Money (Photo credit: 401(K) 2012)

Yes, first million freelancing in Kenya. No, I am not there yet. As I said in my “About” page, I only make a percentage of a million per month but I am getting there very soon. First because I have been experiencing steady growth since I quit my day job and started freelancing and secondly because I believe that we all can if we work hard at it. Therefore, do not forget to go to the sidebar and put your email address on “Follow Blog via Email” so that you get to one day see my post which will be entitled, “How I Made My First Million Freelancing in Kenya”. You can also follow me on Twitter to get more insights. I am also not talking about Kencall or any other company making money online, I am talking about freelancers making money at home or home offices; the likes of Eben Pagan in the States whose office is a few seconds from his house, therefore qualifying to be a home office, but he’s still a millionaire who I respect.

How Much Do Kenyan Freelancers Earn?

Most likely you are seeing this post due to the fact that you are a freelance writer, blogger or some sort of online businessman. But how much do you earn? If it is not a cool million shillings a month, then read on and let’s brainstorm on this.

Personally being a freelancer, I have come across many other freelancers and we’ve discussed a lot of stuff on income. Roughly, the average Kenyan freelancer earns Sh. 30,000 per month. Most do this though freelancing websites such as Fiverr and Freelancer. Alternatively, there are those who work for other top-earning Kenyan freelancers and get paid 20k or something similar.

What about the top earning Kenyan freelancers? So far, the person I have encountered who earns the most is an academic writer who gets Sh. 400, 000 per month. He stopped writing but has some guys working for him. There are a few others who make between Sh. 100,000 to Sh. 400,000 doing freelance programming, freelance writing and alike. Additionally, there are those who have websites that have gone “autopilot” therefore making cash through their affiliate links, Google AdSense and other ad banners. The word “Autopilot” is in quotes because they still have to work on them in one way or another. Freelancing is not limited to the above, there are more people freelancing different things and earning money online. Also note that the data comes from a small range of people who I’ve talked to so there may be others making more or less than the above. Kindly answer the question below to help me in my data collection.

Kenya is a Huge Outsourcing Field

We are a huge outsourcing field. I believe that soon we’ll be giving India and China a run for their money when it comes to outsourcing. Kenya is slowly dominating sites like iWriter, Freelancer, Elance and others. I am sure we also rank highly with academic writing, programming and other online work. Google Inc. has a Kenyan branch and guess what? U.S. also has an “outsourced” Kenyan president .

Millionaire Mentality

Now, when it comes to making millions freelancing in Kenya, the first thing that we need to have is a millionaire mindset. Like a certain ad says, “Think Biggest”. I don’t know why this happens a lot but I have realized that as Kenyans we speak so poorly about ourselves. Check out most Kenyan blogs and forums and you’ll see how Kenyans talk ill of Kenya. I wonder why we do that to ourselves. I happen to do advocacy for mental health and one thing we noted is that there is nothing like stigma when you work hard to make your ends meet. Stigma comes when you look down on yourself and stay wallowing in self-pity. While guys are wasting their energy negative stuff about Kenya, the rest of us are making money online doing better things. Other Kenyan loving wazungus are also having a great time at our part of the 7 wonders, the Wildebeest Migration and loving our country to death. There are more who also employ us day after day to write, program or do something for them remotely. Therefore, let’s shift to the Obama-like “Yes We Can” mentality and think outside the box and we’ll achieve whatever we want to achieve. These three words define the millionaire mentality.

Now, here is what you can do to make some serious money online and in turn help other Kenyan freelancers do the same.

1. Create a Market

Have you ever wondered why most of Google stuff is free? Why does Google even pay you when someone clicks on AdSense ads in your site? Some people say that Google “controls” the internet. What that means is that they want you to stay online and make money online. Therefore, they give you a lot of premium-like stuff for free so that you can get to a level where you pay them for ads and purchase some of their premium stuff. They therefore make a lot of money from the ads since they help people stay online and be found by searchers.

When it comes to making millions in Kenya, we need to create a market ourselves. This can be done as follows in the case of a freelance writer (and any other freelancer in Kenya):

• Start freelance writing using sites like iWriter, oDesk and Freelancer so that you can make your daily bread.
• Create a blog about earning online cash in Kenya, Kenyans working at home and such keywords
• Join web 2.0 website such as HubPages and Squidoo and post stuff about why clients need to hire Kenyan writers, outsourcing in Kenya and other keywords that attract investors to hire Kenyans.
• With the cash you are now earning as a writer or a freelancer, start your own website. Combine both a “making money in Kenya website” and another global website. We don’t want to be discriminative with information. Post stuff relevant to Kenya in your Kenyan site and stuff relevant to everyone in the other site. You can have other sites but for these two, I would advice you to use your Kenyan name and a bio mentioning Kenya somewhere.

What have you just done? You have informed a lot of Kenyans that they can make money online and actually got some started through your blog. Secondly, you have attracted investors to hire Kenyan writers. Click here to see my post detailing some reasons you can use to market Kenya.

2. Laws of Demand and Supply

Robert Kiyosaki once mentioned something about money being virtual. You can simply make money by going to a place where there is demand for an item, supply the item as a middleman and get your cut. Therefore, if we do the above, we’ll create a full online market for freelancers. Some of these guys will be freelance web designers, freelance writers, freelance programmers and so on. They will work in conjunction with what you do. For example, as a freelance writer, you’ll easily hire a freelance web designer to create a website for you. You’ll also need a programmer for your winning software that will help other freelance writers to do something. You’ll have the freelance writers you trained for free who are now rich enough to buy your software. Therefore, other Kenyan freelancers earn money from each other that way. Of course you’ll also hire other countries, but there will be a big enough Kenyan market to provide all these services.

3. Hire a Coach

Most people do their freelance writing, get cash in PayPal, withdraw and consume it all. Have you ever thought about doing a course which will make you earn more cash online? The best coaches are people who have made it. Note that millionaires hire coaches but the average assume they can learn everything on their own. For example, I am now doing Mark Ling’s AffiloBlueprint 3.0 course which cost me $77 (launch offer). This is an affiliate marketing course which is totally awesome. It now goes for $197 but if you save a bit of your cash, it is worth buying. You can also try out Chris Farrell Membership which will also help you start getting easy cash online. No, I am not an affiliate of any of these guys and I’ll not get paid if you buy their courses. These are well-known millionaires who will help you effectively in your online business especially if you want to become an internet marketer like me. I’ll be writing ebooks and setting up auto-responder sequences on this soon so if you need a coach, remember to follow my blog via email so that you can get my updates on how to further your career and more.

4. Teach People

I have just mentioned two millionaires above, Chris Farrell and Mark Ling. How else do they earn money online? Teaching, that’s right. You don’t have to teach people about making money online. Just look for any profitable niche and teach about it. Some examples of profitable niches are as follows:

• Save marriage
• Make money online
• Weight loss
• Dog training

People are literally making millions of dollars as we speak in the niches above and more. Do you have an awesome marriage? Are you making money online? Have you lost some weight this year? Teach people how you did it and read on to see how you’ll make money from that.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Now, there are thousands of ways that you can use to earn money online. From my personal research, a lot of internet millionaires actually make money affiliate marketing. This is very simple, it involves just putting a link that will refer people to a certain product. When people purchase that product through your link, you get paid some commission. If ClickBank was working in Kenya, I would have signed up to be Mark Ling or Chris Farrell’s affiliate and would have made a lot of cash if you bought their training through my link. If we empower more Kenyans to become online businessmen, trust me, very soon we’ll have ClickBank in Kenya or we’ll have our own “ClickBank”. It all starts now. Note that you can’t put most affiliate links in WordPress.com free blogs like this one so it’s better to invest in your own website. For affiliate marketing in Kenya, you can use the sites below instead of ClickBank:

• Plimus
• ShareASale
• PayDotCom
• CJ

In short, if you want to train people as seen in my 4th point above, check out the sites above. Actually buy and use an information product from there that is known to be profitable. If it is great, market it in your site as you teach others and begin to make money affiliate marketing.

5. Buy Stuff and Pay for Stuff

If you find something good, buy it. I know there are many who feel bad parting with some dollars. What you need to do is to look at the cost-benefit analysis. It is okay to pay for Google AdWords if you need to, spend $200 creating and marketing a profitable website, hire people to write for you, buy an online course and so on. One rule that you always need to remember is that millionaires spend money to make money. You’ll only get to a certain level or move at a certain speed if you only depend on free tools.

6. Hang Out with Millionaires

It is advisable to hang out with millionaires and other like-minded people. How do you do this? Go to the top earning blogs and leave your questions and comments there. Join different forums. In Kenya, one of the best forums on wealth is Wazua. I have been a member there since my unemployment, non-freelancing days till now and have learnt lots of stuff. Join the Warrior Forum and participate actively. Remember that’s where guys like Brad Callen hangs out. Join paid networks if you have to. There are many great Facebook and LinkedIn groups and pages that are run by millionaires. Also remember to follow these two Kenyan sites which offer great advice:

• Make Money Online in Kenya
• Work in Kenya

Finally, most top blogs have an opt-in box where they promise some free stuff if you join them. Get a millionaire’s blog such as Quick Sprout and opt-in by adding your name and email address so that you can be receiving great stuff from them. Even if you don’t buy their systems, you’ll learn how to market systems from them.

7. Write About What You Want to Be

I write mostly about Christian life, making money online, self-help and health. In short, I want to always remain straight with God, make online cash, help people and always stay healthy. Whatever you want to be, write about it in iWriter, Fiverr e.t.c. You will soon be a walking Google in these topics. When you are setting up sites in these niches, you won’t have a hard time looking for content. After all, it is always great to do what you love.

8. Take Action

As I have always said, you’ll never achieve anything if you don’t take action. Information in your brain is nothing but information. For it to bear fruit, it needs to be put in action. Personally I am in the process of creating some affiliate sites and hope to one day create an information product. I am also preparing some ebooks and wouldn’t mind hiring one of you very soon to program for me a great software for freelance writers in Kenya. My main focus right now and what I recommend to be your main focus is to get more Kenyans online. This will  help us  have our own market where we can thrive in. The following are untapped areas which you can explore:

• Creating a purely Kenyan freelancers forum
• A Kenyan freelancing website like iWriter, Elance e.t.c
• Software targeted for freelancers made by Kenyans
• A Kenyan SEO company

Which other ways do you think we can earn our first million shillings (or even dollars) per month from? What do you think of the above  ideas? How much do you earn online? Feel free to share your questions and comments below. Share this post with all your friends so that they don’t miss out in this growing market.