Are You Limiting Your Potential?

July 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Most people who launch a website with the intent of making money from it usually follow the following set of steps:

  1. Launch the site
  2. Provide value to the user
  3. Put adverts on the site (especially Adsense)
  4. Make money

This strategy works for hundreds of sites out there. However, it is not the only strategy out there and it is not the easiest or most profitable either.

There are two ways of making money from a website: you can make money from your site or because of your site. Earning from advertising is only one of the many ways to make money from your site. The other ways are probably too many to count but here are some ideas: subscription fees, affiliate marketing, selling goods and services etc.

How can you make money because of your website? Well, I’ll give you an example: Like Chapaa is barely two months old now and it is currently not making me any money directly (nor was it ever meant to) but, believe it or not, I have had people inquiring whether I offer consultancy services…

Do not limit what you do with your website. Especially not to just advertisements. There are so many other things you can do with a website. As we’ve seen, you could earn money in a variety of ways and you can also do any one, or all, of the following:

  • Enhance your network
  • Build and grow a community
  • Establish your expertise and authority
  • Meet new friends
  • Experiemnt
  • Do something that matters
Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Researching Keywords For Domaining

July 15, 2009 by 1 Comment

So far, we’ve had an introduction into the art of making money from domain names. We’ve learnt what domains are, and we went deeper and learnt about domain extensions and saw that choosing the right extension will improve a domain’s value. However, the really valuable part of a domain name is not the extension, it is the second level domain. You may recall my example of sex.com being significantly more valuable than sex.net. The domains, however, derive their value from the word “sex” – which is the second level domain in both cases.

Domain keywords are what make up your second level domain and, indeed, they are key. They account for almost all of any domain’s value.

It is possible for the keywords of a domain to contain absolutely no relevant words and still be valuable (e.g google.com, squidoo.com) but this happens after a lot of time and effort from the domain’s owner(s). Google.com is valuable because of the google brand – on day 1 of its registration, its value to a domainer would have been pretty close to nothing. However, other domains (like sex.com) are valuable from day one. Why? This is because the word making up the domain (e.g. sex) is inherently relevant. It is a key word. Keyword based domains have an inherent value and are much more easier to sell as a domainer.

Successful domainers usually have a portfolio that mostly consists of keyword-oriented domains since these have more obvious value and appeal better to search engines.

Researching Keywords For Your Domains
An easy way to come up with valuable keywords for your domains is to follow trends, seasons, fashion and major events/happenings. For example, many domainers made lots of money by taking advantage of the opportunity presented by Micheal Jackson’s death. Another example: I know of a domainer who quietly buys a portfolio of summer related domains (barbeque, camping, etc) during the cold months and then sells them at a profit when summer finally comes. He lives in the USA though – where this is possible.

Another approach to getting valuable keywords is found in SEO concepts. I mentioned before that domainers have to be SEO-conscious and I repeat it again: as a domainer you have to understand how SEO works. Domain keywords are a huge part of search engine optimisation and should be picked carefully and always with SEO in mind.

Researching search trends is a good way to assess the potential traffic of a domain as well as to get ideas of how valuable that domain could be. The basic idea is simple: analyse search engines like Google and find out what people are searching for (their search terms are your keywords) then develop those keywords into keyword-based domains.

How do you do this? Fortunately, there are several tools available:

Tools To Analyse Search Trends:
Google Trends – With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.

Google Insights For Search – With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.

Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool – This is a handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase to see how often it’s searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords.

Other tools
Keyword Discovery
WordTracker
NicheBot
Google Keywords
SEOChat SEO Tools
Lycos 50

Generally, keywords that receive a lot of search engine traffic would be more valuable and you therefore want to get those. However, competition should also be put into consideration. For example, if you found a keyword that gets searched only about 25,000 times a month (which is low) but there is hardly any competition, it would be a good keyword to develop a domain (or domains) around. The Adwords Tool is useful in analysing competition.

Getting Your Domain Name
Researching search trends will leave you with a list of keywords. You know want to get a nice, brandable domain name based on these keywords. How do you do it? Well, you can sit down and brainstorm. Or you can use a domain name generator like DomainsBot. Domainsbot allows you to sort domain suggestions based on extension, availability, and by synonyms. It’s a fantastic tool

Other tools:
Nameboy
Domainfellow
Raining Names
E-gineer’s Domainator
SnapItNow

This article is part one of a series of articles that will fully explore making money online from domain names. The other articles in this series are:

1. Introduction
2. Domain Extensions
3. Researching Keywords
4. Domain Name Registration
5. Domain Name Parking
6. Selling Your Domain

Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Make Money Tagged With: ,

Don’t Be Left Out – Learn How To Make Money Domaining

July 12, 2009 by 6 Comments

Make Money Online Through Domaining
A lot of people desire to make money, online or elsewhere, but they think that starting your own small business requires a lot of start-up capital. This is incorrect. You can start a business with next to nothing and thrive. Domaining is a prime example of how you can do exactly that.

What is domaining? Domaining is the art of making money online through domain names. But what are domains? I assume everyone reading this has had at least some experience with how the internet works. Probably you have typed www.something.com into your browser at some point. You have? Good. That which you typed in is a domain. A domain name, quite simply, is what you type in to your browser when you want to visit a particular website.

I won’t bore you with all the hard-core tech. stuff behind how domains work but, at this point, a little more technical stuff is necessary. You are able to access every website because it is hosted on a computer, just like yours, which is set up so that the public can access its files and folders online. Such a computer is called a server. Very basically, the internet is a network of many servers and we access them through our computers, mobile phones, and other devices. Every computer or device that is on the internet (whether is is a server or device used to access the server) has a unique address on the internet. This is called an IP address. Normally, an IP address is something like: 216.239.51.99.

Therefore, to access a website you need to get your browser to go to the IP address for that website. Now, as you may have noticed, it’d be quite a task to remember even one single site’s IP address, let alone the tens of sites that one may visit in a day. The domain name system was creating particularly to solve this problem. Instead of remembering a bunch of numbers, you remember just a simple “name”. For example, it is much much easier to remember www.google.com than it is to remember 216.239.51.99.

Another key benefit of the domain name system is that domain names are transferable. If you were to move a website from one server to another, the IP address has to change – everyone who accesses that site will have to use the new IP address. But having domain names changes this. You can move your website from server to server with the domain name staying the same. What does this mean? This means that you can transfer domain names, as well as whole websites, from one server to another easily and quickly. Or, in chapaa-speak, you can sell your website or domain name very easily.

Domainers
Domainers are people who take advantage of the domain name system and use it to earn money online. And guess what? Anyone can profit from this business – your gender, age, education, race/tribe does not matter one bit! You just have to work hard and smart. Don’t get me wrong though, this is NOT a get rich quick scheme and not everyone who reads this will make even a single cent online. A very common misconception is that web money is easy to get – that’s not necessarily true. You have to work just as hard as you would elsewhere. Only difference is that you can do it from the comfort of your home and at your own pace and time.

Ready to start? Good. This article is part one of a series of articles that will fully explore making money online from domain names. The other articles in this series are:

1. Introduction
2. Domain Extensions
3. Researching Keywords
4. Domain Name Registration
5. Domain Name Parking
6. Selling Your Domain

Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.

How Do You Make Money From Domain Names?
Basically, you can make money from domains by selling them, or parking them. Selling them is pretty self explanatory – you buy cheap and sell high. Many people sell domain names through established marketplaces such as sedo, flippa or Pool.com. Still others sell them privately. For example, read about how people made millions selling domains related to Michael Jackson following his death. Or have a look at the top 100 domain sales this year – you can make thousands (of US dollars).

Domain name parking is a little more complex. Simply put, it is creating a really really simple, one page website on your domain name and loading with with advertisements. When people visit those domains and click on the adverts, you earn money. Selling domain names is a quicker way of earning from domains but parking (if done right) is a more stable, hands free way of earning from domains – it is passive income (you don’t have to do anything but receive money 😀 ).

To be a good domainer, you will have to apply a healthy mix of selling and parking.

A Note On SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving chances of people finding your websites from search engines such as Google or Bing. Higher chances of people finding your website through search engines means higher traffic (number of visitors to your website) which usually means higher earnings for you. It would be impossible to be a successful domainer without learning and applying a little SEO.

Although domainers do not often get to delve deep into the SEO realm, you should be aware that domains that would naturally do well in search engines (SEO-friendly domains) are more valuable. I’ll definitely be writing more on SEO but you can get a head start by going here: SEO Book, or SEOMoz.

Now that you know the basics, it’s time to move on to the next step. Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.

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

Introducing Biashara30

July 12, 2009 by Leave a Comment

In yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek post on jobs, Wambere hinted at our upcoming Biashara30 program. She said, “If you need help, you can join ‘Biashara30′ a 30 day program where we teach you everything we know about starting your own business and take you step by step until you start making money.”

Guess what? Biashara30 is finally here! Would you like to learn how to make money online? Would you like step-by-step practical guidance as you set up your internet business? That’s what we aim to do with Biashara30.

Biashara30 is a premium club meant for people interested in making money online. People who join Biashara30 will learn everything we know about making money online and, to complete the program, will be required to set up an internet business either as a group project or alone. A very important part of Biashara30 is ensuring that everyone who participates earns online before the end of the program. At every step, Wambere and I will be on hand to guide and advise the members of Biashara30.

Do you want to sign up for Biashara30?
At this time, signing up and registration is 100% free – we won’t ask you for a single cent!

However, there is a catch! There is a cap to the number of people that we will let into Biashara30. We’re thinking we’ll take only 10 people – but this figure could change if the applications to join us are interesting enough. We want to work only with smart, motivated, interesting and committed people. This is so as to ensure that the program is successful.

Also, note that almost all of the Biashara30 program will be done online.

Our aim in launching is to differentiate Like Chapaa – see, it was never meant to be just another website and, in line with our stated objectives, we also hope to teach and inspire our fellow Kenyans to get ahead in life by learning about making money online.

Still want to sign up? Go here.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

How To Receive Payments Online

July 10, 2009 by 38 Comments

Update: PayPal now works in Kenya! You can also now withdraw from PayPal through Babawatoto or LibertyReserve.


Ok so you’ve decided to give this “make money online” thing a shot. You’ve figured out what you are gong to sell, to whom and how. Now one last thing remains. How will you get paid? How will you receive the chapaa? There are two ways you can receive payments online:

1. Having your own merchant account
2. Using third party processors

What is a merchant account?
A merchant account is a special kind of bank account where funds received from credit card transactions are first routed to the special account and held there before being remitted to your business account. You as an online merchant will need an account called “Card Not Present Merchant Account”. Merchant accounts are only useful when you are receiving payments on your own website (Get one!!) and have some sort of payment processing system already in place on the website (basically, a shopping cart system.

Having the merchant account is, actually, the first step in processing credit cards online. You will also need a payment gateway. A payment gateway is a service provided by billing processor which allows real time authorization of online transactions.The payment gateway you choose to work with has to be compatible with your shopping cart. Three top payment Gateway providers are AuthorizeNet, Verisign and USAePay. All payment gateway providers have their own merchant solutions. Most banks, today, work with partner payment gateway providers and are fully capable of furnishing with a merchant solution.

If you are just starting an online business and you don’t think that your sales will generate more than a thousand dollars a month, you will be better off with a third party processor. However, once your sales become really high, you will save a bundle by switching to a merchant account.

PayPal
With 72 million accounts worldwide and payment volume which is growing at a rate of 44 percent each year, PayPal by far is the most popular third party processor on the Internet. PayPal is a simple and affordable payment solution for those online merchants who are unable to or don’t want to go through the complex process of setting up a bank merchant account. Merchant losses from fraud on PayPal are now only 0.17% of revenues, vs. 1.8% for online merchants that accept credit cards through merchant accounts. This gives one more reason to use PayPal.

Paypal is also perfect for receiving small payments. For example, if you are a freelance writer and you do some small job, you don’t need a big huge merchant account – just request to be paid through Paypal. Once the money is in your Paypal account, you can use it to pay for things online, or you can request Paypal to send the money to you.

Getting a Paypal account in Kenya used to be impossible but they opened that up and you can get one right away. The bet way to use Paypal from Kenya is to use it in tandem with a Debit card. Basically, get a Debit card (I got mine from KCB) and then link it to your Paypal account – you will need to verify the card by entering into Paypal some code that will be on your bank statement. You will also need to verify your address by scanning and sending to Paypal a document (like a water of power bill) showing your name and address on the face. Doing these verifications may seem like a chore but, trust me, you will be love the simplicity and assurance that Paypal is known for.

ClickBank
Clickbank is a laaaarge marketplace where sellers list digital products for sale. The thing that’s special about clickbank is that hundreds of thousands of people ready to market and sell your product for you for a commission. By listing your product on clickbank, you access a huge market. For selling e-books, software and other similar digital products, ClickBank is probably your best option. ClickBank accepts all major credit cards and PayPal.

MPESA
Did you know that you can accept payments online through Safaricom’s MPESA service? Nice eh? I’m pretty new to it so I cannot really review it but here’s what you need to do if you want to accept payments online via MPESA:

  1. Send an email to mpesa@safaricom.co.ke requesting for the service
  2. Safaricom then responds with the requirements, tariffs and supporting Docs required.
  3. Agreements and contract drafted
  4. Allocation of code number, account creation
  5. Service Goes live

There are many other third party processing companies available on the Internet. Two of them worth mentioning are moneybookers and ikobo.

Filed Under: Make Money, Online Jobs, Small Business 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: ,

How To Make Money Online In Kenya

July 4, 2009 by 121 Comments

Some of you may recall that a while back I gleefully reported having made $150 in two hours. That was like a wake-up call, and I have since been applying myself online in ways I had not thought of previously. The results have been amazing!

See, I started blogging (and this internet thing) when I was still in high school (in the delightful town of Nyahururu) so I’ve been around the net quite a while. And I’ve always been tech-savvy so I got to know my way around the net pretty quick. I think I know how to do most things online. However, making money online has always been like that elusive Holy grail – I never seemed to “get” how it’s done. But now I do.


I’m not quite sure how, I didn’t see it coming. It’s been a very gradual process, though. A lot of small payments led to that ‘big’ one of $150, and as I said earlier on, the $150 spurred me on to vigorously try my hand at other projects I have been thinking of. The results were really nice and the earnings pretty sweet 😀 It’s been a slow gradual process getting to this point and nothing happened overnight. But, boy, the education and experience is priceless!

Guess what, though? Making money online is not hard. Anyone can do it, even you. The two most important things you need are the will to do and patience/perseverance. With those two in place, I’m 100% sure that you too can make money online. It’s not that hard – there’s usually a well known set of steps to follow and all you need to do is to apply them diligently. I’m no expert but I do make good money online. www.likechapaa.com is my attempt to teach what I know, if you care to read. You can even subscribe (free) or sign up to receive free email updates if visiting the site often is too much of a hassle.

Most of the sites that write about making money online are pretty good. They also all talk about making money from a distinctly non-Kenyan viewpoint. However, I have come to learn that being in Kenya makes a huge (yet subtle) difference to the process of making money online. Specifically:

I’ve seen many many small websites run by Europeans/Americans that make money off advertising, especially Google Adsense. This doesn’t work very well back home. I’m not saying it is not possible, I am saying that it requires a lot of hard work, and a large userbase. Unless yours is a pretty big/well known website, making money off advertising is a pipe dream. So don’t depend on it until your website is very well known.

But then, does that mean that small Kenyan websites cannot make money online? Nope. I run several of these, so i should know. The trick is, since you cannot really rely on selling adverts, you have to sell something else. Find a product or service (yours or not) that is appropriate to your website and sell it.

Finally, many Kenyans are yet to come online. Some other Kenyans do access the internet, but don’t go beyond Yahoo mail. This means that a lot of people do not frequently access the internet. This also means a lot of your potential customers/clients simply have no way of getting to you. This is why a healthy dose of traditional, real world, marketing should be included in your marketing strategy. You cannot rely on purely online marketing without mixing it with some offline stuff.

That’s it, my take on the nuances of making money online in Kenya. Why aren’t you making money online? Are you going to try? You know, I go to sites where people make money online (e.g. Rent A Coder) and I’m just amazed by the numbers of Indians (or people from that part of the world) who are out there, making hundreds of US dollars a day. Can you imagine that? Hundreds of them, broken English and all. Yet they are making it. Why can’t we in Kenya? I don’t know if it is pride, but I feel we can do a better job than most of them do. We just have to seize this opportunity.

God bless you.

Photo by timbrauhn.

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: ,