Interesting Kenyan Sites #2

August 21, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Like Chapaa PresentsUfahari.com – Ufahari publishes a regularly updated innovations news website, provides organizations with trend reports, and hosts events where uniquely brilliant, and creative ideas can be shared. It’s a nice new site that looks to have a great future. The best things about it are its unique design and its focus on Africa.

Kikulacho – well, I think you have to see this site for yourself. A site that showcases pictures and videos from our land of Kenya. The pictures on the site show Kenya as akina CNN would never show it. From the site: From our beautiful country, wonderful people, rich culture, to our sense of humor. On this website we give you the opportunity to see and to display what your idea of being Kenyan is.

Flops
http://www.kenyafreelance.co.ke/ – this site is built on a wonderful idea. What if you could build the Kenyan version of Freelancer.com? There is potential to build something great and make money if you can connect Kenyan workers to Kenyan employers seeking local freelancers. This site could be great, clearly, but it has been poorly built and looks to be abandoned. You have an opportunity to do a better job.

Filed Under: Cool Sites

Making it as an Online Freelancer [Interview]

August 17, 2010 by 9 Comments

For the readers that don’t know, Linda Cherotich is a writer and freelancer extraordinaire. She is available for hire on www.freelancer.com and is already making a decent amount of money working online. Today, we get to learn all her secrets.

Q. You’re quite an achiever, tell us about you
Linda Cherotich is a young Kenyan woman with little to say but a lot to write about. I’m somewhat an introvert. Above all, I have an independent spirit.

Q. How do you make money online?
I write all kinds of articles for online clients; most of them on social issues. I have constant clients who fill my days with work.

Q. How did you start?
WOW…that’s a long story. I have always been reading and writing but until I went to college I considered it a hobby; my favorite pass time. It was in campus that I started writing seriously, being a firm believer in giving my all to what I love. This was the first time I had paid close attention to my writing passion and I sharpened this skill all through my schooling. I wrote short stories here and there and I kept a daily journal for three years. Towards the end of my fourth year, I discovered the potential that the internet had and I decided to exploit it. That was a year ago and I have never looked back

Q. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
The biggest problems I faced were internet connection, personal organization, dealing with internet clients who didn’t pay me, among others. It was very hard at the beginning and I recall wondering if I was really up to the challenge. Before I got myself my own internet connection it was hell on earth. The first few months were hard but in no time I was on my feet. I had to discipline myself and make time for work everyday. Before these challenges I was very naïve about the market and freelancing as a career, but there is only one way to learn…take the plunge.

Q. What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in Kenya?
In this field, getting a good client can be hard; akin to sucking blood out of a stone especially if you are a beginner. You really have to prove yourself and demonstrate that you have the abilities the client is looking for.

Q. What was critical to your success?
Success can only be brought by a change of attitude, and I had to learn that.

Q. What about the competition and marketing, do you need to advertise, print flyers participate to conferences or is it mostly word of mouth?
Since the business is internet based, the only way to advertise is having a profile that outshines the rest. Developing trust with a client is crucial to your success when you are beginning

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?
Not necessarily, but you have to agree that they have a wider market and better options than us. Some clients, for example will not hire service providers from developing countries and if they do they will pay a fraction of what they would have paid providers from their own countries. Then, there is the payment method issue, which makes it a liability for them to hire service providers from this part of the world. In order to make it big as a freelancer in Kenya, you have to work twice as hard as a freelance writer in the west.

Q. Where do you see yourself and your business (es) in the next 5 years?
I’m going to be a force to be reckoned with…watch this space

Q. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Maybe I would have started earlier than I did, but I guess everything has its day and time. I never really knew a lot about online writing before I went into it, so I would read more about online writing.

Q. What advice do you have for internet business entrepreneurs in Kenya?
First, consult with people who have tread the path before you; they have the experience and you can learn from them. Second, be realistic, do not expect too much too fast. Third, be positive and fourth, since you need to have a skill to make it in your internet based business, take your time to develop them. If you have to take a course please do, it will be worth your while.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Interviews, Make Money, Small Business Tagged With:

Advertising Your Business on a Budget

August 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment

While I think it’s absolutely critical that you have plenty of money to market your business, I understand that many entrepreneurs are on a tight budget, and have to be very careful with how they spend it. If you’re looking for ideas on how to market your business for free, these ideas won’t be of much help. But if you have a few shillings and are looking to get some good word out there, here are some ideas to help you:

  1. E-mail – Borderline ethical and some ISPs won’t like this but do good research and don’t send out form mail. You can e-mail potential prospects directly with a good offer and they could respond with interest about your product or service. Here is an lead generator that you can use.
  2. Search Engine Optimization – I think the payoff from attracting visitors naturally to your website is great for your business long term. My problem is that it’s just too slow to get results. But if you’re willing to bide your time, start buying some links for a payoff further down the road. Need help on this?
  3. Get a website – Nowadays, having your own website is as important as having a business card or a telephone. There is simply no reason why a small business, should not have a website. Can you do e-commerce if you are not online? No. Can potential customers who hear about you check you out later on the internet if you do not have a website? No again. Can current customers find out what your new offerings are if you lack a website? Not easily. Get one here.
  4. Partnerships – Everyone talks about partnerships but no one talks about how to do it. Here is the method we used to bring in some of our best partners. To reach out to potential partners, you’ll have to e-mail them or send them a letter, so you’ll need to implement something similar to what you would do if you were trying to reach clients directly. But what I like about this is that I think your money go much further sooner since you don’t have to worry about establishing a relationship with your new potential prospects – it’s already done for you.

Marketing Ideas that I Don’t Like
Here are some ideas that you may hear for new businesses on a budget but I don’t like them because they are way too slow to develop and you need some sort of factor that is beyond most people’s control.

  • Networking – Uggghhh. To me this is just about brown-nosing with the hopes of something giving you a break. The problem with this is that it may never develop. You’re not developing a plan with any type of numbers to back you up. You’re just going out on a whim and a prayer. Yes, it has helped some people but it does not work consistently enough for most new businesses to rely on.
  • Give Away Free Stuff – The idea of giving away stuff for free is not a bad idea in general but the problem we are trying to solve here is that we’re just trying to get people to pay attention to a new product or service. We’re just trying to get the eyeballs and this does nothing to help that. Keep it handy down the road but don’t focus on this too much when you’re getting started.

The most important thing to remember when you’re marketing on a budget is to determine what your goal is. If it’s to generate new leads, find the method that will bring you leads at the lowest cost per lead – don’t worry about branding, or creating a foundation to build on in the future. Get leads inexpensively, now.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

You’re Invited to The LYP SMEs Forum

August 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

Meet Jonathan Ciano, the Master Of Turnabouts at the upcoming LYP SMEs Forum .

Are you entrepreneur/businessperson running an SME and want to learn how to turn it around and expand it? Are you a young professional who want to venture into business and entrepreneurship world?

Come learn how to start and make your business a success from the king of turnarounds in Kenya, Mr. Jonathan Ciano. When it comes to turnabouts of organisations, Mr Jonathan Ciano’s experience is probably unmatched in Kenya. The current CEO of Uchumi Supermarkets (formerly in Receivership) was part of the teams in the recent past that facilitated the turnabouts of Kenya Petroleum Refinery Limited (KPRL) and Kenya Power & Lightning Company (KPLC). This was after he was involved in strategic change and organizational buyouts in Shell international companies during his postings abroad.

You can too turn around your business!!

Date: Thursday, 19th August 11, 2010
Time: 5:45pm – 8:00pm
Venue: Marble Arch Hotel
Cost: Ksh. 250 inclusive of your tea & snacks.

Confirm your attendance by texting your name to the LYP Club Administrator, Irene Mbacha on 0725 232 536.

Remember to carry your business cards.

PS If you ever wanted to meet the Like Chapaa team, we’ll be there!

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Competition

August 11, 2010 by 1 Comment

Here’s an absolute gem of an article from Seth Godin:

“The number one reason people give me for giving up on something great is, “someone else is already doing that.”

Or, parsed another way, “my idea is not brand new.” Or even, “Oh no, now we’ll have competition.”

Two big pieces of news for you:

1. Competition validates you. It creates a category. It permits the sale to be this or that, not yes or no. And this or that is a much easier sale to make. It also makes decisions about pricing easier, because you have someone to compare against and lean on.

2. There are six billion people in the world. Even if your market is hand-made spoke shaves for left-handed woodworkers, there are more people in your market than you can ever hope to track down.

There are lots of good reasons to abandon a project. Having a little competition is not one of them. Even if it’s Google you’re up against.” – Seth Godin

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

Virtual Tourism – Can It Work?

August 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment

African SafariSuppose you live in Europe or America and you have this really strong urge to come and see Africa (Kenya). You want to see the people, the wildlife, the scenery. It’s probably going to cost you thousands of dollars, right?

What if, in a real professional set up, one of the (Kenyan) tours and travel companies put multiple cameras on and in one of their tour buses and streamed a drive into, say, the Maasai Mara live and in high definition from multiple angles and you could switch the camera view (and maybe even zoom in if technology allows) to whatever you liked? And, in addition, there was a well spoken articulate guide telling you about what was going on (sort of like a commentary)….

Would you, someone who wants to see the Maasai Mara, pay for such an experience? How many people would pay? How else can this make money? Can it work? Perhaps something for our tour companies to think about….

Filed Under: Lazyweb Tagged With:

How To Make Money Online In Kenya, 2010

August 6, 2010 by 30 Comments

Facebook.com is currently valued at $15 BILLION! That makes the young founder, mark Zuckerberg an extremely wealthy man at such a young age. What about you? How are your finances doing? You could seethe with envy at Mark, or you could try your own hand at making money online!


Last year, we wrote one of the most popular articles on this website: How to make money online in Kenya. The gist of that article was that advertising as a source of online income may not be the best way to go….that was way back in 2009, though. This is 2010! How does one make money online in Kenya?

This time, we’re going to do it a little different: since last year, we’ve come across countless numbers of Kenyan who are already making money online! So this article will talk about how those people are doing it in hopes of inspiring you to start making money online in Kenya!

1.How we make money online in Kenya

We run www.likechapaa.com and a number of other websites. Of course one of the main goals of running all these sites is for us to make money online. How do we do it?

  • Advertisements – Like Chapaa has these adverts on the side (you see them?). They make us peanuts. Honestly.
  • Consulting – as it happens, a lot of the people who read Like Chapaa tend to email us asking for help in setting up online. We make a tidy some from this. How can you do this? It is not a hard concept: just pick out a topic that you are interested in and know a lot about then start a website to talk about that topic and set yourself up as a “consultant”. It works, trust us.
  • E-commerce – this is unbelievable even to us. DESPITE not having an online shop yet, we do sell a few books from our site Jua More. The lesson here seems to be if you have a website talking about a certain product that people want, then you can probably sell this product to those people. Jua More is a book review site which is still very small yet it already makes some money. Can you replicate this with a site of your own and another product? I bet you can! Just pick out something you have passion talking about (and marketing). I’m thinking things like movies and music, clothing and other such stuff can do pretty well! We even built DukaPress for you so this is super easy to do with no technical skills whatsoever!
  • Web Design – Wambere, one of the founders of Like Chapaa, also runs Nickel Pro which is a web design and development company. Like Chapaa drives a whole lot of customers her way. How can you do this? This is all about marketing, if you offer a service and want to make money online from it, you need to find somewhere (online) where the people who would buy your service hang out and then talk to these people and subtly showcase your skills and experience. They’ll buy.
  • Referrals (Affiliate income) – incidentally, most of the things we recommend you use – akina Freelancer.com, AlertPay, etc – have affiliate programs. This means that if you sign up to those sites after reading about it on Like Chapaa, we get paid. How to do this: this is pretty easy, in my view. You shouldn’t start the process by looking for companies that offer affiliate programs. Instead, look for what interests you. If you love shoes and want to start a website about shoes, you will come to find there are tons of sites out there that will pay you good money to drive people to them. Affiliate programs exist for almost everything under the sun – just find something you love, start a blog/site around it, and voila!

Also see: How to make Money With A Blog.

2. How Other People make Money Online

We realise that we aren’t the only Kenyans making money online (hehe) and so this section is dedicated to everyone else that we have come across this past year.

A. Advertising
Like Chapaa sucks at making money from advertising but these sites do it amazingly well:

  1. Career Point Kenya – this is one of the most visited sites in Kenya and, rightly so, they make a lot of money from Google’s Adsense program. This means that whenever any of the hundreds of thousands of people who visit Career Point Kenya every day click on the Google Ads, the guys running that site get paid. Sweet! To replicate this you just need to build a website that gets huge, HUGE, numbers of visitors and you’ll get paid like you won’t believe. This is not as easy as it sounds, though, and I would caution against betting on advertising as your sole means of earning online.
  2. Bankelele – the ever popular Kenyan blog. I think this is one of the oldest blogs in Kenya. It has only survived this long because the guy who runs it is a master at what he does. Unlike Career Point Kenya, Bankele makes advertising money by selling his own ads at his own price (you get this luxury when you have a site as good as his). Here’s how to do this on your own site!

B. Selling Stuff
Jua More, mentioned above, is just a lucky occurrence. If you want to really make money by selling something tangible (or digital), then you need to look at, and learn from, the guys below:

  • Mama Mikes – Mama Mikes is one of the first e-commerce sites to serve Kenyans. It is a site that excels at selling Kenyan stuff to Kenyans who do not live in Kenya. For example, you can pay power bills for your family in Kenya while living in Spain – or buy them gifts and groceries. Brilliant idea, eh? I think so too. Mama Mikes found a niche market very early on in the game and took it over.
  • Fab Guru – a fascinating business run by a lady off her Nairobi apartment. This is the face of “make money from home”. Fab Guru sells ladies shoes, bags and other items. She particularly excels at marketing her wares on Facebook where she has a large following of “fans”. Fab Guru makes quite a lot and the ingredients seem to be: a)find something to sell (preferably something that you love) and b)find a group of people who love what you have to offer (in this case, Fab Guru didn’t find those people, she built a place for them to come to).
  • Career Point Kenya – these guys have written a book that resonates well with the people who visit their site. I’m not sure of the sales figures, but I’d bet they do very well.

Do you see a trend here? If you want to make money online by selling things, then you need to first find a good product (or products) – something you love working with and which is likely to have a market large enough to support you. Then you need to find, or build, a place where people who would be willing to buy your product(s) can be found. If you manage to do that, you’ll be home free!

C. Freelancing
Of all the ways people make money online, this is the one way used by most of the people we have come across. Quite simply, this is nothing but being a hired hand. That is, being paid to do something for someone because of your expertise, experience or both. Here are examples of Kenyans who are already doing this: Wuogard, Linda Cherotich, Maria Maina and our very own Crystal.

How do you do this? Well, first off you need to be able to do something better than most people can do it. It can be anything, from writing to art, to web design.

Next, you need to build out your portfolio and then try your hand at finding jobs/gigs at some of the more popular freelancer sites such as Freelancer.com.

To put it in a way that it is more easy to relate to, I’ll give the example of Kenyan Freelancer. She’s a brilliant writer. She set up to do business online the smart way: she set up Smurt Notes which is her ‘business profile’ used to ‘seal the deal’ – but that’s not all – she also has a somewhat less formal site, Kenyan Freelancer, which I would say does more of the ‘marketing’. A nice little one-two punch to get her clients.

Seems very do-able, eh? Good luck!

See also: Interviews with Maria Maina, Kenyan Freelancer, and Crystal.

Conclusion
In my personal experience, and as seen and proven above, you can make money online in Kenya by:

  1. Selling adverts on your site
  2. Consulting
  3. Selling other people’s stuff (affiliate marketing)
  4. E-commerce (selling your own things)
  5. Freelancing

I am sure there are more ways through which people are actually making money in Kenya, but the above are what I have actually seen proven. What about you? Are you making money online? No? Need help?

Good luck, and God bless you!

Photo by timbrauhn.

Filed Under: Blogging, Case Study, Cool Sites, Internet Culture, Interviews, Make Money, Online Jobs, Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,