Posts filed under ‘Business Opportunity’
Renting a read from ‘newspaper landlords’
By Robyn Curnow, CNN
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (CNN) – Garum Tesfaye is one of Addis Ababa’s “newspaper landlords,” a group of entrepreneurs in the Ethiopian capital who rent out papers to people too poor to buy them.
Surrounded by worn-out copies of old newspapers, stacks of gossip magazines and the crisp print of the latest news, Tesfaye sits attentively, checking his watch every now and then.
Near him, a pedestrian bridge provides shelter from the sun to dozens of avid readers who quickly, albeit meticulously, get their dose of the latest news.
For 20 to 30 minutes, these readers can get their hands on a newspaper for a fraction of the price of having to buy it. If they keep the paper longer than their allotted rental time, they have to pay extra.
A newspaper in Addis Ababa costs about six birr (35 U.S. cents) to buy. In contrast, it costs only 50 Ethiopian cents (less than one U.S. cent) to rent one.
“If 20 readers read this single paper at the rate of 50 cents, I will make 10 birr (about 60 U.S. cents),” says Tesfaye, whose business serves a regular customer base that visits his makeshift roadside shop each day.
Most of the readers focus on vacancies rather than regular news.
“Most of the readers focus on vacancies rather than regular news,” Tesfaye says.
Among his customers are unemployed university graduates who tend to rent several publications a day as they desperately hunt for work.
To set up shop, all newspaper landlords need is a shady street-side location and start-up capital for a stash of newspapers and magazines.
Tesfaye says that 30 to 40 people will read a single paper. At the end of the day, the well-thumbed publications can be sold on.
“After a newspaper passes its deadline we will sell it to shops who can use it as packaging for items that they sell,” says Tesfaye, who says he uses the earnings from his business to support his three siblings.
But Ethiopia’s newspaper rental industry — although a vital lifeline for people such as Tesfaye — is also putting pressure on the profits of the country’s private newspaper owners.
With about 83 million people, Ethiopia has the second largest population in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, the east African country boasts just 24 newspapers, among the fewest on the continent.
Dawit Kebede is the owner of Awramba Times, a weekly Amharic newspaper which is one of Ethiopia’s last remaining independent publications.
“For the reading habits it is good,” he says of the rental industry, but he quickly adds: “For the publisher it is nothing. If we calculate in terms of income, the publisher gets nothing from such rentals.”
For Kebede, every newspaper that’s rented instead of being sold is a further challenge for those few trying to survive in the tough Ethiopian media environment, which is dominated by state-owned publications.
But newspaper landlords such as Tesfaye have other issues to worry about. The biggest threat to their small enterprises is not political propaganda but petty thieves.
“There are some readers who ask for papers to read and vanish immediately so we have to turn our neck from the left to the right to check if things are alright,” says Tesfaye.
Ethiopia outsources telecom management to France Telecom
By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia signed an agreement late on Thursday to outsource the management of its sole telecoms provider to France Telecom as it seeks to improve coverage and service.
The agreement marks the first foray by a foreign company into Ethiopia’s state-owned telecoms industry, which remains one of Africa’s few remaining government monopolies in the sector.
The management of Ethio Telecom will be taken over by the France Telecom for two years, in a deal worth 30 million euros for the French company, the state-owned monopoly said.
“France Telecom will strive to improve and modernise Ethio Telecom’s overall business aspect by implementing a new organisational structure,” it said in a statement.
Ethiopia has the second highest population in Africa after Nigeria but has one of the least developed telecoms industries on a continent where mobile phone use is exploding.
Mobile phone usage is about 5 percent out of a total population of more than 80 million people. In neighbouring Kenya, mobile penetration is more than 50 percent.
The Ethiopian government has invested heavily in its telecoms industry in the past few years in a bid to boost communication flows and reduce rates, including an 80 Gigabyte fibre network via the Port of Sudan landing station.
Chinese telecoms equipment maker ZTE bagged a contract from Ethiopia in 2008 to build next-generation telecoms networks in 14 cities.
The Horn of Africa nation, however, has so far shrugged off calls by the International Monetary Fund and other agencies to liberalise its telecoms sector.
© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
If you are searching for the jobs online that do not require degrees
If you are searching for the jobs online that do not require degrees? Fortunately there are many online jobs which do not require special skills and that allow you to start earning immediately. Many people already doing online jobs are seeing a six figure income. There are a lot of potential opportunities for those that are willing to apply themselves. There is no such thing as get rich overnight without applying some effort. The most popular and 3 highest paid affiliate marketing jobs are:
• Starting your own online affiliate store whereby you offer the consumer products or services. This is one of the most lucrative ways to generate an income. All you need do is find a product that is in demand or a service that people are interested in. by offering these products and services you will generate at least a six figure income monthly.
• Another one of the 3 highest paid affiliate marketing jobs are freelancing. All you need do is advertise your talents to various companies. There are various freelance writing jobs, bloggers and designers. Although most companies don’t really offer much for articles. However, there are companies that offer a decent amount and pay around $250 an article whereby one can make a substantial amount of money.
• Another one of the 3 highest paid affiliate marketing jobs are paid surveys. A survey takes around 15 minutes to complete and is a lucrative business. Many companies pay around $50 a completed survey.
Besides the 3 highest paid affiliate marketing jobs mentioned, there are many others one could tap into. All you need do is some research and find a niche best suited to your needs. Do not run with any of the scams. One cannot make money overnight, dedication and effort is a needed ingredient to become successful.
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Are you really interested in making money… |
Africa domain attracts interest
By Edris Kisambira
Even though ICANN has not yet issued the license that will allow for the creation of the .Africa domain name registry, there seems to be a lot of interest at the pan-African level.
Even though ICANN has not yet issued the license that will allow for the creation of the .Africa domain name registry, there seems to be a lot of interest at the pan-African level.
“If I can grade the level of interest on a scale of zero to five, I would say it is at five,” said Sophia Bekele, founder and executive director of DotConnectAfrica (DCA), the nonprofit umbrella organization for the .Africa domain initiative.
Bekele was in Kampala, the Uganda capital, to attend the East Africa Internet Governance Forum, which ended Friday.
“I have seen interest at the pan-African level, and a lot of companies that have pan-African operations like mobile-phone operator Zain, continental banks and even multinationals with African operations are excited about it,” Bekele said.
Bekele said that aside from the policy bodies like the African Union and the African Development Bank (ADB), prospective users of the .Africa name include pan-African companies like MTN, ECOBank, United Bank for Africa and foreign companies doing business in Africa like Microsoft, Goggle and Coca-Cola.
The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board in February next year is set to expand the generic top-level domain space from four — “.com,” “.org,” “.net” and “.biz” — to 21.
Bekele, a policy adviser to ICANN between 2005 and 2007, said the idea for an .Africa domain came up at the time she advised ICANN on existing top-level domains like .com and .org, and geographical names like .EU and .Asia.
“I asked why not .Africa? I initially went to the existing African grouping and African persons serving on the board, and I was told it was a very difficult task getting the African governments to agree,” she said.
Bekele said she has spent the past two years working with the African Union’s (AU) infrastructure commission to get the endorsements required for the application to ICANN.
In November last year, the Council of African Internet Communication Technology ministers meeting in South Africa adopted a resolution to “establish Dot Africa as a continental top-level domain for use by organizations, businesses and individuals with guidance from African Internet agencies.”
In February this year, the AU heads of state meeting in Addis Ababa endorsed the DotAfrica initiative.
The DCA proposal has been endorsed by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), which coordinates African ministries of economic affairs.
DotConnectAfrica, if it receives a license, will operate the .Africa top-level domain registry with help from sponsor organizations and business people. Money generated will go directly to an African organization to build capacity in Africa, Bekele said.
The .Africa initiative will also work with the country code top-level domains of Africa. Most ccTLDs are run by technical people who could use help on the business and marketing side of operations.
Bekele said she will engage in a continental marketing campaign, working with pan-African institutions to encourage development of content to popularize the .Africa name.
The push for the .Africa domain has not been smooth sailing for the DCA, however.
“So far the challenges we have faced are from existing African groupings that had resisted our applications to do the .Africa name,” Bekele said.
The DCA is often mistakenly seen as representing U.S. interests and being led by the private sector, Bekele noted.
Appealing for support at the conference in Kampala, Bekele said, “A continental project is complex and requires many stakeholders to make it a success, so we call upon everyone to join us and make it happen, instead of detracting from the process.”
Source: Computer World
From texting to apps, using cell phones for health
By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP)
WASHINGTON — What if my blood sugar’s too high today? Is it time for my blood pressure pill? With nagging text messages or more customized two-way interactions, researchers are trying to harness the power of cell phones to help fight chronic diseases.
“I call it medical minutes,” says Dr. Richard Katz of George Washington University Hospital in the nation’s capital.
He’s testing whether inner-city diabetics, an especially hard-to-treat population, might better control their blood sugar — and thus save Medicaid dollars — by tracking their disease using Internet-connected cell phones, provided with reduced monthly rates as long as they regularly comply.
Consider Tyrone Harvey, 43, who learned he had diabetes seven years ago only after getting so sick he was hospitalized for a week, and who has struggled to lower his blood sugar ever since. In May, through a study Katz began with nearby Howard University Hospital’s diabetes clinic, Harvey received a Web-based personal health record that he clicks onto using his cell phone, to record his daily blood sugar measurements.
If Harvey enters a reading higher or lower than preset danger thresholds, a text message automatically pings a warning, telling him what to do. And at checkups, doctors will use the personal health record, created by Indiana-based NoMoreClipboard.com, to track all his fluctuations and decide what next steps to advise.
“Hopefully you’re paying more attention to your numbers, too,” says Howard’s Dr. Gail Nunlee-Bland, whose clinic uses an electronic health record — your official medical history — that can automatically link to NoMoreClipboard’s consumer version and update it with things like medication changes.
The trend is called mobile health or, to use tech-speak, mHealth. If you’re a savvy smartphone user, you’ve probably seen lots of apps that claim to help your health or fitness goals — using your phone like a pedometer or an alarm clock to signal when it’s time to take your medicine.
Katz and other researchers are going a step further, scientifically testing whether more personalized cell phone-based programs can link patients’ own care with their doctors’ disease-management efforts in ways that might provide lasting health improvement.
“Mobile phones provide that opportunity for persons to get the feedback they need when they need it,” explains Charlene Quinn, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland medical school, who is testing a competing cell phone diabetes system from Baltimore-based Welldoc Inc.
After all, most of the population now carries a cell phone. Accessing the Internet with them is on the rise, too — nearly 40 percent of cell callers do, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported last week — allowing more sophisticated digital health contact.
On the other hand, older adults are less likely to use smartphones. So are people who are sicker, with multiple chronic diseases, says Dr. Joseph Kvedar, director of the Center for Connected Health, a division of Boston’s Partners Healthcare.
Kvedar notes that nearly any phone can handle simpler text-messaging programs. Among the biggest offered to date is the free text4baby, where government-vetted health tips timed to pregnant women’s due dates are texted weekly to about 50,000 participants so far.
Do these kinds of technologies work? There’s some short-term evidence, although no one knows if people stick with it once the novelty wears off:
_In a study of 70 Boston residents to improve cancer-preventing use of sunscreen, Kvedar found daily texts with reminders hooked to the weather forecast for six weeks increased sunscreen use by 40 percent.
_Researchers at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center found episodes of rejection dropped when they texted take-your-medicine reminders to 41 pediatric liver transplant recipients or their caregivers, adding another text nag to the parent if teen patients didn’t quickly respond that they’d taken their dose.
_The University of California, San Diego, went a step further, designing a text-message program to encourage weight loss where participants texted back answers to such questions as “Did you buy fresh raw vegetables to snack on this week?” Answering allowed more customized texted diet tips. In a pilot study of 75 people, text-message recipients lost about four more pounds in four months than those given printed dieting advice.
_The Internet-based approach offers even more two-way interaction. This fall, Quinn will report results of a 260-patient study using a range of Welldoc phone features, including more real-time monitoring of the blood sugar fluctuations users enter. A small Welldoc pilot study found users’ average blood sugar dropped over three months.
“What systems work best with patients has yet to be figured out,” says George Washington’s Katz, who is testing a version of that program, too — and worries not just about affordability when his study is over but whether interest will wane. “Otherwise, they find it’s a nice toy to start with, and forget about it.”
EDITOR’s NOTE _ Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
British oil worker shot dead in Ethiopia
A Briton working for an oil company has been shot dead in Ethiopia, the Foreign Office has confirmed. The 39-year-old geologist was killed on Monday near Danot, a town in the Warder zone of Ethiopia, in the conflict-stricken Ogaden region. He worked for IMC Geophysics International – which was subcontracted to Malaysian oil giant Petronas. It is believed he was attacked while driving alone in what officials have called an “act of banditry”. Full inquiry A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We can confirm the death of a British national on 5 April near Danot town in the Warder zone of Ethiopia. “Next of kin have been informed and we have offered the family full consular assistance. “The Ethiopian authorities are carrying out a full inquiry and we are liaising closely with them.” Bereket Simon, Ethiopia’s communications minister, said the man had not taken the appropriate “security measures” and was driving alone. He said: “We have reports that the incident has occurred and is an act of banditry. “Following the act the local militia had confronted the perpetrators and had taken measures on them. “We understand that the act was not politically motivated.” Barbaric attack Although Ethiopia does not currently produce oil, Chinese companies and Petronas have signed deals to explore the area. The area has seen a great deal of bloodshed as the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), formed in 1984, has fought for the independence of ethnic Somalis in the oil-rich region for some time. It says the Somali-speaking population has been marginalised by the capital Addis Ababa. The fighting has escalated over the past two years following an ONLF attack on a Chinese-run oil exploration field. More than 70 people died in the attack, including Ethiopian guards and Chinese workers. Addis Ababa calls the rebels “terrorists” and has cut off all access to the region. But Abdirahman Mahdi, spokesman for the Ogadeni rebels, told the Associated Press news agency that as far as they were aware, “our fighters are not involved in such barbaric attacks”. “Our troops do not have permission to target foreign civilians. But we will investigate the circumstances that led to the man’s death.” Source: BBC |
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Ethiopia May Start Regular T-Bill Auctions, Capital Reports
T-Bill
By Jason McLure
March 22 (Bloomberg) — Ethiopia is considering starting fortnightly treasury bill auctions in an effort to stem monetary growth in the Horn of Africa nation, Capital said.
Officials at the central bank and finance ministry have met with experts from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to design an auction method, the report said, citing an unidentified central bank official.
The new system would replace the current, irregular system of auctions and increase yields on treasury bills, the report said.
Ethiopia’s government said it was “committed to active use of Treasury bill auctions” in an Aug. 7 letter to the IMF that was part of a $240.6 million financing package from the Washington-based lender.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg on pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
Ten Rules for More Effective Advertising
Smart
Leahy’s Law states that if a thing is done wrong often enough, it becomes right, and as a result, volume becomes a defense to error. When advertising fails to sway consumers, most advertisers follow Leahy’s Law by increasing the frequency of the advertising hoping that more of what is not working will somehow work when consumers are subjected to more of the same.
Use the following 10 simple rules to evaluate the advertising you encounter. You may be disappointed, but don’t be surprised when you discover that most advertising fails to follow any of the rules.
1. Does the ad tell a simple story, not just convey information?
A good story has a beginning where a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation, a middle where the character confronts and attempts to resolve the situation, and an end where the outcome is revealed. A good story does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience. Instead, a good story allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action. This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys information so boring.
2. Does the ad make the desired call to action a part of the story?
A good story that is very entertaining but does not make a direct connection between the desired call to action – the purpose of the ad – and the story is just a very entertaining story. The whole point of the story in advertising is to effectively deliver the desired call to action. If the audience does not clearly understand the desired call to action after seeing the ad, then there is no point in running the ad. Contrary to popular belief, having an entertaining story and clearly delivering the desired call to action are not mutually exclusive.
3. Does the ad use basic emotional appeals?
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember. There are eight basic, universal emotions – joy, surprise, anticipation, acceptance, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Successful appeals to these basic emotions consolidate stories and the desired calls to action in the lasting memories of audiences. An added bonus is that successful emotional appeals limit the number of exposures required for audiences to understand, learn, and respond to the calls to action – people may only need to see emotionally compelling scenes once and they will remember those scenes for a lifetime.
4. Does the ad use easy arguments?
“Jumping to conclusions” literally gave our ancestors an advantage even when the conclusions that made them jump were wrong because delaying actions to review information could have deadly consequences. Easy arguments are the conclusions people reach using inferences without a careful review of available information. Find and use easy arguments that work because it is almost impossible to succeed when working against them.
5. Does the ad show, and not tell?
“Seeing is believing” and “actions speak louder than words” are two common sayings that reflect a bias and preference for demonstrated behavior. This is especially true when interests may not be the same. Assume audiences are skeptical about any advertising and design advertising that shows and does not tell.
6. Does the ad use symbolic language and images that relate to the senses?
People prefer symbolic language and images that relate to the senses. People are far less receptive and responsive to language and images that relate to concepts. Life is experienced through the senses and using symbolic language and images that express what people feel, see, hear, smell, or taste are easier for people to understand, even when used to describe abstract concepts. The language and images used in advertising should “make sense” to the audience.
7. Does the ad match what viewers see with what they hear?
People expect and prefer coordinated audio and visual messages because those messages are easier to process and understand. Audio and visual messages that are out-of-sync may gain attention, but audiences find them uncomfortable.
8. Does the ad stay with a scene long enough for impact?
People have limited mental processing capacities. Quick cuts to different scenes require people to devote more of their limited resources to following the cuts and less resources to processing each scene. It takes people between eight and ten seconds to process and produce a lasting emotional response to a scene. Camera movement or different camera angles of the same scene can engage people through their orienting responses while providing enough time for them to process the scene.
9. Does the ad let powerful video speak for itself?
Again, the processing capacity of our brains is limited and words may get in the way of emotionally powerful visual images. When powerful visual images dominate – when “a picture is worth a thousand words” – be quiet and let the images do the talking.
10. Does the ad use identifiable music?
Music can be a rapidly identified cue for the recall of emotional responses remembered from previous advertising. Making the same music an identifiable aspect of all advertising signals the audience to pay attention for more important content.
These rules take into consideration consumers’ out-of-conscious processing systems. To learn more, go to The Scintillating Grid.
Source: American Research Group, Inc.
What is Google Buzz?
GOOGLE BUZZ
Google announced some changes to Google Buzz late Thursday that show it has belatedly recognized the backlash over privacy concerns with the new service.
Early users of Google Buzz have found the settings very complicated, especially the ones that pertain to privacy. In a blog post Thursday, Google said it built privacy controls into Google Buzz from Day 1 but acknowledged the most strident criticism–that Google made if difficult to make one’s list of followers private–in tweaking the set-up process for the new social-networking service.
“… we heard from people that the checkbox for choosing not to display this information was too hard to find, and based on this feedback, we’ve changed the notice to make it very clear,” the company said on its Gmail blog. “We will roll these changes out to all Gmail users later today.”
Google will now ask Buzz users “How do you want to be seen to others?” when they log into the service for the first time. The default option will be “Show the list of the people I’m following and the list of people following me on my public profile,” but that box can be unchecked and the option is much easier to find than the convoluted process that was required to hide that list prior to the update.
As noted earlier, Google has also made it easier to block people from following their Buzz updates, which it confirmed in Thursday’s announcement. It has also tweaked the list of those following a user to distinguish between Buzz users who have created public Google Profiles and those who haven’t, which was one of the problems with the earlier method for blocking people: Buzz users could only block people with public Google Profiles. As a result, people without Google Profiles who were automatically added to your Google Buzz followers will not appear in the public list of those followers, should you choose to make that list public.
The privacy backlash certainly hurt the perception of Google and Google Buzz during the first week of the service. Those already skeptical of Google’s insatiable thirst for data and its attitudes toward privacy could not help but see Google’s decisions on the controls for Buzz profiles as a way of tricking people into generating public content.
And users who otherwise did like the service, and didn’t have a problem putting their thoughts out to the public, were nonetheless taken aback that Google assumed that the most frequent people emailed from their Gmail accounts would be the same people with whom those users would want to share Buzz updates. Not to mention the fact that the setting could easily expose sensitive data to the outside world before the Web page to change the setting could be found.
Google has not yet added Google Buzz to its Privacy Dashboard, which could go a long way toward satisfying some privacy concerns by making it very clear where and how Buzz information is being shared with Google and the public. A Google representative said the company planned to make that addition at some point, but couldn’t share a timetable.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom.Top 12 Reasons Why Businesses Fail
- 82% Poor cash flow management skills/poor understanding of cash flow.
- 79% Starting out with too little money
- 78% Lack of a well-developed business plan, including insufficient research on the business before starting it.
- 77% Not pricing properly – failure to include all necessary items when setting prices.
- 73% Being overly optimistic about achievable sales, money required and about what needs to be done to be successful.
- 70% Not recognizing, or ignoring, what they don’t do well and not seeking help from those who do.
- 64% Minimizing the importance of promoting the business properly.
- 63% Insufficient relevant and applicable business experience.
- 58% Inability to delegate properly – micro-managing work given to others or over delegating and abdicating important management responsibilities.
- 56% Hiring the wrong people – clones of themselves and not people with complimentary skills, or hiring friends and relatives.
- 55% Not understanding who your competition is or ignoring competition.
- 47% Too much focus and reliance on one customer/client. Bad Location.
