How to Get Paid For Online Work in Kenya

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Online money and online work is a great way to start earning quickly, however, how you get paid for online work may sometimes hinder your earning speed. On account of my particular bias towards ‘work opportunities in Kenya’, I have written this article to favor people who are selling their skills online as opposed to selling a product. E-commerce is another field altogether and it is not covered in this article.

To start work online selling your skills all you really require is a computer connected to the internet, the ability to sit behind that computer for hours, focus, and commitment to hard work. Of course there are those who would argue that sitting in one spot for long hours does not equal hard work, but I beg to differ.


Why is it, for instance, that top executives, who sit in one spot, and even stretch for a file in a swivel chair on wheels, are paid much more than watchmen and office messengers who move around a lot? The world always pays more for brain, and less for brawn. Online work that pays is serious brainwork, and that is why it pays well.

Main Ways to Work and Earn Money Online in Kenya
Freelance Work
There are many ways to make online money in Kenya, but the two most reliable ones are freelance work and affiliate marketing.

Freelance work mostly goes around design, typing, writing, programming, and data entry. You can start to do some freelance work today off free-to-join sites such as Freelancer.com All you need to do is to join their site, create your profile, and you can start. To learn more about how to start and earn well, pick my freelance ebooks on this offer here.


However, with Freelancer.com, it is important to note that you will pay a percentage of the job cost after you have bid and gotten a job. What that means is that if you bid for a job that is going to pay you say $100, then you need to know that you will pay Freelance.com anything between 3% and 10% of that 100% within 35 days. The amount is determined by your membership status. If you do not pay them that amount, then your account is blocked.

To visit the Freelancer site, click on the banner below!



Affiliate Marketing
Another reliable way to make money online is through affiliate marketing. There are many affiliate marketing avenues out there, and you can check out some of the ones I recommend on my ‘Affiliate Income’ Page. What you do for affiliate marketing is the same thing you would do for a regular offline sales job.

When a product has an affiliate program, what you need to do is join their program, and most of them are free to join. Once in, they give you what is called a unique affiliate link. A unique affiliate link has your unique affiliate ID number on it. By your own initiative, you then promote that product, whether it is a book, an ebook, or whatever, ensuring that when people click to go to the product’s sales page, they click via your unique affiliate link.

You can make money online as an affiliate marketer, connect with Paula Thayrow and make money from the Affiliate or Marketing Program here

The Learning Requirements for Ways to Get Paid to Work Online
Affiliate Marketing has a much stiffer learning curve as compared to freelance work. For freelance work, the assumption is that you already have the skill to work, but what you are now doing is selling those skills on an online platform.

As an example, I am a trained journalist and writer. To start my freelance writing work online, all I did was to create a number of CV pages, and join places that have jobs for writers. Since I already could write and could develop a CV, the rest flowed logically.

Affiliate marketing which I also do actively, was a bit harder to nail. You need to learn a host of things: search engines, keywords, how to use your link, how to get your commissions, email marketing, website marketing, link marketing, and the list can be quite long.

Some Affiliate programs are of course better than others. For instance, I can show you one that I am in that makes me online income weekly and monthly, and all I did was to put up a capture page and a pack of selling emails. I continue earning from it monthly with only a little promotion on my Social Media sites.

Some programs will teach you how to market, will give you the tools to use such as pre-written emails, and recommendation texts. Before you learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, I most often propose that a person new to the internet start by using their skills as a freelancer or join me here.

Even if you cannot design or write, there are sites that pay you to do data harvesting and all sorts of things that only human beings can do. They do not pay in their tens of dollars like freelance work, it is usually in cents but you can do a lot in a day, and they pay anyway.

You will also find that most payment platforms do not pay daily; they tend to pay weekly, after two weeks, or monthly. On sites such as Clickbank and Google.com, the pay comes in the subsequent month. You make your commission in January, and the check is made out in February, and maybe by the time the bank sorts it all out, you are in March.

Ways to Get Paid For Online Work in Kenya
I am sure there are many ways that people get paid online, but there are four that are most common for people who do legitimate online work.

Paypal
One of the most common payment methods for online work is Paypal. Paypal is an online platform that does not require the person paying you to reveal their credit card details to you the receiver. They only need your email address. There are many work platforms that will require you to have a paypal account for you to get paid.

To get a paypal account is free if you have an email address. However, it is a legal process like opening a bank account and for Kenya, you need to verify your account. You can read how to verify your Paypal account from Kenya in the article: How to verify your paypal account from Kenya

As you will quickly learn after generating some pay on paypal, you cannot, through a couple of clicks bring Paypal money directly from their platform into Kenya. However, I give details on ways you can bring paypal money into Kenya safely and legally on the article: Paypal Money to Kenya - The Payoneer Option

Now you can also apply for the Payoneer debit card directly from their site. To apply for their card go to Payoneer Debit Card Application

Applying for the Payoneer card takes about a month to a month and a half. If you are stuck with paypal dollars, and need a solution fast open a FREE epa-Kenya account here for quick and very highly recommended and reliable services.  

A Bit More on the Payoneer Debit Cards
Many larger companies such as Freelancer.com and others have a relationship with Payoneer. Payoneer issues company-specific debit cards.

To the best of my knowledge, based on the two platforms I have worked on that issue a Payoneer card, you have to generate some amount of money on the company platform to qualify for a Payoneer card; technically, enough to pay for the card including shipping.

It is really a fancy thing; you apply online and then you get this card in your local P O Box. Very funky! Lol… Payoneer Debit cards (at least the one I have) have one grand advantage – you can withdraw your money through any local ATM with a MasterCard logo. To apply for a Payoneer Debit card directly from their site, click on Payoneer debit card application

To read the complete process on how to get your Payoneer card and to activate it for our local ATMs read the article here: Paypal Money into Kenya - the Payoneer Option 

Moneybookers
I do have a moneybookers account, but I have never worked with a company that needed to pay me through them. However, you can read the review of that system on the article: My Last Word About Paypal In Kenya

Alertpay
Another payment platform is alertpay. Again, I have not worked on a platform that aid me through AlertPay, but you can read more about their service from their site at Alertpay.com

Western Union
Typically, this is a platform you only want to use if you run into someone who has no clue about any of the other systems. I have taken on ghostwriting jobs where I was paid through Western Union, but it is recommended as a last resort. Why?

One of the major identifiers of a scam online will list ‘payment through Western Union’ as one of the red-flags for a scam. For that reason, if you want to give your work credibility, stay away from the Western Union avenue except for personal transfers and for charity work.

Direct Transfer
Most job platforms that will pay directly to your bank account are 'locked' for the US only. These will require either your physical address and your US ZIP code, or some such other requirement that you simply cannot fulfill if you are outside the US. Do not worry about those, there are thousands of other places to work.

Early in my online work, I would start filling a from by filling in the ‘country’. If the site is optimized for the US only, they will not have ‘Kenya’ listed and I would save myself time by clicking out. Some will have Kenya listed, especially lately, but they will lock certain income generating sections of their sites. I wrote a nasty message to one such site, before I figured I am wasting my energies. Racists are everywhere!

One of the largest platforms for affiliate programs is Clickbank.com and they do not have a payment link to paypal or to any other payment method, although more recently (2012) they did indicate you can now use the Payoneer Card. The details are still fuzzy. They do not restrict you from selling their products even when you are outside the US, BUT, and that is a big but, they only pay by check and that check is sent by Post Office. Unless you have a US connection, let Click Bank rest for now.

Another place that pays for online work is Google under the Google Adsense program. The google adsense program in the simplest explanation is the adverts you see on a page that you click on. When you click on that advert, wherever it is on the web, someone somewhere gets paid. This works mostly for blogs and content sites that have useful information.

Once a blog owner generates enough to be paid by google, then they receive a check. Again, Goolge is another platform that pays either through the Post Office, by check, or through direct transfer to your bank. To receive payment from Google, again is a legal process and you have to verify your identity.

I must mention it here: making money through Adsense in Kenya is not an easy thing at all. I recommend an affiliate program or selling your services. This is much faster money.

You can apply for a US payment service that will receive money from all these income sources. To learn more about the Payoneer US Payment Option read the section on Payoneer in the article here: Paypal to Kenya - the Payoneer Option 

There are charges that go with all these services, but the main thing is, you are making money, and so you need to spread it around to other service providers.

If this article has been helpful, remember to share it on facebook.com And please leave a comment below so that I can learn what more information you need.
Thank you

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