How to earn extra cash in 2011

Kumekucha readers are used to hardball politics but I thought it would be useful to take a brief break today and in these rather hard times share a few money-making tips and spread some inspiration all round especially to those who had a rough 2010… more so cash wise.

Nothing wrong with this I suppose because after all we do carry business articles in Kumekucha occasionally… So here goes

1) Set aside some thinking time: George Orwell’s scary book 1984 is coming to life before the very eyes of those who have read it carefully. We are robots these days controlled by our cell phones and computers. When is the last time you had some quality thinking time? Switch off your cell phone and switch off the computer for 15 minutes and do same careful thinking about YOU and YOUR LIFE. Where are you? Where do you want to go? Are you really serious about earning some extra cash in 2011? You better be (don’t just forget the minute you finish reading this post).

2) The cash is in the problems: There is plenty of information on the web on how to turn the skills you currently have into hard cash. But when you try something it just doesn’t seem to work. Here is the big secret that will make all the difference in 2011. THE MONEY IS IN OPPORTUNITITIES. What that simply means is that your skills have to find opportunities. Quit trying to use your skills to create opportunities because it won’t work. It used to work but it doesn’t work anymore in this changed world of today. Simple example. You have book keeping skills and so you place a classified ad in the newspapers and online seeking part-time book keeping gigs. Nothing happens. Now why not take a completely different approach and look for the problems people are facing out there that will use your book keeping skills? Another word for problems incase you didn’t know is “money making opportunities”. Busy small business people are having problems filing their tax returns so your classified ad should address that instead of just saying book keeping skills. This will work very well especially as the deadline approaches. Another example; I know many small time entrepreneurs in Nairobi who have a serious problem finding the right PC software to do their accounts Quickbooks for instance allows you to do this with zero staff (but you will need a consultant to help you set it up properly and to translate them into something acceptable to the KRA (Kenya Revenue Authority. Don’t tell me you are a book-keeper without computer skills? There are endless book-keeping related problems that you can address. And this applies to everybody. SEEK YE FIRST THE PROBLEMS (OPPORTUNITIES).

3) Making money away from your computer is getting increasingly difficult. Try selling door to door and the decision-makers are all glued to their PCs and will give you 5 mins of half-listening to get back to their computers. So why not talk to them online? Go door to door getting email addresses of the bosses and then craft a good email letter addressing their individual problems directly and showing them how your services can solve them and you are sure to have a winner and make more money in 2011. Use Facebook to keep them on your mind and show them some interesting stuff that can help solve their problems (sometimes totally unrelated to your services). That is how they will remember you.

4) One idea can still change everything. I have seen this happen way too many times over the years. Some down and out guy stumbles on a single idea and it changes their lives forever. The lesson you must not forget in 2011 is that when an idea fails you, don’t take it personally. Try the next one with as much enthusiasm. It is just a matter of time and you will hit the jackpot.

5) Find a way to use the web. In the West they have plenty of wonderful websites that can do all sorts of stuff for free. Heard of Ebay? Tens of thousands of Americans earn a very good living on the site. But don’t worry we in Africa are catching up gradually. You can check out this site where people have advertised odd jobs they can do for only 100 bob. There are two ways you can make serious money from this right away. You can use cheap service providers (at no risk, they are paid only when the work has been delivered and you are satisfied with the quality) as your staff to run a very major side business even as you remain employed. The second way is if you are idle and have not reached that level yet, you can package your skill into a useful gig you can easily get done quickly (because of your immense skill in this area) and sell it for a hundred bob a pop. It must be something you can a thousand units of virtually in your sleep if you want to make Kshs 100,000 just like that. The magic here is that you are able to advertise your gigs for FREE and receive your payments via Mpesa once the job is done. Have you realized how time consuming chasing for payments is most of the time? So by eliminating that from the equation some switched on Kenyans are already making tens of thousands of shillings every month even as slower ones complain that 100 bob is too little for them.

6) DO SOMETHING: And that last rather sarcastic remark in 5 above brings us to the most important point in this article. If you don’t do this, nothing else matters. You can have the best ideas and best websites but you will fail if you do nothing. DO SOMETHING. This is not the time to analyze and strategize, you have already done too much of that in the past. Just get going doing something RIGHT AWAY, however little and build up from that.

When the great Google Inc. started the founders were not earning even a hundred bob for their revolutionary new search engine. They were earning zero!! Zilch!!! Yes and they operated for well over a year earning ZERO while fine-tuning their search engine and business trying to figure out a way to get paid for it. Today Google is a multi-billion dollar company. So why not start in the same way? Or even start with the 100 bob above and see what happens. Good luck to you. May 2011 be your most prosperous year yet and remember to tell me what happens, I am intersted.

Don't worry Kumekucha is still a hard politics blog (see current political post) : Is Raila Evil?