How NOT To Make Money Online

September 30, 2010 by 7 Comments

One of our nice readers sent this email:

“I spend too much time on the internet doing nothing. Sometimes it is fun but it does not pay the bills. I’ve been sort of freelancing for awhile and paid a web designer to do a fancy website that I couldn’t maintain myself, and that thing didn’t generate any leads. Now I don’t have a website, but I have a blog that I don’t even use. Nini mbaya na mimi?

Hakuna kitu mbaya na wewe!

What we all need to do is to stop building all these fancy websites and complex marketing strategies. Are you making money online? Would a blog and Twitter and Facebook help you get your first three paying customers? The plain simple answer is NO. At the beginning your focus should be to get three paying clients (because one or two may just be a fluke).

After you do this, you will have established that your business idea is actually viable; you will have proven that people will actually pay for whatever you are selling. Afterwards, you can start thinking of the blogs and Facebook and other fancy stuff. Not before. I’ll say it again: skip all the fancy stuff that you hear (SEO, social media, etc) and just get your first three paying clients!

The funny thing is that almost everyone who hears this advice does not like it one bit! Instead, you like hearing things like:

  • You need a Twitter page with lots of followers
  • Everyone spends his time on Facebook, you need to get a facebook page
  • You can’t do business without registering a company…and don’t forget business cards

You know why most people prefer the above to actually getting down to work and getting paying clients? Because it is so much easier to start a blog and Twitter and pray that somehow money will just flow in. It is much harder to sit down and make a plan on how to get three people to pay for whatever you are selling.

I have been blogging for more than six years and I’ve pretty much seen it all. If you ask me, 99.9999999% of all bloggers make a shameful amount of money, something like $2 per month. Does that really tie in with your high horse dreams of making it big? We have to be realistic about things, my friend. If your goal is to make money, do not waste time on social media.

Focus on setting up your business, not on the technology; focus on understanding your customer; focus on testing whether your idea is profitable; focus on how to build the best product or service that you can.

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business Tagged With:

3 Steps To Internet Business

September 29, 2010 by 1 Comment

Step 1: Content
Good Content is the key to a good long-term online business. Why? Because marketing costs time and money. You want to have content that gets passed on naturally through the internet. You still need to do marketing but you’re hoping much of your marketing will be done freely through word-of-mouth. And to leverage word-of-mouth, you need to have quality content worth talking about.

So, spend a lot of time planning and producing your content. Create a ‘content blueprint’ to organize your content ideas. For me, this blueprint is a list of different types of content. For example:

  • Tutorials
  • Interviews
  • News
  • Commentary on industry happenings
  • Videos
  • Series of articles on one topic

Step 2: Marketing
Next comes marketing. With the growing amount of information on the internet, marketing has become more important. There are many sites with great content that don’t have much traffic because no one knows about them. Marketing is simply the activity of letting people know about your site.

I would create a ‘marketing blueprint’. However, I spend most of my marketing time in a few marketing channels. It’s not advisable to stretch your marketing efforts too thin. Marketing channels take time to cultivate before they’re fully effective. Of course, if you have a lot of time for marketing or the money to outsource, go ahead and use more marketing channels.

Here are some marketing methods that have proven effective for webmasters:

  • Blog commenting
  • Social media sites
  • Press releases
  • Forum posting
  • Guest blogging
  • Article submission
  • Video submission

Step 3: Monetization
Finally, we have monetization. Now that you’ve thought about content and marketing, you can focus on converting your traffic into dollars. The key here is understanding your traffic. Why are they coming to your site? What are their problems? What can you sell them that would solve their problems?

Also, think of advertisers with products your audience would find useful. Contact those advertisers and see if they would be partner with you.

Here are some methods for monetizing your site:

  • Contextual advertising
  • Advertising through a broker
  • Direct advertising
  • Reviews
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Sell your own product or service
  • Donations

That’s it! Do you have any questions? We have answers!

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business Tagged With:

The Perfect Business

September 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

I’ve always disliked multi level marketing (sometimes derogatorily called ‘pyramid schemes’) like GNLD. But today, I watched the video below and it changed my perception of these models. Allow me to explain.

In the business world, there are four types of people:

  1. Employees
  2. Self-employed people (solo acts)
  3. Business owners
  4. Inverstors

The poor people of this world are employees and self-employed people. Employees work hard to build businesses that they will never own and are always at risk of losing everything. Self-employed people are safer than employees – what they build, they own but the business depends wholly on them and if anything happens to them, the business fails and financial doom ensues.

Business owners and investors are the rich people of the world. They do not work for money, their money works for them. Clearly, we should all try and learn how to build businesses and invest wisely. It is a subject that should be taught in every school, but sadly is not. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of the population of any country, Kenya included, grows up into adulthood with little idea of how to actually build and grow a business.

Because we should all learn how to build businesses, a great challenge exists for the majority of people – how do you learn how to do business? In the video below, Robert T Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad says that the simplest, fastest and safest way to learn how to do business is through companies that offer multi-level marketing. Think about it. If you join a company like GNLD to sell their products, they will support you in all sorts of ways to make sure that you make sales and become successful. While you are doing this, you are learning how to do business in a safe and supportive environment. You could then easily stop the GNLD stuff and set up your own venture using your newly acquired skills and experiences. Makes sense? Watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGMUspZyNuo

What do you think?

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business

Yay DukaPress!

September 21, 2010 by 4 Comments

When I moved back to Kenya last December, Kelvin was one of the first people I looked up. We’d chatted a bit online, and we talked for a good three hours about all things business. I now consider him a friend and a mentor, and he’s still the first person I call when I want to slap a client and I need to talk politely instead. He’s very good at Customer Care.

Kelvin and I laid out a lot of plans during that first meeting at T-spot. Some I implemented immediately, some took a little while longer, and some I completely forgot about for months. For example, it wasn’t until July that I signed up on GAF and Elance, and I didn’t get active until a month later. I’m now fairly settled with that. It’s not without challenges, but I know that I’ll get there eventually.

Another item on our agenda was starting an online shop. The idea was to gather all my little stories and put them on a platform. I’m very organised, but I’m also a bit of scatterbrain, so I have little bits of note paper, poetry verses, and half-finished novels that I’ve scribbled in my notebooks. Kelvin felt we could aggregate them and possibly make some money. I didn’t give the idea much thought until DukaPress came up. I’d always said I’d get the books PDFed and throw in some Photoshop covers, but I just never got round to doing it.

When Nickel Pro developed DukaPress, I didn’t know what it was, but I downloaded it anyway. Kelvin said it was a good idea, and after all, it was free. It sat idle on my dashboard for maybe another month while I fiddled around with Photoshop. I logged in occasionally to tweak the settings or something, but for the most part, it was just a pretty orange thing on my sidebar. Then Kelvin released this video and I immediately set it up. I drew up a quick book cover with Photoshop and google images, and posted my first two books on the shop.

The next few days were frustrating, because I realised that I’d have to buy a new Safaricom line to support Mpesa. *groan* I kept getting blank and partial orders, some of which were from me and Kelvin testing the system. I somehow clicked Paypal Sandbox and ended up opening a whole new account – I have no idea just what it was or why. But Kelvin helped me out and showed me where to click and where to check, and finally the shop was all set up.

Next came the Paypal issue. If I wanted to use Paypal, I would have to price the books in dollars , which is fine, except I kept thinking of this post and feeling like a dreadlocked Judas. I tweaked the shop like four times a day, mostly changing from Ksh to US$ and back again. If my website had a voice [and a hand] I’m sure it would have slapped me a thousand times over.

Yesterday I spent the whole day fimalising products, uploading covers, images and whatnot. I was still undecided on the whole US$ vs Ksh debate, so I was pretty excited when I saw Kelvin announce DukaPress 1.3.0 on twitter. It allows multiple currencies. Yay! It also allows manual control of the image sizes. It took me a while to figure it out, and I spent ages tweaking dimensions, literally. I’m sure it was at least three hours. By midnight, I was happy with the look of the site and the products, and everything was good to go. I did manage to somehow warp my media window, but Kelvin released 1.3.1, and I updated it early this morning with fabulous results.

What I really like about DukaPress, besides the fact that it’s free, is that it’s user-friendly. Even a technobof like me could figure it out, though it took me a while. Kelvin and the other guys at Dukapress are always available to solve problems, and you can even catch them on twitter. The interphase is smooth and pretty, and you can see results immediately, which is pretty awesome. I don’t have to mess with code to see my preferences flow, and it makes me feel like a nerd chick. Uber cool.

If you haven’t got DukaPress yet, I suggest you go download it. Business is all about selling stuff, and when someone gives you a prime, rent-free business space, you’d better find something good to sell. As for me, I’m content now that Kiosk 3CB is open for business.

Crystal Ading’ is a professional writer, editor, rock lover, and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With:

Want Your Own Online Business? [Interview]

September 15, 2010 by 3 Comments

For the readers that don’t know, Andrew Mutua is one of the founders of www.pamojashops.com.

PamojaShops is a community of buyers and sellers of African handmade wares. We hope through this platform which is not limited to time and/or place, we will open up our creativity and art to the world. PamojaShops is the online version of open air markets, commonly known as Maasai markets that showcase our creativity, our culture, our enterprising spirit, our art, and our unique identity with various influences both from within and outside.

Today, Andrew opens up to Like Chapaa.

Q. You’re quite an achiever, tell us about you.

I’m a 29 year old tech enthusiast, who loves Jazz (check out my blog). I have been in the IT industry now for 8 years and I recently co-founded PamojaShops.

Q. How do you make money online?

I believe you’re asking about our business model. Initially, we had thought of having a rental model, whereby each vendor pays a fee to open and maintain an online stall. Pretty much what happens in the physical world.

However, this has since changed to commissioned-based model where each product sold will be charged a small percentage over and above its price. (The most unique part is that the vendors acquire their own micro-site and they can use that to market themselves i.e www.vendor.pamojashops.com)

Q. How did you start?

The idea had been brewing for a while now. I think it has been a year since I first thought of having the online version of Maasai Market (African Handicrafts open air market).After some prodding from my sister I decided to plunge in and pursue the dream. She followed that up with a promise to be an investor and partner in the venture. With that major boost it was full speed ahead to making it happen.

Q. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Initially it was hard getting someone who could translate my idea into a digital platform (site) which could set up and host online shops (E-stalls) and facilitate payment and shipments. But lucky enough I did finally get someone (Nickel Pro) who understand and even further refined my idea – I guess through persistence it finally panned out.

The other challenge is the target user, (Maasai Market Merchants) is mostly not computer literate. And considering we had hoped to have a system fully automated and within the control of the user we’ve had to step back and evaluate the viability of this approach. What we’re now doing is working hand-in-hand with the merchants taking them through the entire process. So it’s gonna be pretty involving and hands-on at the start…again this is good, it may help in understanding the trade more intimately and to craft a more relevant solution.

Q. What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in Kenya?

Funding is an issue but I believe this slowly changing. I think there’s a lack of support structures to help any start-up out there e.g. have a forum for startups, advisors, incubation centers and low cost administrative support for start-up.

Again, there’s good news here the development of initiatives such i-Hub and Nailab seek to tackle some of these challenges.

Q. What was critical to your success?

We we are not there yet, but Passion in whatever you’re undertaking is very important because when all else fails it’s the only thing that keeps you afloat, energized and fired up to move on.

The other is a community of people; be they techies or any skilled person ready to rent their expertise; entrepreneurs who offer their advice and inspire you with their experiences. The community helps you where you can’t; gives you guidance and direction and, there are people out there ready and willing to help and I think the i-Hub has doing a great job in fostering this kind of community support and partnership.

Over and above all, the other attributes of hard work, teamwork and more belief in God has also been key in this venture. When you take the uncharted road and you don’t know what the next step holds, God gives you the strength and bravery to plunge in and keep going.

Q. What about the competition and marketing, do you need to advertise, print flyers participate to conferences or is it mostly word of mouth?
Marketing is a critical element to any business as a means of putting the word out, promoting, raising awareness, seeking participation, etc., to eventually result in conversions (sales).

Word of Mouth ranks up there as best means of Marketing. And in this regard we’re leveraging Social Media Tools – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs etc- to raise awareness; create a community of fans around our product and service.

In terms of Offline Marketing we’re looking to engage in intense evangelism of our product in every meet-up that we’re part of. And we’re also considering doing some flyer print-outs or some other print marketing materials.

Q. Do you think that in order to “make it big” online you have to live in a Western country? Or does Kenya offer more or less the same opportunities?
The Internet has since leveled the playing field quite dramatically. And although Western countries have certain advantages (support structures, availability of VCs, etc) I think now, in this day and age, we all have a chance to play in the same league as them. Look at platforms as Ushahidi that were birthed here and have since gone global. This is a testament that we have what it takes to develop world-class products.

Q. Where do you see yourself and your business (es) in the next 5 years?
I hope we’ll grow PamojaShops to be the world’s largest marketplace for all African Handicrafts.

I also see myself been involved heavily in various community service initiatives that I’m passionate about i.e. education and social entrepreneurship.

Q. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
No. I think the lessons, missteps, failures that I’ve made in life made me who I am and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. You can’t go back, we only move forward.

Q. What advice do you have for Internet business entrepreneurs in Kenya?
Act on that idea. Don’t get hung up on how unique that idea is and holding on to it like your life is depended on it. The best idea is the one that has been executed. Go ahead and make it happen or as Nike would say – Just Do it!

That’s all for today readers. If you like what you hear, why not go over to www.pamojashops.com and buy something or become a vendor?

Check out PamojaShops Facebook Page and Follow them on Twitter.

Or contact Andrew MUTUA- andy[at]pamojashops.com

Filed Under: Interviews, Make Money, Small Business

The Way You Look

September 12, 2010 by 2 Comments

It has been a pretty festive weekend, but then again it’s almost always ‘festive’ in Nairobi right? We always have an excuse to have a good time. And by all means we should.

Among the ‘best sellers’ when it comes to kujienjoy in Kenya is  nyama choma – roast meat.

So let’s say that you were going out to get some nyama choma. Would you get it from this guy:

Or, would you get it from this guy:

The first guy looks more experienced right? He’s got his chef hat-thing and that no-nonsense look going on. He actually went to school to learn how to roast your meat just right. That’s right, it’s your meat now, so you have to worry about who’s handling it. But who’s to say that the second guy has no experience? He’s could have been working way longer than the first guy. And who can prove that he does not know how to roast meat? Other than the fact that he’s not looking at it at the moment of course. As long as it’s not burning right? He could probably argue that he just doesn’t have the 3000 shilling jiko that the first guy has.

How would you decide which one to go to? Could it be by how clean they appear to be? The quality of the meat? The price? Location?

All these are reasonable factors to consider before choosing one of the two. In fact, every client thinks about these factors. What differs is the order of priority that they put them in. Some are more concerned about the price than how clean the guy is, while others are the opposite.

With an online business, most of the time you do not need to actually meet your clients face to face. There is the occasional meeting when the client needs extra attention, otherwise you are good to go. So most of us don’t really need to worry about what we look like because our clients won’t see us. So they can’t really judge us based on our outward appearance.

This could be a good thing since more often than not, if you have an online business that is successful, what you look like really does not matter. Other times, this is a disadvantage since you have to make up for the lack of ‘visibility’, if I can call it that, with other things. Like say, make your website ‘appealing to the eye’. This is not so hard though since you can always just hire someone to do it for you. You have to work hard on the other departments though like customer service and product delivery. Everything else has to be twice as good as a ‘physical’ business.

Anyway, on a normal weekend the two guys above get roughly the same number of clients. Surprised? Different locations, different target groups, different priority orders, but clients all the same. So it’s pretty much your choice. What kind of guy do you want to be? As long as you market yourself well and to the right people, you’ll still do good.

PS: If I were you, I’d pick guy A. Not giving you ideas or pushing you against a wall or anything like that. Just saying 🙂

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business

Enter Elance – Part 3

August 31, 2010 by 5 Comments

Just got here? Here is Part 1 and Part 2.

In the morning, I got mail that I’d won two jobs on Elance. Yay! Then I went to the kiosk and came back to see that I’d won two more jobs on GAF. Oookkkaaaaaay. While I was fixing breakfast, a third GAF client sent me a ‘yes’ for my bid. Yikes! I now had five different gigs totalling $300 and just four days to get them done. This was a different kind of panic.

I managed to push two of the clients to give me some extra time. One was crabby about it, but he liked my work, so he said ok. The other seemed excited that he had to wait. Go figure. He actually gave me five exra days, which is awesome. I like Canadians.

So far, I’ve managed to finish three of the projects, but I still have two to complete before Tuesday, and they total 190 articles ranging between 350 and 600 words, for which I will be paid $140. Wow.

Sometimes I think it’s sad that people with talent and papers get stuck doing grunge work. On one job that I bid, a fellow freelancer explained that he had two Masters degrees and had edited a newspaper, yet his bid was lower than mine. Plus, he’s in the States, so I’m sure he needs to earn way more than I do. The cost of living there is higher. But I guess we do what we have to.

Elance is a touch more OCD than GAF is, which is why the clients there are willing to spend more. Once you win a job on Elance, you get a workroom where you have to issue status reports on the progress of your work. You have milestones, or targets, so that the client knows exactly how many articles you have written by a certain time. You can get jobs where you’re paid per hour, and there’s a stopwatch to calculate just how much time you’ve actually spent on the project. There’s a provision for having a freelance team, so you can bid on multiple projects and ‘outsource’ with more transparency.

I like Elance more than GAF because the jobs are at a higher level, so you’re more likely to work with professionals. Online professionals are generally nice. Sometimes the people I work with on GAF are bullies with zero customer care, and it’s enough to make you smash your monitor … on their heads! The things we do for love money.

So, between Elance and GAF, I’ve reached my August target of $500, which has me pretty excited. My target for next month is $2000. I’d eventually like to make $5000 dollars a month, so that I can own a penthouse by 2020. I still have clients offline who bring in another 10 to 20,000 Ksh some months, but they’re not consistent, so my online work does the bills. Any work from the ‘real world’ is an investment bonus.

I can’t withdraw my GAF money before 31st, but after that, I can access it through Moneybookers, and I hear Paypal finally styled up, so yay! My GAF debit card gets here in about a month, and it’s usable on Elance as well, so I can easily draw my money. But meanwhile, I’m paying my membership through Paypal via my KCB card, and now that it accepts cash receipts, I can divert my Elance cash there and figure out some other way to draw it.

I’m really liking this freelance gig. It’s virtually cost-free except for electricity, $30 for membership, and my Zuku subscription. There’s no market saturation because there’s enough work for all of us. And the best part is that unless the worldwide web collapses, I’ll never be  retrenched or fired. How cool is that?

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

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