soko (by nation Media), Dealfish and Brighter Monday. It seems that these large sits employ someone (or perhaps a bot) to go through the other, small sites, and copy their content (at least as far as job ads go). Worse, the ad that appeared on these “heavy-hitters” was absolutely worthless to a job seeker – they had removed the contact address before posting the job ad. Can you believe that?

How would akina Dealfish gain from posting a job ad that no one can apply to? Sad truth is that they don’t really care. All that these job sites, big or small, are after is eyeballs. They want to post as many job openings as possible in hopes of attracting as many job seekers as possible. I would wager that they dont care if these job seekers actually find jobs….. they only want them to click on their little adsense adverts. And that, my friends, is business.

Of course I am not saying that anyone is doing any wrong – in fact I think that the whole system put together serves job seekers very well. As my friend learnt, it is also extremely useful for employers. At the end of the day it is just business – only at the cost of endless copying and/or plagiarism to entice job seekers and hope that they click on some adverts. This must be one of the easiest “online businesses” to start in Kenya, right?

As they say, if you get a product/service for free then think again. You are the product.

Making Money – Knowing When to Quit

An old nugget from doshdosh.com:

Making money anywhere involves understanding the value of your business, idea or website. Are they profitable or are you attempting the impossible by trying to squeeze blood from a stone?

We all have many ideas on what types of money making websites to set up and we often execute these ideas only to find them withering due to neglect or intense competition from others.

Knowing when to terminate a project is just as important as starting one. By cutting off these additional channels, you can focus exclusively on the ideas that will actually make you money.

According to a Forbes article on this topic, there are three main reasons why you should consider dumping your great money making ideas. Headlines below come from the article, comments made are mine.

1. Paying Customers Never Show Up
Are you getting sales? What do your visitors say or think about your online business? Is your website or service well received? These are some points to assess once a project has been initiated.

If you don’t meet your goal forecast, reevaluate your business model or tweak it to better fit the target market’s needs. If you still don’t make money after all these efforts, terminating or selling your business will help you avoid unnecessary costs.

At bottom, it doesn’t matter how ingenious your product is–if you can’t communicate its value, it may as well not exist.

2. You Can’t Sustain a Competitive Advantage
It is important to have a long-term plan to cope with other competitors in your field. If your idea is truly novel, you should expect a bunch of copycats. To succeed to constantly adjust your website to provide an unique selling proposition.

Allocating a significant portion of your income towards consistent marketing and promotion is always a good idea after the initial site launch.

Remember: Your idea is what gets you in the game; your competitive advantage is what keeps you there. If you can’t figure out how to stay ahead in your market, start looking for a new one.

3. You’re Not Ready To Quit Your Day Job
A great money making idea only reaches its full potential when you support it 100%. You need to push your idea as much as possible if you truly believe it. If you are passionate about professional blogging, giving up your day job to focus on your projects is a move you will eventually have to consider.

Chances are, if you’re going to make that leap, you’ll do it sooner rather than later. Commitment to an idea spurs action. Driven entrepreneurs can’t wait to hit key milestones–incorporation, building prototypes, drumming up customers.If you’re not moving fast, it’s probably time to move on.

If your idea fulfills all the above conditions, it might be better to drop it in favor of another idea that would fare better. My personal belief is that most ideas will turn out to be profitable if you have in-depth industry knowledge, sufficient personal networks and the will to sustain it through the difficult initial growth period.

Play it smart and be intuitive when building your business empire and you will eventually generate a lucrative income from all your businesses or projects.

How To Make Money From Nothing But Numbers!

This is a free online course about Cryptography. In the video below, the course instructor mentions that he will teach you how to use cryptography to “make money from nothing but numbers”! Sounds great, ama?

Cryptography means “secret writing”. It is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties.

Udacity will be offering a course on Applied Cryptography starting April 16th 2012. The course is free and open to everyone.

I do not know about you, but I would love to learn how to make money from “nothing but numbers”!

See you in class?

Disrupting The Kenyan Movies Industry

I just read a very well written and thought-provoking article on how piracy affects the Kenyan movie industry: Secrets About Piracy Revealed By Jitu Films Director. It seems that a very interesting problem plagues our industry:

  • Piracy is apparently illegal in Kenya.
  • However, all those “DVD for 50 bob” shops in town sell nothing but illegal pirated stuff. But they sell foreign films and so no one bothers to go after them. (An instance of how the law fails local film makers).
  • Those shops in town can never dare try to sell Kenyan movies because they need a special license to do so and because if they did, the city council will be on top of them quickly.
  • This presents an interesting problem for local film makers: they cannot hope to compete on price with foreign films. Would you buy “The Rugged Priest” at 100/- when “Avatar” is available at 50 bob?
  • To add to that, there is no local DVD factory hence local film makers have to import these and pay import taxes on top of all the other ‘normal’ taxes int heir industry. Essentially, they are unable to sell their movies at 50 bob and remain financially viable. The illegal shops in town selling pirated stuff pay no taxes.
  • This creates a situation where locally made movies are more expensive than foreign movies. They are also harder to find because to sell them you need a special licence which the 50 bob shops typically do not get.

Of course this creates an industry in which it is difficult to make much good money. What do you think can be done to overcome these problems?

IN my mind, piracy is a problem that can be best solved by offering a more convenient alternative. However, I am not to sure what, exactly, can be done to bring up such an alternative.

Through my brief work with Space Yangu, I read numerous emails from people asking us where they could buy Kenyan movies. I believe there’s demand here and money to be made – someone just needs to figure out the logistics. I can think of two approaches to a solution:

  1. Someone to open a chain of little shops in Nairobi (and eventually elsewhere) to sell Kenyan movies. (this was suggested in the linked article)
  2. Someone could open up a huge online shop that sells and delivers a wide selection of Kenyan movies. Perhaps it could eventually lead to a Netflix like service.

What do you think can be done?

ePay-Kenya: A Tried and Proven Way to Withdraw From PayPal in Kenya

The lack of a good and reliable way to withdraw money from PayPal in Kenya is one of the factors which hinder the average Kenyan’s potential to earn online most significantly. On Like Chapaa, we have had a long and hard struggle to try to find and identify the best way to withdraw from PayPal in Kenya. I believe that we have a contender for this title in e-Pay Kenya.

e-Pay Kenya opened its doors in January 2009 as e-pesa then rebranded in 2010 to ePAY-KENYA. Esther Kimani of e-Pay Kenya reached out to us to provide more information on what e-Pay does. This article is based on her information to us, and on good reports their customers.

e-Pay Kenya offers two ways to withdraw your hard-earned money:


1. Moneybookers
“We have an Merchant Agreement with Moneybookers allowing us to officially run a Money transfer website using their services. This explains why the moneybookers fee is lower (11%) than Paypal. We therefore do not operate under any fear of account limitation as we operate with blessings from Moneybookers. We deliver within the hour but often less,” says Esther Kimani of e-Pay Kenya.

2. Paypal
Esther continues, “We use a third-party gateway to avoid the direct interface with Paypal because we have experienced the danger of doing so (when we operated as e-pesa). This explains why the transaction charges are higher (14%) than Moneybookers but then our users enjoy the following benefits:

  1. Peace of mind when dealing with us as there is no possibility of our users’ accounts being limited by PayPal
  2. Our third-party gateway does fraud tests on our behalf to minimize fraudulent transactions.
  3. We have a strict KYC (Know Your Customer) policy. All our users have to send Identification Documents in order to have their accounts verified, thus allowing them to make transactions.
  4. We demand that users forward their Paypal Transaction Confirmation emails before they can cash their money. We use this document to authenticate the bona fide account holders. We have caught up with fraudsters who hack into unsuspecting paypal account holders’ accounts.
  5. Delivery within 24 hours but often less.”

Charges
The bulk of the fees are charged when you deposit money from Moneybookers/PayPal into e-Pay Kenya. Their charges at this time are as follows:

Moneybookers:

  • Deposit 11%
  • Withdrawal USD 3 irrespective of the amount

Paypal:

  • Deposit 14%
  • Withdraw USD 3 irrespective of the amount

Conclusion
It seems to me that e-Pay Kenya has a very well thought-out service. It is the best of all such businesses that I have come across so far. It is a bit pricey, but as we wait for PayPal to open itself up, e-Pay Kenya remains a good and reliable alternative.

What do you think of e-Pay Kenya?

ALERT
As far as I know, the REAL e-Pay Kenya is at: www.epay-kenya.com

NOT: www.epaykenya.com

TrINC Money : MPESA-PayPal Service [Updated]

I was a bit hesitant to write about this new service after the rise and fall of PayMPESA, but here goes:

Trinc Money seems to be a new service that allows you to transfer money to and from PayPal via MPESA. yes, this means that it lets you both withdraw and deposit money into PayPal using MPESA. Sounds good, eh?


Costs
Apart from the usual PayPal and MPESA fees, Trinc Money charges what seems to be a used to charge a standard flat Kshs 1000 transaction fee. Depending on how much you send, this can work out to be extremely cheap. But is it sustainable?

They have since updated their fees to 6.9% + KES.250

Sustainability
I worry about this service. Does it have the required blessing from PayPal? As far as I know, PayPal does not allow this kind of money transfer service. If your remember correctly, other services got around this issue by packaging themselves as selling “vouchers” which could be redeemed for money. This seems not to be the case with Trinc Money.

Additionally, PayPal is rumored to be very very close to launching fully in Kenya. Would this not outright kill TrincMoney?

I have reached out to Trinc Money for comment on both of the above.

I am sorry if I feel overly critical of TrINC Money, I am just being prudent. I am aware that PayPal frowns upon this kind of “money transfer” business working through PayPal and I would not want the readers of Like Chapaa to suffer any loss as a result of reading this article.

So, dear readers, what do you think of this? Has anyone tried to use Trinc Money?

Response from TrINC Money:

Trincmoney is neither a money transfer service nor a currency exchange service. What we do provide is a platform for registered PayPal users to send electronic PayPal value to the Trincmoney PayPal account. These funds are not withdrawn and are valid PayPal transactions initiated by registered PayPal users.

Upon a customer’s request, our service sends our customers electronic monetary value depicted in ones M-PESA Account representing an equal amount of Cash held by the MPESA Holding Company Limited and which may be redeemed through an M-PESA Agent for an equal amount of legal tender in the Republic of Kenya, to their MPESA registered mobile numbers. Note that MPESA electronic value is NOT legal tender.

With regard to money laundering, Trincmoney carries out the required due diligence on customers who send us money and who receive money from us.

If PayPal were to open up shop on Kenya it would be a blessing to a lot of people who use the Internet to send and receive money. Trincmoney will survive simply because a PayPal withdrawal takes 4 working days to effect while our service is effected within the hour. Also chances are that the charges will be higher.

I hope I have answered your queries. I have also read your blog on our service. Please note that we changed our rates and are now charging 6.9% + KES.250. Check out our Facebook Page and Twitter handle and sample some of our customer reviews.