Freelancers & SEO – What You Should Know

December 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Freelancers mostly get paid for their time and their expertise. You go to a freelancer because you want her to do something for you that you cannot do yourself. SEO, on the other hand is search engine optimisation – it is what you do if you want more visitors to your website getting to your site through the search engines (Google, etc).

Let’s assume that like any other good and forward-looking freelancer, you have a website. Is SEO important to you?? Honestly, search engine traffic is not tremendously useful for freelancers. That’s just the truth. Unless you’re targeting extremely local markets (like “graphic designers in Kisumu”), then SEO is mostly a waste of time and money.

Why? Well, generally, the market is too big to get any appreciable amount of useful web traffic. There’s too much competition – too many logo designers, too many web designers, etc. In my experience, it is hard for freelancers to get search engine traffic that leads to actual paying customers. Believe it or not, most people who are going to visit a freelancer’s website will probably actually type in the site into their web browsers (they already know about you and your site – maybe they read it off your business card) or people who clicked on a link somewhere and got to your site.

So, dear freelancers-reading-this, if I were you, I wouldn’t spend any money hiring anyone to do SEO for you. Of course do not ignore it completely, just don’t focus on it – an online freelancer doesn’t need 1000 visitors a day to make money online. The good thing is that SEO is not the only way to market online.

How do you market your freelancing service?

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: , , , ,

You Need To Know About Online Reputation Management

October 13, 2009 by 5 Comments

Guess what? Everyone’s a critic these days. Of course this has always been true but, these days, every one of these critics can probably go online and write their thoughts on facebook, twitter or even their own blog. Why should you care?

Suppose you own a nice little restaurant and one day, I have lunch there. I don’t like the food and/or service and so immediately after (or even during) lunch I write on my facebook “I hate Restaurant X, the food smells”. Suddenly all of my facebook friends know that you serve smelly food at your place. They’ll maybe tell their friends who will then tell their friends, and the whole thing could grow into quite a movement against your restaurant. And you probably don’t even sell smelly food.

Before the internet, it was very difficult for a single person to spread news to large groups of people but now one can do it in five minutes. As the internet grows in importance in our lives here in Kenya, business owners should be wary of the dangers that it brings. It could take just one blog post or status update to cost you hundreds of potential customers. This is why online reputation management is important.

Online reputation management is the deliberate act of making sure that what people find when they look for you or your business online is favorable to you. Wikipedia defines it as, “the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media.”

When you Google your name or that of your business. Do you like what you find on the first page of results? When you Google my name, the first page of Google displays articles that I’ve written, and links to other places that I hang out online. This is by no means an accident, I consistently try to influence what others find when they look for me. What about you, or your business?

Many companies in Kenya may get a big surprise at what people are saying about them online. For example, at Like Chapaa we’ve talked about quite a number of Kenyan companies but only a handful have even noticed that we talked about them. What else are they missing?

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With:

How To Make Money With A Blog

July 31, 2009 by 8 Comments

I once wrote elsewhere, “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.”

Three years later, the definition of a blog hasn’t changed much. Enough with definitions, though – I’m sure many people don’t know (or don’t care) what a blog is. The more important question is, how do you make money from a blog? There are lots of ways to do it, and I shall talk about a few today.

Traffic
Before you even think of earning from your blog, you have to think of how you will attract visitors to your blog. If no one ever reads/views your blog, then you can be certain that you will not make even a single shilling from it. Got it? Good. On the internet, traffic is key.

Please have a look at this: How to build a successful website.

So, how do you make the chapaa?
I shall assume that you have somehow managed to build a successful blog, and that a reasonable number of people visit it everyday. Also, I shall assume that your blog is filled with content (words, videos, pictures, etc) that people find interesting or useful.

Here’s how you make money from such a blog:

Advertising – The obvious way to earn from a blog is by selling advertising space. Look at it this way, you have a good number of readers who visit you everyday – advertisers will be interested in pay to reach those visitors.

There are two ways to earn from advertising:
1. Self served Ads – basically, ou approach a company and tell them that they can advertise on your blog. If they agree, well, you get paid.

2. Advertisement networks – if you don’t want to go through the trouble of approach companies directly to advertise with you, you can join an advertising network where they approach the companies themselves and all you do is display the adverts and earn. This is a very popular way of making money online and thousands of websites (including blogs) survive and thrive on this model. Normally, you are paid a few cents (US $) when someone clicks on an advert. If you have many visitors then you can earn millions.

RSS Advertising – all blogs have an RSS feature. (What is RSS?). The idea is basically the same as above – place adverts in your RSS feed. Feedburner is a popular RSS advertising service.

Sponsorship – You know how Project Fame is sponsored by Tusker? The same thing could happen on your blog and is already happening at a lot of other blogs.

Consulting and Speaking – So you’ve built a really successful blog and it is widely read. This means people will start viewing you as an authority in the topic in which you write about. For example, if you write extensively on relationship advice, you may one day get the opportunity to be a paid get speaker at some event somewhere. Another example: even though Like Chapaa is young, we’re getting offers to act as consultants guiding new internet business owners. The returns are gooood.

Merchandising – In my own opinion, this one is tricky to pull off but it is possible. Suppose that you built such a wildly successful and popular blog named “Example Blog”. Maybe some people would buy and proudly wear Tshirts and other merchandise bearing your blog’s name and logo. Cafepress is powering an increasing number of bloggers to earn in this way.

Digital Assets – Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, e-courses and e-seminars being run by bloggers.

Affiliate Programs – basically, this is using your blog to sell other people’s goods and services for a commission. It is one of the most popular ways of earning on any website (not just blogs). Where do you find these goods and services that you can sell at a commission? try: Clickbank, or CJ.

Blog Network Opportunities – Blog Networks are groups of blogs which work together to attract visitors and earn incomes. Blog networks these days are high profile and popular. Joinging such a network could be lucrative. It may not be easy, though. Why should you join a blog network?

Business Blog Opportunities – many companies (internationally, not sure about Kenya) are now starting blogs. (Because blogs are too important to ignore). Some companies use their existing staff to write their blogs. But an increasing number are hiring specialist bloggers to run their blogs for them.

Writing Opportunities – When you have a popular blog, people notice you. They know how good you are at writing on the subject matter of your blog. It is therefore not uncommon for bloggers to get jobs or freelance gigs at magazines and newspapers. (For example: I’ve been approached several times to have things I write on Like Chapaa printed elsewhere).

Flipping Blogs – Build a big beautiful blog and sell it for huge profits. This actually happened with NBB.

Donations – put out the tip jar and ask your readers to support you. It’s a simple concept 😛 Kottke.org is the only example I could find of a blog doing this well.

I realise that just mentioning the above is not good enough. I shall therefore follow up with case studies of each or most of the above methods being successfully used. Stay tuned! Subscribe to my RSS feed (free) or sign up for free email updates so that you don’t miss a thing!

Filed Under: Blogging, Make Money Tagged With: , ,

How To Build A Successful Website

July 5, 2009 by 8 Comments

I’m sure you’ve heard of them too, haven’t you? You know, those kids making millions on the net…. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just finally get how this internet thing works? Then we’d all be making millions like they do.

Usually, “those kids” have a website, or a “place” if you will, where their millions are made. All websites are essentially the same since they are viewed or accessed through a “browser” (of whatever kind). But yet, of these sites, some are more successful than others. Why? Of course a website has to be pleasing to the eye and usable in that it doesn’t annoy visitors at first sight (or click).

But, most websites are pleasing to the eye and usable yet some are still more successful than others. Why?

The success of a website can be defined as the degree to which a site accomplishes its intended goals. So if you created your website to, say, make you money, then it would be termed as successful if and when it made you money. If you made it so that you can show your friends your wedding photos then it would be successful if your friends are able to view the wedding photos. The success of any website is tied to its intended use/goals.

Not all websites are created for the same purpose and, therefore, their success or failure cannot be measured by the same yardstick. So before you set out to make a successful site, you must define what you mean by “success” and then figure out a way to measure whether or not the site is successful.

The success of websites is specific to each site but what is needed to make a successful website is universal. Yes, I’m trying to say that all successful websites are made the same way. How? The success of any website is dependent on two things:

  1. Content
  2. Marketing

Content – What do your site’s visitors come to do there? By content I mean the value given to the site’s visitors/users. Do they come to learn? To interact? To be entertained? Whatever it is, it has to be good.

Successful sites are built on the foundation of providing value to the site’s users. Why should I visit your site? What can I find on your site that I cannot find anywhere else? Look, I have my emails, facebook, myspace, football news and that new site that everyone is talking about – I don’t have time to give you my attention! You have to provide something of value to me so that I can make the time to have a look at your website. And if it is not good enough I will leave in a second.

I have to say that not just any valuable content will do. I’ve seen sites built on nothing but freely available beautiful/interesting/entertaining/funny/etc content. This won’t do. Your site has to be unique. If I can find it anywhere else, why should I come to you? You have to build a purple cow.

Marketing – A site could have the most interesting, enlightening, entertaining, etc, information in the world but if no one knows that it exists no one will visit it.

A while back, it used to be that “if you build it, they will find it”. Not anymore. There are millions of websites. Think of it as a vast library and your site is some tiny book on the top shelf at the back of the library. It could be the best book ever but no one will read it if they don’t know its there.

Therefore, you cannot just build a beautiful, usable, entertaining website. You have to market it too.

How do you market your website? There must be hundreds of ways to do this and I’m sure I cannot list them all. But, I believe that “marketing” isn’t the same as advertising. Marketing isn’t what you do when your site is ready just to bring in visitors. Marketing has to be in-built from the inception of the idea. Build something remarkable, something unique, something that people will tell their friends about excitedly.

Yeah I’m really actually repeating what I said – that you need to build a purple cow. See, these two things: content and marketing, they have a connection. The first step of marketing your website is to build/provide remarkable, useful, amazing, entertaining, valuable content.

Useful resources:
Netiquette.
Purple cow.
Tens of articles on blog promotion.
17 Ways to promote your blog.
37 Ways to promote your site.
10 Ways not to promote your site.
Top 10 SEO tips.
SEO training made easy.

Photo by @dakno.

Filed Under: Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: ,