How I Fell In Love With Kenya...

... and turned my passion into income online

	Arjen Koopman, webmaster (Contact)

My name is Arjen Koopman. I’m a journalist based in Amsterdam (Netherlands). I started this website about Kenya in April 2007. I love having this site, being of service to people around the world with something I love.

And... a particular nice thing is that this site is earning me good money, too. My passion for travel is paying my bills. How I do this? I’ll get to that...

I’ve always loved travel. I love to arrive in places where everything is different and there are new things to learn, places to see and friends to make… I’ve been to quite a lot of countries, across 4 continents. But few countries made an impression on me the way Kenya did.

I first went there after some German friends asked me to join them. It would be my first trip to Africa, but I said ‘yes’ immediately as I was always intrigued by that dark and wild continent. I didn’t know what to expect – people told me you either love or hate Africa, there’s no in between…

As for me… I remember my first night there, it was late at night and my friends and me were eating wildlife and drinking Tusker beer in the garden of a great restaurant on the outskirts of Nairobi. We were sitting around little open fires under a dark sky filled with bright stars, and I loved every minute of it. I remember sending a text message to my girlfriend at home (who would join us a few days later): “It’s great here - I LOVE AFRICA!”

Of course, we did what all first time visitors to Kenya do. We traveled through the country, soaking up everything we saw, spent lazy days in Nairobi and Mombasa, went on a camping safari in the endless plains of Tsavo East and West and stayed at wonderful beach cottage where we woke up overlooking Indian Ocean. But Kenya's magic went further.

The wild nature, the people with their typical down-to-earth wisdom, the rawness of life, the fact that a totally different world exists next to our so-called civilization in the West… The fact that people who live in poverty can be basically happy and free… The ‘Africa fever’ got me.

I got kind of a new perspective on life -- that there’s so much more under the sun than traffic jams, boring office jobs and an over-regulated society where your boss and politicians decide the details of your life - day in, day out.

When returned home in cold and rainy Amsterdam - it was January, very hot in Kenya and very cold back home - I almost felt sick in my stomach. I could only think: How do I escape from here and be able to return to Africa as often as I like? And how do I financially support myself if I do that? What will I do??

This question – how to escape the rat race and follow my own passions – wasn’t entirely new to me. I’ve always hated the amount of control bosses can have over you. But Kenya somehow drove this lesson entirely home. It proved to me there are a lot of ways to live your life – no need to go down the same path just because others around you are doing it all the time.

There’s this saying… ‘Once the student is ready, the teacher appears.’ Just weeks after returning from Kenya, I met a friend of a friend. We got to talk about work and business, and he told me how he made his entire income through some websites. His sites all ran on autopilot, allowing him to work on them when he felt like it – and he could work on them from any place in the world with internet access.

I was like struck by lightning. I had heard of making money through the internet before. But I had too much reservations back then. I was sure you’d have to do dishonest things to make money online. I thought making a website would be terribly complicated, as I didn’t know anything about programming or designing. Plus I only want to work in areas I’m passionate about – otherwise I’m simply not motivated enough - and somehow I thought I couldn’t make money with a topic I really cared about.

Three times wrong. My friend told me – and meanwhile my own experience has confirmed this – that the best way to get a lot of visitors is to play it fair. If you give people your best and treat them well in any way, they’ll like and trust you, and come back for more.

Well, that made sense to me. Secondly, it appeared there are an incredible number of topics that you can make money from: basically any hobby, topic, skill or passion, if there are enough people interested in them. And there are systems through which anybody can get a website up and running these days.

He told me he tried several systems, but had the best results with a system called Site Build It (SBI). I searched the internet to see if I could find anything negative about them. Basically, there wasn’t any.

But how do you find a good website topic? How do you get a good website without you going broke over it? How do you make money if you don’t have a product to sell and no ties with companies? How much can you make with one website? I had a lot of questions at that point. There were simple answers to all of them. (But we’re going into detail here – I wrote a second page about all these issues).

So I took the jump and bought an SBI subscription. I started researching possible website topics. Kenya was the first one I tried. And I was happy as a kid when my research told me it made a perfect site topic. I researched other topics as well, but I already knew what my website would be about…

I worked pretty hard for many months, next to my regular freelance work. I learned about the internet a lot, to find out how everything worked. And I gathered a lot of information about Kenya… I carefully mapped everything I knew from my own experience, called friends who had travelled there, watched TV documentaries and movies, and read a ton of articles, books travel guides and blogs… The images of Kenya in my mind became ever more colourful, deeper and wider.

But the number of visitors remained depressingly low in the beginning – 4 lousy visitors a day for months on end.… What was I doing?? There were moments I wanted to throw in the towel. But the vision of having my own thriving money-making website, and the freedom it would allow me to return to Africa kept me going.

Then... at one point a sudden rise in visitors began that hasn’t stopped since. It was fantastic to see – my site had taken off! I was so relieved – it worked!

On average, traffic has doubled every month since the rise in visitors began! Income is rising equally, I get visitors from over 100 countries around the world, I get a lot of emails with kudos and thanks, and I made new friends. I’ve also learned so much more about Kenya (and about running a successful online business!) than when I would have without this site. It’s great to make money with something I love while I’m being genuinely helpful to others. Can it get any better?

(Actually, it can. My travel… umm, research trips are now tax deductible.)

Currently, I mainly make money with Google advertisements. Google makes sure only relevant, ethical ads appear on my site. It's all on autopilot. I’ve also signed up for some affiliate programs and I’m now looking into products that I will be selling from this site soon.

Besides, I increasingly receive offers from companies to make “joint ventures” (as they call it). Yes, if you're site gets enough traffic, the companies will be coming to you with proposals, instead of the other way around. Up to now I have refused them all. Why? I only want to recommend the best quality to my visitors, and I wasn’t convinced that they could offer that. I’m confident in the future – no need to jump on just any bandwagon!

How much I make now? Sorry, Dutch people don’t discuss income numbers even with our friends. Let’s just say it’s a nice supplement to my regular income as a journalist and consultant, and if traffic and income keep rising at the current speed, it’s only a matter of time before my online income will surpass my old regular income. I’ll keep you posted here!

Update July 2008: I received a lot of comments questions about starting your own website. I’ve listed the most common questions on my second page about SBI and earning money online.