Yumna Moosa

As the world digitizes, more opportunities to make revenue for small businesses has opened up. Ziyaad Plaatjes (co-founder of iloveza.com) joined Radio Islam this week to give us some insight into how to make money online.

The co-founder first started by explaining the importance of creating a social media presence and identity in order to establish small businesses online. He describes this at the “image the business wants to portray on social media”. This could be on Facebook, Instagram or even Whatsapp – if it enables you to keep in contact with your market. He also continues to say, “websites are important for any business as they form credibility and helps the customer feel a sense of security”.

Change is something that most people grapple with. Moving your business online could feel daunting at first, however the long time pro’s outweigh the con’s. Once your online presence is established there is a wide variety of ways to turn your social media into a source of income. The first way being through ecommerce businesses such as Amazon. Affiliated links on your account allow you to make a small commission every time someone purchases a product through a link you’ve posted.

With a large enough following, you could even be invited to review products and places. A fee could be paid for you to visit their locations or review their products and put it on your public platforms.

Ziyaad ends off by saying, “if you want to have an engaging customer relationship, you need to actively engage with your customers and reply to them. You need to communicate with your clients.”

Listen to the full interview on the Radio Islam International SoundCloud