Like Chapaa

  • How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps

    Posted: February 28, 2011, 10:26 pm by Kelvin

    There’s a great article on Inc.com written by Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 Signals. He gives valuable insights on how to make money and breaks it down into 6 easy steps:

    1. Understanding the buyer is the key to being a strong seller
    2. Sell only things you’d want to buy for yourself
    3. How, and why, to charge real money for real products
    4. There are different pathways to the same dollar
    5. The true value of bootstrapping
    6. Try, Try Again

    Go read the article here: How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps

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  • How To Make Money Online – For Absolute Beginners

    Posted: February 25, 2011, 3:22 pm by Kelvin

    When we set up this website, one of our primary goals was to teach people what we knew about making money online. This continues to be our goal – we would love to teach as many of our fellow Kenyans as possible. Over the years (its now been tow years!), by and large, we have achieved this goal. We’ve helped grow many business and shared our thoughts and ideas with even more.

    However, we feel that even this is not enough. We have not been able to adequately address the needs of a person who is very new to the whole idea of earning online. What is the easiest way to start? How do you start? What do you do? Where do you go? We would love to answer these questions for everyone. we would love even more to take every one of these people by the hand and show them what to do, and how.

    Alas, things have changed since the time when we started this website. We now get mountains of email daily and it is just too much work to be able to address everyone individually. And as you are aware, our previous efforts largely failed. Yes, I am talking about Biashara 30.

    But we have a plan!
    We have been secretly developing a resource – you may even call it an online course – that is targeted at absolute beginners. The aim of this resource would be to act as something of guide that will teach what we feel is the easiest and fastest way to make money online if you are a beginner. Sounds interesting? Here is what it will cover:

    First, I must say that we believe the easiest and fastest way for absolute beginners to make a significant amount of money online is to get an “online job”. This is what will be the focal point of the guide, specifically:

    1. Getting Started : Understanding the freelance world – international business hours, worldwide clients, international currencies, language problems, range of clients (professional and personal), working at home (separating your home and work lives)…
    2. Preparation for working online: Study yourself, your abilities, what you will/can and won’t/can’t do (working hours/days, combining skills, price range). Are you more specialised in languages, programming, graphics, marketing, media… Several sectors or specialised. Qualifications, experience, references… Skills requested online – a few examples of sectors.
    3. Your Presentation: Photo, logo, profile, message presentation, website…How to write, what to write (and what not to write!)
    4. Where to work
    5. Employer relations: Clarity, efficiency and cordiality (explaining relations and approach, the employer’s point of view)
    6. Getting paid : Payment (online payment methods, payment through freelancer websites and withdrawals)
    7. Protection and Security: Escrow, feedback, work samples, privacy policy
    8. Copyright issues
    9. Etc

    Why did we chose for this guide to be about getting an online job? If you go any site that deals with only jobs – freelancer.com, or guru.com, or elance.com, or anything else – then you will find that these sites are vibrant markets and that people make significant amounts of money through them. We believe that when you are getting started, making money through such sites is the easiest way that you can go. It also opens your eyes to see what can be done online and you will be able to later transition to doing something else.

    What do you think? Interested? Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you can up to date on developments regarding this project.

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  • Topless Meetings

    Posted: February 23, 2011, 4:10 pm by Kelvin

    I think this is a great idea, something that surely came from a smart business mind – topless meetings. What better way to be more productive and have meetings less – ban laptops. What did you think I meant?

    Nothing grates me more than long, pointless meetings. I almost avoid them to a fault. Too often, they are someone’s forum to get their own work done and it doesn’t benefit me to help them with their work. So I do everything I can to keep meetings short.

    If you’re working and meeting in a physical location, I strongly suggest this rule. It’ll guarantee people get to the point quickly and time isn’t wasted.

    Japanese-Style Meetings
    When I was still employed (a.k.a working for someone else and not me), there was one guy I used to work with who scheduled Japanese-style meetings. The meetings were held while everyone stood (usually in some common area). The idea was that people wouldn’t waste time if they were standing around. It worked great as we got a ton done in about 10 minutes. I don’t know if this is the real name for this type of meeting but I strongly suggest this type of meeting as well. Force those long-talkers to cut it short.

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  • Local Websites That Use DukaPress

    Posted: February 22, 2011, 8:31 am by Kelvin

    For those who don’t know, DukaPress is a freely available piece of software that you, or anyone can use to set up an online shop easily and quickly.

    screenshot of a DukaPress shop


    When we released DukaPress, we primarily thought that its main users would be local. As it turns out, the vast majority of people who use DukaPress are not from Africa. While this is good, we have been hoping to come across some well done local sites powered by DukaPress. In this post, we showcase a few of them.

    1. Black Malaika – a really well done website from Tanzania that sells arts and crafts from East Africa. I must say that DukaPress has been very well implemented here.
    2. Pamoja Shops – an online community/marketplace focused on the Maasai Market concept. Pamoja Shops offers vendors the opportunity to sign up and open up their own online stores to sell African handicrafts.
    3. Rusha Ndege – RushaNdege is an online community of aviation enthusiasts in Kenya. They use DukaPress to power an online shop that sells pilot equipment and accessories.
    4. DJ Kalonje – it was a personal pleasure to learn that DJ Kalonje himself uses DukaPress. (DJ Kalonje is an award winning Kenyan DJ.) Kalonje uses DukaPress to sell services. Although I must admit that DukaPress itsels is not well implemented on hist site…
    5. Drip n Dry Kenya – describing themselves as “Nairobi’s ultimate dry cleaning services”, Drip n Dry use DukaPress to enable customers to submit inquiries regarding their cleaning services.

    So, have you ever wanted to have an online shop? As of this moment, DukaPress has been downloaded 8,972 times and here is a list of some of the most beautiful sites made using DukaPress. All those people cannot be wrong, can they?

    Get your own shop today: www.dukapress.org

    DukaPress is proudly Kenyan!

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  • How WooThemes Quietly Built A $2+ Million Per Year Online Business

    Posted: February 21, 2011, 2:55 pm by tranx

    The WooThemes story is an incredible story right from here in Africa! This is the story of how a young South African built an online business that makes USD 2 million plus a year. You do not need to be in the USA or Europe and get massive amounts of funding to build a wildly successful online business. You just need to believe in yourself, and go do it!

    Click here to go see the video interview with WooThemes co-founder that details how, exactly, they built their online business.Similar Posts:


  • Interesting Kenyan Sites #19

    Posted: February 14, 2011, 2:05 pm by Kelvin

    Love.Me – this is an online flower shop. The site’s creators must be commended for a job well done. The design is nice, clean and crisp and the buying process is simple and understandable. Kudos for a job well done!

    Sandstorm Kenya – the website for Sandstorm Kenya, which makes hand crafted items. We find the website and online shop to be extremely well designed. Kudos!

    50-50
    Ask a Doc – this is an interesting site that promises answers to all your medical questions. The answers are provided by real doctors. I have not actually received a question to my answer yet (something for them to work on), but the site seems like it can go places. Good job.

    UrbanSlice – is a website that is to provide a personal shopping service i.e. you can use UrbanSlice to order from your favourite stores and have them delivered to you, no hassle. The problem is that, currently, it looks like just another online shop and the whole idea of “personal shopping service” seems to be lost. Let’s hope that someone is working on this. otherwise, the site looks good.

    State House Girls – the website of State House Girls’ high school. While the web design could certainly do with a little sprucing up – mainly balancing out the page elements and making it look neater – I think the site is pretty good. Someone is certainly working hard to make this site a success. However, perhaps they have overdone it with the ads on the side (I would think that the main purpose of such a site is not to sell ads) and the links for Free and Bulk SMS on the main menu (would high school students really be interested in these?).

    Cute & Cuddly an online shop for baby clothing. I like the idea, and the design. However, a few improvements need to be made: 1) the shopping and checking out process needs to be made more intuitive; and 2) for users with screen resoltions of 1024 (width) and below, the site design seems broken.

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  • You Can Now Withdraw To a Kenyan Account From oDesk

    Posted: February 14, 2011, 11:58 am by wham

    Much thanks to Kunule of KenyanLogic who kindly informed us that oDesk users can now withdraw their earnings directly into a Kenyan bank account for a fee of just $3.99!

    Click here to read more about this.

    Things seem to be slowly getting better, eh?

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  • How Great Entrepreneurs Think

    Posted: February 10, 2011, 9:48 am by Kelvin

    “I always live by the motto of ‘Ready, fire, aim.’ I think if you spend too much time doing ‘Ready, aim, aim, aim,’ you’re never going to see all the good things that would happen if you actually started doing it. I think business plans are interesting, but they have no real meaning, because you can’t put in all the positive things that will occur…If you know intrinsically that this is possible, you just have to find out how to make it possible, which you can’t do ahead of time.” – advice from an expert entrepreneur

    What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? Click here to read about an academic study whose goal was to get inside the mind of great entrepreneurs and determine how they think.

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  • Tandaa Symposium on Growing Your Brand Online

    Posted: February 9, 2011, 10:31 am by Kelvin

    The content of this post is courtesy of Tandaa.

    Delivering your brand promise in an increasingly digital world requires a whole new marketing strategy.

    A recent TNS study* indicates that internet usage in Kenya has more than doubled in the last two years. An estimated 4 million Kenyans have access to the internet and according to TNS, 76% of Kenyan internet users are on Facebook. With increasing access to laptops, broadband internet and web enable mobile phones, Kenyan consumers are changing the way they interact with their favorite brands.

    So should your brand be on Facebook? How should you manage your Twitter handle? The first Tandaa Symposium of the year will explore the opportunities and risks the Internet and social media offer Kenyan brands today.

    The internet may seem like an overcrowded platform in which to compete. With real-time news, celebrity gossip and millions of intriguing web pages to browse–not to mention engaging and all consuming social media sites–attracting and holding consumer’s attention may seem like an uphill task. But today’s savvy marketing or brand manager must find innovative ways to maximize online spend in a crowded and competitive platform.

    Beyond offering a platform to communicate your brand promise, the Internet, especially social networks, also offer the unique opportunity to better understand your customer. The data and insight from online social interaction with consumers can contribute significantly to how your company designs new products and campaigns.

    Understanding how to effectively grow your brand online is therefore crucial for every marketing or brand manager. The Tandaa Symposium will give you insights on how to update your marketing strategy to make the most of today’s digital world.

    Register Here.

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  • New Free WordPress e-Commerce Theme: Begi

    Posted: February 8, 2011, 9:40 am by wham

    Begi e-Commerce theme

    Another day, another freebie

    Begi is a clean, minimal and highly customizable WordPress e-commerce theme. It is based on Vanilla Cart whose development ceased a while ago.

    Theme Features

    • Clean, minimal and stylish
    • Drop-down menu support
    • 2-column layout and widget-ready sidebar
    • Support for WordPress 3.0 custom menus
    • Support for custom backgrounds
    • Styled to work elegantly with DukaPress

    View the live Demo
    Download For Free

    Simply put, this is a ready made online shop design that you can use for free, just download and set up! Here is how to get started in 10 minutes or less.

    If you are familiar with WordPress, you may be interested to know that instead of downloading a whole new theme, you can use DukaPress Styles to make DukaPress look GOOD on your current theme.

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  • How to Open a US Bank Account

    Posted: February 8, 2011, 7:10 am by Kelvin

    This post was made possible by sobbayi.

    There are many reasons why one may want to open a US bank account, including wanting to withdraw money from PayPal. Now to open a US based bank account as a none US resident is still possible.

    The only catch is that you cannot open it online, you have to physically go into the bank with your passport and a second form of identification eg your DL (no need for social security number if you tell them you are not a resident).

    You then fill the forms AT THE BANK and you set up you internet banking details right there as thats where all your transaction Bank transfers etc will take place.

    Once you are done you must deposit some money into the account immediately and you will walk out with you temporary ATM card. You then need a Kenyan address and a US address. The US address is where they will send the permanent ATM card within 10 days and other documentation whenever they need to as they wont send it out of the country. Once you have your ATM card and are going back to Kenya there is a number you will need to call to activate your card to work in Kenya. Make sure you get that number before you leave the bank.

    This information is based on Bank of America. (Not all banks offer accounts to non residents living abroad). Their ATM cards work just fine in Kenya but it will cost you 5 bucks ($5) per use so be careful.

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  • EVERYONE Can Be An Entrepreneur!

    Posted: February 7, 2011, 9:22 am by Kelvin

    In his article 8 Alternatives to College, James Altucher brilliantly tackles one of the largest myths about entrepreneurship: “not everyone can be an entrepreneur”. This is a myth, and this is why it is wrong to say that not everyone can be an entrepreneur:

    First off, there’s no law against being an entrepreneur. In fact, everyone can be an entrepreneur. So what they really mean is: “not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur”. And as far as I know, there’s no law against failure either. When someone loses a tennis match or a chess game. how do they improve? They study their loss. As anyone who has mastered any field in life knows: studying your losses is infinitely more valuable than studying your wins. I failed at my first three attempts at being an entrepreneur before I finally learned how to spell it and I finally had a success (i.e. a company with profits that I was then able to sell).

    Failure is a part of life. Better to learn it at 18 than at 23 or older when you’ve been coddled by ivory blankets and hypnotized into thinking success was yours for the taking. Get baptized in the river of failure as a youth so you can blossom in entrepreneurial blessings as an adult.

    What do you learn when you are young and start a business (regardless of success or failure):

    1. you learn how to come up with ideas that will be accepted by other people
    2. you begin to build your bullshit detector (something that definitely does not happen in college)
    3. you learn how to sell your idea
    4. you learn how to build and execute on an idea
    5. you meet and socialize with other people in your space. They might not all be the same age but, lets face it, thats life as an adult. You just spent 18 years with kids your age. Grow up!
    6. you might learn how to delegate and manage people
    7. you learn how to eat what you kill, a skill also not learned by college-goers

    Source: 8 Alternatives to College

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  • Investing in Virtual Real Estate

    Posted: February 5, 2011, 8:00 am by tranx

    A little-known way of making money online is that of investing in virtual real estate i.e. buying websites.

    I know you are conversant with the idea of buying land or houses so I will use that as an example to make a point. If you buy a house at Kshs 5 million and then rent it out, the monthly rent that you can charge is usually 1% of the buying price (this sometimes varies but it is the average). Therefore, the expected rent of a house worth 5 million would be Kshs 50,000 a month or Kshs 600,000 a year. To get back your 5 million investment, it would take 8.3 years. This is considered a good investment.

    A better one would be to buy a small business. The average rate of return on a small business is about 20% – i.e. if you buy a business at 5 million, you should expect to make 1 million a year. This means that it would take you 5 years to get back your investment.

    What about buying a website? The strange thing is that the value of a website is usually only about 12 – 24 times its money income. That is, if a website makes Kshs 10,000/- a month, the selling price should be a maximum of 240,000/-. This means that it only takes you two years to get back your initial investment.

    Sounds like a good investment to you?

    It is not a silver bullet though – you’d be throwing your money away if you do not know what you are doing. Before buying a website you have to invest time and energy to learn how websites work and to do due diligence on any particular website before buying it. The good news is that you can get websites at extremely low prices of $100 (Kshs 8,000) only. Therefore, you can start small and learn as you make bigger and better investments.

    Daniel Scocco has a very good guide on buying websites for profit. This is the advice that Daniel gives i.e. how to do your homework before buying a website:

    1. Do you have the technical knowledge to manage it? Some websites are quite simple to run, and you’ll just need to update the content via a content management system once in a while. Others, however, are quite complex, and you’ll need some technical skills (e.g., PHP, MySQL, JavaScript). Make sure you know what is involved.
    2. Do you know how much traffic the website gets? The best way to assess this is to ask the website owner to install Google Analytics on the website and to give you a user account so you can see the numbers by yourself. If he is reluctant to do this, be skeptical.
    3. Do you know how much money the website makes? Similarly you need to be 100% sure of how much money the website makes. Ask for screenshots, and if necessary even video screencasts, and those are harder to fake.
    4. Is the website solid and established? You want to make sure that the website you’ll be buying has solid roots, else both the traffic and the revenues could vanish after a couple of months. You can verify this by checking the age of the domain name, the number of pages indexed by Google, the number of backlinks pointing to the website, and by the traffic and revenue history (e.g., ask for at least 6 months of data for those metrics).

    You can buy (and sell) websites online at Flippa.

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  • Interesting Kenyan Sites #18

    Posted: February 4, 2011, 11:45 am by Kelvin

    Nairobi Living – is a local search and business directory. I find the site to be well thought out and nicely designed. Kudos to the makers! Though one is tempted to say “….yet another local directory?”.

    Shameless Clones
    Tokea Online – it seems to be an East African social network (like facebook, but for EA). it looks brand new and so it is “sparse” as far as content goes. But the design, I must say, is well done. Let’s wish them luck!

    Update 7/2/2011: it seems that TokeaOnline is a shameless clone of a site design and setup freely available all over the net. Another site using the same setup is FunKenya. it is good to try and build an online business, but one could surely do better…

    Flops
    mmiarch – this seems to be the website of “mmi architects”. Even by the presumably low Kenyan standards, this website is particularly poorly done. One wonders what the hell the “web designer” was doing…

    beckyzshoes – an online shops selling men’s shoes. Except that it is run on a .blogspot blog. FAIL. I cannot believe that these guys actually advertised on Facebook!! if you want to sell anythign online, 1) do not do it from a free website and 2) use professional e-commerce software (like DukaPress which is 100% free).

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  • Turning Your Critics Into Evangelists

    Posted: February 4, 2011, 10:31 am by Kelvin

    As a business owner, you have undoubtedly come across customers or potential customers who speak so badly of you that you wonder where they get all the venom from. What do you do with these people?

    I am of the school of thought that a business should choose its customers i.e. do not go against your convictions, beliefs, morality and better judgement just because someone is paying you money. However, I also believe that all businesses exist solely to serve their customers. As a business, you should strive to delight everyone that you deal with.

    From my experience, your worst critics can be turned into assets – into evangelists who will spread the good news about your business far and wide. You know why? Because if someone is very critical of you as a business, it automatically means they care enough to form opinions about you and communicate them to you. I see this as an opportunity to turn your worst critics into people who speak exceedingly well about you.

    Now, as it turns out, many of your critics criticize you from points of little information. All it takes to show them that you are not as bad as they think is to be patient, to listen to them and to address their queries step by step in a clear and respectful manner.

    For example, the guys over at DukaPress once received a very harsh email from a potential customer. They could have responded with equal venom or just ignored the critic. However, they chose to engage him in a conversation and address his concerns. Less than five emails later, the critic had made his first purchase at the DukaPress shop! Since then, he has made more purchases and even referred people to DukaPress. Imagine that…

    So the next time you get a call or an email from a venomous critic, seize the opportunity to acquire an evangelist!

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  • The Secret to Making Money Online

    Posted: February 3, 2011, 5:13 pm by wham

    Over the years, I’ve heard many business ideas that revolve around making money online from my friends, family, and even complete strangers. Many, many of the ideas usually go like this: “I will start a website and put adverts on it and many people will visit it and every time they visit I will make money. I’ll be rich.”

    The sad truth is that many people feel that making money online is just easy. Unfortunately, many of these people come to realise that this is not the case the hard way: they lose money while trying to implement their “killer” ideas.

    If you are looking to make money online by launching some type of online business, especially a website, then you have to have a very good plan on how, exactly, you shall grow this website to the point where it is making you rich. How do you grow your website to profitability? Normally, this means that you have to grow the number of people who visit your website to be so many that you make your required amounts of money. Do you have any idea how you would do this?

    Let’s take an example: do you remember the last time you went into a cyber cafe in town? On average, you went online to do a very specific thing: you logged in, checked your email, checked some other sites, and then quickly left. What I am trying to say is that people are busy; people already have websites that they visit on a daily basis. When you launch a new website, you have to convince people to visit your website instead of those others that they already visit. To put it bluntly: why should I visit your website instead of Facebook, Twitter, LikeChapaa or any other?

  • why should people visit your website?
  • what will people do on your website?
  • how will you grow the number of people who visit your website?
  • how, exactly, will you get to make money from people who visit your website?

    • If you can satisfy yourself with your answers to the above questions: indeed, if you can actually translate your answers into your business plan/strategy then you can definitely make money online.

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  • The First Step to Running a Business is to be a Project Manager

    Posted: February 3, 2011, 2:48 pm by tranx

    If you take time out to seriously consider all that is involved in running a business, you will find that the most prominent tasks and traits are multi-tasking and organization. These are the same qualities that define most Project Management jobs. You have to know what is going on in each aspect of your business from projected revenue to hiring staff to advertising and beyond. The best way to prepare yourself for this multifaceted undertaking is to take notes from Project Managers.
    Like most jobs that are challenging, Project Managing is not glorious. In fact, it is seen in the corporate world as a position that consists mostly of creating busy work. Yet, in these positions you need to know the ins and outs of all aspects of the corporation that you are working for. You need more than just a peripheral knowledge of your current advertising campaign; you need to be fully entrenched in its ideology and delivery in order to manage how it is run by delegating responsibility to those best suited, and so forth.

    This is the same situation when you own your own business. The exception is that you need to know more than just one aspect of your corporation; you need to have intimate knowledge of each corner of your business in order to manage its daily affairs including task delegation, future planning, and idea generation. As the owner of a business you are the head of Accounting, Marketing, Human Resources, among other sectors. You will have staff that will look after the details, but it is up to you to hire the right people who share your vision for your organization and can deliver what you expect in a timely and organized manner.

    That is why it is so essential to have the right staff to follow through on the tasks that you set before them. If not, you could wind up in a situation whereby you are micromanaging all the aspects of your business down to the most finite detail. This is exactly the situation that you want to avoid; drowning in the details and micromanaging your way into disaster.

    This is where the skills of Project Management come into play. Being a Project Manager is about knowing a little bit about each aspect of your business and not being a specialist in any. You find competent people to do the required tasks, whether it be controlling, marketing, or hiring staff, but you oversee the entire process and make sure that your final stamp of approval goes on each major decision that comes to your desk. You make sure that things get done as planned and make sure that none of the details are missed and fall through the cracks.

    After all, this is your business, and you will want these little details to reflect your vision for your endeavours. The key is to hire staff that you can feel confident know your vision and manage them in a way that reflects open communication of the daily goings on in their respective fields.

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    • ← January 2011 (13 items) March 2011 (12 items) →

    Blah blah blah

    Fish cakes

    Alas a fish cake.

    Yet more fish cakes

    Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

    The end of the fish cakes

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