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Taxi Driver In India Uses Youtube to Find Customers

wham — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:06:23 +0000

So, I read this over at Alootechie and felt that I had to share it with you, dear readers.

Apparently, Divesh Mishra, an Indian taxi driver was worried that his business was going down. This was in January 2008 when the Indian travel industry was experiencing a downturn. Divesh knew he had to do something to keep his business going.

“I wanted to advertise about my services but could not do that as I did not have much funds,” Mishra said. “This was the time when I met a friend from Singapore. He was one of my customers and I discussed my problems with him. He then suggested me to upload a video on YouTube. Though I knew about internet, I had never heard about YouTube before.” (Source)

The rest, as they say, is history. Divesh’s video has been viewed 24,000+ times and he reportedly gets hundreds of emails a week – from foreigners asking about his services for when they visit India. According to Mishra it was amazing to get such response and this made him understand the power of internet. “It was a wise decision as I eventually understood that I could not have reached those consumers if I had advertised on some other media. Internet helped me to reach out to foreign customers,” he said.

Embracing the internet changes lives, and businesses. What about you, though? What are you doing to tap onto the opportunities provided by the internet?

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8-4-4 Robots

Kelvin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:27:40 +0000

Are you a product of the 8-4-4 system? Well, whether you are or you are not you have probably heard about this: “8-4-4 produces robots”. Is it true? It is said that the 8-4-4 system of education has a workload so heavy that that students go through school without getting a real education; it is said that the system produces people trained to cram and follow instructions but not actually think on their own. I’m an 8-4-4 product and so I am not sure that all this is true.

If it is true, then the 8-4-4 seems to be perfect at producing … employees. Since the dawn of the industrial age, the bulk of employment opportunities were available in “factory-type” jobs. Jobs in which the employee is a faceless ‘cog’ among many. The 8-4-4, it seems, is perfect at producing cogs. However, one may argue that all education systems everywhere produce ‘cogs’.

Why do people go to school? A while ago I heard about a pair of parents who had quite the strange reaction to the wonderful news that their daughter (who was still in college) was starting a business. The parents were furious that their daughter was starting a business instead of focusing on her school work (she was in university) and promptly put an end to her entrepreneurial ways. “Finish school, get a good job and then think about starting a business,” was the advice given.

Do we go to school so that we can be able to get a job? Am I missing something here? Don’t we all go to school so that when we come of age we are able to build a good life for ourselves and become valuable citizens? School is important, very important. But not as important as most people think it is. The important thing is to learn all that you can and how to use it to achieve your goals and/or make a good life for yourself. As it happens, ’schooling’ is not the same as ‘education’. As Mark Twain once said, don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

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To the left to the left

Crystal — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:40:24 +0000

Running your own business is immensely fulfilling, but it can also be tedious. You have no weekends, no public holidays, no annual leave. You will probably never retire, and you can’t quit or walk away when you get frustrated or bored. You worry even in your sleep, because there is no boss or subordinates to blame when things go wrong. The buck starts and stops with you.

But I’ve realised that getting a breath of fresh air is easier than you’d think. All you have to do is shift positions, change direction, step to the side.

Think about your pre-business desk job. When you felt drained, all you had to do was facebook for a few minutes [only a few minutes mind you] and your mind would be alert. You’d find some long-forgotten picture tag or some silly new game, and suddenly you’d be smiling through your chores.

In running your biashara, the same rule applies. I’m not recommending you go hang out on facebook; you can end up spending a dangerous amount of time there considering there’s no annoying boss to stop you!

I simply mean you should change tasks. When you’re running your business, you generally handle everything from finances to door-to-door sales. Even if you have employees to do all this for you, you find that your eye is all over. After all, this is your baby.

And this is where the trick lies.

If you’ve been dealing with difficult clients all day, take a break and look through the books. If you’ve been filling out your tax returns and your eyes are swimming in numbers, stop for a second, pick up your cell phone, and make a courtesy call to a client.

If you’ve been shaping up the code on your website, jump to the comments page and work on your response. If you’ve been taking inventory at your warehouse, run to the computer and work on the receipts. All it takes is a simple sideways step.

I’m not very good at multi-tasking [actually, I suck at it. I can’t even talk and skate at the same time!] and I’m (usually) a very focused person, so I like to finish one task before I move on to the next. I’ve been working on an editorial assignment all day, and after 12 hours, the full stops were starting to look like commas, and the small caps are lost in the text. I thought about taking a break to read a novel, but I figured I’d never stop. I looked at the pile of laundry and the dishes in the kitchen [I’ve nothing left that’s clean!] but that didn’t hold much motivation.

So I started to think about the other assignments that are due today, and took a break to do a little writing. Four articles later, my mind was refreshed, my deadlines were met, and I could do my editorial work easy peasy.

Granted, this may not be possible with all businesses, but if you stretch your mind far enough, you can find a slightly different section of your work to take your mind of things, even if it’s as basic as shifting from counting your thousand-bob notes to stacking your ten-bob coins…

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

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Outsourcing to India

wham — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:46:49 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the noble cause of the Kenyan government to make Kenya an offshore outsourcing destination. Companies like Kencall are, currently, the face of these noble and valuable efforts. I have been thinking about Kenya as an outsourcing hub and I still wonder, can we really make it a reality? Yes, companies like Kencall do very well but will Kenya ever be as big as countries like India when it comes to offshore outsourcing? I think not.

Last week, I was talking to some people who are interested in starting an egg (mayai) business. They want to sell eggs on a large scale. Do you know it is cheaper to import eggs from Egypt than it is to produce them locally? And that’s just one product – pick any industry in this country and you will quickly realise that producing goods locally if often several times more expensive than it is to just import them. What does this mean for us, as a country wishing to grow our producing and manufacturing industries?

You would think that imported products are cheaper, but those that are locally manufactured are of a better quality, yes? Well, this may be true in some cases but more often than not, it is not. A trip to Nairobi’s industrial area would leave you shocked at just how much of what we consume locally is outsourced – from packaging material to the whole manufacturing process. The people who outsource would like to use Kenyan alternatives but it does not make business sense to do so. Why pay more for something of a lesser quality?

What about services? We’re good at that, at least, eh? Well, not really. Undoubtedly, we have a very educated and extremely skilled workforce. But, it is still cheaper to get things done in India, or elsewhere. Case in point: Kenyan ‘technology’ firms (software producers, web design, web development, etc etc) often require to hire additional programmers, designers, etc to handle small tasks. The local labour force is very well equipped to handle these tasks. However, the local labour force is also nearly five times more expensive than offshore (often Indian) options. Who would you choose to go with?

Now, this post is not meant to bash Kenya and Kenyans. I’m a Kenyan too.

I’m just simply wondering: how can we compete with India as an outsourcing destination when we ourselves outsource to India? As a people and as a nation we have to ask ourselves: what are we doing wrong? Why is it cheaper to import sofa sets from China (and taking shipping costs into account) than it is to make the sofa set locally? Why is Kenyan stuff so expensive? Can we ever compete with economies like India or China? I do not know the answers to these questions. Do you?

What I do know is that the following are some of the things we need to address:

The infrastructure in Kenya is good, but hardly good enough. We still have frequent power losses and water shortages, not to mention many other things
The cost of doing business in Kenya has to be brought down
Our mentality as a people needs to change. The average Kenyan businessman is greedy – he would much rather do one job for a profit of 50,000/- than 10 jobs for a profit of 25,000 each

What do you think?

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Hustling Is Over. Now You Can Sell your Music Online.

wordseller — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:42:49 +0000

How much do Kenyan artists, musicians and those wannabes who feel like celebs make from their efforts? With piracy trends on the upward, making money as an entertainer here in Kenya seems to be a hard call. Waiting to get an invitation to perform or curtain raise for others may not be the best way to make serious ‘bucks’ for the so called ‘wasanii’. We have seen them complain that Kenyans don’t appreciate local talent. We have seen them floss with the little they make –is this really a celeb`s life?. If you are reading this and you are musician or an entertainer listen carefully because what you will discover will open your eyes and do something.

Let me ask how many local artists Jua Cali, Nameless, Wahu, Redsun etc market their music, tickets and events online? How many if I ask have a website or a face book fan page.

So why do many local celebs fail to market their music online? Why do they go down the traditional route of taking it their music to the radio stations? Now it’s to live the life you deserve.

If you are an artist its almost criminal if you don’t have a website and its almost suicidal if you don’t have a list: a collection of email addresses (of your fans, leads and purchasers of your music) .Your website is where you send all of your prospective customers. Your website must contain details on how to purchase your music, both online and offline. I would also recommend having a ‘sample’ piece of music for clientele to listen to for free and to be able to download the a sample.

Ring tones have made Cellulant and mobile planet richer by the day and you too should have ring tones (as a product) of your music online. Sample this just by selling 30 ring tones a day at Kshs 30 brings in (27,000 kshs) every single month. And that’s with very little sweat because everything is automated. Once you have a website running you can get sponsors via co-branding rights. Lets say we have Jua Cali as our artist who has a website running and receives 20,000 visitors everything month. Jua Cali can get sponsors(convincing sponsors to brand the website becomes easier since we have some traffic already) and advertisers(by selling advertising spaces ) to his website .The money he gets can supplement what he makes offline. If you combine the income from ring tones, online CD sales and sponsorship revenue then Jua Cali could be living the real celeb lifestyle.

And where will he get these 20,000 visitors?

1. Via Search Engine Optimization-Marketing the website by improving its rankings
From my research, the term “Jua Cali” (I know it may mean the other Jua Cali out there) alone receives 4,000 searches a month .Other important terms like ‘Kenyan music, (searched 20,000 times a month) and ‘Swahili music’ (9,900) all point to a lucrative undertaking – note that these are buyers and business leads. See other popular search terms from the table below. Even if he gets 20% of these visitors to his website then the chances of conversion are quite high. It seems crazy to miss out on this. Doesn’t it?

2. From YouTube and other video hosting sites
This is the new way to market your music online. You Tube has simply taken the world by storm, not only from a viewers perspective but from a marketing perspective also. Similar to video clips that you see on MTV you are able to create your own video of your music and upload them on YouTube.

3. Facebook and Twitter
Facebook, twitter and the Social media represent the new way to market your music. Facebook alone has over 1/2 million Kenyans and from Alexa.com, facebook is in the top ten of Kenya’s most popular websites. As an artist who wants to make serious inroads, facebook and twitter should become the focal point of your marketing efforts. Alongside your website you will need to create a fanpage updated daily. Let the fans know about your next event, upcoming album, collabos, where to get the tickets. The point is: engage and interact with fans and you will surely never run hungry.

4. Forums
Forums are an old and popular way to marketing your music, and it still works today. Not only can you specifically market your music in the forum, you can also market your music by just posting messages about anything related to music. For example, if there is a discussion about the kind of music you sing then post your comments and put a link at the bottom of your post to your website. So not only do you market your music, you also marketing to the right group of people, music lovers!

It’s time to sell your music to the world.

To your success,
Kihato Mwangi
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How To Be Creative

Kelvin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:05:37 +0000

In today’s world, being creative is a requirement. Don’t you think so? The good thing is that everyone was born creative. The bad thing is that things like school (and 8-4-4) often steal our creativity. Hugh MacLeod’s How To Be Creative is a book that teaches you how to get back your creativity. Do you want to be creative? Download the book below.

Hugh doesn’t teach you how to come up with your big idea, nor is the book a collection of theories on what makes something innovative. Rather, Hugh’s rules teach a mindset conducive to pushing great ideas to their logical conclusions. This book won’t teach you how to paint, but if you’re lucky you’ll come away with the mental frame you need to avoid having the outside world crush your creativity.

My favorite line from the book: The more original your idea is, the less good advice people will be able to give you.

Download it here: How To Be Creative

Hugh MacLeod is a brand consultant, copywriter and cartoonist. Born in America but educated in the UK, he has spent most of his life shuttling between the two countries. He started out in straight TV advertising writing in the early 90s but with the advent of new media it evolved into new brand thinking and cultural transformation. His website, http://gapingvoid.com, is widely read in the blogosphere. Similar Posts:

Starting An Online Record Label

Kelvin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:35:46 +0000

How much do you think local musicians earn from their music? I bet it is pretty low. Perhaps that is why musicians in our part of the world have full time jobs. As a musician, when you give your song or album to a local record label such as Ogopa Deejays, or Calif Records…how much do you earn? How much do they earn?

I believe that all artists should have affordable access to all channels of music distribution, get all of the money generated from the sale of their music, and all without giving up any of their master recording ownership, copyrights, merchandise rights, live performance income, public performance royalties or any other rights or money. Do you share my beliefs?

So recently I helped a friend (a musician) set up online. He made a sale yesterday. A Swedish couple, in Sweden, liked his album, and bought it. My friend emailed me saying, “you should start an online record company.” I actually have thought about that for quite a while. I know for sure that our local artistes have a far better chance of earning from their music online than through the local market. Blame piracy.

Is there need for an online record company? Well, look at it this way…if I was a musician and I found out that I can quit my day job and focus on my music, I would jump at the opportunity! Would you? The bigger issue is whether there is a market for Kenyan music online. More research needs to be done on this but I do feel there is a large and untapped market for anyone’s (not just Kenyan) music online.

What would it take to start an online record company? I do not know. But as with all good ideas that I have, I shall share my thoughts with you, dear readers.

First and foremost, one needs to know how to market online. You shall be taking the hopes and dreams of people and you shall be responsible for their success or failure. You need to know how to build an online presence, nurture it and grow it. This requirement means that, currently, not many Kenyan are qualified to start an online record label.

Secondly, one needs to understand how to market music online. Apart from setting up the artist’s website, blog, etc etc one must be able to actually find a market for the music, and then sell it. The most obvious places to sell seem to be places like: iTunes, Amazon MP3, Zune Marketplace, Rhapsody, eMusic, etc. One should also understand the more indirect methods of selling – for example, one American band famously gave away all their songs free on MySpace. They then went on a tour of the USA, and had live – well paying – shows in almost every town, big or small. Despite being a small unknown band, almost all their shows were well attended. It turns out almost everyone knew of them and liked their music (they got it free).

Looking at the two requirements above, I would say that, really, all a prospective online music label needs to have people who know the Internet; people how know marketing and, above all else, people who are creative and are not afraid to to do new and different things. Could this be you?

Let’s be honest, some music is harder to sell than others. If I had an online record label, I would find ways to work with only those musicians whose music inspires or impresses me. One would think that the best way to run the business would be to accept all musicians. I be to differ. Perhaps you can offer certain limited services to every other musician but I believe real success can only be achieved if you work with musicians who you believe in. Marketing is challenging, online marketing even more so. if you do not believe in what you are trying to market, then you will not market it so well.

Finally, my type of online music record label would be creative in how it charges its musicians. I believe that musicians deserve 100% of all their royalties, copyrights, merchandise rights, and any other rights. Instead of charging a commission on the royalties, for example, I’d charge a small annual fee (depending on how much work I do for them).

Does this make sense to anyone? Discuss below, let’s start an online music record label, shall we?

Photo by Shankar, Shiv.

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Are You A Slave To Your Business?

tranx — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:47:39 +0000

By The Lazy Business Owner

As a business owner, it is tempting to wear many hats at one time and take care of all the departments by yourself with some (very limited) help from employees. Speak to any successful businessman and he is likely to tell you that this is a mistake which you should avoid. Of course, this does not mean that you can delegate everything within your business to others….it just means that you need to MANAGE more and DO less.

It is quite easy to fall into the trap of taking on more and more work for any of the following reasons:

You can do it better than most people in the business
Delegation takes a lot more time than actually doing it
Cost saving in man-hours as you are doing most of the work yourself
It is a matter of habit

Now, unfortunately, this may cause your and your business a whole lot of problems. Problems like:

Too many items in your TO-DO list leaving you simple exhausted
Too little time for pro-active business management activities. Who is going to do your business strategy when you are doing all the ‘dirty’ work?
Employees do not learn nor take on added responsibilities
Your business will stop growing as much as it should be growing
Creates a poor impression on customers ( imagine a customer always getting to speak to the business owner for support, billing and account managing issues)

If you have already realized that you are doing too much in your business which in turn is creating the problems listed above, then it is time for some change. Here are some suggestions of what you can do to reduce your micro-management activities and focus on the BUSINESS.

1) Delegate smartly. I have seen many business owners delegating to their juniors…some of them do it well and some of them….well they end up delegating their own work to the employees as well. Smart delegation means explaining your employee what you need to get done, defining the goal well and giving helpful suggestions on how the task can be completed. If you give broad instructions (Let’s work towards increasing sales), you are unlikely to see any results.

2) Departmentalize clearly. As a growing business, you need to ensure that you have clear departments which can handle the growth as it happens. Making departments with clear demarcation of duties is likely to help you grow lot faster than your competition. Review each department’s progress, their problems and recruit good people to lead these efforts ( I know this is easier said than done, but there is really no other way out) .

3) Direct more. As a business owner, I feel the most important thing I do is direct my team. In measurable terms. Giving timely feedback and responses to employees, showing them the direction in which the business needs to go and tackling overall issues of managing the business.

4) Put in systems. Automation is the best thing since sliced bread. I am serious, I mean it. You can now take mundane tasks and automate them. You can even take complicated tasks and automate them intelligently! Not only does this reduce the time you need to do some pieces of work , it helps mitigate the risks you face when an employee leaves. Automating accounting, HR, Customer service and sales are just some of the things which help you grow well. The initial costs may be high, but automation tends to pay for itself with 12 to 24 months of implementation.

So the next time you catch yourself doing multiple tasks in the business, stop right there…and delegate it to the right person.

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Should You Work For Free?

Crystal — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:06:19 +0000

The primary reason for business is making money, that’s a given. Business is not like art, it can never be done just for the sake of it.

But business is not as simple as art. A piece of music or a pretty picture can bring infinite pleasure even if no one actually buys it. You could be carelessly singing in your shower [or the karaoke bar] while your audience marvels. Some genius could tape you and post it on youtube where it will virally spread and make a billion people’s day.

Hopefully, the appeal will be your singing voice rather than anything else.

But business isn’t like youtube karaoke. A business that isn’t earning is … well … not a business; it’s just a person being busy.

That said, benefits are not always monetary. Say, for instance, that you attend a seminar. You won’t get paid; more likely you’ll spend to attend. But you may learn a skill, and you will meet a hundred other people, all of whom could possibly buy from you. If you use 2 or 3 thousand to attend a workshop, meet two hundred people, and five of them end up being your clients and pay one thousand a piece [probably more], then it’s totally worth it.

The classical musicians of the past did not always get salaries. Many of them worked for food and board. They lived with their patrons and were given nice clothes, royal treatment, and access to a full time orchestra. They produced some of their best work for ‘free’.

The same applies with freelancing. We are often advised not to work pro bono, and no professional does anything for nothing. So when a client approaches you, you need to seriously review your options. What do you get out of it? Will this help you to meet potential clients? Will you learn anything new? Will it push you out of your comfort zone?

Are you engaging with people, getting ideas that you wouldn’t find by sitting alone in your office or at your computer? Are you meeting experts from other fields, people who could expand your pool of information? Are you forming relationships that can give you an edge as you find ‘free’ manpower to ‘outsource’? Are you making friends who could support you, advise you, [buy you birthday presents] and bring business your way?

And if this is the case, then are you really sure you’re not getting paid?

Sometimes your wage doesn’t come in cents and zeroes. Just because nobody is showing you the money, doesn’t mean you’re working for free.

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

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How to Start and Build a Business With (Almost) No Money

wham — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:01:51 +0000

At Like Chapaa, we come across all sorts of people who are looking to get ahead in life. Many of the people are people with small businesses or people trying to set up a business. Almost all of these people are people with big ideas but no funding – people who are starting, or running a business on a shoestring budget. These people can be called bootstrappers.

Are you a bootstrapper? Well, we have a treat for you today. We’re giving you Seth Godin’s book, The Bootstrapper’s Bible. You can download it below.

I read this book a few years ago and once again I reread it recently. Not only does this book cover a wide variety of issues about starting a business on little money, it also provides you with examples of how other businesses started (including some of the big brands that exist today.) From stretching your existing cash to finding your niche, this book is not a black and white “how to start a business in x number of easy steps” but instead a book that can be applied to whatever business you want to start. Or if you have already started and want to go back over some of the fine points it can also be helpful.

Download it here: Bootstrappers Bible

Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. Godin is author of multiple books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. His newest book is Linchpin.

What do you think of it? Did it saidia you?

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