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Here’s something about what you’re going to find on Niabusiness.com blog going forward

I have been away from my blog for a very long time. It has been months since I added new content to the site.

But yesterday something happened.

Now that I am back, there are a few things I wanted to bring to your attention. If you have been to Niabusiness.com before, you’ll already be familiar with some of the things I am about to tell you.

If this is your first time on Niabusiness – your first time reading this article -welcome to the blog. I hope you find the info in this post useful.

The new direction I am taking with blogging

I have done the separate domain thing in the past – you know creating separate sites for every niche topic I thought about.

I’ve created several niche sites that didn’t work out and so this time I’ve decided to just use one domain for all my content – using different categories to organize the posts I publish of course.

This is one of the things niche sites are known for – the ease with which you can organize content on different topics on separate domains.

It is one of the things that appealed to me back then.

But what most niche site creators never tell you is how much work it takes to build and maintain multiple domains / blogs / websites especially if you are just a one man operation.

I blog solo at the moment and I think it makes much sense to have all my content on one domain – in different categories of course.

I save on domain name fees as well – no need worrying about all the yearly fees for multiple domains from Kenya Web Experts, GoDaddy, Namecheap or Namesilo.

No more time wasted on managing different domains / sites.

This way I can just focus on building all my online assets under one domain; focus all my energy on making this one domain stronger (by spending all my time creating and promoting the content I publish on whatever topic I please).

All the articles I write will be housed on Niabusiness.com.

Same thing with interviews, videos and podcasts.

My online shop too is on the same domain.

All the ebooks, e-courses, products and services I sell now and in the future will be available on Niabusiness.com as well.

What you are likely to find on Niabusiness

I publish articles on a variety of formats. Here’s what you’ll likely find on Niabusiness on any given day.

Tutorials. I like writing articles that show Niabusiness readers how to use various products and services. Think about some of the products / services you use on a daily basis (and you’ll likely find how-to posts on some of them published here on Niabusiness).
Interviews. Most of the articles on Niabusiness are written by me. But there are times when hearing someone’s take on the various topics I write about makes sense. So, you will likely stumble upon some interview-type posts on the site. Bringing in experts to share their thoughts and experiences with you is a good thing. You get someone else’s perspective on whatever topic you are interested in – and hopefully that leads to decisions that help you achieve your goals in a much faster way.
News commentary. Once in awhile I share my take on what is happening in Kenya and other countries by publishing opinion pieces touching on current news. If you like to hear other people’s take on current news (and share your take as well), these posts will appeal to you.
Reviews. Niabusiness.com publishes articles reviewing products and services sold in and outside Kenya. The reviews share pros and cons of products / services in various categories – so when you go out there you only end up buying the best products. My aim, with the reviews I publish, is that you end up paying only for quality products – products that work well; products that last.

Search terms you can use to find Niabusiness.com blog

After reading 1, 2 or more posts on Niabusiness chances are you’ll likely want to come back. The easiest way to do this is by typing Niabusiness.com on your web browser’s address bar.

To access all the recent / popular content published on the site that’s all you need to do – visit Niabusiness.com on a browser of your choice: Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera or UC Browser.

To save time and start enjoying content newly published on the site you can also just quickly type the following phrases on Google to access the blog.

Niabusiness blog
Niabusiness blog Kenya, or
Niabusiness.com blog by Philos Mudis

A variation of the search terms can work just as well on search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo or Yandex.

Thanks for taking the time to learn more about Niabusiness.

Again, the full address is Niabusiness.com.

Type that on any web browser & you’ll instantly have access to all the content I’ve published.

A few actions for you to take before leaving this page

Get notified of any new content published on Niabusiness blog by signing up via email here.
Learn more about the different categories in which I publish content by visiting the main Niabusiness About page.
Check the Niabusiness Free Ebooks page. Grab yourself a PDF.
Send me your feedback – your thoughts & ideas for content you’d like to see more of. Use this contact form here to get in touch.
Go to the homepage to read my recent posts. Or the START HERE page if you want to explore different parts of the site.

Hire a freelance writer in 2019 and get a good return on money you spend on outsourcing

If you own a website or blog or want to start one, you already know the critical role that content production plays.

Most people running their own sites write the content themselves and may be you are too.

But there is another way to go about getting new content to publish on your blog.

That is by outsourcing your writing needs to freelancers.

Read on to learn how to hire a freelancer writer in 2019 – and get a good return on money you spend on each order.

Why work with freelance writers?

So you can free up your time and focus on other things.

If you are a marketer, you can spend more time promoting affiliate products.

If you are a business owner, you can spend more time on customer care – or marketing.

If you are a blogger, you can focus on getting links from more authoritative sites.

If you are selling a service or product online you can focus on marketing – to get more people to buy from you – instead of spending time writing article after article.

Budget: What is the cost of hiring a freelance writer

It depends.

Some writers charge per post. Some charge per word. There are writers who charge US$ 0.01 per word. Some charge $0.10 per word or more.

The rate is often determined by how much work research/writing work is involved.

Different topics also attract different rates.

I charge $0.04 to $0.08 per word for example. If you are interested in working with me, you can use the contact form here to get in touch.

You can order 1000-word articles from me – or hire me to write longer articles of 2500 to 3000+ words.

800-word articles in a niche such as blogging/marketing/business often cost 50 US dollars or less.

If you are interested in working with a freelance writer this year, you probably need that much for your first article.

If you are not strict with word count, you can allow your writer to write as much as they want for the same amount of money.

If you want to order multiple articles, then be ready to commit a few hundred dollars each month to this.

The process of hiring a content writer

Do keyword research first. Most keyword research tools can show you how competitive different search terms are.
Determine which topics you want to outsource first. Create a list of post titles.
Outline the first post you want to outsource just to give your writer a rough idea of what you want them to write.
Put together instructions you want your writer to adhere to – instructions on word count, structure and sources.
Get a writer from various freelance marketplaces or content writing agency websites such as UpWork. If you like you can hire a writer in your niche by going directly to their blog and sending them an email to enquire about their writing services.
Negotiate. Ask how much the writer would charge for the job. Once you agree on the amount to pay them, and you are confident in their ability to write quality posts, send them the work.
Review the content you get back from your writer. If there are any corrections to be made, ask them to edit the post. You can share a Google Docs so that you are able to review any changes they make in real time.
Pay them once you are satisfied with the final draft. At this point you can upload the post to your WordPress backend. Save it as Draft, hit publish or Schedule it to publish at a later date.
Repeat the process if you like the experience of working with freelance writers.

Test different monetization methods

To get a good return on money you spend on outsourcing, publish the content you get from your freelance writer then add ads or affiliate links to it.

See which monetization method performs best.

If you don’t want to use ads or affiliate links, use the content pieces to promote your products / services directly to your website / blog visitors.

If you go this route, make sure to link to sales pages, FAQ page and contact forms on your site.

Best Link Building Strategies for Amazon Niche Websites

After you start an Amazon affiliate niche website, you are going to need to rank it high on Google Search to get people to come over read your content and click your affiliate links. And one way of steadily climbing search rankings is to do link building for your niche site.

There are many ways people go about this. Below I present to you some of the best link building strategies used by Amazon Associates, the people who use the Amazon affiliate program to monetize their sites.

White Hat Links via Outreach

White hat links, this is what most see as the holy grail when it comes to link building. Some just publish content and wait for other sites to link to them naturally.

But as someone in this to start making money from your niche site as soon as possible, you don’t have to wait for people to start linking to you.

You don’t have to sit and wait for things to happen naturally. This is where email outreach comes in. It’s how you take things a step further; speed things up a little bit.

First it starts by you publishing a great resource on your site then you go out there to find people who can link to it.

Publish an in-depth informational post on your niche website, then go out there to find sites to link to you. Often these are blogs in your niche.

Draft emails and send them to other webmasters with the view to get them to check your resource and link to it.

Here is a template you can use in your outreach. It is a variation of a template Chris shared on his post. Change its content depending on the topic covered in your post, the one you wish to gain links to.

Hey,

My name’s John, and I run the website over at https://examplesite.com /.

I just stumbled upon your site, and I’ve been enjoying your articles. Great stuff!

It’s nice to meet another blogger sharing their knowledge and experiences on blogging with others 🙂

Anyways, I have written a huge and in-depth blog post about the reasons why one would want to start a blog.

I saw that you had a guide about it yourself (URL-to-their-post), and was wondering if you would be interested in taking a look.

Would really appreciate some feedback on it from you.

Let me know if you’d like to see it, and I’ll send you over the link right away!

P.S. What was your main reason for starting your blog?

Thanks,

John

Use the template above if you are running an Amazon niche site that promotes blogging resources sold on Amazon.

In the example above, the blogger John, writes an in-depth guide on the ‘reasons to start a blog’ then goes out to hustle for links from other sites.

How does he find the sites and webmasters to email? Via Google, searching sites publishing content on similar content.

Note that in this email, John doesn’t ask for links. He just asks the other webmaster if they’d like to check out their post and give them some feedback on it.

At this point, he is not asking for a link. Just for a few minutes of the webmaster’s time to check their post.

If they say yes, that they’d like to take a look, then that is John’s cue to send them a second email containing a link to their in-depth guide.

Here’s the email.

Sweet!

Here’s the link: https://examplesite.com/reasons-start-a-blog/.

BTW, I think it would make a great resource for your already awesome guide:

URL.

If you could share it with your readers, it would make my day 🙂

Thanks,

John

Suppose the webmaster checks out the post and likes it, they are likely to share their feedback with John. And also likely to share the post with their readers. For example tweet it, share it on Facebook or mention it in an email to their subscribers. After all that is what John is asking for.

But also note how, indirectly, John suggests his post to the webmaster as an additional resource. How subtly he’s asking for a link. Do you see that? That is how Amazon affiliates use outreach to get powerful white hat links from different sites.

Of course there are rejections. Most webmasters won’t even bother with such requests. But of all the outreach emails one sends, there will be people who will say yes. Yes to sharing their content. And a smaller percentage of people saying yes to linking out to them.

Outreach is a great way to gain links because all you have to do is publish something awesome on your site then reach out using variations of the templates above. Chris of RankXL has used emails like these to get quality white hat links from more authoritative sites. You can too. But you also have to remember that it is a numbers game.

There are also places where you can purchase quality outreach links, if you don’t want to spend time doing the manual work all by yourself.

These service providers do all the outreach work for you: finding prospect, emailing them and getting links for you.

For a fee, you can use a service like LoveToLink, which Shawna of Skipblast recommends as one of the best places to get outreach links in 2018.

Guest Posting

Writing content for other sites and adding a link back to your site is also a popular method Amazon affiliates use to build links. Normally you can find sites with a Write for Us page, send them your idea for a post, write it and have your post published.

To find sites to write for, go to Google and search for:

Your keyword + a combination of any of the following (submit content/guest post/write for us/guest article).

Doug Cunnington of NicheSiteProject, a successful Amazon Associate himself, recommends starting your relationship with other bloggers by commenting on their articles before asking to guest post on their site.

You can simply comment on their posts and develop a relationship over time. Then later on propose ideas for a guest post contribution.

Here is a great template from BloggersPassion.com that you can use for your guest post email outreach.

Hey [NAME]

I am a long time reader of [Blog Name]. You may have noticed my comment on your post on X (awesome article by the way).

I’m writing to you because I am interested in contributing a guest post to [Blog Name].

I’ve been brainstorming some post ideas that I think your readers would get a ton of value from:

Post idea #1

Post idea #2

Post idea #3

I’ll make sure the piece overflows with information that can’t be found anywhere else.

To give you an idea of the quality I’ll bring to your site, here’s a link to a guest post that I recently published on Example.com.

If you have any post idea on your mind, feel free to share it.

Cheers,

[Name]

You can use the template above to get things rolling.

Or even do something Doug did once: Hiring a team to help with guest posting for his Amazon site, which he (and his business partner) eventually sold for more than $200,000.

PBN Links

If you got a big appetite for risk, PBN links is a great strategy for ranking your Amazon niche website. PBNs are considered grey hat, and frowned upon by Google. But a lot of affiliate marketers still use them to power their sites up search rankings. Why? Because they work. And in some cases work incredibly well.

How you implement your PBN though affects whether Google slaps your site with a penalty and send your page one rankings down into oblivion. Or not. Or whether your site gets entirely deindexed from Google Search results pages.

That is why more marketers are moving away from public PBNs to more private PBNs comprised of real-looking sites (hosted on decent web hosting companies) with original content and few outgoing links.

If you can’t build your own PBN and use it to rank your niche site, you have the option to buy links from more reliable and quality sources.

Human Proof Designs, not only sells content and done-for-you Amazon niche sites, they also sell PBN links. And they do their best to ensure buyers get value for their money. They sell links that help their clients sites climb up the rankings.

Same thing with Niche Site Azon, through their Rank Guardian service.

Also Shawna of SkipBlast does sell links.

Many other places also sell quality PBN links. Places like PeoplePerHour. But you have to be careful where you source your links from.

A guy making $5000 per month with his sites was interviewed by Dom Wells and he gave some insights on building links to Amazon affiliate sites.

His name is Glen. So, in the post he shares that when it comes to link building, PBNs have always worked well for him.

And he recommends building 10 to 15 links for the first 2 to 3 months then going nuts with link-building once a site starts ranking.

He says once your site has around ten posts of 1500+ words, it is time to focus on building more links instead of creating more content.

Shawna implements a mixture of web 2.0s, PBNs, outreach links and guest post links to rank her sites. The mixture diversifies her sites link profile.

But she too sees the power in using PBNs (her own and from other quality sellers) to rank her niche sites. For example she recommends getting PBN links from a seller such as Matt of Diggity Links. Instead of building ones own PBN, you can rent links from such a seller.

Web 2.0 Links

The people building and earning from Amazon niche sites that use web 2.0 links to boost their rankings include Shawna of SkipBlast, Dom Wells of Human Proof Designs and Al-Amin of Marketever.

Dom Wells sometimes orders the HOTH web 2.0 package instead of building the web 2.0 sites himself.

These are the links you get from free sites such as Blogger.com, Weebly.com, Wix.com, Tumblr.com and WordPress.com.

These links don’t have that much ranking power. But they can be used as foundational links. To give a little boost in rankings. To provide variety and to diversify your link profile.

Building web 2.0 links for Amazon niche sites can be risky, as Google considers this strategy to be gray hat. To build a proper web 2.0 though, you are going to have to add original content (some even advocate adding 3 to 5 posts initially with more posts dripped down the road).

Then add the required legal pages, links to resources on other sites and then one or two links to your own niche site.

Of course, you also have to use the Google URL submit tool to index the content you publish on the web 2.0 sites you create for link building.

Shawna of Skipblast in one of her posts shows the power of using web 2.0 links to rank Amazon niche sites.

She created 2 web 2.0s for linking and week after week her site’s rankings increased. Note that it can take up to 2 months or even more to see the effect of such links.

The niche you are in also determines how big of a boost you get from the web 2.0 links. Keywords with high competition will obviously get a little boost compared to the ones with medium to low competition.

Al-Amin of Marketever also, on a $2000 per month Amazon niche site, did the bulk of his link building using web 2.0 sites.

He did get a boost from the links he built.

In this post where he shares a little bit about the process, he says that you should use the blog style theme, publish original content – basically build web 2.0 sites whose content add value to readers. Add multimedia content to your posts. And pay attention to on-page SEO.

Then add links to your money site naturally. For each web 2.0, use a separate email and save login details in an Excel file.

Round up Posts

Here you can create a list post containing any of the following:

a list of influencers in your niche
a list of top websites in your niche
a list of the top blogs in your niche
a list of answers from the top influencers in your niche

For example, you can send one interview question to influencers in your niche then compile their answers into a list post.

Or compile a list of the 51 best websites in your niche.

Or top 21 Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest infuencers in your niche to follow.

You can do this with authors, service providers, companies, manufacturers, experts and other professionals in your industry.

It’s all about compiling a list, the result of which is a valuable piece of content that adds value to the lives of readers of your site.

But then this piece of content also serves another purpose. Ego boosting and baiting.

People like to be recognized; to be mentioned; to be applauded for the great work they are doing. So, in essence, your post taps into this phenomenon.

Once you publish the post, you email all the people mentioned in it and ask them to share the piece of content with their audience.

Most likely, many of them will share your content. Some will link to it from their own sites. The result? More quality backlinks to your site.

The shares can also draw in more readers who run their own blogs increasing the likelihood of some of them linking to your site later down the road.

Tung Tran of Cloud Living mentions that this is a great way to get links from influencers in your niche. This can be taken even a step further by interviewing individual influencers on a text-based post or via an audio podcast episode or a YouTube video.

For every person you interview, ask them to share the post with their followers. If you ask the right questions and attract valuable answers, your bet is the influencer you interview will also link to the post, sending more quality links your way.

Conclusion

Both the white hat and gray hat link building strategies above work for Amazon niche sites.

What you deploy depends on how much risk you are willing to take in the short-term and ling-term.

Your budget also comes into play especially if you want to outsource some of the link building work to virtual assistants and freelance writers.

Your willingness to hustle for more links to boost your organic search rankings will also depend on how much time you are willing to set aside just for link building.

The best link building strategy for Amazon niche websites can therefore be argued to be that which works best for you – because people have used all these different strategies to rank and make money from their sites.

Chris Lee, someone who I respect a lot when it comes to building links, though advocates people to go the whitehat route; to not pay attention to tactics such as web 2.0s; but to spend more time gaining more quality links via email outreach.

That is his style. To create pillar content on his site then email other webmasters to link to it.

See his outreach template here. I have personally used a variation of it to get other sites to link to me.

Make it your target to get your first 100 links. That is what Spencer Haws and Jon Dykstra recommend when building your niche site. Work on getting your first hundred links.

Once you have published some content on your site begin gradually working on attaining links from other sites over the months that follow.

As you go about hunting for links, I want you to also remember this one thing Tim of NicheSiteAzon says.

He says to build one epic page and rank it before turning your attention to other keywords or pages you want to rank.

An example he gives is how he built 40 links to 1 URL in a 4 month period.

So, remember this.

You can do it for your buyer’s guides or any other review posts you publish, of course taking care of internal links as well.

So keep writing detailed posts, product reviews and buying guides. Publish a variety of posts: reviews, informational posts and articles with lots of stats concerning your niche. Then get more links via outreach, round up posts and guest posting.

Google Keyword Planner keyword research: Need help with it? Hire Niabusiness.com

Are you in search for a freelancer, a company or an individual to do keyword research for you?

A person to quickly take a word or phrase of your choice and research it for related terms?

Someone to help you find how easily you could rank for given keywords?

Someone to give you a list of keywords you can use in the titles of your blog posts, YouTube videos, Slideshare uploads, landing pages and ads online & offline?

Keywords that you could use in your copy?

Keywords that could point to you what a certain segment of the market (you are in or after) is struggling with?

Keywords that could help you answer the questions they ask and let your expertise shine when people acknowledge how you tackle a problem with deep interest and just the right amount of passion that leads to great results?

Welcome. Niabusiness.com, through its keyword research service, helps you do all of the above.

You give us a word or phrase, a domain name or topic and you get back terms related to it, and more, to do with as you please.

Who can benefit from this keyword research service? Should you hire Niabusiness?

Anyone thinking of doing anything online really, especially if you are:

interested in sharing your knowledge and ideas online and off
interested in making it easier for the millions of searchers who depend on popular search engines to sift through the vast amount of content, products and services already available in various markets, offline and on the internet, to find you
interested in creating a new blog, website or email list or improving the assets you already have online
interested in selling anything online, attracting readers and customers to your content, products and services by paying for traffic or getting free quality organic search traffic from the popular search engines
interested in doing thorough keyword research on many different terms, words or phrases but don’t have the time to do it well – or for some reason, you can’t do it yourself
interested in knowing terms people use often when talking about, or researching, a certain topic, niche, industry, business, person or remedy
interested in creating more content targeting the keyword researched to rank for them and be found by people using them
interested in launching a new product or service and want to know what people use to find similar products or services offered by your competitors
interested in knowing which keywords people use to find websites and blogs owned by certain businesses and individuals in your niche or industry (those you consider competitors and those who simply offer, for sale, products and services that complement your own)
interested in knowing more about the keywords commonly used by people (which are difficult to rank for on search engines) and those that aren’t used often (long tail keywords that you can rank for on search engines with a little effort, even though they may bring fewer visitors to your blog or website)
interested in finding keywords which you can then use to be the main topic in a niche site you created or one you want to start soon
interested in keywords you can use in your blog post’s descriptions, tags and title fields
interested in writing a book or ebook, creating a video, a presentation or a guide and want keywords to give you more ideas about what people look for (struggle with or want more of) when it comes to the topic, audience or market you are targeting
interested in knowing keywords that warm visitors and make them ready to take a particular action – one that may be the difference between a successful sale and an unsuccessful one

If you are an individual interested in any, or all of, the above, take advantage of this Niabusiness.com service.

All you need to do right now is tell us the number of terms or phrases you want researched, what you want to use the keywords for and what you aim to achieve.

Interested in using Niabusiness.com keyword research service?

Click here to see our rates and select the number of keywords you want researched.

Editing and proofreading: 2 reasons businesses need to outsource this

If you look at the number of documents produced by businesses on a daily basis, you’ll quickly realize that it is a lot.

And the volume keeps increasing with new businesses that are set up – and new customers that are acquired.

Looking keenly at all the documents, you will notice that some businesses:

take the time to edit and proofread them
spend as little time in the editing and proofreading bit, ending up with documents still containing errors here and there
don’t allocate time to (properly) edit their documents. They simply use their first drafts, without making revisions. The result? Documents full of typos, grammatical and factual errors. That’s not good for business.

Most businesses realize the benefits that come with polishing their documents. Some decide to do it themselves – and either: succeed at this, achieve average results or fail miserably.

As long as they are in business, owners know that their businesses will always keep pumping out words – in the form of emails, articles, newsletters, adverts, tutorials and more.

They can either decide to do things as they currently do them or make changes, do things better and create beautiful documents.

So, why bother editing and proofreading at all?

1. It is one of the best ways to ensure your documents have a clear purpose, supported by every single word you write

You want to make sure that what you promise in the title, or headline is what you give to your customers, prospects, investors, in the first and subsequent paragraphs.

Niabusiness.com editing and proofreading service gives you the advantage of aligning the story created by the words in the body of your document with those in the title.

It forces you to delete words, replace whole sentences or paragraphs, use synonyms, use simple words or shorter sentences to make your writing concise.

It also helps in setting the tone, giving you the power to choose to be formal or to lean more towards the informal.

That’s why first drafts should not always be denied the chance to undergo revisions.

It is part of the writing process – for a big reason.

It limits confusion and wastage of time.

It helps you avoid turning a million dollars to a hundred thousand dollars because of a missing zero.

2. Perception

What comes to your mind when two businesses A and B, offering similar services place similar ads on your favourite newspaper or website? This? ‘Hmm. Two businesses offering the same service, at the same price. Which one do I work with?’

Now imagine reading A’s ad and noticing one or more errors in their advert, while B’s ad is error-free. What happens?

Automatically you’ll be pulled more to B than A by the mere fact that their copy is clear, error-free and easy to read and understand.

If the two businesses invite you to check their websites and you realize that A’s web pages are riddled by more errors, you may find yourself drifting more towards B.

Of course, not all clients can make the choice to go with either A or B on the basis of who edits and proofreads their work better. But this is not a reason for this bit of the writing process to be neglected.

The smart way to go is to do everything better as a business. That includes giving your words more power by dedicating enough time and money to editing and proofreading every document you create, regardless of whether the document brings in money or not.

How can you do it right?

Whether you are a big company, a sole owner of a small business, an online-only business, the question you should be asking yourself now is, ‘How can I do it right?’ because I firmly believe that you have been doing some, or a lot of, editing and proofreading since you started your business.

1. Continue doing it yourself

You can simply polish your work by yourself as you’ve always done especially if doing this doesn’t take away time that you could spend on other activities that brings your company even more value.

2. You can hire someone to help

If you find the right person and pay them well, you will have more time on your hands to focus on your top three, four or five income generating activities.

You can get a freelancer of your choice, or –

– hire Niabusiness.com to help you

You can send every single document in your custody that is already typed over to Niabusiness.com anytime.

It can be a sales letter, an article, email, web page, guide, ad, contracts…save your time for other activities by allowing Niabusiness.com to:

take the pressure of having well written documents off you
catch errors that might escape your attention the first, second or third time you go through your first draft
take the drag and boredom that comes with improving the quality of you documents

How does this make your business more money?

It allows you to focus on your top income generating activities. And that’s where I believe you want to spend most of your time, right?

If you want to save your time and money for the more important activities, contact Niabusiness.com, send your work and get them back error-free.

Want to do freelance work to get capital to start a business? Ask yourself these questions

Capital, capital, capital, it is one of those things that can keep you wondering how to actually start a business in Kenya in the shape and form similar to the picture you’ve been playing and replaying in your mind lately.

If only you had a certain amount of money you could pick and use to start, life would be really great. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Sometimes the money you think you need is ten to twenty times what you make on a monthly basis.

Does that mean you only have to see your business inside your head and not in front of your eyes? It depends…on what you really want and what you do thereafter – which hopefully should be in alignment with what you really want – which is to start a business.

In this article, we are going to look at how you can make more money with your skills. This money of course is going to be part of your capital. You have a business to start, so that’s where I want your focus to be.

1. How much do I need to make as a freelancer?

This is the first question you have to give serious thought. It isn’t the only question you should focus on at this point.

There are many more related to it. For this article, we are only going to focus on this question – and this one: How much would it cost to start a business (like the one) I want?

Learn more in this free ebook: 10 Things to Look at If You Are Thinking of Starting a Business.

The second question encourages you to do research, to learn a little bit about the industry you want to be a part of, to listen to the stories of people who have been where you want to be.

In other words, it doesn’t allow you to rely only on your judgment to determine how much money you are going to need to start.

When you do your research, brace yourself for surprises because sometimes you might realize that your estimates were either too high or too low.

2. How do I know my skills, before I get started as a freelancer online?

Different people may have different definitions to the word skill. In this article, we’ll simply define skill as something you do very well.

Take a pen and paper and list down your skills.

See the ones you really do very well and the ones that you need more time to master and then settle on the ones you want to do for pay.

For example, someone who loves reading business books, writing, spotting factual and grammatical errors and correcting them can decide to become an editor and proofreader for the numerous small business websites, whitepapers, tutorials, ebooks and the millions of sales pages getting uploaded / published on the internet everyday.

This is work they can do both online and offline unlike some type of freelance work.

3. Can people pay for my skills?

The quick and short answer is yes.

If you do your best, then worry not about people thinking that the value of your skills is worth nothing.

Know your skill – and start reaching out to the people, organizations and companies you know / think are a good fit for what you want to do as a freelancer.

4. How much am I going to charge for my freelance services?

That depends on your skill, how well you do your work, the type of clients you meet, how much you get done and what you think your skills are worth.

Study your industry to learn more about the rates other freelancers with similar skills accept, and then come up with your own rates.

Your rates will help you determine how long it will take you before you reach your golden figure and start that new business.

5. How do I get freelance work that pay well?

There are tons of websites that connect freelancers with the people who need their services.

Clients come to the sites to choose who they want to work on their project.

Of course several freelancers with similar or better skills than you will always be bidding for the same work as you (not always the case) and it is the client’s discretion to choose whoever he or she wants to work with.

Then there are many agencies who recruit freelancers and give them a cut of what they get for the work that comes their way.

When they receive work, they send it to you, you work on it and they give you a fraction of the money they are paid.

A lot of these agencies have their ads on popular classified ad websites and job boards as well.

These are all great ways to get work.

You can join and get work from Upwork.com, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, Freelancer.com or even place ads under the services category of many classified ad sites like OLX Kenya, CraigsList or Gumtree.com.

Then there is my favourite: starting your own WordPress website to tell the world (the people who can benefit from what you have to offer) about your skills (what you can do for them).

In our example of the editor and proofreader above, you can create a site and write pages about what you do, answer questions your clients may have in in-depth blog posts, include your rates, a contact page, a hire me page and more.

Don’t be afraid to use a combination of all or any of these to get well paying gigs.

You can also introduce prospective clients to your services by writing them short emails about what you can do for them, and linking back to pages on your site (from inside the emails you send) where they can find additional information.

It’s called cold emailing.

6. What if the money I earn as a freelancer isn’t enough?

Use what you have saved to start. If it is not really really enough then borrow some money to make it enough.

Borrowing only takes two things: asking and a solemn promise to return the money on the agreed date.

Do everything you can to avoid any drama that may ruin the relationship between you and whoever loans you money.

Niabusiness.com affiliate program

You’d like to help Niabusiness.com reach more customers that need the products and services listed on the site and make money doing that in 2019? Glad to have you here.

Below you will learn how to join Niabusiness affiliate program, get your affiliate link, use it to promote products and services sold on the site and get paid, in Kenyan Shillings, to your Safaricom M-PESA account (or in USD to your PayPal account).

The affiliate program has been created to enable you partner with Niabusiness.com to reach more people who can benefit from the products Niabusiness sells.

For every person you refer that buys any of the products tied to the affiliate program, you get a 25% commission – on each sale referred.

What are you going to promote as an affiliate?

For now, you can only promote all or any of the Niabusiness.com online shop products and services here. Niabusiness.com will let you know of any new products or services that you can promote when they are made available.

[check current products and services to promote]

How do you promote Niabusiness.com products and services – and earn?

Though it would be a good idea to promote what you have purchased, used and found useful, there are no stringent rules on when to join the affiliate program and begin recommending Niabusiness.com products and services to others.

When you recommend what you have used yourself it is easy to clearly show others what they get when they buy after going through your recommendations.

But it is up to you, what you do.

Another thing that matters a lot when you are thinking of becoming an affiliate partner is coming up with honest recommendations where all hype, misleading statements are denied the time of day.

You can promote Niabusiness.com products and services inside emails you send to your subscribers, inside articles or blog posts, on sites like Medium, Quora, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin Pulse, Google Blogger (BlogSpot), forums and any other place you can think of online or offline – so long as it’s done in a non-spammy way.

Make sure the people you are recommending any of the products to are actually interested in them.

Every time, you recommend any product, use your unique affiliate link so that when someone clicks it and purchases it I’ll know who to send the commission to.

If you have your own blog and say, you are writing an article related to a Niabusiness.com product, you can link to it using your unique link.

You can also add an image or picture to the article and link to the product on Niabusiness.com using your unique link (which you’ll get immediately you join the program).

If you are sending out an email to your subscribers, you can also include your affiliate link inside the email if you happen to mention any of the products I have on sale – or something related to any of them.

You can also create a post on your Blogger.com blog, slide on Slideshare.net, video on YouTube, Facebook Notes (tagging some of your friends who may be interested in the products you promote) or any of your favorite sites.

If you are writing a free ebook or writing a page with all your recommendations for your blog visitors, that could also be a great place to do some promotion.

The possibilities are endless.

Is that all?

There’s so much you can do, but remember you don’t want to come out as obnoxious or think so much about the commission you want to make that you end up putting the needs of your own readers (or any person you refer to Niabusiness.com shop) second or third.

How and when do you get paid your affiliate earnings via M-PESA or PayPal?

Niabusiness.com affiliates are paid once every two weeks (or any time their commissions exceed KSH 1000 or USD 11) by sending them their commissions via Safaricom M-PESA or PayPal.

If you don’t have a large and targeted audience, you may need a little more patience and hard work before you see the money rolling in.

So stick around. Stick with the program. Stick with Niabusiness.

How do I join the Niabusiness.com affiliate program? [Sign up link]

To join, click here.

The details needed to join the affiliate program include: real name, email address, username (make one up. You will use this to login to your affiliate account on Niabusiness), password (make one up) and your Safaricom M-PESA enabled phone number.

Once you have entered the details above, click sign up, to get access to your affiliate account and unique link.

How does the affiliate link look like? How do I get it? How do I use it?

Here is an example: https://niabusiness.com/?affiliates=c4ca4238a0b923820dcc509a6f75849b

Notice that last part (?affiliates=c4ca4238a0b923820dcc509a6f75849b)? That is an example of a URL parameter.

Each Niabusiness.com affiliate has a unique one.

If you add it to any Niabusiness.com link, and the person that visits Niabusiness through that link (say, for example, you add it to Niabusiness Shop page URL so that it looks something like this: https://niabusiness.com/shop/?affiliates=c4ca4238a0b923820dcc509a6f75849b) ends up buying any of the products and services tied to the affiliate program, you will earn 25% off the sale total.

Remember to use your unique affiliate link and URL parameter (this is shown in your affiliate account once you sign up) when linking to a Niabusiness product or service you want to promote.

The link and URL parameter above are just used for example purposes. But you get the drift. If you want to link to a blog post on Niabusiness and still earn commissions from people you send to the post (who end up buying Niabusiness products), here’s what it will look like.

NOTE: I’m still going to use the example URL parameter above.

So, say you want to send them to the blog post ‘How to Start a Blog in Kenya‘ (the URL for this post is: https://niabusiness.com/start-and-grow-blogs-in-kenya-start/), you will just need to add the parameter to the URL so that it looks something like this: https://niabusiness.com/start-and-grow-blogs-in-kenya-start/?affiliates=c4ca4238a0b923820dcc509a6f75849b

If you opt to send people to the How to Start a Successful Blog ebook and online course product page (the URL of this product is: https://niabusiness.com/product/sbke/), the final affiliate link, once you’ve added the URL parameter, will look like this:

https://niabusiness.com/product/sbke/?affiliates=c4ca4238a0b923820dcc509a6f75849b

Follow these examples when creating links to specific Niabusiness products, services, blog posts or pages. Get your unique URL parameter in your affiliate account area and append it to any Niabusiness link where you want to send people as shown in the examples above.

Remember, as standard practice, that you will only earn commissions from other people you refer via your affiliate link. You are not, as an affiliate, allowed to buy via your affiliate link though.

No Niabusiness.com affiliate earns any commissions from clicking on their own affiliate link before buying something from the shop. Such clicks are considered invalid and do not earn you any commissions.

In conclusion

You need to create content, which can be text only, audio only, video only image only or a mixture of any of these that people can read, watch or listen to.

You include your unique affiliate link in the content you create.

The content is what you use to help the people who read, watch or listen to what you have to say to gauge if your recommendation is for them or not.

People want to know why you recommend something to them as an affiliate, so…

… show them.

They want to know if you like it – and why you like it.

They want to know how you use it.

They want to know about the features and the benefits (the pros and cons… the advantages and disadvantages of using the product).

They want to know how much it costs to get it.

They want to know who the author is (the company or individual who created it).

They want to know how it can be useful to them.

And of course, they want to know where to get it – here is where you use your affiliate link to refer them to Niabusiness.com.

Write your reviews paying attention to the questions your readers may have.

Things to keep in mind as a Niabusiness.com affiliate

It is great when you know what you are promoting.
Take your time when writing your review. Don’t rush it. When ready, publish it.
Forget not to use your affiliate link in your review because for you to earn a commission the people who read your review must click on your unique link to buy from the Niabusiness.com online store.
If you publish the review on your blog or websites like Medium.com, Linkedin Pulse or Quora, promote the review on your favourite social networking sites and email subscribers as well.

Need an answer you didn’t find here?

You can always get in touch by sending me an email via the contact from here. Once I receive your question, I’ll do my best to respond as soon as possible.

Here is the link again. Click it to register as an affiliate now.

PS: If you are looking for an affiliate program to sign up to and make money from on the internet, join Niabusiness’s.