Scribd and Other Web Delights

Scribd is a social publishing site where millions of people share documents. It has been called a youtube (sort of) for documents. Scribd lets you upload Word, PDF, text (.txt), PowerPoint, Excel, PostScript, and LIT (.lit) files for private use or public sharing.

Why would you share your documents with the world? Well, Scribd’s CEO, Trip Adler has the answer: by sharing documents you make them social objects that a community can add onto.

I was skeptical about scribd – yeah, not a great name – but it is helping me change the game for my long children’s book. I needed a solution that was plug and play and enabled me to give readers a terrific experience for my 400+ page book on my web site, and I really wanted a way for them to easily give me feedback on the book. Whala! Scribd. For authors, legitimate ones especially, what a great way to get real market data. Kids read it the book on my site, I count the hits, get their comments, and direct them to buy the paper copy on amazon. Awesome.” – John Wolpert

Like scribd? Try it: www.scribd.com

Other Web Delights:
Opera is about to “reinvent the web“. No one seems to know how, exactly, but I can’t wait to see what they have up their sleeve.
Windows 7 will launch without IE in Europe. Wow.

How to Start A Business With 3000 Or Less

Whether you’re starting a business on the side while still employed elsewhere, a student or homemaker looking for extra income, or unemployed and trying to figure out what to do, there are plenty of opportunities for you to start up a side business inexpensively. We’ll take a look at 10 such opportunities and, most importantly, tell you what to do with the 3K!

It’s unlikely any of the following will make you a living in the first few months, but they all have the potential to grow into full-time businesses.

1. Web Entrepreneur
It’s what everyone who’s ever surfed the Web dreams of — just stick a web site up there and watch the cash roll in! Well, that just doesn’t happen overnight, but the fact of the matter is it’s really not very hard to do. To do it right, start by picking a subject matter you know a lot about. Then get a domain and create a web site. It doesn’t even matter what technology you use — just make sure it looks good and provide plenty of original content. Now find some appropriate affiliate programs—that’s where your revenues are going to come from. Next, learn everything you can about search engine marketing and promote the heck out of your site. Last of all, set aside time every week to put new content on the site, delete dead links, and other maintenance. Now do this three or four times, and you’ve chosen your topics well, you might actually have some decent income from it.

Spend the 3,000 on: 800 or less for a domain and 1,000 for hosting. You can get cheap web design too (kitu 500).

2. Consultant
Getting into consulting is relatively simple. All you have to do is know how to do something better than most people do, and be able to either teach people how to do it or be willing to do it for them. Networking is the key to success in this business, so start by making a list of everyone you know and giving them all a call.

Spend the 3,000 on: 1,000 on a box of clean business cards and 500 buying your first prospect a cup of coffee one morning.

3. Housesitter /Babysitter
Nowadays, people feel an increased need for security, and house-sitting gives them some reassurance while they’re out of town. This one’s great because it basically requires no particular skills, just trustworthiness and reliability. Be sure to have personal references available, and you’ll also need reliable transportation. If you’re a baby lover, babysitting is an easy add-on.

Spend the 3,000 on: 200 on flyers to put up on bulletin boards and to pass around.

4. Professional Organizer
People these days are simply overwhelmed by their “stuff”. While there is an ever-growing trend of people wanting to simplify their lives, most of us haven’t done it yet. It’s not that people really have no clue how to get organized, it just keeps moving to the bottom of the stack, both figuratively and literally. There’s a prime opportunity for people to come in at a reasonable rate and get houses organized. And mostly it takes common sense, organizational skills, and a familiarity with where to get frequently used items cheaply. You can also do this online.

Spend the 3,000 on: Classified ads.

5. Independent Sales Representative
Sales has to be one of the most well paying ‘jobs’ out there. Just find a product you know people will love and sell it on commission. You can try this product, look here, or just ask around – the people you know are very resourceful, trust me.

Spend the 3,000 on: Possible sign up fees, maybe some samples; the rest on advertising.

6. Personal Services – Shopping & Errands
Believe it or not, there are people who are just too busy(or lazy) to do their own shopping. In addition, running petty errands is quite in demand – things like delivering small parcels and paying utility bills. Again, trustworthiness and dependability are the key traits for this. Also, make sure you know your way around the town/city you live in.

Spend the 3,000 on: 200 on flyers and the rest on classified ads.

7. Desktop Publishing
It’s amazing how many people have a computer and still don’t know how to do really simple stuff! If you’ve got a good design sense, are familiar with your word processor, and already have a laser or high-quality inkjet printer, you can get into desktop publishing. You can make fliers and posters for people. Create a really great-looking portfolio for yourself and go door-to-door.

Spend the 3,000 on: Some high-quality paper to create your samples on.

8. Tutoring
There’s an unprecedented need for tutors these days for kids of all ages—even adults! If you’ve got a topic you can tutor in, contact the local schools, particularly private ones, and even try door to door, and offer your services. Don’t be worried if your topic is highly specialized—even those are in demand.

Spend the 3,000 on: 1,000 on a box of clean business cards and 500 on flyers.

9. Online Freelancing
If you have a certain skill or if you can just do something really well, chances are there’s someone out there willing to pay you for it. Finding such people online is easy and all you need is the skills, the right attitude and reliability. Try look here.

Spend the 3,000 on: A nice looking website and reliable web hosting. Try these guys.

10. Secretarial Service – Typing / Transcription / Proofreading
Many small businesses and individuals have a need for these services, but not enough need to hire a full time employee. Assuming you’ve got a computer, a printer, and e-mail (and the necessary skills), you’re all set. Be prepared to charge by the job, not by the hour.

Spend the 3,000 on: 1,000 on a box of clean business cards and 500 on flyers.


One last thing — beware of small business scams that promise overnight riches or ‘easy money’. Sure,one can get rich overnight but practically speaking, it just does not happen.

Be prepared to work, and work hard, for your money.

Note: This post was modified into Kenyan terms (as much as I could) from the original writing found here.

How I Made $150 in Two Hours

At the moment there are an awful lot of people online who are not making money online! In fact, it is reasonable to assume that there are a significant number of people who lose money on the internet, daily – by not making enough to cover their bills (website hosting and suchlike).

Making money online may seem like a daunting task indeed. I can testify that it can be a long hard struggle especially if you have to learn everything and do not have the means to either enlist the help of friends or anyone, really. So the question is can you make money online?

Yes you can, but it is not easy. Some so called ‘gurus’ may tell you that you can become rich overnight. This is indeed possible but usually, however, it is not possible to amass riches overnight. Sometimes it can take months or even years and in extreme cases maybe never!

All that is needed is not just hard work and determination. One is required to work smart. For example, many people online try to reinvent the wheel – they want to make money in a unique original way. While this is fine, even commendable, it is not necessary when you are just starting out. As regards making money online, there is usually a basic tried and tested system. Usipuuze hii system, follow it carefully and diligently and sooner of later you will reap from your effort.

Another is honesty. I personally feel that you cannot go very far if you try to lie and cheat.

Anyway, so how exactly can you make money online?

There are many ways to make money online. Some of these are: drop-shipping, affiliate marketing, selling your own products/services, selling adverts etc. They are different ad require different approaches but, to me, the business principle in each is on: use the power of the internet to create connections.

Seth Godin puts it best: “Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.

The essence is this: connect.

Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.

* Connect advertisers to people who want to be advertised to.
* Connect job hunters with jobs.
* Connect information seekers with information.
* Connect teams to each other.
* Connect those seeking similar.
* Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
* Connect people who are proximate geographically.
* Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
* Connect like-minded people into a movement.
* Connect people buying with people who are selling.”

Read the rest of Seth Godin’s writing here.

Some people describe it this way: find a niche market in which some need is under-served in some way and fill that need.

An Example (How I made $150 in two hours)

I used to actively run this website: http://iexplor.blogspot.com (I got busy and semi-abandoned it). I worked at it for a few months and managed to collect about 300 emails of people who had voluntarily agreed to receive emails from me whenever I updated my website. The site used to earn me about 500 a month from adverts but now it averages a few shillings. This is because I don’t really update this website anymore because of my tight schedule, but I still have that list of emails. So, I sent an email to some of my list, telling them of my current web host’s nice web hosting package, and enticing them to host their sites with my webhosts. I sent this email and went to sleep. When I woke up, I found that in the space of two hours some of them had signed up to the web hosting deal and I got paid a commission for the sales I had driven to my web host.

What can you do to make money online?

  1. Get as much information as possible on this subject. Pay for it if you have to. Perhaps you’d like to bookmark this website because we teach how to many money online here
  2. Decide how (specifically) you want to make money
  3. Make a plan
  4. Follow your plan and stick to it no matter what
  5. Never quit until you get what you want

God bless you, and good luck.

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Mechanical Turks, and 9 Other Jobs

While computing technology continues to improve, there are still many things that human beings can do much more effectively than computers, such as identifying objects in a photo or video, performing data de-duplication, transcribing audio recordings or researching data details. Traditionally, tasks like this have been accomplished by hiring a large temporary workforce (which is time consuming, expensive and difficult to scale) or have gone undone.

At Amazon Mechanical Turk, you get paid to do things such as transcribe audio, label pictures, write short (and long) essays among other things.  Some of the pay is pretty low but if you live in a country like Kenya and daily do an amount of work equivalent to a full working day, your monthly income should be a lot more than that of most people in this country.

Still not convinced?  One of the people who work at Mechanical Turk is "Kristy Milland, 27, a mother of one who runs an at-home day care in Toronto, as well as a Web site called RealityBBQ about the reality TV show "Big Brother." "I have a lot of free time basically sitting at the computer while the kids play," she says. Among the work she does is editing and quality assurance for CastingWords, but not transcription, because she has tendinitis. When Mturk.com first began, Milland would churn through 3-cent HITs. (That's "human intelligence tasks," Turker lingo for jobs.) Amazon was paying turkers to make sure that photos of businesses used on its A9 site, a local search engine, matched the actual businesses listed, a task a computer can't do. In an eight-hour day, when she didn't have the kids to watch, Milland could go through 1,000 photos, making a cool $30". (Read the rest of this review) That's 30 US dollars per day!!!

Amazon Mechanical Turk can help you make money, try it.

Other jobs you may want to check out:
Kids Blog Seeks Editorial/Administrative Assistant
Help English Language Learners Online
Seeking GAM writers
Write Short Blog Posts for Social Network Site
Writers Wanted – Custom Content Freelancers
Storytelling Magazine Is Looking For Submissions
Business Plan Writers Needed
Food Blog looking for writers
Pet lifestyle writers, bloggers, producers wanted!
Freelance web designer

Note: The positions above may be filled and therefore the links may cease to work after a while. Hurry!!

DISCLAIMER: You may be scammed, or you may not. I am not responsible for anything. If you click here, you can learn how to avoid online scams.  Alternatively, Subscribe to this blog or sign up for free email updates.

Of Flying Cars, Cyberbullies and Games That Make You Vomit

Where, exactly, can we draw the line between virtual and real?  Here's a round-up of some thought provoking news:

There's been a lot of talk about a new game: Mirror's Edge.  The game is really nice and is action packed as you would expect of a 1st person shooter but that's not why people are talking about it.  Apparently, the game is so realistic that all the jumping around and rapid motion can make you vomit. Whoa!  Read the review.

The US "Pentagon's mad science division Darpa is helping build thought-controlled robotic limbs, artificial pack mules, real-life laser guns, and "kill-proof" soldiers. So it comes as no surprise, really, that the agency is now getting into the flying car business, too". Read the rest of the story at Wired.

We end with a sad story of Loli Drew, a woman charged with creating a MySpace account that was allegedly used to harass a teenager.  "Drew is charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of unauthorized access to computers after allegedly creating a MySpace account for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named "Josh Evans."  Drew and two co-conspirators allegedly provided fake information to MySpace to set up and maintain the account in 2006. The Evans account was used to flirt with and befriend Meier, who'd had a falling-out with Drew's daughter.  The fake "Josh" ultimately turned on Meier and told the girl that the world would be a better place without her. Meier already suffered from clinical depression, and shortly after that final message she hanged herself in her bedroom." (Wired News) May she rest in peace.

(Cyber-bullying involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others.)

Bonus: Read how a sex-offender set up a fake church.

Remember The Milk

Is there anyone else out there who simply forgets to do stuff (that are rather importnat)?  For example, I’ve been meaning to send an email to my friend in India for a few days now, but I just keep on forgetting to do this.  So last night I set out to find a solution.  I do spend a lot of time on the internet and, particularly, I check my email very often.  In fact, my gmail is almost always open in a tab on my browser.  If only there was a way to have some sort of to-do list integrated into my gmail – I’d be able to see what I needed done easily, and often. As it turns out, there’s something just like that:

Managing tasks is generally not a fun way to spend your time. We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.” – Remember The Milk.

The Nation Media Group, Plagiarism, An Apology, and Customer Service – A Case Study

This follows the article that I wrote yesterday regarding plagiarism by the Nation Media Group (NMG): Shameless Plagiarism at The Nation Media Group. If you read that article, you will notice that I wrote it while I was pretty upset at the NMG.  I felt that they had been dishonest and, feeling that there was little I could do about it, I decided to tell the world (that part of the world that reads what I write) of my frustrations. After writing that post, sharing it with Bidii Africa members and putting it up at Let's Explore, I felt a little happier.  A got an email that essentially said, "Cool, let's slay this behemoth."  Word spread, and what I wrote was picked up by Irani Media where Stephanie added her thoughts and experiences with NMG and plagiarism.

Putting the issue of plagiarism aside (I'll get to it later), I think this demonstrates the profound challenge facing organisations everywhere.   All it needs is one person dissatisfied with your product/service with a blog and suddenly your reputation and respectability could be facing a  big ugly challenge.  What is a company to do when there's a good number of its customers armed with blogs and ready to trash them at the slightest provocation?  Surely, there probably aren't any silver bullets out there; the solution(s) to this problem are probably wide and varied.  Yesterday, the NMG did something right.

One of the first people to email me following the post calling NMG on the plagiarism was Charles, a write I respect deeply, who is from the NMG.  His email was pleasant, but curt: He wanted me to point out instances of the plagiarism so that he could look into the matter.  I did that last night and today I got a response that was satisfactory to me.  Let's analyse this using Joel Spolsky's Approach to Remarkable Customer Service.  What did the NMG do right?

1. Take the blame.  When you're dealing with an angry customer, you have to take the blame.  The customer is always right, as they say. Take the blame and move on to the more important matter of solving the problem.  The NMG did this well.

2. Don't fight the customer.  "When an irate customer is complaining, or venting, it’s easy to get defensive.  You can never win these arguments, and if you take them personally, it’s going to be a million times worse. This is when you start to hear business owners saying, “I don’t want an asshole like you for a customer!” They get excited about their Pyrrhic victory. Wow, isn’t it great? When you’re a small business owner you get to fire your customers. Charming." (Source: Joel Spolsky's Approach to Remarkable Customer Service).  As Patrick McKenzie writes, you never win an argument with a customer.  NMG didn't fight the customer.

3. Fix everything two ways.  Every customer service problem has two solutions (and you have to use both): You solve the immediate, superficial problem and also make sure that particular problem doesn't happen again.  Charles not only calmed me down by explaining why they published Bidii Africa articles, he proceeded to tell me what the NMG did to make sure the problem didn't recur. So the NMG have this covered too.

4. Make customers into fans.  The trick here is to treat your customers so well that they talk about it.  This is the whole rationale behind remarkable customer service.  Yesterday, I was extremely disappointed by the NMG.  To see a paper that I love turn suddenly (in my eyes) into a dishonest behemoth got me sad, and angry.  I'm just one out of its thousands of readers but today I didn't buy a copy of the Daily Nation.  It was my way of solo, frustrated protest.  I was going to make sure that anyone who values my opinion thinks twice about buying The Nation.  I know what you are thinking – my 35bob and that of six of my friends won't do anything to hurt the NMG in any way. However, remarkable customer service isn't about being nice to most of your customers, it's about being nice to all of your customers.  Charles, and the NMG, got this right, very right.  I didn't buy the Nation today, but I'll buy it tomorrow. Why? Because Charles was pleasant and helpful.  He seemed sincere and made me believe that there are good, honest, respectable people at the NMG.  Yesterday, I was pretty hard on them.  I made a list of possible reasons why the NMG would plagiarise.  The list didn't have anything nice to say about the NMG.  I wrote that post and overlooked another possible reason for the plagiarism.  Dear readers, and everyone at the NMG, I wish to apologise for this.  The plagiarism that I wrote about yesterday could have been the result of an honest mistake, and I fully believe that it was.

Be sure to read the rest of Joel Sposky's article as I have only dealt with items that I feel apply well in online customer service and reputation management.  Also, Seth Godin has an interesting take on starting over with customer service.

What other lesson can be learnt from this experience?  As I wrote elsewhere, it is important to keep track of what is being said by you online and to respond super fast whenever there's a problem.  Notice how Charles' fast, sincere and helpful actions won back a customer and made a new fan.  One wonders where the Wananchi Online people are when their new product Zuku is getting a bad reputation. Welcome to Online Reputation Management.

Now, regarding NMG's plagiarism, I am convinced that the instance of plagiarism that I wrote of yesterday was an honest mistake, and a misunderstanding.  However, the very fact that this is not the first complaint of plagiarism by the NMG is a little worrying.  Other complaints are here and here.  Some people say that where there's smoke, there's fire.  Perhaps the NMG could do something to clear up all of these issues.  I don't know, though – maybe they already did.

The NMG did, however, clear every doubt in my mind regarding the instance of plagiarism that I had written of.  I cannot put it in better words so I shall put the email from Charles here:

"We have now established how Bidii articles ended up in Daily Nation. First, let us acknowledge that, indeed, the articles were published in DN and The East African.

How did this happen? Beginning from when it was KaziAfrica, Bidii material come to the email addresses of very many editors and journalists at Nation, even in many instances when they have not subscribed. Anyhow, every
one took it in good stride. However, someone got the email for Letters from the paper and added it on the Bidii list. Thus all Bidii correspondence ends in Nation's "Mailbox".

Everything that comes into the "Mailbox", as the name indeed does indicate, is for publication. The Letters editors, therefore, have on occasion published some of the letters that caught their fancy. They did it in good faith, in the understanding that they were sent to the "Mailbox" be considered for publication (because that is what the notice says).

They weren't aware that by doing so they would cause offence to Bidii members. They also say it is unfair to accuse them of plagiarism or stealing, because they attributed the letters correctly to the authors (although perhaps, one could argue that they should added Bidii too. However, there were no such instructions).

Going forward, instructions have been given that no material from Bidii should shall be used in Nation because the members don't intend that to happen. However, to absolutely ensure that no slip up happens, we are instructing the IT Department to block all Bidii material from the Mailbox and other general addresses at the Nation.

I hope that you can explain this to your members, and that you find this satisfactory. Finally, to say we are sorry that this happened and for the misunderstanding."

What do you think? Does the Bidii Africa group deserve an apology in print?