Is Your Business Failing?

March 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

“1. Is the site live yet?

Yes: you’re likely failing, but at least you’ve got a chance of getting some feedback from real, live users, which may, if you’re smart and perceptive, decrease your chance of failure a little bit.

No: you’re failing.

2. Do you have free customers yet?

Yes: well, now you have a shot to establish relationships. And if you listen carefully and not pridefully, you just may have a tiny chance of hearing them correctly and improving your customer experience from awful to plausibly bearable.

No: you’re failing.

3. Do you have paying customers yet?

Yes: congratulations! You have reduced your chances of failing from 100% to 99%. There are many more chances to fail along the way, but you have graduated to some of the more interesting ones. Good show!

No: you’re failing.

If, when you wake up in the morning, the answer to any of the above questions is “no”, then you’re failing. Not failing tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but failing right now, today. As you read this…. Now.

And what you need to do, what you must do, is to spend your entire day focused on changing the answers to yes. Desperately, immediately, fully.”

The above is taken from How can I tell if I am failing at my entrepreneurial venture or start-up? Which is a very inspiring article on how to tell if your online business is failing.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Tips Hacking and Reviews

Starting an Online Business – Deciding What To Do

March 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

So you want to make money online but have no idea what you can do? This post is for you. We shall look at a number of ways through which real (Kenyan) people make money online.

This is Part 2 of How To Start a Simple Online Business in Kenya.

Last year we published a report on the most common ways of making money online. If you haven’t read it, here is the link: How to make money online in Kenya, 2010. The good thing about that report, in my view, is that it not only discusses how to make money but it gives examples of Kenyans who are using those methods.

So, how do other Kenyan make money online?

  1. Selling adverts on your site – basically, you set up a website and make it popular, and then sell advertisements.
  2. Consulting – whereby you work to be seen as an ‘expert’ in some field. People then pay you for consultancy.
  3. Selling other people’s stuff (affiliate marketing) – where you sell goods on behalf of other people and get paid a commission.
  4. E-commerce (selling your own things) – simple put, find some things to sell, and sell them online.
  5. Freelancing – also known as ‘getting an online job’. You basically get paid to do something for other people.

What you choose to do is up to you but you have to realise that “making money online” is not something that will take a short time. When thinking about making money online, you should think long term. You know those stories of people making millions online? Yeah, it usually takes years and extremely hard work. be prepared.

The purpose of this series of articles is to learn how to start an online business and therefore we’re going to pick “e-commerce” as the example that we will use for the rest of the series. Why?

  1. We believe it is very easy to understand for people with no prior experience online – it is very much like starting a little shop anywhere else.
  2. We believe it is relatively easy to start and straight-forward to run
  3. We can set up a sample e-commerce business as an example to go with this series of articles

In the next article in this series, we shall be taking a closer look at how to plan for, and start your own online shop. Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you do not miss any updates on this!

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business

Kenya’s Tertiary Education is Broken

March 17, 2011 by 2 Comments

I just read a very disturbing article on The Standard titled: Board rejects 47 degree courses.

A few years back, I was a student at JKUAT. My room-mate was doing a course named “Bachelor of Science in Mining and Mineral Engineering”. This course, like any other engineering course at JKUAT, takes five gruelling years to complete and is in now way ‘easy’. My friend struggled through five years of his life and should be completing his course around June of this year. Nice, eh?

As it turns out, his course is one of the 47 engineering courses that the Engineering Registration Board (ERB) has rejected and will not be recognised.

To put it simply, my room-mate and countless others have wasted five years of their life. They will have nothing to show for it. Can you imagine that? How much money wasted? How much time gone forever? How do you even start to recover from this?

The ERB took this drastic action because the universities were offering very low quality engineering courses. For experience, I can say that this is true. Many of the engineering courses in our country are shamefully sub-par. Our universities and colleges focus too much on making money than on providing quality education.

Of course the ERB’s action is loathsome and painful to many but the real blame lies at the feet of our “institutions of education”. Ours is a broken system.

How can we fix it?

A parting shot:

From “The Loss of the University,” in Home Economics: “The thing being made in a university is humanity. given the current influence of universities, this is merely inevitable. But what universities, at least the public-supported ones, are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words — not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of human culture. If the proper work of the university is only to equip people to fulfill private ambitions, then how do we justify public support? If it is only to prepare citizens to fulfill public responsibilities, then how do we justify the teaching of arts and sciences? The common denominator has to be larger than either career preparation or preparation for citizenship. Underlying the idea of a university — the bringing together, the combining into one, of all the disciplines — is the idea that good work and good citizenship are the inevitable by-products of the making of a good — that is, a fully developed — human being. This, as I understand it, is the definition of the name university.”

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

How Does a Business Work?

March 14, 2011 by 3 Comments

The secret to a successful business is the law of supply and demand. Never, ever, forget that.

As a business person, your job is to supply something that is in demand. That is, your job is to find something that people want and to give it to them, and then take their money. This is the heart of every business, whether it is simple or complex.

Btw, this is Part 2 of How to Start An Online Business in Kenya.

Now, I know you can get generic business advice absolutely everywhere so since I do not want to just repeat stuff and because I cannot even begin to cover this topic in totality, I will keep this article short and simple. Basically, I want to speak to that person who is very new to business in an attempt to show the reality of things while not shattering your self belief.

So as I said, doing business means supplying people with something that they need or want and then charging them. I will be straight and point out what I consider to be your biggest weakness: you! The biggest challenge that a new business faces is its founders/owners. Most new business people that I encounter can’t even see how poor of an entrepreneur they are (if you can even begin calling them that – a person with just an idea and some attempt is hardly an entrepreneur). They don’t realize what they lack or that their internal biases and opinions are creating problems in why they can or can’t succeed. My advice to you as a new business owner is try and get the most knowledge possible about running a business and about your chosen industry. Do not be complacent. Keep in mind that most new businesses fail. From Day 1 it is a full out war to make sure that your business succeeds.

Secondly, a new business is usually very short on resources. You often do not have enough money or enough time. You need more money than you have – you see all the places your business can go and you want to try and go in all directions at the same time…

Which leads to focus. New businesses usually have more time constraints than any other business – the new business needs to get its products to the market to prove its worth after all. Unfortunately, new business owners typically fail to focus on what, exactly, they want to sell and thus they therefore take the business in many directions at once – which leads to more time constraints…

Do you know that focusing on a particular niche of an industry has been proven to be more successful, on average, than trying to attack the whole market all at once? The best advice I can give you is to focus on one small part of the industry you want to do business in. You can always grow to all the rest later. This has several advantages:

  • It is cheaper
  • It is easier
  • You face less competition from other businesses
  • You have higher chances of success

Remember how Facebook started? There were already many social networks back then, including the then giant MySpace. Facebook started by focusing only on university students – there was a time you simply could not get a Facebook account unless you were in university/college. By doing this they were able to craft an niche in a huge market while at the same time sowing the seeds that would later lead them to becoming the biggest social network on the Internet.

Think big. But Start small.

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Filed Under: Small Business

How To Start a Simple Online Business in Kenya – Part 1

March 14, 2011 by 17 Comments

So I just got off the phone with a Like Chapaa reader who was pleading with me to show her how to start a simple online business. I personally do not think it is something that is simple enough to explain on the phone – is it? I believe that doing business is a personal journey that you must take on your own. But then again, I also believe that everyone should be doing their own business – enough with this employment maneno. You know?

I talked the reader into letting me sit down and send her an email with a very basic guide on what to do but as I was doing that email I thought, “Hey other people might like this too”. So here I am, readying myself for mission impossible. Basically, this week – on this very website – we are going to write a series of articles that attempt to show you how to start an online business from scratch. Sounds fun?

The idea is to write a very simple guide that anyone can follow to set up a small, extremely simple online business in ONE WEEK. To make it easier to understand, and follow, we shall be attempting to start an online business in this one week and show you everything that we did. In other words, as we try and show you how to start an online business, we shall be applying what we talk about on an actual real life business* that we will be starting up this week. I think that will work. You?

So this is what we hope to cover:

  1. How does a business work?
  2. Online business Vs Offline business
  3. Deciding what to do
  4. Building a simple website for your online business (a.k.a. web design 101)
  5. How to get customers (a.k.a. how to do this ‘internet marketing’ thing)
  6. Legal & tax issues
  7. Final thoughts & conclusion

The list may change as we go along because right now it is all coming off the top of my head.

Finally, I must say that I, and the Like Chapaa team, have some experience doing online business. We have had some satisfying successes and many failures. While I am very proud of what we have achieved, you are advised to take what we say with a pinch of salt! We do not pretend to be experts on anything.

Also, this series of articles is meant to give the basic bare-bones ideas on doing online business. To achieve real, long lasting success you must do much more than what we shall be talking about.

Anyway! So who’s up for this? Please comment below, click the “Like” button and tell all your friends. Cheers!

*The ‘actual, real life, business’ we shall be starting as part of this series has not been thought-up yet. We’re currently putting our heads together for an idea that won’t embarrass us.

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Filed Under: Make Money

Interesting Kenyan Sites #21

March 13, 2011 by 1 Comment

Mutahi.info – Mutahi (I presume that’s the site owner’s name) created a simple website to sell his car. I think it is an innovative and brilliant idea. Gone are the days when a “For Sale” sticker on your car will suffice.

Zebu Mob – a site that is a bit like Groupon, the difference being that Zebumob seems to be focused only on advertising instead of selling discount coupons. Interesting approach, eh? Their website is brilliantly done – but it must be said that the Zebumob Facebook app could be made better, considering that much of what Zebumob offers is inside Facebook.

Wadawida – nice simple, clean website that tells you all about the Taita people (of Kenya). I, for one, wish to see more similar sites celebrating our country’s diversity. [Disclosure: I hail from this community. Partly.]

Kenya Memorials – did you recently lose a loved one? Well, now you can immortalise him/her on Kenyamemorials. They also offer a directory of funeral service providers. it may not be a “happy” line of business but the site is well done and it looks like they are doing pretty well. Kudos.

Flops
Newsupdate.co.ke – this site promises to bring you ‘daily Kenyan news updates’. The only problem is that, at a glance, the overwhelming majority of news (‘featured’ news, specifically) on this website is… well, it is not ‘Kenyan news’. Also, at the moment, seems like images on the site are broken. Though to give them credit, the site does have local news that feels like it is from mashinani.

Filed Under: Cool Sites

Social Media For Small Businesses

March 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I just came across a very interesting question on Quora:

Q. Social media is quite popular. However can a small business really make good use of it with limited time and resources?

Michael answers:

Having done business online as my sole occupation for over twenty years, never with more than three employees, I can speak to this subject with the advantage of a long-term perspective. Also, since my previous career was ten years as a Senior Vice President of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation, I have witnessed the marketing realm from the opposite extreme. With this as backdrop I can say, with some certainty, that social media is the most important and powerful innovation in online business history.

Here’s why:

  • The key to success online is the ability to be both effective and efficient. That is to get the right job done and the job done right. With social media it is possible to target your market with rifle-shot accuracy, engage with potential customers on a mass scale, provide workable solutions, and to perform these tasks without the huge capital outlay normally required.
  • Large companies are like Battleships on the open ocean. To make a change in strategy or tactics requires a long and cumbersome mid-course correction. Being small allows you to be nimble. Instead of mounting an expensive marketing campaign in a vacuum and waiting for long-term results, social media gives instantaneous feedback. An entire strategy can be reconfigured at a moments notice, and appropriate changes can be made with little delay and minor expense.
  • The technology tools are in constant transition. Today’s best solution (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) can and will change tomorrow. As a dedicated and small entrepreneur, it is possible to remain at the vanguard of technology from one day to the next, without a large employee base or stodgy corporate culture in your wake like an anchor.

Here’s how:

  • Engage, don’t sell. I won’t belabor this point, as it has been said by experts for a while now. Be creative and forget what you think you know about marketing. View your potential customer as a collaborator not a sales target. Follow the lead of thought-leaders like Scott Monty at Ford Motor Company and engage your customers from the beginning of the product-development cycle. Ask their opinions on how best to serve them, gain their trust and eventually the sales will occur naturally with little motivation from you.
  • Spend time improving your service and expertise, and while you are building a future receptive audience make your expertise available at no cost. Cultivate a long view of the process. Demonstrate leadership, not salesmanship.
  • Do something that matters. Care as much about the quality of the relationships, and your place as a member of the human family, as you do about your product and profits. Who you are is more important than what you sell.
  • Work hard. Be prepared for a period of sustained effort. Social media is simple, but it isn’t easy.

Follow these simple guidelines and success will catch up with your efforts before you know it. And once it overtakes you, it will be sustainable.

See the rest on Quora.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business