1) Social media marketing

You need:

A computer or a phone with an internet connection
An active Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube account with a good number of followers.
Typical earnings: ₦50,000 - ₦150,000 a month (for serious and hardworking people)

Sometimes it pays to be a social media addict. Some companies and even normal people are willing to pay good money to make their voices heard on social media. They pay social media marketers to tweet about their product or service in a bid to gain some popularity for the product on social media. Some people (especially up-coming musicians) pay social media marketers to tweet or ask people to follow/like their social media pages in a bid to make themselves more popular. Some social media marketers earn about ₦20,000 just to tweet about somebody, a product or a service for a month.

How to get started

Sign up for Facebook, twitter and YouTube accounts
Get followers/likes/subscribers (2000 is enough to start earning something but you should target 100,000). Start with your close friends and work your way up the ladder. The easiest way to do this is to be interesting, funny and controversial.
When you become really popular on social media, people will naturally start asking you to tweet, post a pic or a video on your page in return for cash. If they don't; sign up for an ad dynamo account.


2) Sell your own product, service or information online

You need:

A computer or a phone with an internet connection
A product, service or information to sell
Typical earnings: ₦50,000 - ₦100,000 a month (for serious and hardworking people)

Selling information in form of an eBook is one of the most popular ways to make money online in Nigeria. Creating an eBook does not really require any special skill; however, you need to be a good writer with enough knowledge of something important. For example, if you are good at Forex trading, you can write an eBook about it.

Also, you can sell services like webdesign services (for web designers), graphic design services (for graphic artist), Photoshop to HTML services (for programmers), blogger to WordPress services, SEO services and so on.

Selling an eBook or a service online is not an easy task but you can start by spreading the word on Facebook, twitter, forums and others social networking sites. Creating a dedicated website (it can be a free website) for the sale of the product or service is the most effective way to get those sales.

Are you a good writer? Good; you can make money online as a freelance writer. Website owners are more than willing to pay freelance writers to create content for their websites. Big sites like eHow (through demand media studio) pay at least $15 per article while Text Brokers pay $5 to $30 per article.

3) Affiliate marketing

You need: A computer or a phone with an internet connection
Typical earnings: ₦20,000 - ₦70,000 a month (for serious and hardworking people)

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. In simple English, when you sign up as an affiliate to a company or business, you get a commission (which is a percentage of the cost of the item sold) when you refer customers to them.

Not too long ago, becoming an affiliate of amazon.com (an international online store) was the best way a Nigerian affiliate marketer could make money online but now, with Nigerian based online stores like Konga and Jumia, Nigerian affiliate marketers can get their commission (3-9% of cost of the item sold) directly into their bank accounts.

To get started, simply visit Konga, Jumia, or amazon.com, sign up, create affiliate links and start referring people.

Ideally, creating a content/information website that can attract thousands of visitors monthly is the best way to earn a good income through affiliate marketing but you can start by using your affiliate links on Facebook, twitter, BBM, forums and others social networking sites.

4) Create a website/blog

You need:

A computer with an internet connection
A little knowledge about websites, SEO and the internet
Typical earnings: ₦50,000 - unlimited (for serious and hardworking people)

Creating a website/blog is as easy as ABC and you don't necessarily have to spend a Kobo to create one. There are different types of websites that can serve different purposes and generate income in different ways. Let's take a look at a few of them below:

A content/information/news website: The most popular way to make money with a content website like this one (aabnigeria.com) or a news website like lindaikeji..com is to sell advert slots to advertisers. Linda Ikeji is a typical example of a very rare Nigerian who turned blogging into a multi-million Naira business. It is certainly not easy to attract advertisers to a website. To attract big companies like MTN, GTBank and others you'll need at least 1million visitors to your website monthly but all hope is not lost. A program called Google Adsense can help.

Google Adsense, an advertising program by Google allows website owners to display Google ads on their website or blog. When the advertisers pay Google, Google in turn pay the website owners. Bloggers like Jide Ogunsanya of ogbongeblog.com (a content website) make a cool ₦150,000 (estimated) monthly from Google Adsense.

To get started, create a website or blog, write at least 15 pages of good and unique content on it, attract a good number of daily visitors (using SEO and social media marketing) then visit Google.com/adsense to sign up for a Google Adsense account.

Affiliate marketing (explained above) is also a very good way to make money with a content/information website.

A subscription based website: A good example of a subscription based website is a US dating site called eHarmony.com. On eHarmony, members pay a monthly subscription fee to be able to access the site and chat with other members. In Nigeria, there are hundreds of hours of Nollywood movies on iROKOtv.com but to watch them, you have to pay a ₦560 monthly subscription fee.

To get started, create a site with a very important/unique component that people won't mind paying for and simply ask them (interested people) to subscribe in order to gain access to the site. A lot of marketing is involved here but you can start small; maybe with your friends.

A free dating site: Creating a free dating site is not difficult; you can do it for free in under an hour but getting people to register and use your dating site is a different ball game. Selling ad slots and affiliate marketing are the 2 major ways to make money from a free dating site. Plentyoffish.com is a good example of a multi-million dollar free dating site

Others: You can also make money online by creating a free classified ads site like olx.com and tradestable.com, a forum like nairaland.com, a job search site like and so on.
Sound easy right? Hate to disappoint you; it’s not. Making money online by creating a website is the most lucrative but difficult way to make money online. Creating the site is not difficult but getting a substantial amount of traffic (visitors/people) to the site is very very difficult.
Making money online is not completely different from the normal everyday job. Yes; it is flexible but you still have to work hard; sometimes harder that a paid employee job. However, once you get past all the hard work and disappointment, it gets to a stage where the business kindof runs itself and you get to do less work. But unfortunately, only 10 percent of internet entrepreneurs will actually succeed. Don't be discouraged though, TRY IT. It might work for you and if it doesn't... at least you'll know you tried.

5) Play games on Gamespay.
Gamespay is the new gaming platform all gamers would really love.
How does this work?
Visit the website (www.gamespay.com) , you can either play the virtual games such as Jelly break, Crazy runner, Duck shooter, Penalty kick, hallowitch flight and a couple of other interesting games. You can as well play the lottery on the same website, either way, you get paid for playing.
Visit  www.gamespay.com
Register with your email address
Play and win
Be rewarded.