How To Be Creative

February 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

In today’s world, being creative is a requirement. Don’t you think so? The good thing is that everyone was born creative. The bad thing is that things like school (and 8-4-4) often steal our creativity. Hugh MacLeod’s How To Be Creative is a book that teaches you how to get back your creativity. Do you want to be creative? Download the book below.

Hugh doesn’t teach you how to come up with your big idea, nor is the book a collection of theories on what makes something innovative. Rather, Hugh’s rules teach a mindset conducive to pushing great ideas to their logical conclusions. This book won’t teach you how to paint, but if you’re lucky you’ll come away with the mental frame you need to avoid having the outside world crush your creativity.

My favorite line from the book: The more original your idea is, the less good advice people will be able to give you.

Download it here: [download id=”27″]

Hugh MacLeod is a brand consultant, copywriter and cartoonist. Born in America but educated in the UK, he has spent most of his life shuttling between the two countries. He started out in straight TV advertising writing in the early 90s but with the advent of new media it evolved into new brand thinking and cultural transformation. His website, http://gapingvoid.com, is widely read in the blogosphere.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Starting An Online Record Label

February 25, 2010 by 10 Comments

How much do you think local musicians earn from their music? I bet it is pretty low. Perhaps that is why musicians in our part of the world have full time jobs. As a musician, when you give your song or album to a local record label such as Ogopa Deejays, or Calif Records…how much do you earn? How much do they earn?

I believe that all artists should have affordable access to all channels of music distribution, get all of the money generated from the sale of their music, and all without giving up any of their master recording ownership, copyrights, merchandise rights, live performance income, public performance royalties or any other rights or money. Do you share my beliefs?

So recently I helped a friend (a musician) set up online. He made a sale yesterday. A Swedish couple, in Sweden, liked his album, and bought it. My friend emailed me saying, “you should start an online record company.” I actually have thought about that for quite a while. I know for sure that our local artistes have a far better chance of earning from their music online than through the local market. Blame piracy.

Is there need for an online record company? Well, look at it this way…if I was a musician and I found out that I can quit my day job and focus on my music, I would jump at the opportunity! Would you? The bigger issue is whether there is a market for Kenyan music online. More research needs to be done on this but I do feel there is a large and untapped market for anyone’s (not just Kenyan) music online.

What would it take to start an online record company? I do not know. But as with all good ideas that I have, I shall share my thoughts with you, dear readers.

First and foremost, one needs to know how to market online. You shall be taking the hopes and dreams of people and you shall be responsible for their success or failure. You need to know how to build an online presence, nurture it and grow it. This requirement means that, currently, not many Kenyan are qualified to start an online record label.

Secondly, one needs to understand how to market music online. Apart from setting up the artist’s website, blog, etc etc one must be able to actually find a market for the music, and then sell it. The most obvious places to sell seem to be places like: iTunes, Amazon MP3, Zune Marketplace, Rhapsody, eMusic, etc. One should also understand the more indirect methods of selling – for example, one American band famously gave away all their songs free on MySpace. They then went on a tour of the USA, and had live – well paying – shows in almost every town, big or small. Despite being a small unknown band, almost all their shows were well attended. It turns out almost everyone knew of them and liked their music (they got it free).

Looking at the two requirements above, I would say that, really, all a prospective online music label needs to have people who know the Internet; people how know marketing and, above all else, people who are creative and are not afraid to to do new and different things. Could this be you?

Let’s be honest, some music is harder to sell than others. If I had an online record label, I would find ways to work with only those musicians whose music inspires or impresses me. One would think that the best way to run the business would be to accept all musicians. I be to differ. Perhaps you can offer certain limited services to every other musician but I believe real success can only be achieved if you work with musicians who you believe in. Marketing is challenging, online marketing even more so. if you do not believe in what you are trying to market, then you will not market it so well.

Finally, my type of online music record label would be creative in how it charges its musicians. I believe that musicians deserve 100% of all their royalties, copyrights, merchandise rights, and any other rights. Instead of charging a commission on the royalties, for example, I’d charge a small annual fee (depending on how much work I do for them).

Does this make sense to anyone? Discuss below, let’s start an online music record label, shall we?

Photo by Shankar, Shiv.

Filed Under: Lazyweb, Make Money, Miscellaneous Tagged With: ,

Online Freelancing [Interview]

February 17, 2010 by 3 Comments

For the readers that don’t know, Maria Maina is a writer and freelancer extraordinaire. She is a graduate of the first edition of Biashara 30 – where she started her online freelancing career. Right now, Maria does something quite interesting: her online freelancing has grown to the point where she now has a team (of siblings and neighbors) who do all the work that she manages to get online through sites such as Freelancer.com. The set up very much resembles a BPO company, but on a smaller scale.

Q. You’re quite an achiever, tell us about you.

I’m just a kawa girl. If you met me on the street you would not think that I employ ten people from my home, LOL. I am a shy and private person. I think I am very talented at being hard working and ‘driven’. Also, “they” say that I’m quite young. I’m a girl who simply loves life! I love to live life to the fullest, you know? I take each day as it comes and I give it my absolute best, every time! Many people say I’m cheerful most of the time and pretty easy to talk to. I love my life and I love what I do.

Q. How did you start?

There was a time, in B30, that Kelvin was encouraging us to go out and try get online jobs so I was eager to try something out. A friend of mine had been using Elance for about six months, and she turned me on to Elance. She was behind on a project and asked me to help her with it for part of the payment, and I agreed. After working with her on it, I figured Elance was something I could do, so I checked them out, signed up, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Q. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

When I started out, I had no money in the bank and no access to any money. Things were thick! I used to live from hand to mouth month after month – every little bit of money that came in was already spent. But I gradually overcame this as I became better at getting clients and started saving.

Q. What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in Kenya?

I do not know if everyone faces this one – but not many people took me seriously. I kept hearing people tell me to get a job until my other business picked up. This is good advise and all but I believe one can only be successful if they focus sufficiently. One cannot focus sufficiently on both a full time job and a business – you have to choose. Atakaye yote hukosa yote.

Q. What was critical to your success?

I’m just a tenacious person. When I get into my stride I never give up. I think that is a quality that all business people need to have. Believe in yourself and never give up – no matter how dark and gloomy it gets.

Q. What about the competition and marketing, do you need to advertise, print flyers participate to conferences or is it mostly word of mouth?

I’m not sure how to answer this. I get all my clients online and the only form of advertising that I would say works is that all or almost all the clients I get really talk well of me. I would say word of mouth. It is the most important, anyway.

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?

Hey, people should wake up to the fact that if one is focused enough, then it does not matter where in the world you operate from. When you go to these online freelancing sites you will quickly realise that they are chock full of people from India. India is just like Kenya….why can’t we do it too?

Q. Where do you see yourself and your business (es) in the next 5 years?

Right now my whole team consists of semi professionals and we work from my home. I love that I can help my friends and family earn something. In the future I’d like to see it evolve to a point where I can hire more full time professionals who can help me manage the (hopefully) much bigger team. I want to see my little baby grow to the point where we can easily do five or six hundred gigs a month worth $30 each from sites like Elance and oDesk. That would be something, eh?

You always hear about BPO in the news and it is described in a way that makes you think it has to be a company getting huge contracts from big companies in America or Europe. Why can it not be a little business getting hundreds of tiny jobs from individuals all over the world?

Q. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

It takes time to build up a client base and portfolio with references. You have to be willing to take a few jobs that are not exactly what you want to do or pay a little less than what you want to receive in order to gain that all important feedback and history built up so that people will trust you with the higher paying jobs. Initially I only did the very well paying gigs, I feel that if I did all and any jobs earlier, I would be much more ahead of where I am right now.

Q. What advice do you have for Internet business entrepreneurs in Kenya?

Freelancing is a business, not a hobby. In order to make enough money freelancing as your sole source of income, you have to treat it like the business that it is. You wouldn’t expect to be paid a full-time salary on a job for working part-time hours, right? And quality in your work are essential to being a successful freelancer.

That’s all for today readers. If you’d like to hear more from Maria Maina please visit her website: www.mariamaina.co.cc. Miss Maina wrote a book early in her freelancing career, you can find it here.

Filed Under: Interviews, Small Business Tagged With: ,

The Simplest Way To Find Something To Sell

February 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment

A question I get asked a lot is, “What is the simplest way to find a good product or service to sell?” Well, there is no “simple” way to come up with something that one can both believe in and convince others to believe in enough to buy it. There have been many great products that have sold poorly, and just as many impractical or inferior products have flown off the shelves . There is no sure-fire way to test whether a product will be successful, no matter how much you believe in it. The only way you are ever going to learn whether a product is going to sell is by jumping in and selling it.

Running studies to test out whether a product will succeed is not a novel idea. People give away products as gifts, or even (in the extreme internet case) sell things on eBay to figure out what markets well. Introducing a new product or service into any market is hard and downright scary – most people want some kind of assurance that they will be successful. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to get any amount of reasonable and reliable “assurance”. A product or service may test just fine, but run into problems in the real world when competing with something of equal or lesser quality that simply seems better because of how it is being marketed. The best marketed product often is the highest-selling product, whether it is superior in function or not.

One may think that introducing a new and unique product may guarantee success. This works only sometimes. As certain as you may be that a new product is exactly what people need, new concepts or products can backfire on you. If a great new product comes to the market, and people have nothing like it to compare it to, sales typically do not take off until a later version or a competitor’s version has come along. This is counter-intuitive, but it is how people make shopping decisions – they want to make the best choice, and to do so, there need to have choices.

If a product or service does not sell well at first, you have options. First, do not be afraid to slightly alter what you are offering. Slight alterations provide one way to repackage a product as a new, different product. You must also consider presenting it in a new way. A different marketing campaign, the addition of incentives and targeting consumers in subtle ways are all viable ways to boost sales if they might be lagging. You may also try and ask your customers and fans about what to do next. This can be through surveys, polls, and even services like SitePal.

Remember that anyone can sell anything. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.

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

A New Day Has Come

February 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I’ve just read an article in the Business Daily in which they mention some research findings of a research by Synovate Kenya (formerly Steadman). The article is titled, “Facebook now clicks trouble for TV, radio”.

According to the article (courtesy of Moses Kemibaro):

  • Kenya now has over 2 million registered users on Facebook.
  • Email is being discarded in favour of social networks like Facebook and Twitter by new Internet users in Kenya. One quarter of Kenyans who are online do not have email addresses.
  • 79% of Kenya’s Internet users are members of Facebook.
  • Daily and weekly Internet usage in Kenya have both doubled in the last two years whereas monthly usage grew by over 80% in the same period.
  • Kenyan Internet users spend approximately 70 minutes online during each visit. This utilization is comparable to the average amount of time spent on television.

Moses Kemibaro provides further analysis of the research findings here.

What does this mean for you and I? Internet usage in Kenya is growing at an astonishing rate. This, coupled with the arrival of fibre last year, means that, alas, the time has finally come for Kenyan businesses everywhere to to view and treat the Internet with great care – lest they fall by the wayside. When the Internet was taking root in the more developed countries, a lot of businesses chose to ignore it. Those businesses failed, or lost significant market share. Do not let this be you.

Moreover, if you ever had any thoughts of using the Internet to enhance your business or if you ever wanted to start an online business, then the time to act is now. Lots and lots of people are embracing the Internet, you must be one of the first movers in order to succeed early and establish yourself as a force.

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With:

No Balls, No Babies

February 13, 2010 by 5 Comments

You know something? If you really want to achieve something, then the only one who can help you achieve it is you. The buck stops at you, you are responsible for the achievement of your own goals and dreams.

I met Hottie today. For those who do not know her, she is a promising local musician. What struck me about her was her passion for what she does, and her ambition. She told me a story of how she once pushed her producers, not wanting to settle for anything less than perfection, until she was 100% satisfied with a song she was doing. That particular song ultimately earned her a Kisima Awards nomination. Nice, eh? I could tell that she will go far in her career just by listening to her.

What do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to see your business grow to? Most importantly, who do you think will help you achieve all that? I do not know if you know this, but the power to achieve all that you want lies with no one but yourself. Just believe in yourself and in your abilities. Don’t you know the story of a black man from a third world country who became the president of one of the most powerful nations in the world? You have to believe that you can do it.

And belief bring courage; and courage brings success. What do you want to do? Whatever it is, you better get off your behind and do it. No one is going to do it for you.

As the saying goes, if you don’t have balls, then you won’t make any babies…

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Why Does Your Business Not Blog?

February 8, 2010 by 2 Comments

A recent study by HubSpot found out that businesses that actively maintain their blogs draw as much as 7 times more visitors to their websites than businesses which do not have blogs. What does this mean?

Does your business depend on getting many visitors to your website? Or, would it benefit your business if your website had more visitors? Yes? Then you need to have an active and well maintained blog for your business.

What makes a good business blog? It may surprise you, but the big accounting and consulting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers once did some research on what makes a good corporate blog. Here are their published results. From reading their white paper, some of the main points, in my mind, are:

  • Demonstrate expertise – Position an employee and/or the business as the industry thought leader.
  • Build customer relationships – Develop personal, long-term relationships with customers; collect feedback, insights, suggestions, complaints and endorsements; and increase intimacy by giving the business a human voice.
  • Enhance company credibility – Utilize a high-profile, press-monitored venue to directly address and respond to issues related to the company. During times of crisis, explicitly address needs and concerns of stakeholders. In other words, use the blog to paint the best picture possible for your business.
  • Expand company visibility – Link the blog to related Web sites via RSS to generate interest from new parties, including the media and competitors’ customers. Basically, use the blog to increase the number of people who know about you, and can find you.
  • Increase collaboration – Create a workspace in which project teams can interact.
  • Promote knowledge management – Provide employees with information and resources in an easy-to-navigate format.
  • Strengthen recruitment – Generate interest in the business from potential recruits by demonstrating candor and credibility in the blog.
  • Test progressive ideas – Gauge public interest to out-of-the-box thinking by posting ideas and monitoring responses.
  • Heighten search engine rankings – Raise rank and profile of business by building a high number of links to the blog.

Apart from those pointers, the white paper goes further and lists some additional tips:

  • Remember that blog readers are not passive consumers; they are actively seeking a ‘scoop’ or insight from your blog.
  • Do not just blog for blogging’s sake. Make sure that what you write about is interesting and engaging.
  • Authenticity is critical to creating a successful blog; readers know when content is primarily focused on marketing the firm/company.
  • Updating the blog on a regular basis is key to engaging readers and driving return traffic.
  • Be sure to incorporate RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow readers to receive blog updates in real-time.

So, why exactly does your business not blog?

Filed Under: Blogging, Small Business Tagged With: , ,