AJIRA Government Initiative To Direct The Youth To Online Work

 Kenyan Government Program To Move The Youth Workforce Online

The Kenyan government through the Ministry of ICT and Youth Affairs founded AJIRA in 2017. In 2022 this initiative has empowered over one million youth to access digital work opportunities.

This program seeks to position Kenya as a choice labor destination for digital work. The other objective is:

•  To raise the profile of digital work
•  Promote mentorship.
• Increase collaborative learning.
• Provide Kenyans with access to digital work.
• Promote Kenya as a destination for digital workers.

The guiding priciples of the AJIRA program are:

Value generation through the private sector.

Providing a sustainable model by orchestrating an ecosystem to self-regulate and grow organically.

Eliminate brokers hence creating more value for the youth.

Enhance and realize an economy of knowledge and expertise.

This is a very ambitious and useful government program that has created access to digital jobs. New jobs have been created for both local and global companies, and the youth have found an alternative to traditional employment.

Training courses available for this year 2022 include courses in e-commerce, digital marketing, transcription courses, basics of data entry, virtual assistant, etc.

Access available training courses through their website.

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High Earning Jobs You Can Teach Yourself Online

High Earning Jobs That Africans Can Learn Online

One of the best things that the internet has brought to our modern world, is the removal of gatekeepers such as institutions of higher learning and certifications that were a requirement to work in certain fields. 

If you are tired of getting undervalued and underpaid, it's not too late to learn new skills that will allow you to earn a higher income online. The best thing about these skills is they will give you the ability to work remotely from anywhere in the world, and you can learn these skills from home all by yourself. 

IOS App Developer

IOS is an operating system used in Apple devices. If the thought of building iPhone and Ipad apps is exciting to you, it can be one of the fastest ways of making a six-figure income. Although it can be difficult, it is easier for those who lean more tech-savvy. It also helps that there is a free registration IOS development course on Coursera by The University of Toronto. It will take 5 months to complete with a pace of 2 hours per week. You can also use free resources specific to African scholars such as ALXafrica and use some free instruction to master the basics.

User Experience Designer

User experience determines how the customer uses a product or service. How it looks and feels through their eyes and any points of improvement that can be applied for a better experience for the consumer. In a world of options, you never want to hear about a problem with your product from your customer. You want to pre-empt any unpleasant experiences for your customer as much as possible. 

User experience designers turn applications into something that people like and want to use. They can look at your website or app and optimize applications, improve ease and explore approaches to solve user problems.

Google offers a UX Design professional certificate on Coursera. It takes 6 months at a pace of 10 hours per week.

Digital Marketer

Digital marketers are becoming a vital part of online success. A digital marketer is responsible for developing and implementing strategies that promote a product online. They manage various social media channels, website content, email marketing, and online ads.

You can learn to be a digital marketer by mastering these aspects for clients by taking courses online and even learning from free courses on Youtube. Start with learning how to create content. How to present information online by using graphic design tools and then learning to market the content through free avenues and paid ads on search engines and social media channels.

Cybersecurity

More personal, government, and corporate data are being stored on the cloud. A huge industry in cyber security is developing to protect this data from hackers. Cyber security specialists are responsible for discovering vulnerabilities and risks in networks, software systems, and data centers.

You can be a Certified Information Security Manager by taking an online class. This role gives you expertise in information security governance. Incident Management and risk management as well as program management and development.

Google, Amazon, and IBM offer cybersecurity courses online.

Blockchain Developer

Blockchain is defined as a ledger of decentralized data that is securely shared. A blockchain developer enables secure digital transactions by creating systems to record and store blockchain data in a way that prevents changes or hacks. They design blockchain technologies, develop app features and maintain client and server applications.

There is a blockchain basics course for free offered by great learning. 

These are high-earning jobs that you can learn from home in the next couple of months. Do you currently hold any of these skills? Which one are you most interested in learning? Comment below and share with our community of African freelancers.

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Creating A Brand Identity

 How To Create A Brand Identity From Start To Finish

Brand identity is the visible element of a brand. These aspects include color, design, and logo that identify and distinguish the brand in the eyes of the consumer.

Brand Strategy And Creative Direction

This is how a brand intends on building rapport and favorability in the market. There are four brand strategies;

• Line extension. Creating additional products in response to consumer needs.
• Brand Extension. Introduction of a new brand in a market, after consolidating in a related field.
• New brand strategy. When a firm creates a new brand to go with a new product.
• Fight brand strategy. This is the placement of a new brand or sub-brand in a higher or lower price point to capture a new market segment.

Logo Exploration And Design

A good logo should instantly be recognizable to the consumer, by being simple, unique, appropriate, and memorable. It should convey clearly a company's goal and why the brand exists. A good logo should also be able to exist in different sizes and be applied to different products, packaging, and signage.

Brand Elements And Assets

Brand assets are elements such as color scheme, specific font, or ad jingle that help to identify a certain brand. These only become assets once customers associate them with a brand. These brand elements serve a specific purpose to a brand;

• Unique to the brand
• Purpose-driven for the brand.
• Knows its target market
• Stays on-brand at all times
• Authentic to the brand
• Thick-skinned as a way to protect the brand

Brand Inaction

Brands must decide even before any incidents, where they will take action or where they will choose inaction. A brand should not respond to every opposition, query, or instance that occurs. For example, a bank robber may choose to wear a Nike jersey while robbing a bank and get caught. The press will blast images of a bank robber wearing a Nike logo jersey. This kind of instance requires brand inaction, by not responding to such incidences. Based on the product or service offered a brand can expect its name and image to get caught up in a way that disparages the brand name and brand inaction will be the most logical way to respond.

Presenting The Branding

Time requires that brands present themselves to the consumer in a way that is appropriate for societal norms that come with the changing of eras. A brand must be adaptable in order to survive the test of time. This could include changing the shade identified as their brand color from lighter to darker blue. Changing fonts to appear more modern yet true to its identity. Constantly tweaking aspects of the brand identity in order to remain relevant to the times.

This is how to create a brand identity from start to finish. Have you worked on a brand identity before? Was it for your company or a client? Comment in the section below and share with our community of African freelancers.

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Digital Marketing Gigs For Freelancers

 5 Ways African Freelancer Can Monetize on Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is basically internet marketing. It is the use of online-based approaches to promote goods and services to customers. These promotional approaches are usually directed to;

• Search engines
• Social media platforms
• Email blasts
• Websites
• Videos

There is a huge opportunity for African freelancers to help brands and companies use these mediums to market their goods and services. Here are ways you can make money in digital marketing.

Creating Social Media Posts

You can create social media post gigs for clients who want to strategize their social media timeline. Infographics, memes, video clips, and sales promotions are a common way to make money online by creating social media posts customized for each brand. You can break it down for 10 days, 30 days, or even longer. Create engaging, relevant social media posts as a gig, and many brands and online companies will pay you for it.

Online Ad Strategist

You can create google ads, ads on search engines, and ads on social media for clients. The world of online ads is a confusing, time-consuming yet completely essential part of operating an online business. You can improve your skills in social media management by using google. Google digital garage is an online course by google that trains in digital marketing. You can receive certification for Digital Marketing completely free. This will give you the skills you need to deliver great online Ads strategies. There are also useful sites such as Ad Box, that will show you high-performing ad examples that you can use as templates to find success in your online ads.

Refining Target Market

Sometimes brands start out with a vague idea of what their target market looks like. A target market is a particular group of consumers at which a product or service is aimed. These people exhibit similar characteristics, have the same values, and share certain demographics. A good example of this is Tea drinkers versus coffee drinkers. These are completely different target groups, and even among the coffee drinkers, there are those that drink instant coffee versus those that buy whole beans and grind them each time they make a cup of coffee. A target market is very specific, and getting it right will determine better results while marketing to a group of people online. You can help brands find their target market.

Brand Identity

Just like matching your curtains to your furniture, it is very important to have a cohesive brand identity. A brand identity is an imagery, colors, and symbols used in a company's website, apps, and social media pages. You can create brand identity that will help them in creating logos, banners, posters, and images that they will use as a guide in their online presence. Websites such as Canva make it easier for us to create illustrations, graphics, and images that a brand can use to refine its brand identity online.

Sales Funnels

A sales funnel is the journey that the customer goes through in order to purchase goods or services from a company. Each step of the funnel takes the buyer one step closer to making a purchase. A well-planned sales funnel will define the actions a business needs to take to push prospective clients to the next step. You can create a sales funnel from search engines or social media ads and guide people from seeing the marketing online to a landing page on a website that shows product descriptions and guide them to buy from your client. Sales funnels are complicated and effective and this is why brands will hire you to create e-mail capturing, landing pages, and other means used in sales funnels.

These are five easy ways to make money using digital marketing. There are free certifications and great templates you can use for success with this gig on Fiverr. You can also create a Fiverr seller account to offer your services online.

What are some good resources you use for digital marketing? Comment below and share with our community of African freelancers.

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How To Make Money As A Coder

 In this video, we visit websites that hire coders online. We look at their requirements and the ability of African Coders to join.

We also look at creative ways of making money online as a coder by teaching and creating plugins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Links to websites 1. https://geektastic.com/ 2. https://www.hackerrank.com/ 3. https://www.hackerearth.com/ 4.https://www.topcoder.com/

5. https://codecanyon.net/ 6.http://www.tutor.com/ 7. https://www.classgap.com/en --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you like this video, please give us a thumbs up so that we can keep making more content for online work, remote jobs, and working from home in Africa. Please also subscribe and press the notification bell to get notified of our new videos every week.

REVIEW: International Writing Gigs For Freedom With Writing

In this video, I bring to you current writing gigs from https://www.freedomwithwriting.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I explore the kinds of writing jobs available on this website. If you are a freelance writer or you want to start writing and getting paid gigs you will love this opportunity.

 

Best AdSense Alternatives For Blogger Traffic

How to Monetize Your Content With Alternative Advertising Platforms 

Google AdSense is a program through which publishers can earn money with their content. AdSense works by matching ads to your site based on your content and visitors. Google being the largest search engine becomes the default for most publishers, but there are alternatives that all publishers should consider.

Infolinks

This is a global advertising platform, offering ad solutions for both publishers and advertisers. Online advertisers utilize the Infolinks self-serve marketplace to customize their own campaigns.

Monumetric

Set up in 2012, this ad network provides bloggers with ad solutions that favor the website owner. Monumetric offers accurate reporting and performance data as well as a more custom experience for bloggers and their audience.

Media.net

This ad network is run by yahoo and bing. It allows you to monetize your content through the exclusive access demand from Yahoo and Bing. Media.net uses contextual ads to open up advertising search budgets worth billions of dollars. This format filters the user's intent via relevant search keywords resulting in finely targeted ads and much higher revenues as advertisers are willing to pay more for visitors with qualified intent.

Amazon Native Shopping Ads

This ad agency allows you to place ads in product article pages to automatically display relevant product recommendations from Amazon based on your page content and audience. Native shopping ads are stylishly designed and responsive types of ad units, that can be placed at the end of content to create a more compelling visitor experience as well as an organic shopping opportunity.

Evadav

They specialize in push notification ads to bring in revenue. Evadav guarantees the highest CR/CTR by matching the best offers with relevant audience boosting the efficiency of your ad campaigns. They also cut off any bots or suspicious activity providing only real users and live audiences for campaigns.

Have you used any of these AdSense alternatives? Which one would work best for your audience? Comment below and share with our community of African freelancers.

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5 Businesses You Can Start With Zero Investments

 How Anyone Can Start A Business With Zero Investment

Starting a business with zero investment is a great way of determining if a business is worth reinvesting funds into. A lot of fortune 500 companies were started with zero investment, as well as the wit and skills of their founders. Here are five businesses you can start TODAY with zero investments.

E-commerce Reseller

E-commerce sites are often free for e-commerce resellers to list their products, later charging for commission and other fees. If you have a supermarket or mall within walking distance from your home. You should go there and see what products you could resell online. Look through a group of products that interest you, the sky is the limit. If you have a new baby, maybe you have come to learn about products that are useful to new parents. If you love doing your hair and makeup, you may come to know trendy useful products that you could use to build a customer base online. List the products on the website add fees and commission to the price and wait until you get an order before you buy the products from the supermarket or mall to relist. You would be surprised at how many products you can resell online for a profit.

Build Websites

Even without software design skills required to build websites, you can use website building platforms that are easy to use. These drag and drop website builders allow you to simply change different aspects of a website by adding and removing features. They even have pre-set templates that can be used by just changing the name and images to reflect the brand or company of the user. You can market yourself as a website builder and use the free trial period in order to create websites for your clients. Mark up the registration required by the website builder and also have an option to charge your client for weekly or monthly changes as needed. This website-building business will cost you zero to set up but can give you great financial rewards as recurring income.

Dropshipping

This is a form of retail business, where the seller accepts customers' orders online or in person without keeping the stock and fulfilling customers' orders directly with the manufacturer or distributor. The distributor will then deliver the goods to the customer. The drop shipper considers the cost of the goods, and delivery costs and marks up the price of the goods to make their profit. Once orders come in the seller will use the customers' payments to repay the distributors who will ship and deliver items to the buyer.

Travel Agency Business

Travel agencies usually arrange travel for their clients. This can be the purchase of flights, accommodation, tours, admission fees, and more. The easiest way to get started with this kind of business is to create custom travel arrangements for your clients. This can be done by calling or even emailing hotels, museums, beach clubs, or any activities your guests would be interested in. Finding their rates, negotiating lower rates, and reselling to your customers. You can also approach local restaurants or clubs and negotiate a rate for all the guests you bring to their establishment. This method is especially effective if you live in a high tourist country.

Vlogging

Vlogging is documenting experiences in video form and uploading them as content to help your audience experience a different place or navigate an experience through your eyes. With platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and TickTock, monetizing short and long video content. You could record content online and post on these platforms completely free. This can be very rewarding if you find your target market and speak to them directly. Read how to rank on search engines, to make sure your content gets seen by as many people as are interested in your topic.

Have you ever started any of these businesses? What was your experience? Share in the comments below with our community of African freelancers.

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Online Surveys on Survimo in 2022

 

In this video, I will go through the sign-up process for Survimo https://bit.ly/3DFhESc I will tell you my initial observations on their website and what they promise their survey participants. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is Survimo Legit or a scam? Real-life experience on the site for my opinion on the matter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like more content like this reviewing different work from home platforms, please SUBSCRIBE to our youtube channel. Like this video and give me any feedback on what platforms and websites you want me to review.

Is It Too Late To Start Freelancing In 2022

 Why Africans Should Start Freelancing Now

Now is a great time to start freelancing. Freelancing has always been an option that plenty of people have used to earn an income but thanks to our new normal post COVID, corporation, small and medium companies are now testing freelancers to fill the gap in their workforce. With the uncertainty of todays world, employees are quitting their jobs with more frequency abruptly and it's easier for most companies to outsource work to freelancers before they permanently fill positions.

Freelancers For Startups

It's also a great option for startups who cannot afford to have full time employees to dedicated positions. Full time and part time employees have to work in company offices, have benefits and dedicated salary every month. However, freelancers can be paid per task and per project whenever needed making it a great hiring option for start ups.

Freelance Careers

It's also a great time to hire freelancers because of the change in careers. New careers are popping up to accomodate future tech and social media filled world. Even old careers like marketing and advertising are being replaced by digital marketing, which five years ago was not being taught in university. The work force is being forced to hire digital marketing firms who through freelancing, have learned the new way of digital marketing.

Specialized Skills

Freelancers specialize in specific fields at a time and hence can hold more competency than traditional employees. Social media managers are a good example of this. A company may have managers that oversee business operations, however, they may need a social media manager whose sole responsibility is to manage social media accounts. A freelance social media manager is a very common addition to most brands, although it will not be created as a full time position. A social media manager is also a great addition during marketing campaigns and product launches and then scaled back once marketing campaign is over.

Competitive Edge

Freelancers are often self-motivated because their business relies on constantly being better than the competition. They are often replacable at the drop of a dime, and they have to consitently produce good work in order to keep getting hired. Businesses find that freelancers can often be more reliable than traditional employees because they don't always expect to be asked to work on a project or task.

Freelancer also get to benefit from their business arrangement because freelancers earn higher income. This is because they can have multiple clients and charge more based on the project difficulty and complexity. They also get to work as many hours as they want, choosing which project to pick up earning themselves more money. 

The flexibility of hours worked can also vary for freelancers choosing to work around their family obligations, travel arrangements, religious and national holidays. This means that freelancers will show up to work ready and available to work bringing their A game to every job they pick up and work on.

Are you a freelancer? Why do you choose to be a freelancer? Comment below and share with our community of African freelancers. 

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