There is so much hype these days about making money online in Nigeria and yet for some of us it is still an illusion. Nigerian internet gurus constantly inundate us with e-books and videos on making money online in Nigeria. And of course there is always a proof of their earnings to persuade us to part with our hard earned cash in the quest for easy internet wealth. I have bought such e-books with hopes of great ROI which were at best copy and paste materials with no credibility and they never earned me a kobo. Trust me most of those internet gurus don’t know jack about making money online; they are only touts reselling other people’s content. Making money online while possible isn’t as easy as these gurus make it sound. It takes effort, passion and the right information.

What then are the essential ingredients for making money online in Nigeria
1. Patience; don’t expect to start making money right off the bat. It often takes months if your game is very tight and maybe years. Linda Ikeji didn’t become big in 2015, she been laying the foundation to her banana island mansion since November 2006 when she hit send for first post.

2. Great writing skills; if you are ever going to make money from freelancing you need to be able to write well. While not so too hard a skill to develop, but really helps if you are a natural and well versed in your area of interest. One thing about writing well is knowing a little of almost everything and knowing so much about one area; your area of expertise. That way your writing becomes more balanced

3. Understand the needs of your customers/audience. If you start out with placing making money first, you may miss it all completely. The needs of your customers should come first, before monetisation. Don’t gamble on this. Seek first the needs and wants of the customers, then every other things follows.

4. Think like your audience/customer. Putting your customers/audience first also means thinking like they think. Think where they want to go and be there first.

5. It may take money (but not money that will break your account) to make money online; money doesn’t just pulp out online, it often comes as a result of concerted efforts towards offering a product or a service on a credible platform. While you may be able to register at a platform like freelancer.com and write for people for a commission, to be able to make serious money, you need a platform; more on that later.

6. Understanding SEO; you may have the best products or services but without good SEO for them, they are as good as crap. Understanding the specific keywords your audience or customers will search for will enable them find you easily when they search? Take for instance this post’s keyword is making money online in Nigeria in 2015. This will increase my discoverability unlike if I used making money online in 2015. That would mean pitching me against thousands of other posts with similar keywords. However SEO is much more than keywords and meta-descriptions.

Ways to make money online
Disclaimer; this is in no way an exhaustive list; it is at best the few ways I have experimented with and have seen others use to success.

# Blogging; blogging isn’t dead. It is one of the most common ways of making money online in Nigeria. While it may be really difficult to make as much as Linda ikeji without making a substantial investment (she is greatly helped by first mover advantage and momentum she had built up for close to a decade now). You too can make money through blogging. However it requires a lot of effort especially when your budget isn’t that big to hire people to do your contents and also do aggressive marketing.
But like I earlier mentioned, you need to start from the stand point of filling a need instead of hoping that blogging will give you money instantly. Some of the mistakes folks make is trying to make money when their blogs have not gotten to the maturity stage where it can make real money.

Few things that could help you in making money online in Nigeria through blogging
1. Be Original; you can easily be found out if you are a fraud. I see a lot of bloggers who all they do is copy and paste stuffs. While they may succeed in making money in the short run, they are only destroying their credibility in the long term. These people don’t last long in the game.
2. Be Consistent; You can’t get no where without consistency. Consistency builds momentum.
3. Be engaging; your blog need to be engaging to your audience.
4. Blog about what you know and have an interest in; so that you it can be sustainable.

# Youtubing; $7 for every 1000 views! Ever wondered if people and how people make money from YouTube? Well there you have it. For every 1000 views, you get paid 7 dollars. So put that skill to use and start making money through Youtube

# Selling your products or services; you can sell your products or services online. If you just finished secondary school for instance and you are really into tutoring people on how to pass WAEC. You can get a site or even a facebook page to promote your skills. Trust me you can make so much money from offering your service to people who needs it. I know how much my boss spends on a monthly basis for the home tuition of two of her children. An online presence could really help you in this regard to sell your service to a wider audience. Are you very good in digital marketing; you can start a blog to promote your craft. I see guys earning hundreds of thousands running Facebook fan pages for companies.

# Freelancing; while I don’t do freelancing, I know folks who make money doing stuffs online for other people. Here are two great freelancing platforms; Freelancer, The Penny Hoarder, Listverse

# Affiliate marketing; this is as a stream of making online in Nigeria works by you earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you could do it without having a site; creating a facebook fan page may just be your platform. There lots of great networks online; you can find some here http://mthink.com/top-20-affiliate-networks-2015/.

But before jumping in here are some few more things to consider
To make serious money online you need to gather your factors of production; well more like the all things you would need. I decided to use this approach because even a secondary school student knows what the factors of production are and as such its easier to use it to describe the process.

So here are the factors of production to define in order to make real money online
a. Land; this represents your platform, you can choose to squat for free or pay rent. But don’t forget that as a squatter your rights are limited unlike someone who pays rent. Your platforms include your webhost, social media.
b. Labour; your labour is the manpower and man hours that your business requires. You can choose to outsource or pay people to handle key areas of your online business/ presence.
c. Capital; this is another key input in the process. To rent your platform you need capital, to outsource labour you need capital. Capital in this case, is the money you are required to invest in order to make money.
d. The entrepreneur; you. You give the dream life. You pull the strings; the ability to make money online depends largely on you.

These are my two cents on making money online in Nigeria, and like I said its by no means exhaustive, please share, comment so as to help folks who are seriously considering making money online in Nigeria

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