Smart Ways To Make Money Online With Nil Investment

December 14, 2009 by 17 Comments

The fiber optic Internet is here with us, the Internet charges have dropped dramatically and the prices of computers too have plummeted to due to zero rating. With opportunities beckoning on our doors I don’t see why you should continue complaining that there are no jobs. With almost nil investment you can now make some money online. If you love freedom, that personal freedom to do what you love and enjoy, that comes with working without a fixed schedule or geographic location, then you are welcome to join the lucrative world of making money online with minimal investment. Even if you’re not looking to work full-time at home, the Internet offers a viable source of money which can help to supplement your regular income and improve your life style.

Today I will explore several ways in which you can make some money online. My ideas involve making real cash not points or credits or some funny rewards, they don’t require you to have your own Web domain or ask you money or have your own products or any hard-selling. Hapana. So let’s start.

Be an Online Freelancer
The easiest way to make some real bucks comes through online freelancing or contracted work. Take advantage of your skills and expertise .What do you love? Are you good in web design? Are you a good writer? Whatever your skill is put it to good use as an online freelancer. Perhaps the best place to start is getafreelancer or Elance or Guru or demand studios. No money is needed to subscribe and the registration is fairly simple. Take your time in each website and read the processes involved and make some bucks while you can. You gotta start somewhere.

Be an Affiliate
If this is the first time you are hearing this word then you have been sleeping. Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative ways to make passive income while you sleep and do the things you love .Young people all over the world have become millionaires and rich overnight without products of their own or any investment. Talk of Joel Comm., Russell Branson, Michael Sweeney, the king of the online marketing Rich Schfren and the John Reese-famed for making a million bucks online in 24 hours!

Anyway, affiliate marketing works like this: You sign up as an affiliate with a merchant and then promote a specific product or service and whenever a referred user makes a purchase based on your recommendations you earn some commission. If you’ve got an interest in weight loss as an example, you can make money promoting weight loss products. In terms of fashion wear, you can earn commissions by recommending friends to clothing websites with affiliate programs. Sounds fun?

The amount of money you make depends on what you are selling. Done correctly, affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money from the web.

The best place to start is Clickbank which has over 200,000 affiliates and over 2 million affiliates’ products. Clickbank is one of the most popular affiliate networks 1)because it deals with digital or downloadable products and 2)because of its platform which makes it easier to select. Commisionjunction or cj as its commonly known is the largest network but deals with physical inventory.

Other popular affiliate networks include Amazon, Paydotcom.com similar to click bank and owned by PayPal, moreniche of which I am member (it’s so cool) and linkshare.com. There are thousands of affiliate networks and probably the best place to find the best affiliate programs is at www.associateprograms.com. Did I mention that www.africapoint.com (based in Kenya) has an affiliate program worth checking out?

Sell Your Stuff Online
Do you have pictures or do you have old stuff that you no longer need, do you love artworks or have some crafts? The Internet provides the best platform to sell your stuff. We all know eBay which provides an avenue to sell your used (new) products to people all over the world. In fact you don’t need to own any product to make money on eBay. (See drop shopping, below).

Those pictures you have may be worth some bucks. Check out citizen journalism websites like www.spymedia.com and www.citizenimage.com which will pay for your images. You can also try using www.shutterstock.com, the most established and lucrative micro-stock photography website.

Are you good in web design, content writing or graphics? , If you are, then you can sell your work at places like www.sitepoint.com or even Clickbank, warriorforum, or digitalpoint.com.

For craftworks, the best place to sell your works is www.etsy.com

Be a Dropper Shopper
This almost like affiliate marketing although it involves arbitrage (here you act as a broker).

It’s a method whereby you deal with offline retailers or exporters in other countries, or buy from one seller and sell to another.

Simply put let’s take the case of eBay. Using eBay’s pulse (sort of market research platform) you find that the most popular fashion item is skinny jeans. Next we research who are the sellers of skinny jeans – we assume our seller (the cheapest) is located in china. You contact the seller who gives you a deal of a certain % of sales (you can also get an affiliate code).Then you head straight back to eBay and find who is selling skinny jeans (in this case he is the buyer).

Armed with your information, you propose the deal to him that you can supply cheap quality skinny jeans and that you can handle shipping charges as a way to sweeten the deal. Deal done. Your supplier in china dropships (ships it directly to the eBay seller that you found) the product and remits your cut in good faith.

Otherwise with affiliate code you can simply open an eBay store and start selling skinny jeans. The seller (our guy in china) handles the shipping (drop ships-takes the product to the buyer’s doorsteps) and handles customer care issues.

Hope you get the idea .It is rather simple. Perhaps I should send you to salehoo, the world’s biggest drop shipping platform where there are thousands of cheap wholesalers located everywhere. Some of the prices offered by the drop shoppers seem outrageous but the commissions are quite handsome. Plus I find this idea of dropshipping so much applicable right here in Kenya. What do you think? Is this not what brokers do at wakulima market?

Some more hot money making ideas coming up in the next post. Keep reading.

To your success,
Kihato Mwangi

About me
I am simple young man who earns and spend most of my time online making some bucks and hunting for opportunities. I am also an entrepreneur (my firm handles life coaching, Internet marketing and how to be financially independent) and a small business consultant who is always eager to help Kenyans to be financially independent by making smart choices.

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business Tagged With: , , ,

Another Option To Raise Funds

November 24, 2009 by 2 Comments

When starting a business, sometimes one does not have enough money from his own personal sources to fund the business startup costs (‘capital’). There are two main sources of additional funding:

  1. Debt – basically you take a loan from a bank, or a friend, and agree how to pay it back.
  2. Equity – basically, you find someone to ‘invest’ in your business. They then get to own a certain agreed part of your business.

Usually, debt financing is much, much cheaper than equity financing. However, they are both sometimes unattainable for very young businesses. What to do?

Well, there’s a third source of funding. It’s not much different from debt financing but it is different enough. Basically, get someone who has some spare money and who is not a seasoned/experienced investor. Perhaps someone who retired recently and is looking for something to invest in (like a retired dentist).

You then offer them a deal: give me some money to launch my business and I’ll give you a certain percentage of my sales. Think about it – no endless meetings, punitive interest rates, complex accounting. You just pay a commission on your sales. It could work, ama?

Adapted from Seth Godin’s article.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Kisstv.co.ke – whoooops!

November 16, 2009 by 5 Comments

Spot the difference: KissTV Vs JA Tube.

It looks like whoever made the Kiss Tv website used a Joomla template. Joomla is one of the leading content management systems so, at the very least, the Kiss Tv website is build on solid ground (code). However, this means that the designer hired/tasked to make the Kiss Tv site did little or no ‘designing’. What do you think about this? People have made millions from Joomla in exactly the same way…

What do I think about this? Well, it is a little embarrassing when people learn that a major website was made using a publicly available template but I have absolutely no problem with this. Using templates/themes means we can drastically cut website development time and costs as well as have elegant, well designed websites instead of the absolute eyesores that we used to see.

How much do you think the person who made the Kiss Tv site was paid? Why can that not be you? All you need to do is learn how to use WordPress, Joomla or Drupal and you’re well on your way. Making websites using these systems is easy. Good luck!

As a parting shot, will the designer of the Kiss Tv site please fix the top navigation bar?

Filed Under: Case Study Tagged With: , ,

The Strawberry Store

October 27, 2009 by 5 Comments

A whole lot of people dismiss Kenyan online business as being ahead of their time. Some people even go as far as claiming online entrepreneurs in Kenya as being misguided, or even plain silly. The usual explanation is that Kenya is still very new and untested as far as the internet goes…etc etc. But who will do the ‘testing’ if no one dares to try? The good news is that more and more Kenyan online businesses are being launched. When are you launching yours?

Today, we’re going to take a look at the Strawberry Store, a Kenyan online business that specialises in importing and selling home, office and institutional furnishings and accessories. One of the co-founders, Naomi Konditi-Kivuvani, has been interviewed over at Tujuane – click here to go and read the interview which talks about the Strawberry store at length.

What I found interesting was that the store exists purely online. There is no physical showroom or shop. While I have doubts on how well this approach works in Kenya, it is a commendable and brave move. For one thing, the expenses of the store are very much reduced and the only overheads are those of hosting and maintaing the website – which are usually very minimal.

When you buy items from the Strawberry store, you either collect them at their pick-up center near Adam’s Arcade, or you can have them delivered to you starting at Kshs 200/-. Again, this is a commendable approach. However, I’d think that several strategically located pick-up centers would work better.

So, how does the Strawberry store get it’s clients? Naomi mentions that they rely on email marketing and facebook advertising. Both of these are powerful ways of getting people to notice you, especially here in Kenya. However, I wonder how well the facebook campaign is doing. To me, facebook – at least in Kenya – wouldn’t be a suitable advertising medium for most products/services. Why? Well, the majority of people who use facebook in Kenya are teenagers and other youth. Unless you’re selling something that this group can afford and would want to buy, getting their attention is not worth much.

One thing that I would wholeheartedly recommend for the Strawberry straw is a blog. The absence of a blog was something that struck me within a few minutes of browsing the site. As far as internet marketing goes, a blog is almost always something like your mothership.

All in all, I love the work that Naomi and her team are doing. I recommend that you check out the site (and make a purchase).

Parting shot:

“Running a web-store may look easy, but it’s really harder than running an ordinary physical store. This is because there’s nobody just ‘passing by’ to come into the store, you have to make people be aware of the store using creative methods. ” – Naomi Konditi-Kivuvani.

Photo by Muffet.

Filed Under: Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

What if I want to make money right now? What do I do?

September 1, 2009 by 6 Comments

Ever since we launched Like Chapaa, I’ve got numerous people walk up to me and ask me “How do I start making money online?” or “What if I want to make money right now? What do I do?” This question has always been a bit difficult for me to answer because there are so many things one could do to make money online. However, if you asked me these questions today, I’ll be quick to answer: start a simple blog business.

What is a simple blog business? As the name suggests it is a really simple way of earning good income from a simple blog. If you can spare five to ten hours a week to work on this, I am sure you can earn at least 7,000/- per month from doing very very little work. If you can spare more time..well, the possibilities are endless. AND it costs exactly zero shillings to get started.

But please understand that this is not a get-rich-overnight scheme, it takes time and commitment. You may not make even a shilling on the first day; or the first month but if you stick with the plan (which I will explain in detail) then the shillings will come. Many shillings. Just stick with it until you make it. Sawa?

Good. Let’s get started. I didn’t call it a simple blog business for nothing. We’re going to start a blog. What is a blog? A web log, which is usually shortened as blog, is a type of website in which entries are made much as in a journal or diary and displayed in chronological order. But that’s just the technical mumbo-jumbo. A blog can be anything you want it to be. Your diary, your magazine, your newspaper, your photo album, whatever.

For the simple blog business, you’ll need to start a blog which is more text than anything else so please polish up your writing – you’re going to be writing a lot!

As we mentioned elsewhere, any online business generally must follow these principles:

1. A niche Market of People that require a product or service.
2. A Product or service That Fills Their Need
3. An outlet Where They Can Find the Product or Service (Your Website)
4. A Way of Letting That Market Know You Have The Product
5. An Offer
6. A Way to Deliver the Product
7. A Way For Your To Get Paid.

What you’re going to do is to start a very simple blog in a specific niche in which you will have already established a need for your service (your blog). You will then spend time promoting your blog using simple and free methods. If you follow everything that we shall be going through, in a while your new blog will have enough traffic for you to get a tidy sum in the bank every month.

First things first, take time to think about what kinds of topics you’d be comfortable writing about. Trust me, you want to be comfortable writing about the topic that you shall choose – you’ll spend lots of time working on your blog so you should at least be able to write frequently about that topic. If you choose a topic that you have little interest in, boredom will quickly set in and your simple blog business will fail.

Nearly every single topic can earn you money – don’t worry about that. So go ahead and think about what you can really write on. Go on, make a list. I’ll wait. A really easy way to find out if you have enough interest in a topic is to ask yourself: can I write several letters about this topic? Think this through carefully and make a list of topics that may interest you.

The next installment in this series comes up very shortly. Subscribe to receive free email updates so that you don’t miss a thing!

Filed Under: Blogging, Make Money Tagged With: ,

Sunny Bindra’s Sunwords.com – What It Can Be

August 22, 2009 by 7 Comments

So I’ve been poring over Sunny Bindra’s articles really heavily recently. I love his writing and he makes excellent business sense every time he writes. I always, always end up comparing his ideas to those of Seth Godin. In all honesty, they think quite alike on how a business should be properly run. Don’t take my word for it, have a look at their websites and decide for yourself. For those who don’t know, Sunny Bindra writes in the Sunday Nation. Seth Godin is based in the USA and is a renown best-selling author.

So, did you have a look at the two authors’ sites? What do you think? I’ve followed both writers for some years now but it was only recently that I noticed that sunwords.com is, in my view, not all that well developed. I say this with all due respect to Sunny Bindra – I don’t mean to bash him in any way! However, I am an avid reader of his writings and I just wonder, why isn’t his online presence as big as it could be?

Just think about it. How many people LOVE his Sunday articles? I bet a whole lot of people love and respect his work. This is his introductory blog post. See that? 46 comments on day one! However, the rest of his 100+ entries (all beautifully written) have just a handful or no comments. Contrast this with bloggers such as Shiko or Mama whose comment count goes into double digits regularly.

Okay, okay one could argue that Sunwords.com gets a lot of visitors but very few leave comments. That would explain things, right? I thought so too, until I had a look at sunword’s visitor stats. According to Statbrain (hint: Statbrain is really useful to carry out e surveillance on other sites), Sunwords gets 320 visitors a day. Now, I’m nowhere near as popular as Sunny Bindra but Like Chapaa gets 570 visitors a day.

Now, I don’t know about you but I think that Sunwords should be a lot more successful than it is. I have my own thoughts on how to build a successful website but I bet Sunny has access to people much much better than I am at doing this. The big question in my mind is this: why isn’t Sunny doing more with his website? I do not know. There are probably very valid reasons for this. I would, however, like to point out some reasons why it may be of benefit to make Sunwords.com more successful.

Sunny Bindra is already very very successful by any means. However, more success won’t hurt, surely. Ama? Let’s take a look at Om Malik. Om Malik, in my view, is a classic example of the opportunities that the internet can bring. I’m no authority on this but Om Malik has been a writer for a long time. At some point, he set up a website and grew it. Then he set up another, and another……now he owns GigaOm, which is among the top 50 blogs worldwide by Technorati Rank, and is part of CNet‘s 100 Most Influential Blogs. And what about Seth Godin? I believe that, over the years, his blog has been one of the key, if not the key, ‘things’ that sell his books so widely. One of his books is even based on his blog’s writings.

I believe in Sunny Bindra’s wisdom so much that I know he can do something similar. He is already popular, all that’s needed is a little more focus to build an online brand. The possibilities would then be endless. What do you think?

Picture by arturodante.

Filed Under: Blogging, Case Study Tagged With: ,

What If Shit Happened?

August 19, 2009 by 5 Comments

What if you lost your job today? No, really. What if you actually lost your job today? I am asking you. No, I’m begging you, to think for just a moment about this. What would you do? Are you going to go out and look for another job at another similar company? I bet you’re smart enough to have an back-up plan. Alas, most people would be completely lost if they lost their jobs today.

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong – Murphy’s law.

I am always inspired when I read “Why We’re Broke and How To Fix It” by Naomi Dunford. In that article, she describes a small town in Ontario, Canada where the area’s largest employer closed down one day.

Here’s what Naomi says, “Recently, in a small town in Ontario, the area’s largest employer closed its doors. Most of the town, trained only in the art and science of making canned soup, found themselves out of work. A few thousand soup makers live in a town where nobody wants to pay them to make soup. Now all of them are going to try to find a way to apply their skill sets to other employers in the area. The competition is fierce, and their mortgages are on the line. Except there are no other major employers in the area.”

Can you imagine that? What would you do if you woke up one morning to find that not only had you lost your job, but your whole industry and area of specialisation disappeared overnight? I know, I know..you live in a big town and you’re trained in X or Y which is always in demand. Blah.

How much time do you spend worrying about your immediate boss’ job security? Do you invest a lot of time worrying about his happiness and fulfillment at work? Well, guess what? He spends the same exact amount of time worrying about you, your happiness and your job security. This is hard to swallow for many people – we grew up dreaming of ‘dream’ jobs and long careers. I’m sorry but the world changed.

Seth Godin puts it best, “As long as you work for someone else, 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 or really, truly making a difference in the way people live and work.”

Stop doing something that is risky, crazy, and that you don’t understand (your current job is all three). Stop working for The Man and start building something that people will remember.

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: