Posts Tagged ‘business’

So, You Want To Start A Business?

January 30th, 2010

Here is a nice (long) video in which Mr Edward Hess talks about starting a business. He starts out talking with the most common causes of start up failure and ends with taking questions from the audience. The whole talk is filled with interesting and insightful comments by Mr Hess.

Throughout the talk, he stresses one thing: why would a customer want to buy from you? He says that you have to look at this question and answer it realistically. I’ve had the good fortune to start a few businesses and I have to admit that figuring out why people will give you their money is probably the best thing you can do for your business.

Please watch the video:

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What do you think?

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Posted in Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews

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How To Start An Online Shop

December 2nd, 2009

One of the most common questions we get goes like, “Hey, how do i set up an online shop?” Because we’re all about seeing the Internet come through for people in Kenya, especially financially, I decided to write an article on how to start your own online shop, easy. Enjoy :)

Trust me, it is a very daunting task and it involves a hell of a lot. Are you up for all that? I do not know. I do know one thing though, the opportunity to make lots and lots of money is still very much there. In all markets most online stores are, for lack of better words, a complete waste of time.

No joke – there are so many badly designed and structured online shops out there that you’d be surprised. You could choose any market place and still have a very good shot at making a killing. If only you use correct procedure. And guess what? The wealth of tools available for your use is just unbelievable – challenging the Top Dogs in any market is something very do-able.

Where do you start?
As I said earlier, starting an online shop is no easy task. Should you start your own, you are bound to make lots and lots of mistakes. However, I beg you to always work with this in mind: “Customers first, money second“. Got it? Good, you’ll never go wrong. Many, many businesses mess up this simple task.

Before anything else, you need to ask yourself the same questions you’d ask yourself if you were going into business in the offline world. Do you have something to market? Will people buy what you want to sell? Will they pay enough money for you to make a profit?

Next you’ll need to choose a name for your site/shop. Since this will be your identity, it is VERY important. Take time to choose a good and easy-to-remember name. Read more about this, if need be.

Building your website
Unfortunately, if you want the best results there are only two courses of action:

  1. Hire professionals to build you a site. People like us. :)
  2. Do it yourself, but only if you have the technical know-how.

That said, here are some things you should keep in mind:

  • How many products do you have? If you have just a few, your site will look bare. (Depending on how it is built)
  • What type of products are you selling? This will affect how you display them – jewellery will be displayed differently from, say, aquariums. :p
  • You must have good quality pictures of your products.
  • Include item descriptions jameni! Of course your customers want to know this.
  • Ensure that your site loads quickly and that it is easy to navigate.
  • As well as making your site the best it can be for customers, make sure it is very easy for you to update it i.e. add new products or change prices.
  • Make the selling process as easy and as fast as possible. You don’t really need to make your customers register at your site, do you? This is an unnecessary step that will cost you sales!

Because I love my readers, I shall suggest a super easy way to build a top-of-the-range online shop. Listen carefully:

  1. Download wordpress
  2. Install wordpress on a server somewhere. How?
  3. Install this wordpress theme. How?
  4. Install this wordpress plugin. How?
  5. You have your very nice online shop!

Other tools you can use: Magento, osCommerce.

Web hosting
One your website is made, it needs to be hosted somewhere. This is so that it is accessible to the whole of the Internet. Learn more.

If you’re going to handle any kind of financial transactions through your website, you need to make sure your web host offers secure servers. This means that they offer SSL encryption. You should find out whether your prospective web host offers SSL encryption as part of its regular package or charges extra for this service.

When your website is your storefront, if your website is down, your store is closed – or worse, effectively nonexistent. So you need a web host that offers at least a 99% uptime guarantee. While asking about a web host’s uptime guarantee, you might also inquire as to its back up systems in case of emergencies.

There are hundreds of good web hosts out there. I recommend that you choose us. :)

Marketing your online shop
The key to online retailing is to strive to get as many people visiting your shop as possible. Please, please keep search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind. If need be, hire someone to do your SEO.

There are some helpful articles here and here. Oh and we are also available to help you with SEO.

Dealing with payments
You will need a way to accept payments online, or at the very least accept orders online. Many modern online shop creation systems (like the ones I suggested earlier) do this right out of the box. If you intend to sell to people in Kenya, it would be helpful to be able to receive payments by ZAP and MPESA. Here’s an article we wrote about this topic.

Conclusion
We haven’t covered everything you need to know in this article, but most of it is up there. You can have your shop ready by next week if you follow what the article says.

Good luck :)

PS I was thinking of doing a follow-up article on this topic by going step by step through what I did when setting up an existing online shop. Anyone interested?

Image courtesy of Jesse757.

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Posted in Small Business

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Six of the Best Banks For Startups In Kenya

October 6th, 2009

So last week we wrote here about our frustrations in finding a good bank for a young startup business – we had walked in and out of banks for hours and non struck us as particularly attractive for our young business. Following the article on Like Chapaa, we received a lot of emails and other feedback from a whole lot of people giving us advice on which banks would be suitable for startups in Kenya.

Are you a business owner? Are you planning on being one? For your banking needs, try one of these:

  1. Equity Bank. Evans says, “Try Equity bank, I have a business Account with them and its good and even accessing credits is easy.They have helped in the growth of my business,so I m a proud member of the bank. All the best as you start your business.”
  2. Chase Bank – Maingi says, “They are really flexible in terms of handling transactions for instance I comfortably transact without ID…in a nut shell they try to know their customers and treat them as such. Also there are good in Forex. Try them.”
  3. Fina Bank
  4. Bank of Africa
  5. Eco bank
  6. NIC

The banks in the above list are ranked according to the number of recommendations received for each. I hope you will find this useful.

All in all, the picture of banking in Kenya that I got from this experience is not good. At all. Our banks seem to be interested only in making money off their customers and they are very poor at supporting new businesses.

That said, I shall close this post with the best piece of advise that I got. Many thanks to the author, Sagongonyi. Thanks also go to everyone else who helped.

“Most banks will require a six months statement (minimum) for any meaningful assistance. It also depends on the nature of business you would like to engage in. For example if it is a simple transaction like you have an order to supply some items to an organization, Equity can finace you and you agree on how to share the profit.

There are other institutions like GroFin that can finance start up businesses but with a well presented business proposal. They will also require you to contribute a percentage of the initial capital outlay. They will also require you to personally manage your business and you will also share profits with them. They have assisted quite a number of my friends who import second hand Prime Movers. They are in Upper Hill CIC Plaza.

NIC are also good but they require you to have some experience in your business, even 3 months can be ok. Their systems are very good and you can get money in two weeks. They are very clear on what they want and they are very straight forward. They have financed my business for a period of three years now and i am not regretting. No bank can give you 100% financing for a start-up business; better start small and grow it.”

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Posted in Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews

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Starting Your Own Business

September 24th, 2009

In his book ‘Small is the new big’, Seth Godin writes, “As long as you work for someone, you have no job security. As long as your company is public, your future is in the hands of others—people who are likely not as smart as you are. And as long as you follow the instructions of others, you won’t be fulfilling your destiny of really and truly making a difference in the way people live and work.”

Lately I’ve come across quite a lot of people who have remarkable ideas for a new business that they’d like to start. I love hearing about these! Unfortunately, the talks usually end with a bunch of excuses why the business has to wait until you are “ready”. When are you ever going to be ready for the crazy ride that is running your own business? There’s never going to be a more perfect time than now.

One of the founders of Meebo gives this advice to aspiring startups, “At the exact moment you had your idea, ten other people had the exact same idea. There was just something in the environment that made it the right time for folks to think that one up. The race has already begun! Who’s going to execute first? Who’s going to execute best? If you want to waste nine months trying to raise VC money for that idea, great. But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Now.”

Don’t wait for anything, start now. Hurry!

I’ll let you in on a little secret, if you cannot do absolutely anything for your new business without getting funding or another form of support, you better quit now because you will not go very far. You need that initiative and fire to at least do something before you get support. Think about all the great businesses and companies of our time – a lot of them started in garages, parking lots and dorm rooms.

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How To Actually Start A Business

July 22nd, 2009

If you have read a lot about starting a business, you’ve probably seen over and over that it’s not so difficult. It just takes determination, hard work and patience. This is all true. For most people the problem usually comes in actually starting. You know like when you really want to do or say something but you just don’t know how to start? I put together a couple of steps to help starters get past that starting point.

Decide what you want to do – This should be fairly simple. You must have had some idea in order to want to start a business. Something that you are good at and you actually enjoy doing. It can be writing, marketing, advertising, selling, chocolate bunnies, pretty much anything sells these days. Most people have the idea in their heads, how they are going to make millions, start their own ‘apprentice’ show or something like that. You basically need a plan, not many go as far as Scofield by getting it tattooed all over their body but you get the point, decide what you want to do and have a plan.

Do the research – Check out the field you want to join and even better know the ‘who is who’ in it. Who is likely to be your mentor, who is going to be competition, who can help you out, who to look up to, who to aim to beat. All of these different people will come in handy at different points later on. Through this research you also get more insight and maybe new ideas on how to operate that you had not thought of or maybe even discover things that are not already offered that you can bring in.

Get a website – A website is becoming increasingly crucial in running any kind of business today. It is very important to have good stuff on your site, stuff that people will want to know, don’t just copy and paste from some other sites or pick up other people’s articles. I’ve seen many people complain about the state of Kenyan websites and how they are not up to standard, and seen even more people ripped off by cons selling clone sites. To save you any misfortune I recommend Nickel Pro for your website design, management, hosting and all your web needs.

Get clients- This is the part that needs a lot of hard work and patience. You have everything set, your website running, all that is left is getting clients. You need to let people know that you are out there, what you have to offer and why they should get it from you and not your competitors. There are many ways to do this. You can start a blog of your own, leave comments on other peoples blogs, get into forums, chat rooms, write articles, send emails, do everything. Even the old school African way, tell your family, friends and neighbors and tell them to spread the word.
A big mistake most people make in this part is doing this blindly. Before you start advertising yourself, decide who you want as clients, a target group. After narrowing it down to a specific people advertising is easier and if you do it right most of it will pay back.

Keep clients – Now you have a running business and a bunch of clients yay! It’s not yet time to relax though. In fact, it’s sometimes harder keeping your clients happy than it is just getting them. They came to you because they think you can do the job right. All you have to do is prove to them that you are better than everyone else and make sure they don’t regret picking you. How you treat your clients is very important. Update your website with information they need to know, reply to their comments on your site, answer their emails in time, give them high quality products, timely deliveries and do everything you can to make sure they are comfortable.

Launches – Yes launches, not lunches. One reason why a lot of on line businesses do not succeed is lack of stimulation. If you offer the same thing, over and over, after a while it gets to be kinda boring. To keep your business alive you need to have a launch maybe once every two or three months. Depending on what your business is.
What is a launch? It involves bringing in something new, a fresh idea to your business. For example we had Host a Charity a while back and Biashara30 right now, which is starting soon by the way so sign up if you haven’t yet. These new and different things that you bring in give your business a little spice. Launches also give your clients something to look forward to, makes your duty interesting too since you have to find something new every so often plus it offers an opportunity for you to get new clients due to the new additions to your business can be services or products.

So stop thinking about how you are going to do it and postponing, the sooner you start that business the sooner you start becoming rich :)

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Posted in Make Money, Small Business

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