PayPal Now Works in Kenya!

August 27, 2010 by 102 Comments


Well, yesterday was a very significant day for me. I am not sure exactly when it happened, but receiving money in Kenya through PayPal is now possible! Kenya is officially on of the PayPal supported countries.

Yesterday there was a heated discussion on the Skunkworks Kenya mailing list on whether one can use PayPal in Kenya. During this discussion, one of the skunks happened to visit the PayPal site and lo and behold Kenya was on the list of supported sites. It was not long before the skunks quickly tested and confirmed that receiving money in Kenya via PayPal is now actually possible!

Why is this important? Almost everybody knows about PayPal and they are the most popular company to process payments on the Internet. Many people will trust paying through PayPal because that’s what they normally use. In fact, in countries like the USA, if you do not offer an option for buyers on your e-commerce site to pay via PayPal, buyers will think twice before buying from you. Just using PayPal inspires trust amongst your potential customers.

Now that PayPal supports Kenya, I expect that e-commerce in Kenya shall grow even faster.

Unfortunately, you can receive money into your PayPal account in Kenya but you cannot yet withdraw it to a local bank account – you have to withdraw it to a US bank account. This is definitely going to be a hindrance for many, but there are rumours that PayPal is working with Equity and we shall soon be able to withdraw to an equity bank account in Kenya. Is this great, or what??

So, this is all great but how do you actually use PayPal to do e-commerce? Well, PayPal offers two main ways of getting paid:

  1. Anyone can send money to the email address that you used to sign up for PayPal and you will receive it int your account.
  2. You can integrate PayPal into your own website to power payment processing for your online shop. DukaPress is probably the easiest way to do this as it supports PayPal straight out of the box.

Update: PayMPESA Helps Withdraw Your PayPal Funds to MPESA

Update: You can also now withdraw from PayPal through Babawatoto or LibertyReserve.

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

Rich Man, Poor Man

August 25, 2010 by 3 Comments

working less will help your business grow

Over the years, we’ve worked with very many people and many, many small businesses. I it’s always interesting to see how a small business is run and how the owner approaches it. I was thinking about this today, and I realised there are two types of small business owners: hard workers, and smart workers.

Comparing these two is very eye-opening. Take two businesses in the same industry with the same amount of experience and you will get drastically different results depending on the owner’s approach to business. I am going to just say it: – some people work too much, which hurts the growth of their business.

I know a smart guy who only works a few hours a day on his business compared to the 12-15 hour days that other owners work each day (and a few hours each weekend). Based on my real rough estimates, I believe that his business also made about 5x as much as the other owners (in the same industry). Imagine that – you work a quarter of the time and your business makes five times as much money. Or to look at it another way, you are 20 times more productive with the time spent managing the business.

Both types of owners probably make a very comfortable income but even if I made the same amount of money, I would take the business that requires a quarter of my time. I could use that time to do whatever I wanted or I could use it to grow my business or start new businesses.

What is the Difference?
Smart business owners are incredibly gifted at creating a process oriented business. It’s a very educational experience every time we work with them or visit their offices. Everything such an owner does has to be broken down into repeatable systems and processes. If it can’t, he’s not interested in it. He could easily take on new business if he wanted, but the work would be ad hoc, and would not scale well. If it isn’t something that he can scale, he won’t do it. It might cost him 2 or 3 customers a month, but if he is spending his time creating systems to bring in 10 other customers on his terms, which one do you think is a better deal?

The other type of owner is very detail oriented. He believes very strongly in personal service and is involved in every step along the way, from marketing, to sales, to operations. Instead of delegating work to other employees, he does everything himself. Instead of creating a product that he can sell over and over again, he customizes everything for his clients.

Remember, this owner is very successful and he would be correct if he said he’s been successful for a long time doing it in his style, so I don’t want to say that hard work isn’t the right way to grow. But if he had just relinquished some control and created systems and processes so that other people could execute them, I bet his business would be a lot bigger than it is now. If he decided to put in just 1/2 the time each day that he is used to, he would be been forced to create systems that other people can execute.

When Hard Work is Required
When you are starting your own business, you need to spend a lot of time in the business, growing it. If you don’t do it, no one will. But instead of doing everything yourself, you need to start creating systems and processes so that other people can start operating the business. If you sell some sort of product, don’t be the salesperson, customer service, and operations manager.

Start out by creating systems to outsource some of the work and then continue to move away from each part of the business. Otherwise, you will be working too much and you will end up hurting the growth potential of your own business.

Filed Under: Case Study, Small Business Tagged With:

Kenyans on Freelancer – Part 3

August 19, 2010 by 3 Comments

If you’re just stepping in, please have a look at the first and second parts.

My GAF (www.freelancer.com) account has just hit the $100 mark and I’m pretty excited! I’m still very winded, and inside my head, I can’t stop dancing. I’m doing some dancing outside my head too, and quite a bit of screaming. Luckily, my house is soundproof, so no one has come to my rescue … yet.

I didn’t have any online work today, so I caught up with an offline client [though ironically, I needed to do the project with internet] and spent some time boosting my chances of getting hired on GAF. One way to do that is by sitting exams.

Relax, they last just 15 minutes and are multiple choice.

For writers, there are only two exams you can sit. There’s the English proficiency exam, which anyone from 8-4-4 can sit. I took 332 seconds and scored 98%. I’m sure they rigged it, because I don’t see how I got anything wrong. The test costs $5 by the way.

The second test you can sit is the Freelancer test. It’s free … and I failed it 3 times before I passed. Don’t ask me how I failed, just chill in the FAQ section before you start. You’re allowed to sit the test as many times as you like, but there’s a catch. If you have no feedback, you can only do the test once. After feedback, you get 6 tries for every feedback.

There are over 20 tests for accountants, designers, programmers and etc. But you can only sit 3 exams a day, so by failing the same one three times, I was really pushing it. Lucky for me there are no other tests for writers, so I wasn’t missing anything.

Perhaps I should explain feedback. After you’ve finished a project and been paid, you get an option of reviewing your boss and vice versa. You have to do this within 90 days. When you give feedback, it remains hidden until the other person responds [or until 14 days pass]. Your boss [client] can choose to block your feedback if it’s negative, but I don’t know if freelancers have the same option.

The more feedback you have, the better your chances of getting new projects. The top freelancer currently has almost 1500 reviews, and he’s been on the site since 2007. He’s a graphic designer. Number 2 has around 1420, is a designer as well, and has been on GAF since 2004. I think it’s a girl.

As I was browsing the stats, I noticed something. Despite being on GAF for years and having earned more than anyone else, they still lose bids, and they still get jobs worth $40. I don’t know if this makes me mean, but I found that very consoling.

I’ve learnt some of the GAF tricks, but I’m sure I’ll learn more every day. I’m trying not to cry every time I lose a bid, or to stalk the profile of the writer who won my lost bid. I’m learning that some people play dirty on the site, and that it’s immensely satisfying when you get the last laugh … which I’m still waiting on. It’s coming; it’s kharma.

I’m learning not to bid randomly. You can use a strategy so you can get paid without necessarily being a driven slave. And I’m learning that you don’t have to like a client to work for them, which is a massive lesson for me, especially when a potential client asks you where you’re from, and when you say Kenya, they ask, ‘What’s that?’  I did a search for Kenyan freelancers on GAF, and got over 1500 hits. There are a lot of us on there, and we’re all pretty active. It’s interesting to know.

…  to be continued …

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Online Jobs, Small Business Tagged With:

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: , ,

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:

How to use Paypal in Kenya – Part 2

August 7, 2010 by 64 Comments

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


So, after all the drama and excitement here, things could only go up, right?

Wrong.

I received my card on Tuesday, and Simon, the agent who opened my account, was nice enough to bring it down for me. He’s usually stationed at the  KCB tent opposite GPO. Nice guy. I’d harassed him so much on the phone that he probably knows me by ringtone. So when he texted to tell me my card was ready, I texted back and said I was on my way.

Simon either saw me coming a mile off, or he remembered my habit of keeping time, but by the time I got to his tent, he had my card waiting. I didn’t have to queue or anything. Yay! He also gave me the names and emails of several IT guys who I could call in case of problems with my card. I had him write them on the PIN number envelope, because I was sure I wouldn’t lose it.

And then I lost it. Crap!

I got home late after several errands, so I didn’t try my card until Thursday night. By then, I had confirmed that the card account has a minimum balance of Ksh 300, and a monthly charge of Ksh 100. Not too bad, I can live with that.

On Thursday night, I keyed my card into my Paypal account for verification. It alerted me that my bank had blocked the transaction, and that I should call them for details. It was past 10.00 p.m. so obviously I couldn’t call anyone. I decided to sleep on it.

At 5.00 a.m. on Friday, I tried to key in the card again and got the same result. I was feeling pretty tense because I was expecting a payment through Freelancer, and I didn’t want to explain to my client that my new Paypal account was frozen … already!  After trying the card four more times and failing, I checked the time. It was way too early to call Simon, and I’d lost the number of the IT guy.

I did some elementary math and decided that two and two makes five – I’ve always been bad at math. I concluded that the bank had rejected the card because the names didn’t match. I had opened my Paypal using my middle name, which in most places appears as an initial.

So I closed my Paypal account and opened a new one, using the exact same details, but this time. I used my last name. Then I added the card to the new account. Paypal instructed me to contact their Card Problems Centre. I sent them an email, then twiddled my thumbs and waited for a reasonable hour to call Simon.

As I sat there worrying, I realised that none of my business contacts know my last name, so they’d never issue a cheque in that name. So I deleted the second Paypal account and opened a third one, this time using my common middle name, and my personal email address.

Paypal says, ‘This email is already registered to an account. If it’s your account, please log in.’ What?! It turns out I’d opened a Paypal account in 2007 and never used it. Oh boy.

I then went through all my Paypal accounts, including the one from my mum, and deleted them. Apparently, it’s s common thing, because when I was asked my reason for closing the account, there were fifteen options including ‘This is a duplicate account.’

Ok. Done. I now have one active Paypal account in the name that everyone knows. Good. Time to add the card. And Paypal says, ‘Contact Card problems’. Good Lord!!

Card problems at this point sent me an email saying I can only add a card to one account at a time. I realised that in their system, my dead accounts still had the card attached, so I emailed and explained this, then waited for an answer. A while later, they replied saying I could now add my card, but it still refused.  reason? I’d mailed them using the address on my dead duplicate account. The gods hate me. really. They do.

So I sent yet another mail, and this time they told me to attach the card, and that if I had a problem, I should mail them using the address on my new account.  I keyed in the card. It refused. I sent yet another email and waited. As I was waiting, Simon called me back, and I asked him for the IT guy’s name and number. We then had a conversation [where I noticed that the name, voice … and other things … of this IT guy seemed very familiar]. He instructed me to load my card account. Apparently, the bank had not rejected the card because of my name. It was because the account was empty.

I explained to the IT guy that I had paid Ksh 1000 to open the account, and he told me 500 was to open the account and 500 was to process my card, so actually, my card was in overdraft. Groan. He then said that if I made an immediate deposit, then attached my card, I could call him and he’d give me the verification codes. I wouldn’t have to wait the standard two-day period for a card statement.

I went to KCB Haile Selassie to deposit some funds in my card account. I walked into the wrong door and a nice lady redirected me before the security guy could find something to throw at me. At the cashier’s, the deposit slip was four numbers short, so I had to put the extra numbers in my account somewhere else. Apparently, the slips are printed for regular accounts, and card account numbers have four extra digits. To make things even better, the teller was new, so he had a trainer over his shoulder.

When the computer started beeping. he thought it was his fault, and asked for help in panic. The trainer taunted him for a while, then took over. Then they tell me my account was invalid and that I had to go to the Card Centre branch to get it sorted. The Card Centre branch is in Sarit. Just shoot me now. Pretty please?

I called the IT guy, who said he’d sort it and get back to me. An hour [and several kilometres] later, he called and told me everything was sorted and I could safely make my deposit. Trouble is I was now at a school function, miles from any KCB branch. So I hung around for a bit, then gave baby girl a kiss and excused myself so I could get to the bank before closing time. Deposit went without a hitch, but now I had to get to a computer before the IT Department closed for the day.

I keyed in my card and … nothing. I called the IT guy, who told me his records did not show any activity after 5.40 a.m. It was now almost 5.40 p.m! He suggested  i try a different ISP, so I got off Zuku, hunted down my trusty Orange modem, loaded it, and keyed in my card. Still nothing!!

The IT guy then suggested I pass by their offices the next day and see if he could fix the problem. He half suspected I was keying in the wrong thing, but it was still pretty nice of him. So the next day found me at Sarit Centre pacing outside locked doors. Eventually, I was let in, went to the computer, keyed in my card and … nothing.

I then explained the saga of my multiple accounts, and he said the only solution was to get a new card at a charge of Ksh 500. Curses and damnations. Which is my way of saying *** I wrote a little letter, got my ID photcopied, and left. IT promised to call me when my card was ready.

When I got home, I found a n email from Paypal saying they had corrected their data and that I could now add my card to my account. They explained that this was an exception, and that in future, even if I  closed an account, I could not attach the same card to another account. I replied explaining that my card had already been cancelled. They sent me a link to a survey on customer care, and I was not very polite in my responses. It was a very frustrating weekend.

Come Monday, on a whim, I decided to try attaching my card to the account. It worked! My hands must have shaken for a full five minutes. When I recovered my wits – and the use of my fingers – I called the IT guy and asked him if he could cancel the cancelling of my card. He said he’d call me back.

A while later, he gave me the verification codes and stopped the cancellation. Yay! I then wrote to Paypal explaining that I had now attached my card. I browsed my account looking for the ‘receive money’ or ‘withdraw money’ tabs, but I couldn’t find them. How now?

I received an email from Paypal saying that my withdrawal limit had been lifted, and that I could now receive any amount of money that I wanted. It gave me a link to regulations for receiving countries. the link had a list of countries where I could make Paypal withdrawals. Kenya wasn’t on the list.

So when they sent me another survey, I ranted about them not allowing withdrawals in my country. I was even more angry because a new client had been skeptical when I explained that we couldn’t use Paypal in Kenya. He’s American, and in his mind, Paypal is like Starbucks and McDonalds – it’s everywhere. So my claim made me a con. Not cool.

To their benefit, Paypal did write me a nice long reply explaining that condititons were not ripe here for Paypal, and that it was not a personal slight against me or my country blah blah blah. It was actually a really nice letter, but I still can’t withdraw from Paypal 🙁

So. Solutions. Well, I can apply for a Payoneer card for my Freelancer jobs, and I can use my Moneybookers account for other payments. But Moneybookers is kind of like Zain. Their service is great, but nobody uses them, and fewer people have heard of them.

The way I see it, I have two options. I can either spam Paypal until they give Kenya a break and let us receive through them, or I can do a major ad campaign for Moneybookers. Which one do you think would work?

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business Tagged With: