How I Began....and Ended Up With a Website About Kenya
And Why You Need a Website and How You Can Do It Too!
I have always loved to work for myself. I enjoy the freedom, challenges and opportunities that come with being self-employed. Back in Kenya, I already had my own small business by the age of 26 - and I thoroughly enjoyed working at it and seeing it grow.
Yet a few months after immigrating to the United States, the little money I had brought with me was gone. Since I had already enrolled in college, I had to pay for both my living expenses and college tuition. My only option was to get a job where I could earn enough to cover my expenses, so that's exactly what I did. In fact, I got two and earned $7/hr working at both. I had to work long hours, as well as weekends, just to make ends meet.
No matter how many hours I put in, there never seemed to be enough money and there were many times when I had to use a credit card to pay for books or shop for groceries. Over time, doing casual jobs began to take a toll on me. I was constantly fatigued; my body ached from the tasks I had to endure at work, and I was frustrated with working such long hours and going to college at the same time.
Neither of the two jobs I was working challenged or fulfilled me in any way. I felt dull and lifeless. I often reminisced with sadness about the freedom and life that I had when I was working for myself back in Kenya.
Although I had a couple of years left before I could earn my degree, I felt I could no longer hang onto the routine of getting by with $7/hr jobs that seemed to be taking all the life out of me. But I couldn't quit the jobs because I needed money to pay for college.
I longed to find something that I could do and enjoy - something that would earn a good enough income to at least substitute for one of my jobs, without my needing to get a third job. I had no idea what I could do to fulfill these wishes, so I set out on a journey into the unknown, looking for a solution.
"Do not be limited by fear or narrow definitions; do not build walls around yourself. Do your best to find kinship, beauty and opportunity in unexpected places." - Barack Obama
My Online Adventure
One day in the spring of 2003, while walking home from college, I saw a small advertisement pasted on an electric pole. I decided to walk close by the pole so I could read the advertisement. It said that I could make $5k/month working from home. I thought to myself, "Make $5k/month working from home? I would be more than happy to make just half of that!" I couldn't wait to get home and access the Internet to find out what I needed to do to earn that much money. It turned out that it was a multi-level marketing (MLM) business that involved selling herbal supplements.
I had never heard of herbal supplements before. I had no idea, even, what an MLM was, but driven by the good stories that I read about the company and the success other people were enjoying, I figured I would give it a try. I immediately contacted the advertiser to learn how I could join this great online MLM business. I was up and running in no time, hopping into every conference call available in order to learn as much as I could about how to become a top recruiter and earner selling herbal products.
Four months down the road, I had managed to sell a few products to my friends but had not managed to recruit anyone into the business. Since I wasn't making enough money from the business to sustain my membership, I had to subsidize it using my little savings from my regular jobs. Six months into the business, I realized things were not going well because I was spending more on the business than I was making. I started thinking that my lack of sales meant there was perhaps something wrong with the products, so I decided to count my losses and move on to another venture. I jumped into yet another MLM, but this time I was selling anti-aging products.
A few months into my second MLM, I was again struggling to make the payments to keep up with my monthly subscription. I still didn't have any members signed under me but I was over $500 in business debt and could see no income in sight from the anti-aging MLM business. I once again began eating away at the savings I had accumulated from my regular jobs. The savings that were supposed to be used to pay for college were now being used to sustain a business.
After many months of trying, I finally realized that I terribly lacked some of the traits that appeared to be common among those who had succeeded in the business; I didn't have a large network of people whom I could recruit and I lacked the gift of the gab - my language was just not persuasive enough to convince people to buy the products. No one had told me I needed those special skills when I signed up. I finally decided MLMs were not for me....
....and I kept moving on.
I decided to try something that was not an MLM - an online business that didn't require me to recruit people.
I started off by attending a seminar where I was sold on a very unique business model. According to the model, all I needed to do was buy websites and then find companies that had products I could display on those websites. I would then earn a commission every time a visitor to one of my websites bought a product from one of those companies. I wasn't required to stock any products, since the company would blindly drop-ship the products to the customer.
The concept of this internet business was simple: the more websites I had displaying different products, the more customers I would get to visit the websites, and the more money I would make from the realized sales. I thought, "Now I'm on my way to fulfilling my dream."
At this point, there was only one obstacle prohibiting me from accomplishing my goal. I had no money to purchase the websites. Luckily, the recruiting company had anticipated that problem and had a solution at hand. They gave me a US$5,000 credit to buy five websites.
"Build and they shall come."
I set up the five websites. I did everything as I had been advised and waited for customers to start rolling in. I was sure I had found the perfect business and was on my way to financial bliss, but after a couple of weeks I had not made a single sale. Feeling hopeless, I made a call to the recruiting company to complain that I hadn't made any sales despite having followed their instructions to the tee. That's when they told me I needed to do something more to get visitors to the websites - I needed to advertise my websites in order to attract customers or no one would ever find them!
Since I had already exhausted my credit line, I didn't have any money left for advertising. Meanwhile, it was time to start paying back the credit I had received. Once again, I reached for my savings to make the monthly payment to the credit company.
Months rolled by. I tried every trick I could find to lure people to the sites but nothing seemed to work. I became desperate and kept calling the company that sold me the websites to help me out. Every call I made to them came at a cost to my account and the debt kept piling up. My big dream of finding success with the websites began to elude me. After almost two years of MLMs, conferences, teleconferences and seminars, all I had to show were the "empty shells" of five websites and over $7,000 in credit card debt. The whole concept of doing business online had become an elusion, and in the eyes of my friends, I had become a total joke.
I had learned difficult lessons the hard way.
But it didn't end there. I wasn't done. I refused to give up. At this point, with my eyes fully opened and my sense of smell elevated, I could detect an online business scam from a mile away.
Determined that I would never again be sold or coerced into buying my way into a business opportunity, I went back on the Internet to search for another legitimate business opportunity. I don't know why, but I felt the Internet sort-of had the answer to my dream, so I spent countless months dozing on the keyboard as I scoured through online blogs, forums and websites in a bid to understand how people were making money online.
I knew there were companies called Google and Yahoo! that were successfully doing business online, but I wasn't sure of any others. I committed every bit of free time I could find in between working my two jobs and going to school to searching for a worthwhile business opportunity on the Internet.
A light-bulb moment...
As I said, I persistently read through all kinds of blogs, forums and websites. I often became overwhelmed and confused by the amount of information available on the Internet. Then, one day, I came across an online forum by a guy named Allan Gardyne. I will never forget that day because I skipped school and became totally engrossed with what this guy had to say. There was something different, something sincere and authentic about his forum postings that made them stand out from everything else I had read online. What he said seemed to make so much sense. It felt as if he was speaking directly to me.
Allan was so knowledgeable. He was such a breath of fresh air compared to everyone I had previously encountered on the web. Even more captivating was the fact that he wasn't trying to sell or sign me up for anything. With no air of hype, he simply talked about and analyzed various aspects of internet business. He told it as it was to his audience - he was so real!
In one of his postings, he had a lengthy discussion about a concept I had never heard of before - a web business system called Site Build It (SBI) that anyone could use to start and run a successful online business.. He provided extensive resources and information about SBI, including case studies of people he knew personally who had had success with the system. He concluded by saying that it was one of the very few online business models that he was nearly 100 per cent sure of and could recommend to everyone, including skeptics who had failed in online business before. >>>Click to continue to page two of my personal story.
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