Three months is how long most households give a referral side business before deciding whether it works. It is also, almost exactly, how long it takes for the first honest number to appear. That mismatch is why so many people stop in week six, one month before the part that pays.
An introduction business is easy to describe and hard to plan. You bring a customer, a rider or a tenant to someone who needs one, and you take a share of what follows. What nobody explains is how uneven the first quarter is. Month one produces activity and no money. Month two produces money that has almost nothing to do with month two's effort. Month three is the first month that tells you the truth. Budget as though each month should resemble the last, and you will read a completely normal start as a failure.
What follows is a simulator you can run on paper before spending a shilling on airtime. It is built around the one introduction market in this country with genuine volume — the two-wheeler and ride-hailing fleet — and it contains no promised amounts, because commission terms here are set per platform, per campaign and per month. And while the first quarter finds its shape, apps such as I am Beezy let you earn roughly KSh 750 to KSh 2,240 a day from your phone by viewing content, paid into the mobile wallet you already use.
What are you actually being paid for when you make an introduction?
Almost every disappointing first quarter comes from a misunderstanding at this exact point. People count introductions and expect to be paid for them. Nobody in Kenya pays for introductions.
The commission is for a completed act, not for a name
Whether you are bringing riders to a ride-hailing platform, customers to a shop or tenants to a landlord, the money is released by something the other person does after you have finished your part. A rider has to be approved, get on the road and complete a number of qualifying trips. A customer has to actually pay. A tenant has to actually move in. Between your effort and your payment sits an action you do not control, and that gap is the single biggest reason a first quarter underperforms. Your job is not to produce names. It is to produce people who will finish.
Your warm list is a fixed asset, and it depletes
In month one you work through people who already trust you: relatives, neighbours, the group you save with, the riders at your own stage. That list converts far better than anything you will ever do again, and it is finite. Most households have between twenty and sixty names on it. When you build your simulator, treat the warm list as stock you are spending, not as a rate you can repeat. The month you run out is the month your conversion rate collapses, and it usually falls in the second half of month two.
Two families of deal, two very different quarters
A one-off fee pays once, quickly, and stops. A recurring share pays less per event and keeps paying while the person you introduced stays active. In a three-month window, one-off deals look far better and recurring deals look like a mistake. That is an illusion created by the length of the window. If you only ever measure ninety days, you will systematically choose the weaker of the two.
Why the two-wheeler fleet is where introductions have volume in Kenya
You can run an introduction business in almost any sector. Only a few of them have enough new entrants each month to keep a household busy, and in Kenya the clearest one sits on two wheels.
A fleet renewing itself at speed
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics counted 395,235 vehicles and motorcycles newly registered in 2025, against 267,193 in 2024. Of the 2025 total, 252,241 were motorcycles, tricycles and autocycles, which means the two-wheeler fleet added new machines at close to double its previous rate in a single year. Every one of those machines needs a rider, and most riders need to be attached to something — a platform, an insurer, a spares dealer, a savings group. That is the raw material of an introduction business, and it renews itself continuously rather than in a season.
Five platforms competing for the same person
On the ride-hailing side the market is unusually crowded for Kenya: Uber, Bolt, Little and Faras all operate here, alongside inDrive, and two of those are Kenyan companies. Crowding matters to you because platforms that compete for the same driver run recruitment campaigns, and recruitment campaigns are where introduction fees come from. It also means terms change often. A commission structure you were told about in January may not exist in April, which is exactly why this guide gives you a method rather than an amount.
What that does to your first three months
Two consequences follow. First, your supply of candidates does not dry up the way it would in a narrow trade, so a flat month two is about your list, not about the market. Second, because platform terms are campaign-based and time-limited, you must confirm the current terms in writing before you introduce anybody. Not the terms your cousin had last year. The terms today, from the platform, with the qualifying condition spelled out.
The five numbers that decide your first quarter
A simulator is not a forecast. It is a way of finding out which assumption you are most wrong about, cheaply, before it costs you three months. You need five inputs and nothing else.
| Input | What it means | How to get a real value |
|---|---|---|
| Warm list size | People you can approach without an introduction of your own | Write the names down. Do not estimate. The written list is always shorter than the imagined one |
| Contact rate | Share of the list you actually reach and speak to properly | Track it for one week. Airtime, travel and time of day all move this number |
| Sign-up rate | Share of those contacted who begin the process | Only countable after week two. Before that you are guessing |
| Completion rate | Share of sign-ups who finish the qualifying condition | Ask the platform or business what the condition is, then count how many meet it |
| Collection rate | Share of earned commissions that are actually paid to you | The one nobody models, and the one that decides whether the quarter was worth it |
Where each number comes from
The first two you can measure in week one. The third takes a fortnight. The fourth and fifth cannot be known before month two ends, which is precisely why month one feels like nothing is happening. When you build the sheet, leave the last two blank and fill them from your own record rather than from what you were told at the start.
Run the arithmetic in the direction that hurts
Multiply the five together and you get the number of paid outcomes in the quarter. Then halve it. A household that plans on the halved figure and beats it stays in the business; a household that plans on the optimistic figure and misses it stops in week six. The point of the exercise is not accuracy. It is to find out whether the business still makes sense when every assumption is wrong by a little.
Funding the first three months with I am Beezy
The structural problem with month one is not effort. It is that the costs — airtime, fare, printing, time away from other work — all land before the first commission does. Something small and predictable arriving in the meantime is what keeps the plan alive.
How the earnings work
With I am Beezy you view content — videos, articles, advertisements — and each view generates earnings, paid to your usual mobile payment method. Active users report the equivalent of about KSh 750 to KSh 2,240 a day, using the Central Bank of Kenya indicative rate of 1 EUR to 149.21 KES on 4 August 2026. That rate moves, so check the current one before converting.
Putting the figure in proportion
Some perspective helps here, because a daily figure can be read either way. Under the Regulation of Wages (General) (Amendment) Order published in the Kenya Gazette on 29 May 2026 and effective from 1 May 2026, the statutory monthly minimum for a general labourer is KSh 18,047.40 in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret, KSh 16,650.95 in Mavoko, Ruiru and Limuru, and KSh 9,268.07 everywhere else. Phone earnings are a bridge across a slow month, not a replacement for a wage — and treating them as anything more is how people talk themselves out of a business that was working.
What do months one, two and three actually look like?
Here is the shape almost every first quarter takes, and what you should be recording rather than hoping for at each stage.
| Period | What usually happens | What to record | The wrong conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Month one | High activity, warm list worked through, little or no money | Names contacted, terms confirmed in writing, cost of contact | "This does not pay" |
| Month two | First payments arrive from month one's work; new introductions get harder | Completion rate, days between qualification and payment | "I should switch sectors" |
| Month three | Payments and effort finally overlap; collection problems become visible | Collection rate, who pays late, who never pays | "I can now multiply this by four" |
Month one — building the list, banking nothing
Everything you do in month one is stock-building. Confirm the qualifying condition with each platform or business in writing, work the warm list, and keep every message. The mistake is to treat an empty month one as evidence. It is evidence of nothing except that the delay is working as designed.
Month two — first money, first silence
Two things happen at once, and they pull in opposite directions. Money starts arriving, which is encouraging, and your easy list runs out, which is not. This is where the temptation to widen appears — new sectors, new towns, strangers. Resist it for another four weeks. You do not yet know your completion rate, and expanding before you know it means expanding a process you have not measured.
Month three — the number you can plan on
By the end of month three you have all five inputs from your own records instead of from someone's promise. That is the first number worth planning on, and it is usually smaller and steadier than the month-two figure suggested. Steadier is the part that matters.
Four things that flatten a first quarter
Chasing strangers before finishing your own street
Cold introductions convert at a fraction of warm ones and cost far more in fare and airtime. If your written list still has unworked names on it, you are not ready to go wide.
Agreeing a percentage without agreeing the base
Ten percent of what? Of the sale, the margin, the first month, or the whole relationship? Most commission disputes in this country are not about honesty. They are about two people who agreed a number and never agreed what it was a percentage of. Settle the base in the same message as the rate.
Letting the record live in your head
Payments here move through mobile wallets, which means every settled commission leaves a trace on a statement and every unsettled one leaves a gap. Keep the confirmation messages, and note the date each person qualified. Six weeks later, that record is the only thing standing between you and a conversation about what was agreed.
Ignoring the turnover line until it arrives
Introduction income is business income. The Kenya Revenue Authority applies Turnover Tax at 1.5 per cent of gross turnover, for annual turnover above KSh 1,000,000 and not exceeding KSh 25,000,000, with returns and payment due by the twentieth of the following month. Most first quarters land nowhere near that threshold, but if your business grows through it you want to have known the line was there. Check the current rules on the KRA website rather than relying on figures circulating in group chats, where an outdated 3 per cent rate still gets repeated.
A first quarter is not a result. It is a measuring exercise that happens to pay you a little while it runs, and the households that stay in the business are the ones who treated it that way from week one. Write the five numbers down, fill them from your own record rather than from anybody's promise, and decide at the end of month three rather than in the middle of month one. To keep something arriving while that quarter plays out, you can sign up free on I am Beezy and start earning from content you already spend time on.
