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  • Interesting Kenyan Sites #22

    Posted: March 28, 2011, 12:31 pm by wham

    Zanaa – is the website of “a non-profit whose mission is to craft tools from within Africa to slay the giants of poverty”. I must say that the website is exceptionally well made – it is just beautiful! Kudos sana to the web developer! More of the same please.

    50-50
    Kenyan Gamer Supply – a site that sells Xbox Live, PSN and iTunes cards in Kenya. I think it is an interesting business but I feel that the website could have been better made…to me, it seems it needs more graphics and attention to detail, considering what the site is about.

    Flops
    Bluu Nile Hotel – this site looks like it was done in 1999. The creators definitely need to take a look at modern web design trends. Also, notice the site’s domain “bluu-nile.awardspace.biz”. This site does not exist on its own domain name but uses free web hosting from www.awardspace.biz. Surely in this day and age everyone should realise the importance of a unique domain name that your own, ama?

    Source Code – I saw this site’s advert on Facebook. Considering that the site is under construction with over 250 days to go until it launches (according to them), is there any value in spending money on Facebook right now? Not to mention the fact that their demo page is…undone

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  • Is Your Business Failing?

    Posted: March 17, 2011, 4:41 pm by Kelvin

    “1. Is the site live yet?

    Yes: you’re likely failing, but at least you’ve got a chance of getting some feedback from real, live users, which may, if you’re smart and perceptive, decrease your chance of failure a little bit.

    No: you’re failing.

    2. Do you have free customers yet?

    Yes: well, now you have a shot to establish relationships. And if you listen carefully and not pridefully, you just may have a tiny chance of hearing them correctly and improving your customer experience from awful to plausibly bearable.

    No: you’re failing.

    3. Do you have paying customers yet?

    Yes: congratulations! You have reduced your chances of failing from 100% to 99%. There are many more chances to fail along the way, but you have graduated to some of the more interesting ones. Good show!

    No: you’re failing.

    If, when you wake up in the morning, the answer to any of the above questions is “no”, then you’re failing. Not failing tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but failing right now, today. As you read this…. Now.

    And what you need to do, what you must do, is to spend your entire day focused on changing the answers to yes. Desperately, immediately, fully.”

    The above is taken from How can I tell if I am failing at my entrepreneurial venture or start-up? Which is a very inspiring article on how to tell if your online business is failing.

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  • Starting an Online Business – Deciding What To Do

    Posted: March 17, 2011, 1:19 pm by Kelvin

    So you want to make money online but have no idea what you can do? This post is for you. We shall look at a number of ways through which real (Kenyan) people make money online.

    This is Part 2 of How To Start a Simple Online Business in Kenya.

    Last year we published a report on the most common ways of making money online. If you haven’t read it, here is the link: How to make money online in Kenya, 2010. The good thing about that report, in my view, is that it not only discusses how to make money but it gives examples of Kenyans who are using those methods.

    So, how do other Kenyan make money online?

    1. Selling adverts on your site – basically, you set up a website and make it popular, and then sell advertisements.
    2. Consulting – whereby you work to be seen as an ‘expert’ in some field. People then pay you for consultancy.
    3. Selling other people’s stuff (affiliate marketing) – where you sell goods on behalf of other people and get paid a commission.
    4. E-commerce (selling your own things) – simple put, find some things to sell, and sell them online.
    5. Freelancing – also known as ‘getting an online job’. You basically get paid to do something for other people.

    What you choose to do is up to you but you have to realise that “making money online” is not something that will take a short time. When thinking about making money online, you should think long term. You know those stories of people making millions online? Yeah, it usually takes years and extremely hard work. be prepared.

    The purpose of this series of articles is to learn how to start an online business and therefore we’re going to pick “e-commerce” as the example that we will use for the rest of the series. Why?

    1. We believe it is very easy to understand for people with no prior experience online – it is very much like starting a little shop anywhere else.
    2. We believe it is relatively easy to start and straight-forward to run
    3. We can set up a sample e-commerce business as an example to go with this series of articles

    In the next article in this series, we shall be taking a closer look at how to plan for, and start your own online shop. Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you do not miss any updates on this!

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  • Kenya’s Tertiary Education is Broken

    Posted: March 17, 2011, 10:58 am by Kelvin

    I just read a very disturbing article on The Standard titled: Board rejects 47 degree courses.

    A few years back, I was a student at JKUAT. My room-mate was doing a course named “Bachelor of Science in Mining and Mineral Engineering”. This course, like any other engineering course at JKUAT, takes five gruelling years to complete and is in now way ‘easy’. My friend struggled through five years of his life and should be completing his course around June of this year. Nice, eh?

    As it turns out, his course is one of the 47 engineering courses that the Engineering Registration Board (ERB) has rejected and will not be recognised.

    To put it simply, my room-mate and countless others have wasted five years of their life. They will have nothing to show for it. Can you imagine that? How much money wasted? How much time gone forever? How do you even start to recover from this?

    The ERB took this drastic action because the universities were offering very low quality engineering courses. For experience, I can say that this is true. Many of the engineering courses in our country are shamefully sub-par. Our universities and colleges focus too much on making money than on providing quality education.

    Of course the ERB’s action is loathsome and painful to many but the real blame lies at the feet of our “institutions of education”. Ours is a broken system.

    How can we fix it?

    A parting shot:

    From “The Loss of the University,” in Home Economics: “The thing being made in a university is humanity. given the current influence of universities, this is merely inevitable. But what universities, at least the public-supported ones, are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words — not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of human culture. If the proper work of the university is only to equip people to fulfill private ambitions, then how do we justify public support? If it is only to prepare citizens to fulfill public responsibilities, then how do we justify the teaching of arts and sciences? The common denominator has to be larger than either career preparation or preparation for citizenship. Underlying the idea of a university — the bringing together, the combining into one, of all the disciplines — is the idea that good work and good citizenship are the inevitable by-products of the making of a good — that is, a fully developed — human being. This, as I understand it, is the definition of the name university.”

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  • Online Business Vs Offline Business

    Posted: March 15, 2011, 8:05 am by wham

    So, basically in this post we’re going to think about what makes an online business different from an offline business. This is Part 3 of How To Start an Online Business in Kenya.

    Business is business everywhere you go, even “online”. You are basically selling something that people want. However, I would strongly argue that doing business “online” is better than doing it anywhere else. Why?

    1. It is relatively cheaper to start and run an online business. You can get started for as little as $25 (about Kshs 3,000/-) and your monthly costs could be even lower.
    2. It is also generally less difficult and easier to get people to visit your business premises – your website.
    3. It is generally easier to scale. You can have very many customers without investing in infrastructure to support them. While an “offline business” may need to get new offices to serve more people, you can just use your one website to serve more people. You can even serve all of them at the same time.
    4. You can do absolutely anything under the sun. There are endless options when choosing your business online. You can sell bananas, have a service based business, sell affiliate products or create websites that make money through the hundreds of different monetization options. What you can do is limited only by your ingenuity.

    Unfortunately, this makes the idea of starting an online business so attractive that people think it is easy. This could not be more far away from the truth. I would strongly argue that doing business online is harder than doing it anywhere else because:

    1. While it is easy to get people to visit your website, it is quite difficult to convert these visitors into paying customers. In most cases, people find it easier to spend money “offline” than “online”.
    2. You are competing with the whole world. While a Nairobi-based business may have a few competitors in town, an online business probably has hundreds of competitors from all over the world.
    3. It is extremely easy to get distracted. There are so many options that many online business people simply get lost in trying to do everything.

    I know you’ve read those stories – you know, those stories of people becoming millionaires overnight online. Exciting, eh? And to think that you could be next… it is indeed true that you can make millions online in a very short period of time. However, if you look closely at anyone who made millions online, you will discover:

    • That they are very smart and/or talented
    • That they followed a very strategic and focused plan
    • They work (or worked) VERY hard

    As you think of doing online business, be prepared for the extremely hard work that you will have to do to see real success.

    Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you do not miss any updates on this!

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  • How Does a Business Work?

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

    The secret to a successful business is the law of supply and demand. Never, ever, forget that.

    As a business person, your job is to supply something that is in demand. That is, your job is to find something that people want and to give it to them, and then take their money. This is the heart of every business, whether it is simple or complex.

    Btw, this is Part 2 of How to Start An Online Business in Kenya.

    Now, I know you can get generic business advice absolutely everywhere so since I do not want to just repeat stuff and because I cannot even begin to cover this topic in totality, I will keep this article short and simple. Basically, I want to speak to that person who is very new to business in an attempt to show the reality of things while not shattering your self belief.

    So as I said, doing business means supplying people with something that they need or want and then charging them. I will be straight and point out what I consider to be your biggest weakness: you! The biggest challenge that a new business faces is its founders/owners. Most new business people that I encounter can’t even see how poor of an entrepreneur they are (if you can even begin calling them that – a person with just an idea and some attempt is hardly an entrepreneur). They don’t realize what they lack or that their internal biases and opinions are creating problems in why they can or can’t succeed. My advice to you as a new business owner is try and get the most knowledge possible about running a business and about your chosen industry. Do not be complacent. Keep in mind that most new businesses fail. From Day 1 it is a full out war to make sure that your business succeeds.

    Secondly, a new business is usually very short on resources. You often do not have enough money or enough time. You need more money than you have – you see all the places your business can go and you want to try and go in all directions at the same time…

    Which leads to focus. New businesses usually have more time constraints than any other business – the new business needs to get its products to the market to prove its worth after all. Unfortunately, new business owners typically fail to focus on what, exactly, they want to sell and thus they therefore take the business in many directions at once – which leads to more time constraints…

    Do you know that focusing on a particular niche of an industry has been proven to be more successful, on average, than trying to attack the whole market all at once? The best advice I can give you is to focus on one small part of the industry you want to do business in. You can always grow to all the rest later. This has several advantages:

    • It is cheaper
    • It is easier
    • You face less competition from other businesses
    • You have higher chances of success

    Remember how Facebook started? There were already many social networks back then, including the then giant MySpace. Facebook started by focusing only on university students – there was a time you simply could not get a Facebook account unless you were in university/college. By doing this they were able to craft an niche in a huge market while at the same time sowing the seeds that would later lead them to becoming the biggest social network on the Internet.

    Think big. But Start small.

    Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you do not miss any updates on this!

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  • How To Start a Simple Online Business in Kenya – Part 1

    Posted: March 14, 2011, 9:13 am by Kelvin

    So I just got off the phone with a Like Chapaa reader who was pleading with me to show her how to start a simple online business. I personally do not think it is something that is simple enough to explain on the phone – is it? I believe that doing business is a personal journey that you must take on your own. But then again, I also believe that everyone should be doing their own business – enough with this employment maneno. You know?

    I talked the reader into letting me sit down and send her an email with a very basic guide on what to do but as I was doing that email I thought, “Hey other people might like this too”. So here I am, readying myself for mission impossible. Basically, this week – on this very website – we are going to write a series of articles that attempt to show you how to start an online business from scratch. Sounds fun?

    The idea is to write a very simple guide that anyone can follow to set up a small, extremely simple online business in ONE WEEK. To make it easier to understand, and follow, we shall be attempting to start an online business in this one week and show you everything that we did. In other words, as we try and show you how to start an online business, we shall be applying what we talk about on an actual real life business* that we will be starting up this week. I think that will work. You?

    So this is what we hope to cover:

    1. How does a business work?
    2. Online business Vs Offline business
    3. Deciding what to do
    4. Building a simple website for your online business (a.k.a. web design 101)
    5. How to get customers (a.k.a. how to do this ‘internet marketing’ thing)
    6. Legal & tax issues
    7. Final thoughts & conclusion

    The list may change as we go along because right now it is all coming off the top of my head.

    Finally, I must say that I, and the Like Chapaa team, have some experience doing online business. We have had some satisfying successes and many failures. While I am very proud of what we have achieved, you are advised to take what we say with a pinch of salt! We do not pretend to be experts on anything.

    Also, this series of articles is meant to give the basic bare-bones ideas on doing online business. To achieve real, long lasting success you must do much more than what we shall be talking about.

    Anyway! So who’s up for this? Please comment below, click the “Like” button and tell all your friends. Cheers!

    *The ‘actual, real life, business’ we shall be starting as part of this series has not been thought-up yet. We’re currently putting our heads together for an idea that won’t embarrass us.

    Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you do not miss any updates on this!

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  • Interesting Kenyan Sites #21

    Posted: March 13, 2011, 5:43 pm by Kelvin

    Mutahi.info – Mutahi (I presume that’s the site owner’s name) created a simple website to sell his car. I think it is an innovative and brilliant idea. Gone are the days when a “For Sale” sticker on your car will suffice.

    Zebu Mob – a site that is a bit like Groupon, the difference being that Zebumob seems to be focused only on advertising instead of selling discount coupons. Interesting approach, eh? Their website is brilliantly done – but it must be said that the Zebumob Facebook app could be made better, considering that much of what Zebumob offers is inside Facebook.

    Wadawida – nice simple, clean website that tells you all about the Taita people (of Kenya). I, for one, wish to see more similar sites celebrating our country’s diversity. [Disclosure: I hail from this community. Partly.]

    Kenya Memorials – did you recently lose a loved one? Well, now you can immortalise him/her on Kenyamemorials. They also offer a directory of funeral service providers. it may not be a “happy” line of business but the site is well done and it looks like they are doing pretty well. Kudos.

    Flops
    Newsupdate.co.ke – this site promises to bring you ‘daily Kenyan news updates’. The only problem is that, at a glance, the overwhelming majority of news (‘featured’ news, specifically) on this website is… well, it is not ‘Kenyan news’. Also, at the moment, seems like images on the site are broken. Though to give them credit, the site does have local news that feels like it is from mashinani.

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  • Social Media For Small Businesses

    Posted: March 9, 2011, 3:47 pm by Kelvin

    I just came across a very interesting question on Quora:

    Q. Social media is quite popular. However can a small business really make good use of it with limited time and resources?

    Michael answers:

    Having done business online as my sole occupation for over twenty years, never with more than three employees, I can speak to this subject with the advantage of a long-term perspective. Also, since my previous career was ten years as a Senior Vice President of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation, I have witnessed the marketing realm from the opposite extreme. With this as backdrop I can say, with some certainty, that social media is the most important and powerful innovation in online business history.

    Here’s why:

    • The key to success online is the ability to be both effective and efficient. That is to get the right job done and the job done right. With social media it is possible to target your market with rifle-shot accuracy, engage with potential customers on a mass scale, provide workable solutions, and to perform these tasks without the huge capital outlay normally required.
    • Large companies are like Battleships on the open ocean. To make a change in strategy or tactics requires a long and cumbersome mid-course correction. Being small allows you to be nimble. Instead of mounting an expensive marketing campaign in a vacuum and waiting for long-term results, social media gives instantaneous feedback. An entire strategy can be reconfigured at a moments notice, and appropriate changes can be made with little delay and minor expense.
    • The technology tools are in constant transition. Today’s best solution (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) can and will change tomorrow. As a dedicated and small entrepreneur, it is possible to remain at the vanguard of technology from one day to the next, without a large employee base or stodgy corporate culture in your wake like an anchor.

    Here’s how:

    • Engage, don’t sell. I won’t belabor this point, as it has been said by experts for a while now. Be creative and forget what you think you know about marketing. View your potential customer as a collaborator not a sales target. Follow the lead of thought-leaders like Scott Monty at Ford Motor Company and engage your customers from the beginning of the product-development cycle. Ask their opinions on how best to serve them, gain their trust and eventually the sales will occur naturally with little motivation from you.
    • Spend time improving your service and expertise, and while you are building a future receptive audience make your expertise available at no cost. Cultivate a long view of the process. Demonstrate leadership, not salesmanship.
    • Do something that matters. Care as much about the quality of the relationships, and your place as a member of the human family, as you do about your product and profits. Who you are is more important than what you sell.
    • Work hard. Be prepared for a period of sustained effort. Social media is simple, but it isn’t easy.

    Follow these simple guidelines and success will catch up with your efforts before you know it. And once it overtakes you, it will be sustainable.

    See the rest on Quora.

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  • What If They Steal My Idea?

    Posted: March 8, 2011, 1:27 pm by tranx

    I’ve come across a great number of people who have brilliant business ideas but they are afraid to share them because the ideas may be “stolen”. Do you know that feeling? When your idea is so “genius” that you have to keep it in, strategize, plan, and when the time is right, you will have it all built and then release it to the public.

    Unfortunately, this is pretty naive. I find that people who have only began thinking of “business ideas” are the ones who fear that their ideas may be stolen.

    Let me tell you a story. I once had what I thought as a brilliant, God-given, unique idea that would make me billions. Yes, billions. Naturally, I was very afraid that someone may steal my wonderful idea. I thus kept it to myself and just kept on building on it. Since I was not a programmer/web developer back then, when I had the idea fully fleshed out, I approached some techies seeking a partnership. What I found was astonishing.

    As I started befriending programmers and web developers and began telling my idea to them, I realized that the developers I was interested in partnering with didn’t care too much about my “genius idea” but were much more interested in what I brought to the partnership. What kind of skills did I have? What kind of connections did I have? What was my reason for pursuing what I was doing? What did I know about my industry?

    You are bigger than your ideas. It is always good to have “genius ideas” but you need to reach a level where YOU as a person are more valuable than your idea, a level where you are valuable independent of your idea. In other words, you need to get to the point where people realize that your “genius idea” cannot succeed unless you are part of the team.

    Still, so what if they just steal the idea? The fact is, once you start marketing to the public, the whole world will know about your idea. if the idea is good enough then competitors will pop up and they will try to outdo you – and some of them will have very deep pockets. But, the thing is that anyone can try and copy you, but no one can actually be you.

    They can steal your idea, but no one can steal your style, your creativity, and your drive to succeed. That is what should make your business different, and successful.

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  • Interesting Kenyan Sites #20

    Posted: March 8, 2011, 7:41 am by Kelvin

    Chukua.com – yet another directory-type website. Lots of these are being built, it seems. The thing that sets Chukua.com apart is that it is not only a directory but a marketplace – whereby you can set up an online “shop” on chukua.com. The site is very well designed and thought out. Good luck to the creators!

    Nairobi Living – well, it is another directory-type website. Though I must say that Nairobi Living looks to be elegant and well done.

    Samosa Queen – a website that represents a business based in Dallas, Texas, USA whereby you can order samosas, mandazi or chapati online. The design is a bit “dated” but it does the job – nice and simple!

    50-50
    Maridadi.co.ke – is an online clothing store. The design is beautifully done. Kudos to the developers on that front. However, the checkout process is not so intuitive – when you click “buy now” the page refreshes, but it is not immediately apparent what happened. Could be improved.

    Flops
    Jambo News Pot – this is supposed to be a website which aggregates local news. Unfortunately, the site’s design does it no favours at all and makes the site look haphazard and unorganised. The excessive adverts near the top are also an eyesore (though perhaps they indicate the site is earning the owners a pretty penny). Could be better!Similar Posts:


  • The Housing Bubble in Kenya

    Posted: March 1, 2011, 4:13 pm by Kelvin

    It is often said that housing/land prices in Kenya always go up and can never go down. You just cannot fail if you invest in real estate in Kenya. But is this really so?

    According to The Standard, a report by the Central Bank of Kenya and the World Bank indicates that only 1 in 10 Kenyans can afford to buy the home they live in, even if they get a mortgage (assuming they even qualify to get it).

    I think the question must be posed: What is a bubble? According to Wikipedia, An economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a speculative bubble, a market bubble, a price bubble, a financial bubble, a speculative mania or a balloon) is “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”. It could also be described as a trade in products or assets with inflated values.

    Specifically regarding housing/real estate bubbles, Wikipedia further says: A real estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in valuations of real property such as housing until they reach unsustainable levels relative to incomes and other economic elements, followed by a reduction in price levels.

    Now, back to the Central Bank report. Here are a few selected excerpts from the report:

    • only eight per cent of Kenyans — 320, 000 households — can afford a mortgage was shocking
    • for one to buy a house worth Sh2 million, for example, one must have a net salary of Sh100,000, and service the loan at Sh42,000 a month for a period of 15 years at an interest rate of 14.5 per cent. Those earning less have no place in the mortgage industry and must find another way of owning their dream house
    • The shocking revelations also indicate that the total mortgage loan book in the country is only 16,000 accounts, while the total value of mortgage loans, as at the end of December last year was Sh133.6 billion. This means that, technically, only 16,000 people/organisations in the whole of Kenya have taken up mortgages
    • It is also an indication that buying property in Kenya is predominantly for the rich, who opt for cash sales as opposed to mortgages.
    • Professionals in the housing sector say the findings reflect the high level of speculation on land that has pushed property prices through the roof

    Only 1 in 10 Kenyans can afford to buy the home that they live in, and even fewer Kenyan can afford to take up mortgages. In my mind, this report clearly indicates that the Kenyan real estate market is in the middle of a bubble. Real estate prices have gotten to be so high that the great majority of Kenyans just cannot afford real estate.

    Sooner or later, this bubble will burst and prices will come crashing down. Many of the “me too” real estate developers and investors will lose vast sums of money. It is just a matter of time…

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