Archive #1

Originally posted to Red Zebra Facebook page on the 23rd September, 2020:

Not related to anything: I just discovered I may have done Kyokushin karate for a year in my teens. Please at least save this as 'to Read' or something if you can, or copy and paste to a text file for later, this is a big one.

The following post is going to be a long one, so unless you're a well-wisher or wish to know some of the pitfalls to an online business, this may not be for you. Also, I name and shame in this one.

News:

I'm putting 'Red Zebra' on a semi-permanent hiatus. I think it's been a while coming now.

Most people wouldn't know that I've been working on this for years. My previous online business was to be called 'Aard Mosaic', previously located at aard-mosaic.co.bw, some of you might be familiar with that. A lesser known one that I had for a few months was called 'Direct-Bw', located at direct-bw.com. Online stores take a lot more money to start up and run than one would realise, especially if you want to get it up and running quickly.

Successes:

1. Card – I have had, and still have, cards that are PayPal-compatible and affordable. It wasn't the easiest thing ever to find a bank that could support PayPal, but thankfully, it hasn't been that difficult. I use Banc ABC. The only problem is, you seem to have to give a nasal swab and 2 stool samples for the tiniest transaction and you spend so long in their customer service queues we've had a baby girl that's now five and have lost at least 2 relatives.

2. Suppliers – One of the first things I did initially, was test out suppliers. And although I had problems with geekbuying.com, I had some initial success with banggood.com. I found BangGood to be both reliable, taking less than 5 weeks to send a parcel, and affordable. Unfortunately by the time I was ready, the pandemic had struck. Banggood was more reliable but much less affordable (bear in mind I have to pass on costs to my customers). I have actually been contacted by other suppliers though, but for now, they're on the backburner.

3. Domain Name – As with hosting, I lucked onto a local company, but this I did quite early. Cost is great, support is great. Check out bwdomains.co.bw, but don't buy just yet, I've decided this will be my second-last post and I'd like to help both you and bwdomains by trying to get a promo-code, lower price for you, free marketing for them.

4. Logo – I feel guilty about this one. A Nigerian (of all people) was advertising his services on Facebook. I asked for the price and he just did the job and then charged me. And not some astronomical charge either. A mere U$ 4.00 (about P 50+/-). If you know anything about logo costs, it can START from P 80.00 here (if you're REALLY lucky) and go up. I didn't pay him, not because I wasn't happy or wanted to crook him, but initially I didn't have the means. I recently reset up my PayPal but now the money is again low.

5. Marketing, SEO and Analytics – The SEO has been the hardest and I never did really wrap my head around it. Further below I go into how this may have started the slide that lead to the downfall. That's all I have to say on that FOR NOW. The analytics has always been fairly easy for me but Google consistently changes the way the services work, so you have to keep updating your knowledge base. I was also planning to use Pinterest for A/B Split Testing and Pinterest Analytics.

Marketing was mainly done via Facebook. I picked one product and sold it as best I could. More on that below.

6. Employees! - Yeah, I had employees! Well, more independent contractors than employees. It started off with me simply posing a rate question to a VA in Pakistan. Then I thought, why not set up an advert here, which I subsequently did. Surprisingly, a lot of people applied. A lot of people sent long-winded emails. A lot of people don't know how to take instructions. And that was the week I learnt that C.V.s don't matter and most of my adult life has been a lie.

Problems:

Hosting:

My biggest problem, aside from funding,and one that would haunt me from name to name, was web hosting. The first thing I discovered was that affordable, reliable hosting is almost impossible to find. Apparently, the technical side is fairly easy for me, it's just getting somewhere to put it that's a problem.

My first major host for Aard Mosaic was 1and1.com and their hosting price for a year is cheap but the fine print says you have to keep US$ 200 in your account. So, eventually I had to let them go and come to the realisation it wasn't worth it.

My second major host hiccup was with namecheap.com. Good price, no “keep in your account caveats”, but they wanted a colour scan of my card, which, time-wise was an impossibility for me and that in itself made the decision to not go with them VERY easy.

The difference with Red Zebra is my current host. A webhost reseller. Local (Southern Africa), affordable, supportive. They're called Cloudmind Hosting. You can probably Google them, or find them on Facebook. They have Softaculous-based, one-click Wordpress setup hosting.

Customer Wants and Pricing Goods:

The BangGood shipping change, the short, urgent deadline, and my low budget, meant that any proper pricing tests and product choices I would have done. I simply chose the three most diverse products from BangGood's that made the most sense and put them out there. Some idiot immediately called me out for not doing enough research and I tried to ride it out as best I could.

I stuck in there and Analytics told me that the biggest search on my site was for a 3D printer I had thrown out there, meaning there is a potentially untapped market out there for a product like this. I think though, that as far as both buyers and sellers are concerned, people don't realise how time-consuming such a product. It's one of those you have to have a real passion for.

Needless to say, I've tons of research on 3D printers.

Towards the end, I used some tools that allow you to search customer keyword searches on rival sites.

Funding:

In the early days when I was working, I took the small bits I could out of my paycheck to try to get this off the ground. When I was let go after 5 years and just never receiving my gratuity in full, that was no longer an option, but now neither was failure.

There was a friend I used to lend money to when he was working and I asked him to loan me some money. He loaned me about P 200. Next, I have an aunt that, let's say has a fair amount of money. I didn't want to go the route of asking for a huge GRANT or loan, so I asked her for P 50 'for food'. Not exactly a lie, there was little to no food in the house at the time anyway. She sent me P 500 which, I swear I'd love to pay back but things just have not picked up.

Any small bits of funding here and there have come from my girlfriend and my mother. Oh yeah I had another aunt lend me money for the business but like a weird reversal, I ended up having to use it for rent. I wasn't too happy about it.

Energy Levels and Motivation:

So, here I've got to write about 3 separate sort of 'things' or events or something, and I've got to try to do it in a way that's not so messy. I'll do my best but I can't promise.

At some point when I was working I was living alone and I tried to take that opportunity to get into a routine. I sort of got into waking up a certain way and going to sleep a certain way. Basically, Google 'Timothy Ferris evening routine' and you'll get some of what I was doing. I did some and I got some ideas but I never got into exercising.

Now, when the first lockdown hit, I thought it was great. I just put the business aside knowing I couldn't do anything (unlike the second lockdown which depressed me). I put a 2L bottle of water (formerly a Coke bottle) aside and used that both as foam roller, and as a weight. Every morning I would get up, diarise, exercise, do some chores, and I'd still find time for a ton of leisure and relaxation.

I don't know why, but these days I feel tired and demotivated, sometimes angry and depressed. Some days my joints ache. I go to bed about an hour after supper and sometimes get up at about 2 or 3 AM when I do some leisure related-stuff without my attention being deviated elsewhere. I Googled the symptons and got CFS for which 'I need an anti-inflammatory diet'. Damn hard enough just to get food to eat.

Wordpress 5.1 (and attempted website recovery), Post Box, Whatsapp, and Bank Account:

AKA the final nails in the coffin. You recall above, I mentioned SEO leading to my downfall.

Even though demotivated through things just not gelling, I still tried to get Red Zebra off the ground and making money. I was trying to install SEO plugins on my Wordpress but they seemed buggy. I read somewhere that one should not upgrade to Wordpress 5.1. So naturally, like the genius I am, I did that (in my defence I really hoped the plugins would start working properly). Big mistake. Then 5.2 came around. Upgraded again. Still not working. Then I figured I'd try out shtml rather. Webhost doesn't want to work with Filezilla. So that's problem 1.

Now, the bank account should probably come last because this was basically the last straw that caused the camel to go to the physical therapist (I don't trust chiropractors), but it took the longest time and the most amount of hassle for me to get the business bank account that I wanted. But as of today (23/09/2020 at time of drafting), I've had to consider closing it down as funds for the house have run low. This is one of the biggest downers for me. The Account Name was even 'Red Zebra' and I had to sweat, shout, and jump through hoops for this account.

Another big problem is my contact info.

First and foremost is my Post Box. From 2014, one of the first things I did was get a P.O.Box when I arrived (the other was to get library cards). I figured it'd be good for managing bank statements, my yearly reports (I have shares in both Choppies and NAFPROP). Also I did kind of hope I'd have a business of some sort going. I'm hoping to still renew this year for the next 12 months.

I've saved the longest for the last: I have the worst luck with phones.

I've had like 3 Android phones. With both I didn't want to get them until I was absolutely ready. I know myself, I know I'll get distracted. The first one was fairly cheap and I bought it. The other two were only slightly less cheap, both of them I was given. The first one I upgraded. Well, by being given. The second one I lost. Quite ticked when it happened too.

The third one is quite an interesting story. I had lost the second one and was using a basic Nokia. My girlfriend insisted on getting me at least a basic Android but I refused. I wanted a Kechaoda K112 (for reasons I may get into another time). To cut a long story short, I kept having to flush the phone because of a software problem and I ended up giving it to a friend.

That left me with the Kechaoda, non-smart, phone. Someone pulled it from a high shelf which damaged the charging system and from there it was downhill for that particular phone.

Right now I'm not even using my main phone line, which was Orange. I'm using a Mascom line and can only send and receive text messages. No Whatsapp, no even calls.

Conclusion

First of all, how do I rate myself and my performance?

Maybe about a B- or C+. The worst thing for me has been luck and lack of funding. Lack of confidence doesn't help either. I also have to admit that my timing often hasn't been the best and I've made a few bad decisions here and there. All things considered though, I think I did pretty well, no?

What's going to happen now?

I'm not closing down the business per se, just putting it on hiatus. I've paid for hosting until the end of October and my domain name is good until March 2021.

We've got October's rent and some money for groceries and stuff but that's going to run out. Closing down the account will free up about a grand or so and after that we're done. For a while anyway.

What are my options now?

Adulting is hard and as much about luck as anything else, I'll say that much. Look about a decade or so back my life was going nowhere and I place no blame on anyone for that. But I tucked my shirt in, did up my CV (I've re-done it several times since), re-read up on finances, business even.

I got an evening job, I went to school again. And for all that effort I've just gone from struggle to struggle. I often work very hard because of this belief in myself that I'm lazy. There's often talk of 'my intelligence'. Yet for all that I still get underpaid. And that's when I'm lucky enough to find a job.

But I'll soldier on and stop feeling sorry for myself, I have a lot to be thankful for. You'll notice I haven't really answered the question. As I said, this will be my second-last post for now. I'll let you in on some tangible options in the next post.