We are in the age of digital revolution where the traditional business as usual approach is rapidly changing. The good thing here is that the traditional gatekeepers are not in your way, so you can start a business online such as affiliate marketing with literally no social capital a.k.a “connections” requirement. But beware that there are new gatekeepers in the digital space. We will explore this in another blog. Looking for quick money? Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online. Even if you have an existing business, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to add another income stream to your business.  The result you get from this blog is to actually have a blueprint to start today.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way for you to earn a commission for recommending products or services to your friends, family, network, work colleagues or even strangers who come across your recommendation. When they buy, the seller pays you a commission. 

Step 1: Review your opportunities – this is where to start from 

To start an affiliate marketing business you will need to make extensive research on companies that will be open to engage affiliate marketers like you and in your region because not all companies sell to where you stay. Come up with a list of 10 companies that you will like to promote their product and earn doing so. 

What kind of companies are you looking for? 

While some companies require that an affiliate has a website, a vast majority encourage people who do not have a website to use their social media accounts. With this practically everyone can go into affiliate marketing business. Your goal should be to find companies that have an online store where they sell products or services.  These companies want to have traffic directed to their platforms or e-commerce sites like Jumiang, Cartrollers, Konga, wakanow etc this research can be done online by simply typing/writing “companies that have affiliate programs” on google and you will see a list of companies who do this with their links and you can register. Was that not easy? This action should take you at most 2 days to accomplish!

Bonus tip for step 1: Know who you want to sell to.

Let’s get to do another easy research that you will need to be able to move to the next step. Who are your customers? Those are the people like your friends, family, colleges, strangers you will showcase the product of the partnering company to and they buy. So it depends on the products you choose, you now begin to target the customers that will want that product. Make sure to choose a customer base that you can target. 

That was it for now. This is the first step. After you are done with this. Move on toe step 2 which we would release soon. If you want to know when we release step you can sign up to our newsletter. We are creating videos, tools and more guide to help you start your side or full time business. We are also discussing with funding partners to get on board as investors for small businesses in Africa. This opportunity will only be available for our tribe members. Join the Joadre Tribe now and get the tribe app – available right here to get  notifications, learn and build your business. 

Thank you for reading to the end. 

Cheers

Joadre Editorial

So here is a new blog series, at last.  In this blog, I want to prepare you for the upcoming stories we will explore in 2022. We are coming to the end of this year. The beginning of 2021 started with a lockdown but still I travelled to Nigeria twice this year to continue work. It was yet another eye opening journey because this was my first trip to research about the october 2020 mass protest that happened in Nigeria. 

The Nigerian #endsars protest 

During this protest tagged #endsars, over 20 people were killed. I felt disappointed that the international media as well as national media in Austria hardly dedicated a space to report about it. If any report was done, it highlighted simply that the protest was prompted by a group of fraudulent young men labeled “Yahoo boys”. Yes, there are yahoo boys whose notoriety for fraudulent activities has claimed the internet space. Remember those stories sent via email claiming that there is an inheritance to get if you help them? Or those fake internet profiles promising marriage and love?  In other communities, these scammers have another name. As our world turns totally digital and global, online scams become a challenge we all must effectively deal with. But that is not the story behind the protest that happened in Nigeria. 

Fast information culture eats up journalism

Incapable of truly exploring the depth of issues leading to a mass protest during the pandemic lockdown in Nigeria that should not even have occurred, some international media choose a platonic approach. Why dedicate a few lines to a very serious issue affecting over 200 million humans if the story is not worth telling? Our world’s fast-information culture leaves little space for journalistic work.  Proper journalistic research is now even termed investigative journalism, of which I then do not understand what journalism is in the first place if it was not investigative.  This is dangerous. Accepting this kind of information culture is the beginning of the end of whatever is left with democracy.  

Africa Europe is historically entangled

This kind of disregard for groups that do not fall under one’s nation state, religion, culture, space or any man-constructed identity, is a threat for global solidarity.  Is there even global solidarity? If information is poorly researched and simply copied from an agency-generated summary of the actual information, often based on aggregated algorithms, weight risks the richness and diversity of the true stories. And it is in the knowing of the diverse truths that we can begin to reshape a better world. I know we might argue that the world is so massive and somany things happen everyday, everywhere and one can hardly cover them through the media. But I can tell you that Africa and Europe are strictly entangled in a shared history that hunts and flows into our present day. So more efforts to develop a communication culture is called for and worth investing in. 

What is newsworthy?

A country with over 200 million people which is basically larger in population than most of Western Europe combined, and also suffers the continuous exploitation of Europe leading to forced economic migration of its youths, should be considered newsworthy. Especially, when millions of its people take to the street, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown. But it wasn’t! This attitude serves who? Do we serve the powerful in politics and economics with this attitude? When we refocus our collective bias towards the powerless commiting mediocre crimes rather than the powerful committing “legitimate” crimes affecting millions of people, what are we intending?

Let’s explore activism from the African continent

This attitude serves the interest of those that want to engage in the retheorik of “Africans strumming Europe as refugees” to instigate fear and propose a threat for those who feel a “legitimate” right to “own” the space and ressources in Europe. How about exploring the deeper activism of Africans in their continent fighting to be heard? What about giving them a platform to be heard? Are we scared to hear what they will say? Can we listen beyond our pre-programmed biases? 

Stay ready for 2022 as we explore more in-depth socio-economic issues I face on my journey to creating a more sustainable economic ecosystem in Africa. On our global web platform Joadre.com here, we publish weekly business education and personal development content to train the thousands of yearly visitors to our platform. If you read and speak English, feel welcome to visit and learn. You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter here.

We are working to get back many producers to work

After we closed the Austrian fashion company, we supported over 60 producers to continue their work. The goal was to make sure they stay in business and serve the local market. Many are still in business, but for some, the pandemic closures and lack of raw materials due to logistics hindrances led them to close their business. We are working out a concept to help them restart as many Nigerian SMEs do not have access to any form of government structural support. To make this work, we are raising funds through sales of products we have in stock. We could get some amazing rattan products, some interior cushion cases and our favourite pullstring bags. Everything online in our store is what we have here in stock in Austria. The revenues from sales goes into the following areas: fair income for the producers, transportation and logistics of the products and the rest goes into creating new designs, products and training for the producers. 

I will be very happy if you find something you like as a Christmas gift this season and order from us. In the next blog article, I will share my experience traveling to Nigeria in January of 2021 where I talked to experts about the protest that happened the year before.

Volunteers needed to translate our articles

By the way, as we scrolled through some messages from our German online shop website, we stumbled across a reader who encouraged us to keep writing. We really love to share our thoughts, updates and news with you all. The only issue is that we want it to be in “good” German and do not have someone to translate at the moment. Hence we rely on google translate. But I strongly feel that it does not do justice to our editorial tone. However, we will keep using google translate until we can find a volunteer who will help us translate our blogs. 

If you want to volunteer, please contact us. It will be one blog of about a page or less that you will translate every month. We will appreciate it very much. 

Thank you for reading, 

Sorry for the google translate and stay tuned in. 

Best, 

Joana

*The original English version is below. 

Every business needs to have/received a sustainable amount of money which the business in return spends/invests daily to operate the business. Cash flow refers to the spending and receiving of cash within the business. In this blog I want to shortly introduce 3 ways every small business can maintain a healthy cash flow and what you must know about cash. 

According to Wikipedia, A cash flow is a real or virtual movement of money. Cash flow is the net amount of cash and cash equivalents being transferred into and out of a business. Cash received represents inflows, while money spent represents outflows. 

Trying to survive and you say cash flow

I started my first business at a very young age of 16 out of necessity. When my parents separated and I was sent on the streets to find a life, it was only about surviving. So for me at that time, things like cash flow made no sense. So I get you when you might be trying to survive and we are talking of cash flow. However, I quickly came to realise that I want to thrive. I choose to thrive. To go beyond surviving to actually living a life where I can thrive. One major shift that happened was to reorganise my approach to managing all the entrepreneurial activities I carried out. I began to take theories that I could apply into my everyday practice. Cash flow was one of them and here is how I used it. 

Monitor the cash flow by recording 

By developing what experts would call a cash flow statement, you can have first hand insight about the health of your business. Since cash flow reflects the current state of your business, it will be wise to continually update your cash flow records and this is a simple basic way to go about it. Consider these 3 key aspects of your business:

1. Regular business activities which you could label operating activities. Here you record the inflow of money you make from your products and/or services. Also add any money like interest you receive. Then record the money you spend paying for stuff like overheads, taxes, purchases of raw materials, salaries, suppliers and any money you give out. 
2. The second aspect might not be very relevant for now as a startup entrepreneur. But if you already have started and you have properties or equipment (large equipment that cost much and last years) to sell or acquire, then consider these investment activities and record them. Here you can also record non-current assets or other financial assets like bonds and stock you buy or sell for your business. 
3. Then the last key aspect is to keep track of the major financial activities that help you start, build  or expand your business. We can label these financial activities like if you receive or payback loans from banks, investors, friends and others. Or you sell or buy back shares (parts) of your company from shareholders and such. 

Spend only what you have

Do not spend more than the cash you have. Through consistent records of your expenses, you will have a clear oversight about the current amount you have which is called your liquidity. Liquidity refers to one’s ability to pay the obligation as soon as it becomes due. You can even apply these strategies to your personal life. Cash Flow is not the money you have in your savings account or a promise from a customer. It is about the money in your current account or on your hand as cash. 

It isn’t the monetary value of the product in stock. No! I know that these products cost money but they have not been sold. Therefore, they have not yet generated money into your cash flow. Even those people promising to pay tomorrow, are not money in hand. So it is wise to know what you have and how to disseminate spending. Do not borrow or lend or take things on credit to spend on things that depreciate in value based on your expectations of money. This guiding principle will help you build a healthy business. 

Regulate your fixed cost and variable cost from the start and consistently. 

From the beginning consider fixed costs. Fixed costs can be considered indirect costs or overhead costs. They are business expenses that are not dependent on the level of goods or services produced by the business. These kind of costs tend to be recurring, such as interest or rents being paid per month. (Wikipedia). Unlike variable cost which changes as the quantity of the good or service that your business produces changes, fixed cost can sometimes ruin businesses. 

During the pandemic for example, restaurants that were not allowed to open up for 15 months still had to pay rent. Rent is fixed costs. But they did not need to buy vegetables to cook since they were not cooking. Vegetables are variable costs. So you see, list out all your fixed or proposed fixed costs and try to set them to the minimum you need to start or run your business. 

Advantages of consistent cash flow check

The advantages of using these strategies is that you get to know from which product and/or service you make more money. Maintaining a healthy cash flow helps you build credibility for your entrepreneurship journey and makes it even more feasible to get capital to expand your idea. This was a real technical blog article, but we at Joadre believe that every entrepreneur, no matter where you are or if you have access to education, there are some basics you have to understand to be able to navigate in this our economic system for today. 

I hope we could break this much needed knowledge down for you in the article. Please help us to grow our platform. We want to reach students and upcoming entrepreneurs in Africa. Help us by sharing this blog article on your social media platform. Help us by commenting beneath. Thank you so much and go check out the videos on our YouTube Channel. If you don’t want to miss out on our updates, subscribe to our newsletter. We will release our Joadre community app this year, so sign up on your waiting list to be one of our first users. Thank you for reading. 

Cheers,

Joana

As a social entrepreneur, I know that the core purpose of your business, activities, ideas and projects is to create social impact and bring about positive change. Yes, but in our 21st century world, you might need to make money to provide the framework to create these social values. This means you will have to consider business smodels, revenues concepts and income streams, just like traditional business does. Unfortunately many social entrepreneurs identify themselves as a charity and refuse to invest in the design of their ideas. Since we need more ideological and purposeful commerce in our world today, let’s explore how to navigate this terrain and make money for the mission. 

You need to make money to structure your value creation

Your sole purpose is not to milk, extract and accumulate financial capital as a social entrepreneur. But that does not mean you will not design a model that allows you to make money consistently so that you can give more value. Very often, those that receive the direct value of your products  and/or service (the offer) might not be able to pay for it. This is a very common phenomenon for social ventures. Sometimes, even if they can pay for it, the fee you charge might not cover the cost of production nor can you make profit to grow.  

In some cases, you might cover your cost but you cannot grow because you have to continuously invest in training, standardisations etc.  But there are strategies to design models to enhance or boost your current structure. Check a previous blog and videos  – part 1 blog, part 2 blog, part 1 video, part 2 video, and part 3 video to learn more about how to integrate revenue models into your social enterprise or project. 

What is a business model?

This is how Wikipedia describes it “the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts”. In much easier terms, it is the whole framework behind your idea or project. A business model can be referring to the project model. It embodies the approach you have to use your idea to generate value and profit. It is within creating your model that you, 

1. identify the products and/or services your plan to offer/sell, 
2. then to who, which is the target market or the end recipient of the value, 
3. and any anticipated expenses.

Let us examine a simple example and how to make money 

So as a social entrepreneur, say maybe your dream or vision is to bring health care to a remote region. It is all about dentistry and teeth care for teens and young adults. You want to offer education about teeth care and also treat teeth issues. Great. However, the end recipients who are teens and young adults cannot afford the full cost. They can only pay about 20% of the cost. You can design a business models like this. Your main issue now is that you have expenses of about 80% that the customer cannot pay for.  This is an exciting challenge! If you design a model that generates the remaining 80% or more, you might even make profit to keep operations steady and begin to grow.  

Integrating third party of social entrepreneurs

Hoping you have watched the previous videos about money for the mission, you now know that you have to integrate a third party into your model. Thi third party will cover the 80%. How do you get the third party? And by the way, the third party can be a side business attached to the main business. For example, you have a borehole at the dentistry and the local population can pay a very fair price to get the water.  You only retain the cost to maintain the borehole and invest the profits into running the dentistry. See how do you create two solutions in one?

Finding more third parties

Who else will profit from the recipients receiving the health care? Is it the government in that region or of the country producing the health care equipment? Is it a medical device company producing dentistry equipment or teeth care products? Are there companies offering complementary products in that same region to other regions that are open to extending their Corporate Social Responsibility CSR? Can the extended family members of your audience pay? Or is it just the simple man on the street that recognises that everyone deserves a great teech care no matter where they are? When you have to integrate a third party to fund your model, it becomes a revenue stream of its own. 

Make money by designing revenue models.

Designing a revenue model is very important. You might have one-offs ideas to raise funds, then when that cash has been used up, then you begin to think again about ways to raise the next funds. No. Write out all the potential ways you can consistently raise funds or make money. For example, if merchandising is a revenue model you want to engage in, then expand this kind of model to develop more income streams. If you will raise funds by educating the end consumers and organising lectures, workshops, or events, this is a revenue model. 

Revenue streams are incentives to make money that need their own very extensive care. So imagine the third party scenario where you decide to get companies with no CSR to partner to fund the 80% cost of the dentistry. You will have to develop a strategy to reach these companies, pitch them the ideal partnership, send them progress reports and continuously care for them as an intermediate customer.  Here is how Wikipedia puts it – A revenue model is a framework for generating financial income. It identifies which revenue source to pursue, what value to offer, how to price the value, and who pays for the value. It is a key component of a company’s business model.

What are income streams?

Income streams are the different channels from which cash comes in. If your revenue model is merchandising, then what can you merchandise? Are you focusing on digital merchandising, textile products or other branded products? Say your revenue model is fees for workshops, then what different kind of workshop will you offer to generate income streams? Online workshops, life workshops, weekend workshops? How much of these kinds of either online or offline workshops would you need in a year? 

What kind of income streams would you generate from the workshops? Can you combine models? Like sell your merchandise at the workshop for which you already collected a fee to attend? But remember, your purpose is not to make money, but to give the value through the dentistry, so do not milk every opportunity to make money. Let there be enough headspace to build a sustainable venture. Integrate the streams from which you receive financing into your project design.  

This was a very technical blog about how to make money to grow your value creation enterprise. Stay with us as we release more implementation tools for you. Subscribe not to miss out and hey, we are launching our mobile app soon to build a tribe of social entrepreneurs beyond borders. Want to be in our network, pre-register now.  Thank you for reading to the end and share with anyone who you believe will need the information. 

Cheers

Joana

We are often overshadowed by the fear of failure, especially  when we want to start something that really matters to us. A great sign to know that it is the fear of failure rising up within you, is when you begin to think about how it might NOT work. How you might make “unforgivable” mistakes. You actually consider the thought of what people will think about you, maybe they will think that you are foolish. Then your stomach has those ugly butterflies stirring fear inside. 

How to conquer the fear of failure!

Maybe you have to learn more. Yes, it is ok if you do not have all the answers when you start. You do not have all it takes right at the beginning. But soon you will know, if you take the next logical step to start. That is the secret. Doing the next logical thing or set of actions.

In every area of our lives, we are confronted with fear. In fact, fear makes us humans. Nobody teaches you to cope and deal with your fears. Neither does anyone tell you that that could be your greatest tool for action. Fear. Yes, I said it. When you feel those ugly butterflies in your stomach by the mere thought of doing something that your rational brain knows is good for you, then it’s fear trying to sabotage you. 

It is true that sometimes those uggly butterflies are just there to protect you from danger but you know the difference. If there is something you always wanted to do but you are afraid to do it, then recognise the fear holding you back. Fear often comes in many diverse packages, like excuses, procrastination, lies about how difficult it is and so on. 

Here is a logic example.

Look at a simple logic, we all know that our way of life now is bad for the environment. But what are we doing? We still consume exactly the same way. Ok some are making a real sincere effort to change. But what is holding every other person back? Fear! Fear that they would lose their comfy lifestyle. Maybe even fear that their lifestyle might get too expensive and they would not be able to afford it. Or that life might become too strenuous to maintain. Peer pressure – Fear that they may not be cool anymore to their peers. 

Awareness will help counter your fears. 

Well then I have a message for that fear. Tell it to go to hell for now, if you believe there is a hell afterwards.  If not, flush it down the toilet today. Inform yourself about anything new you want to do. Becoming more aware about something helps to transform the fear to a tool of courage. Then the next step is to take the next logical step. Appreciate the small steps, those little advancements you make. 

As an entrepreneur, I see the big picture of where  and what I want to accomplish. But I also really enjoy the little things I do every hour to get there. Like,  I enjoy writing this blog right now. Because, what if today is my last day? Would I allow fear of failure that this blog might not be good enough to prevent me from writing it at all?

I hope I was able to inspire just one person today to flush down that fear. Allow yourself to make mistakes. Give yourself permission to fail. It is great. Fear of failure is a real thing and you are not the only one experiencing it. Remember to watch the YouTube video in German on this topic if you understand German. I have a new video this week on my Youtube channel for our entrepreneurs who want to start their business but do not know what next to do. So check that out. Share your comments and story beneath this blog. Thank you for reading till the end. You will read from me next week. 

Cheers, 

Joana

Over the past 4 weeks, I released blogs and videos about awareness raising for social issues that we care about. The format of our media work on Joadre is to choose a broad topic and approach it from many different perspectives. Believe me, there are countless perspectives available. In fact, if we have 7+ billion people on the planet, then there are 7+ billion perspectives. But my goal is to try to share a very few that I have learned about during my work in the past 20 years. So in this episode, let’s summarise and get the 3 best tips for a successful awareness raising journey. 

From episode 1 – Is awareness raising effective?

That has always been a question I kept wondering about, especially after visiting a Nigerian village in 2006 with my team. Our goal was to show a no-budget anti-trafficking film called “Greener Pastures” to a group of young women in the village. The questions that i received from the young viewers made me know that the voice of the survivor is stronger than any other information out there. 

> Tip 1 – So my take away from more experiences is that we should give the affected people more space to tell their stories themselves. 

Remember the film “Greener Pastures” I mentioned above? After showing the film one of the viewers father came over to me to beg me to take her daughter to Europe. That was the moment I started questioning awareness raising. How effective is it for people that see no way out of the problem for which you are informing them about. For people that already have a fixed mindset?

From episode 2 – Who is awareness raising for?

Seriously, I keep wondering why the “offer” seems to be the focus of activism when economics clearly shows us that the “demand” delegates the market. So why do we not focus on informing those that regulate the demand? Informing those that make destructive consumer culture boom, without any thought of the complexity behind.  I believe even more now that awareness raising is more needed here in Europe. In the west where the consumer culture has hit the peak and people are so privileged that they do not even realise it. Watch the video!

> Tip 2 – lets focus on demand!

From episode 3 – How information changed my life!

My family had enough to buy meat but my mum chose more vegetables and let meat be the cherry on top. When I came to Europe and saw how meat was the norm to fill your stomach, I was shocked. Also very shocked at how cheap and available it was. I began to educate myself about the meat production and consumption healthwise. Read the full blog or actually watch the video.  That was the first thing I did, I educated myself. I actually watched this film “Forks over Knives” and “What the health” and they changed my life forever. So you see information can change the game. Awareness raising is important, that’s a fact now. 

> Tip 3 – even when you are dedicated to a social cause, continue to inform yourself about others social issues. You are bound to learn new approaches. By the way, diversity of information and checking the source plus interest of the information provider is key! 

But what do you do with all the information you get? 

In my next session, we will talk about fear and action. Before the pandemic, I toured stages giving workshops and speeches, encouraging people and teaching on these topics, especially against human trafficking. I actually worked on one of the first german books in this field called “Ware Frau” and published my one autobiography “Die Wassergöttin”, then researched for my last book “Hexen Kind”. So besides all these, there have been countless media reports, even a full 90 minutes documentary where I was the lead protagonist “Joana und die Mächte des Finsternis” produced by BR and aired on major German TV stations. So people know that I talk about this publicly. The same question comes after every speech or workshop, are you not afraid? What can I do? That’s why the next topic would handle fear and action. 

Hope this was an exciting read. Share with your friends. Read the original english version on my global website to know exactly what I said not what google translated. 

By the way, if you are native German speaker and want to volunteer in our awareness raising editorial unit, contact me here. 

Cheers, 

Joana