Your Online Sokoni
Today, I want to talk about the growing number of Kenyan oriented internet sites that are increasingly using the web to try and find new customers.
The first site is the new Craiglist/Kenya site, which has all the same standard listings seen on the regular Craigslist site and since posting an item for sale is free (if you are based in Kenya) – why wouldn’t you not try this medium if you are a business owner?( Craigslist’s fee’s only apply if you live in certain large metro’s in the United States, e.g. New York City and San Francisco).
The second site, which is owned by the Nation Media Group is called N-Soko and although they have a free trial period for those who want to test out the site, they will eventually start charging for listings even though no prices are listed yet. So, N-soko is essentially going to be competing with Craigslist Kenya, which will be offering free listings. Is this bad timing on N-soko’s part? Also, why didn’t they just add this new service to the Nation’s regular website? i.e. just add an extra page to the Nation site and tell your regular readers about it so that when they are browsing articles on the Nation, they can remain on the same site and look at N-Soko from there.
Then today, I opened up my email and the founders of yet another site wanted me to check it out and perhaps mention it here. This site is called Uzanunua.com and they’re calling themselves an online auction site, but again, they’re going to charge people to list items and Craigslist Kenya is not.
So, anyway, these sites keep growing and growing because everyone is trying to either sell stuff to you directly or offer a platform where businesses can reach new clients easily and I’m not quite sure who they are targeting. Are they targeting Kenyans based in Kenya or in the diaspora or anyone else or what?
These Kenyan sites don’t get a lot of hits. The Nation, which I believe is the most popular site, gets about 50,000 online visitors a month, which is not bad, but it should be far more given that it’s the country’s main newspaper and without hits, it’s hard to make any real money.
I was talking to a guy yesterday who told me that in this recession they are really two things that will always sell online: Pornography (but who pays for porn anymore? there’s so much free stuff online) and sports (e.g. online fantasy sports games, online gambling/sports games, etc, etc).
Then of course, if you decided to sell there two things you wouldn’t have to confine yourself to selling to Kenyans. The world would become your marketplace.
My friend….are you conversant with hits? Nation gets close to a 100,000 page views a day. This would mean at least 20,000 visitors a day assuming 5 page views per visitor. This translates to over half a million visitors in a month. Check http://www.websiteoutlook.com and confirm the stats with your own site
Wainaina:
Yes, I’m familiar with “hits” and they are not the same as pageviews. When I say “hits”, I’m talking about the number of visitors (i.e. the number of people who go to the nation site, click on it and read the articles). Those are not pageviews.
The Nation gets on average about 50,000 hits or visitors a month (at most, maybe you can push that number up to 70,000 hits a month).
I prefer to use this site to gather general stats on sites: http://www.quantcast.com/nationmedia.com
I’m not so sure about that…..I think this potentially could be a goldmine. Take a recent experience, we have been trying to sell our car in Ghana for the past 4 months using the usual local routes including sign on the window, newspaper ads etc. We had a few bites but nothing promising, then my husband decides to list the car on an online soko for cars. In two days we had a local buyer and the car was sold.
We have had a ton of inquiries after that listing. Frankly I was surprised at how many locals use the site. So I’ve come to the conclusion that a local Craiglist is probably an idea whose time has come….people are starting to shop online perhaps because it is a more reliable aggregator of information e.g. the ghanacartrader.com site we used, both buyers and sellers are becoming savvier in this internet age plus it is very convenient.
Sijui:
That is very interesting. I’ll have to look up that site. It’s interesting that the ghana car trader site is product specific, which is probably a good thing.
The main question I had was how sites like Uzanunua or N-soko are going to compete with FREE Craigslist listings. Also, in Kenya, I would be worried about crime. How will people who are trying to sell their cars ensure that they don’t get carjacked when they go to meet any prospective buyers?
The power of Craigslist for me is that it is free and easy to use. How do you compete against that?
KE: Your link is showing US data only.
This link http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.nation.co.ke
is more comprehensive and agrees with Alexa.
And online shopping will take some time in Kenya. Kenyans unlike the west Africans are so slow to adapt. Even Nation saw the opportunity the other day despite being online for the last seven years.
I have recently just started using online services and I find that only a few are reliable. A friend sent me an email from a company calling itself mamamikes and it has been a real help. i was able to send airtime from my base in suoth sudan and it was received almost immeadiately.
please list more websites so we can know which ones are reliable. Keep up the good work informing Kenyans.
I think you guys can do a better job with the site