5 Tips to Get a Job Online

August 20, 2014 by 1 Comment

Every one of us would like to find a perfect job to develop a professional career and realize our personal value. Nowadays, we rarely obtain news from traditional sources like the newspaper or magazines otherwise we have all turned to the website. In the age of information, we can get what we need/want from the Internet including that elusive job.

Job, anyone?

I would like to share some experience about searching jobs online and some tips to help you find your ideal job.

1. The email you send to the company should be concise and to the point. You have to ably express your strengths and personality in brief without being verbose. You had better clarify the position you want to apply on the subject and give a brief introduction of yourself in the body text.

2. Get better your CV and make it unique for each job application. As you search for your job online, the first impression for the interviewer is your CV. The quality of the CV reflects your personal conduct and your attitude to the job. A perfect CV will leave a good impression on the employer. If you apply to many similar jobs in different companies, you need to adjust the content of your CV according to the match the company you are applying to.

3. Search for information on authority websites. It is always better to find the recruitment announcement in the official web page of the company. But if you do not have an ideal company to search, you can turn to some authority website that offer jobs or post free ads on such kind of platform so that the employers will look for your information and contact you.

4. You can establish your CV online. While sending out your cover letters, you can simply share a link for recruiters to visit your personal website to further attract their attention. The personal website should be well established with your personal information, CV, your study results, your work experience, etc.

5. Be careful of your personal information. The Internet is huge and there are some risks of revealing your personal information. Take precautions to protect your personal information.

I hope some of the advice will help you find a nice job and I wish you all the good luck in your career.

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Is There a Problem Here?

May 17, 2012 by 11 Comments

So last week I was with a friend of mine who does a lot of IT freelance consulting in the city of Nairobi. He wanted my opinion on how to solve a particular problem that he had come across. The problem is this:

There is a client who runs a certain business that generates a lot of text files (about 10,000 a week). These are small and simple text files but they are important hence they need to be backed up and also uploaded to a website online. How do you reliably automate this?

Apparently the solution he was looking for was a program that he could buy that does this. Nothing wrong with that, right? Yes. But this is not the first time I have come across such a relatively simple problem that computing can solve. All of them follow the same basic pattern: a company needs a way to automate one of their internal processes, usually to reduce some costs and they give their usual “IT person” the task to find a solution for them. Said IT person then finds some software to do the job or one that comes close. Almost always, the end result is a compromise because little software out there really ever does exactly what your company’s peculiar processes need.

The thing that nags me about all this is that most of these problems can be solved by a good programmer in little time. And the best part… the resulting solution will not be a compromise, the programmer can build a solution that exactly matches the needs. We’re not talking about huge programs like Ms Word or even Notepad or Ms Paint, most of these solutions can be done by a tiny little ‘script’.

So this begs the questions: are there no programmers who can come up with these little scripts? Why is the default solution always to look for some software “out there”?

Where do all the programmers go after they graduate from the seemingly millions of computer colleges in town?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

Making Money – Knowing When to Quit

April 18, 2012 by 3 Comments

An old nugget from doshdosh.com:

Making money anywhere involves understanding the value of your business, idea or website. Are they profitable or are you attempting the impossible by trying to squeeze blood from a stone?

We all have many ideas on what types of money making websites to set up and we often execute these ideas only to find them withering due to neglect or intense competition from others.

Knowing when to terminate a project is just as important as starting one. By cutting off these additional channels, you can focus exclusively on the ideas that will actually make you money.

According to a Forbes article on this topic, there are three main reasons why you should consider dumping your great money making ideas. Headlines below come from the article, comments made are mine.

1. Paying Customers Never Show Up
Are you getting sales? What do your visitors say or think about your online business? Is your website or service well received? These are some points to assess once a project has been initiated.

If you don’t meet your goal forecast, reevaluate your business model or tweak it to better fit the target market’s needs. If you still don’t make money after all these efforts, terminating or selling your business will help you avoid unnecessary costs.

At bottom, it doesn’t matter how ingenious your product is–if you can’t communicate its value, it may as well not exist.

2. You Can’t Sustain a Competitive Advantage
It is important to have a long-term plan to cope with other competitors in your field. If your idea is truly novel, you should expect a bunch of copycats. To succeed to constantly adjust your website to provide an unique selling proposition.

Allocating a significant portion of your income towards consistent marketing and promotion is always a good idea after the initial site launch.

Remember: Your idea is what gets you in the game; your competitive advantage is what keeps you there. If you can’t figure out how to stay ahead in your market, start looking for a new one.

3. You’re Not Ready To Quit Your Day Job
A great money making idea only reaches its full potential when you support it 100%. You need to push your idea as much as possible if you truly believe it. If you are passionate about professional blogging, giving up your day job to focus on your projects is a move you will eventually have to consider.

Chances are, if you’re going to make that leap, you’ll do it sooner rather than later. Commitment to an idea spurs action. Driven entrepreneurs can’t wait to hit key milestones–incorporation, building prototypes, drumming up customers.If you’re not moving fast, it’s probably time to move on.

If your idea fulfills all the above conditions, it might be better to drop it in favor of another idea that would fare better. My personal belief is that most ideas will turn out to be profitable if you have in-depth industry knowledge, sufficient personal networks and the will to sustain it through the difficult initial growth period.

Play it smart and be intuitive when building your business empire and you will eventually generate a lucrative income from all your businesses or projects.

Filed Under: Make Money

Learning Marketing from Email Spammers

February 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A little Gem from DoshDosh:

Imagine you’re a email spammer. Your strategy is to send out thousands of unsolicited emails everyday hoping that some unassuming individual will purchase your product or inadvertently get infected by your malware/virus, so you can phish for credit card and banking details.

So here’s the situation. You’re dealing with millions of people whom you don’t know. You might not even know their age and gender, the basic demographic yardsticks. You can data mine email archives on a zombie computer to create personalized and convincing email messages but you’re always going to be dealing with a barrier of not-enough-trust.

You don’t know the audience well. So how do you increase the chance that they’ll even open up your email and clickthrough on the links within it? By treading on common ground and leading with the familiar. People might not know who you are but they know Angelina Jolie, who incidentally is the most popular celebrity name used by email spammers.

2.28% of all emails sent in July 2008 contained her name in the subject field. As a personality famous worldwide, she’s an alluring referential point spammers use to breach the walls of unsavvy targets. The familiar is powerful. That’s why you’ll see domain urls that are almost identical to official institutions or receive emails that use the addresses of people you know.

But that’s not all, spammers also love to use current events as bait. Events like political elections, conflicts between nations and major sports events like the Olympics are all fodder used to hook unassuming users into clicking on links or videos loaded with Trojan viruses.

When you want to get someone to do something, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect.

Every single blog post or salesletter you write can be filled with comparisons, analogies, metaphors, name-drops, references and citations that make your offer/idea more vivid. More familiar. More enticing. So focus on getting your audience interested first, because if they tune out right from the start, they’ll never absorb your pitch or give you a second chance.

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Everyone Uses the Internet for a Reason

January 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

As the year starts, here is an absolute GEM from DoshDosh:

“It’s the first month of a new year and at this time I’m itching to start new web ventures both for fun and profit. I usually do up a list of possible startup and site ideas and narrow them down into those with the highest potential. But success depends on execution and not just plans so I tend not to be too hung up about having a complete vision of what I want.

A little vagueness won’t hurt. I can always muddle through and change things up in response to market conditions or personal interest. No need to be perfect from the start.

I looked at many websites to study their methods, to learn what made them a success. I started planning what specific niche I wanted to explore and suddenly realized that I was thinking about the whole thing in a roundabout way.

There’s really no need to think hard about having the perfect idea. The foundations of popular and profitable websites/services are deeply related to the basic reasons why people get online and use the internet. Let’s do some reverse engineering from that perspective.

So, why do people worldwide use the internet?

  1. To communicate and socialize
    This is very much a fundamental human need. People like to meet and talk to other people through the internet. They use it to maintain new or existing relationships. They want to communicate ideas and find solidarity with others who share similar interests. So do something which facilitates communication. Hyper-local or cross-border communities, social networks, virtual worlds, apps or services built on existing communication/social protocols and services. Bring human social activities onto the internet grid. Socialize existing web functions, emphasize on connecting people.


  2. To find information, learn new things and be entertained
    The internet is a massive archive of new and old information. It is also a source of pleasure, giving immediate gratification in the form of images, sound and interactivity. As an educational tool, the web is essential for people who are seeking to learn.

    People want to find things online. So help them. Create a system which provides information or filters existing content. Monetize the flow of data. Blogs, training courses, social news, aggregated news, paid membership sites, online journals, one-stop entertainment portals, video, image and game hubs with a specific focus.

  3. To do work, generate income and run a business
    People use the internet to make a living. It is essential to many businesses that want to increase brand exposure or sell a product/service. They also use the web to help them work better. There is a market of webmasters, entrepreneurs and small/big businesses out there who are willing to pay to boost their revenue. Consultancies, design firms, freelancers, enterprise software, business-specific tools/apps and services. Think of ways to help people work smarter and more efficiently online.

And of course, there’s the e-commerce industry and the buying/selling of products. There’s really a lot more specific reasons why people get online. Everyone of them is an idea for a product/service/website. Most likely there’s already someone out there in the same niche doing the same thing. The question is not how many competitors are there but how saturated and fulfilled are each web user’s reasons/needs.

Differentiate by presenting alternate solutions. Or stand on the shoulders of giants and improve existing services/websites even more. Learn to do some clever marketing and you should do fine. Cut your losses early by quitting when you’ve lost the passion or will to work hard. Because one rarely gets profitable or influential without interest or perseverance.”

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Make Money

How To Price You Product/Service For Maximum Profit

December 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Do you sell anything? I bet it was quite difficult coming up with the price, right? Trust me, I’ve been there. You want a price that ensures you make maximum profit yet you do not want to alienate your customer. What to do?

Here’s a very interesting article on: Pricing experiments you might not know, but can learn from.

The article gives concrete examples of interesting price experiments that you can learn from.

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business

Learn To Say No

November 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

No.

No, we don’t take clients like that.

No, that’s not part of what we offer.

No, that market is too hard for us to service properly.

No, I won’t bend on this principle.

No, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to have lunch with you.

No, that’s not good enough. Will you please do it again?

No, I’m not willing to lose my focus, and no, I’m not willing to compromise.

Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous