Happy New Year everyone!
I am saying this on the 17th since I believe all the noise has settled and no one else is telling you that ;)
Do you want to know how freelancing in Kenya was in 2012? Below are some great things that happened in 2012 in the Kenyan freelancing scene, from the eyes of FreelancerKenya.
January 2012 – Google’s Kenyan Sting Operation
This was funny. Anyway, Google was involved in some sting operation in Kenya. Read all about it here.
April 1st – The birth of FreelancerKenya
1st April 2012 marked the birth of FreelancerKenya.
It started as a joke after I was messed up by some clients and decided to start a site that will help protect other Kenyan freelancers. Back then, it used to be a wordpress.com site that could be accessed through FreelancerKenya.wordpress.com. Note that if you click on that http://freelancerkenya.wordpress.com url, you’ll be redirected to this one.
Below is my very first post online. It is also one of my most read posts to date.
Where to Start as a Kenyan Freelance Writer
Of course I have now tweaked it a bit to fit into the current scene.
My second article and one of my most unread articles is Know Your Skills.
April 24th – PayPal Withdrawals
In April 24th, I published an article on PayPal withdrawals. That is one of my most popular articles to date. What made it unique is the fact that I was the first Kenyan to blog about the Payoneer option. Below is the article:
How to Withdraw Money from PayPal in Kenya
July 10th – iWriter Suspends Kenya
iWriter completely suspended Kenya on July 10th. After a while we were reinstated but on a limited capacity.
This was the highlight of my WordPress.com site. This post quickly went viral; getting 343 views on its first day and becoming my most popular post. It is also the most commented on article on FreelancerKenya to date. Let me just say this was my big break, the post that got me out there.
July 11th – 2nd Place in Fogs Contest
I emerged 2nd best in a Fogs.com contest.
A guy got me from a freelancing site, asked me to write an article and paid for it. He then requested me to join the contest in his site. It was great becoming number 2 among 100s, including native English writers. It was even greater to receive their $150 cash price, making the total amount earned for 1 article $154 ($4 is what he had paid me to write it, $150 the cash price).
July 20th – $50 Mention
I was paid $50 to mention a certain overseas company in FreelancerKenya.WordPress.com.
This is the easiest $50 I have ever made. It took me less than 2 minutes to edit a certain article and mention them. Of course I soon started internet marketing and made much more.
This was where I thanked God for inspiring me to start a blog as a joke. Note that it took me almost 4 months to start earning from the blog. This year, I’ll be training newbies how they can start a blog which earns them money as a premium, but affordable course.
August 16th – NationHela Launch
NationHela launched big in Kenya. It promised to be another method of helping Kenyans access PayPal cash.
It wasn’t much of a success since its site kept changing, they delayed people’s payments and eventually they stopped PayPal loads. You can read all about it in the post below:
NationHela Review – Is This The PayPal Withdrawal Method Kenyans Have Been Looking For?
They still exist in the money transfer market but not as successful as their launch promised. I guess this is because they deal with 3G DirectPay, a company that does not have that good a reputation yet.
5th October – FreelancerKenya Goes Self-hosted
Can I get an AMEN!
Of course you cannot do much advertising and affiliate marketing in WordPress.com. 5th October marked the day when I officially moved to a self-hosted website, FreelancerKenya.com. This required me to start paying for my domain name and hosting.
The move was majorly inspired by an affiliate marketing training that I was doing called Affiloblueprint. Like the wise say, you have to use money to make money. Enough said.
8th October – How to Make Real Money Online in Kenya eBook Launch
I launched my first eBook on 8th October. I had challenged myself not to always be an affiliate, but rather to start creating my own products. The eBook was a success and is still selling to date. More about it in the post below:
How to Make REAL Money Online in Kenya eBook is Out!
13th October – Another iWriter Ban
After the dust had settled on the first ban, another one was rolled out, affecting mobile ISPs. This ban is still in place therefore some people can still not access it.
Another iWriter Ban Affecting Even More IPs
Brad, the owner of iWriter recently sent me an email stating that 40 Kenyan accounts belonging to two Kenyans were banned due to some integrity issues. The guys were trying to falsely improve their ratings. I sent this message quickly to my mailing list.
He insists that Kenyans should work on their honesty and I reiterate it. On the other hand, this is the internet, we have near-perfect reputations in other sites like Elance and Freelancer. I therefore advice Kenyans not to look down upon themselves, maybe some hacker in New York is causing all this “Kenyan” thing in iWriter.
Once again, this is the internet, anything can happen.
8th Nov – SlumFest 6
In just 8 months of blogging, I was invited for my first speaking engagement on SlumFest 6. This was an incredible event attended by the likes of Juliani, Mugo Kibati and Ronald Osumba.
9th Nov – End Year
I went quiet from 9th Nov to 4th Jan as I was doing so many other projects out there. It was funny that my site still remained visible in search engines, getting approximately 100 visitors per day and earning affiliate commissions. I still kept contact with my mailing list, keeping them up to date with whatever was happening on the ground.
As usual, I kept responding to all FreelancerKenya comments and emails.
That’s It
That’s about it in terms of how it was freelancing in Kenya in 2012. Big up to you all for being faithful followers of my blog.
A special appreciation to the guys who helped us fight out the iWriter thing and all the people who have been leaving comments and sharing my blog posts on their social network pages.
I also appreciate everyone who follows the blog via email so that they never miss a post.
Finally, I appreciate those in my mailing list and those who buy my products and trainings.
Once again, Happy New Year 2013 everyone! I have great plans ahead for Kenyan freelancers. Stay tuned!
Hi. I have been a freelancer for about a year now. I have one steady client whose blogs I keep updated. But I do not like the risk of depending on just one source of income online. As such, I have been working with London Brokers (www.myams.net/writer) where my consistency and quality was so good that they had elevated me to level 5 around October last year (the site is such a black-box that I only got to know of this much later, but at the time I had access to high premium orders that pay up to $7.5 per 400 word article).
I slacked off a bit from writing for London Brokers around the last few months. In the meantime, the site operators instituted wide ranging changes to the site and closed a good number of Kenyan accounts though mine survived. At the moment they are no longer accepting Kenyan writers.
Three weeks ago they started limiting access to orders for lowly ranked writers. One of my articles was caught with a couple of typos by one of their reviewers and my account was downgraded to level 1. I had no access to orders any more.I contacted their online support and this was when I got the lowdown on ranking and bulletin board access limitations. When I log in these days I have to type in my password twice and I have only managed to get about 4 orders since.
I love London Brokers as they have very many orders and are directly associated with the famous UAW article submission service. This means at the best of times, you will always have work to do. Moreover, most of their orders come with no special instructions at all and you need to do virtually no research. I have submitted hundreds (yes, HUNDREDS) of articles with exactly the same information but different phrasing and got paid for it.
I do not want to leave London Brokers. I am sure one of these days I will get an order which will be reviewed and my account will be upgraded again. However, I need reference to website that is reliable and stocked with orders. I opened an iWriter account and even before I could submit my first article, my access was limited.
Do you have any idea of a reliable site where I can get access to jobs please? I have no time to place bids and I have been scammed on Freelancer.com before…
hae njoroge iam Esther iam currently looking for an account even those that do not display articles any more. If you are willing to sell or have some leads where i can get some please contact me at [email protected]
Try scripted.com, their pay is excellent…..
Thanks for our addition TK.
Hi Njoroge,
Thanks for your comment.
I am happy to hear you have a steady client who you keep updating his blog.
Wow! You seem to have been doing an awesome job at London Brokers. Sorry about the Kenya thing. I learnt to get over that fast.
Now, I am sorry to disappoint you, most of the great non-bidding sites have problems with Kenyans and other non-natives. Even if you write better than half of the natives they don’t care. I don’t like complaining about such things so I move on to where Kenyans are loved and accepted.
I suggest iWriter if you want a non-bidding site. IF you can’t get through you can try using a different modem. For now, Airtel works perfect. You can also Google other masking software if you want.
Otherwise, sorry to disappoint you but bidding sites seem to be the places where you can get the most love. Just make sure you choose clients with good reviews and insist on milestones or frequent payments. I was also scammed when starting but these two tips have been bailing out after that.
Also try out Fiverr though that can’t give you steady income, especially when starting.
The best option for you is Elance, where you can get those $5-10 clients who if you work hard enough can also supply you with steady content and income.
All the best Njoroge.
Have a great Year too
Thanks a lot Titus.
hi walter. This is Wilfred, I am still re-reading and re-reading your book on how to make money online in kenya. Like you said, it takes persistence and hard work. But I am happy that you are really guiding us on the right path. Let me share something small, I was almost conned at http://www.freelancer.com when I applied for one of those jobs such as conversion of pdf into excel documents. This man posted a project on http://www.freelance.com and many people (including 5 kenyans) placed their bid. I also placed my bid. Two hours later, the bidder sent me an email saying that he has a small job for me. He wanted me to log in into his private website and he said that my work is to read the numbers that are in the capta images, type it in the text box and submit. You can only submit one result after every 30 seconds. Something in my head told me to check whether this was related to the project he posted at freelance.com. When I checked, I noticed that his project is currently running. I notified http://www.freelance.com about this man and 2 hours later, the website informed me that they have cancelled that bid because the man is a fraudster.
Thanks Wilfred for the kind words about my eBook.
There are so many fraudsters like that in Freelancer. Never do any job before you get an email from Freelancer (Not from a client) stating that you have received the job.
Lucky you, you noticed before you started. I actually went on to type those captchas for 2 weeks when I started freelancing, only to realize that I was conned.
I thank God the next client I got ended up giving my 100s and 100s of articles. He was a brilliant paying client.
No worries bro, we all start from somewhere.
All the best 🙂