How to Make Money Online in Nigeria

A high rate of unemployment in Africa’s largest economy has seen to it that a lot of people are keen to make money online in Nigeria. Either for extra money through a part-time gig or as a full-time online job, it is possible to earn money online from Nigeria. Making money online is just like the offline world. Yes, there are advantages to working online but you would need skills, proper planning, and good execution. This article shares how to make money online in Nigeria and lists over 130 freelancing opportunities.

Making money online has become even more popular in recent times due to the requirements for more people to work from home, around the world. It is no longer exclusive to a few.

Make Money Freelancing in Nigeria

Freelancing is a model that allows you to work on a project-by-project basis, without being permanently committed by a specific employer. You would have the benefit of being able to choose your clients as well as flexible working hours. The flexibility makes it a popular means to make money as a student or as an intentional way of life.

A freelancer is an independent person who works on a project-by-project or task-by-task basis. The freelancer model of working is becoming increasingly popular especially over the internet.

The gigs that are popular with freelancers are too many to list in this article but we have listed some of the major ones.

Graphics Design

The specific roles that are popular under this category are:

Logo & Brand Identity

You can design for companies and other entities that need specific tasks related to Logo Design, Brand Style Guides, Business Cards & Stationery. Freelancers who want to make more money often offer the three listed in packages, in other to offer beyond just a logo design.

1. Logo Design: logos make a world of difference and constitute the primary form of brand identify for a company.
2. Brand Style Guides: an excellent logo often goes with brand stlye guides espcially for bigger companies that want to be consistent with their brand identity.
3. Business Cards & Stationery: the 3rd leg of this brand identity is the business cards, company letter heads and other company stationery.

Game Art: folks in the gaming industry often need custom designs for their gaming profile or online store. These can include Graphics for Streamers, Twitch Store, Art & Illustration.

Illustration: still under graphics & design, there’s a big market for NFT (non-fungible tokens) Art, Pattern Design, Portraits & Caricatures, Cartoons & Comics, Tattoo Design, Storyboards and so on.

Web & App Design

1. Website Design: every serious company that does business online needs a website and many of them, especially small businesses do hire freelancers for their online presence.
2. App Design: smartphone apps have become extremely popular and a part of our daily lives. These apps need to be designed by skilled software developers and this is a strong avenue for you to make money if you have the right skills.
3. WordPress themes and plugins: WordPress is so massive on the web that it deserves its own category. You can make money as a freelancer designing custom WordPress themes and or plugins.
4. UX Design: user-experience is very critical to the success of any website or web app. The owners of the website or app cannot make much money if the user experience is very poor. This offers a job opportunity.
5. Landing Page Design: an effective landing page can make a world of difference in the volume of sales conversion on a website. Thus, companies spend on an effective landing page design.
6. Email Design: newsletters are still an important means of reaching out to a customer base or potential customers. A newsletter needs to look good to have a positive impact on and retain the target audience.
7. Icon Design: icons are an important part of branding. The right icons in the best colours will make a website or app pop.
8. Web Banners: banners are still common on websites as a means of online advertising. You can make money from designing banners that can convert web traffic into sales.
9. Packaging & Label Design: other design requirements that are often filled by freelancers are Book Cover Design, Album Cover Design, Podcast Cover Art.

Visual Design

1. Photoshop Editing: Adobe Photoshop is still a popular software for graphics design. You can make money if you have the skills for using this software.
2. Presentation Design: serious companies need impressive flyers for offline marketing, beautiful PowerPoint presentations, and the like.
3. Infographic Design: they are a very effective means of explaining information online
4. Vector Tracing: they are required for designing vector graphics based on an existing image
5. CV/ Resume Design: job seekers would make a better impression when their CV stands out from the crowd
6. Architecture & Building Design: this is a specialized and professional industry but qualified professionals still get freelance gigs either as a side-hustle to their day jobs or on a full-time freelance basis.
7. Interior Design: you can assist with desigining the interior of a home, office or any other building
8. Other visual design gigs that are possible online on a freelance basis are Landscape Design, Building Engineering, and Building Information Modeling.

Fashion & Merchandise

There are a lot of listings on freelancer websites for gigs related to the design of fashion and merchandise since these can be done remotely.

The specific gigs often include the design of T-Shirts & Merchandise, Jewellery.

In terms of print design under this category, the following are common:

1. Flyer Design
2. Brochure Design
3. Signage Design
4. Poster Design
5. Catalog Design
6. Menu Design
7. Postcard Design
8. Invitation Design

In all the online designs gigs listed above, the freelancer is obviously limited to the design aspect while the business that contracted the job would design offline.

Digital Marketing

This industry has become pivotal to making money online. It is thus common for small businesses to outsource these roles considering they might not be able to afford full-time in-house personnel. These roles are a perfect way to make money on a freelance basis.

1. Social Media Marketing: companies engage their customers and fans via social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like very regularly. They are often on the look-out for smart and witty fellows who can handle their social media presence effectively.
2. Social Media Advertising: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all have very serious paltforms for companies to advertise on their respective networks. In other not to loose money due to poor knowledge, companies sometimes outside their social media advertitising to skilled personnel.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO has become very tough and there is a massive indistry for ensuring that businesses can stand a chance to rank well on search engine result pages of Google, Bing etc.
   1. Local SEO: this is a subset of the generic SEO for businesses that want to rank well in their own city or country. An SEO expert with good local knoweldge would make a world of difference here.
4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Google Adwords is the most popular SEM considering Google is by far the biggest Search Engine. If you have the skills, you will make money here.
5. Marketing Strategy: sometimes, all a business needs is the right person who can draw-up the best marketing strategy for them. They can then execute this strategy inhouse or outsource to other freelancers.
6. Public Relations: every serious business wants to look good online or offline. Public Relations plays an important role in this. This is a professional industry that requires personneel with qualifieications in courses like Mass Communication.
7. Content Marketing: gigs under this category are for writing blog posts, articles, podcasts, infographics and other content that can be published online.
8. Video Marketing: ads on YouTube and other video streaming websites need to be strategised and designed carefully in other to have the best impact.
9. Email Marketing: newsletters are not to be taken for granted. There are a lot of opportunities for freelancers who can design newsletters using email marketing tools like MailChimp.
10. Web Analytics: Tools like Google Analytics are not the simplest for a small business owner. This presents an opportunity for a freelance who can distill the analytics into useful formats that would be useful for decision making.
11. Text Message Marketing: believe it or not, SMS is still a popular form of market.
12. Display Advertising
13. E-Commerce Marketing
14. Influencer Marketing: if you have built a strong followeship on any of the popular social media networks, you can make money marketing brands that are closely related to your followership.
15. Community Management: online forums need level-headed people who can manage them.
16. Mobile App Marketing: smartphone apps are everywhere. Freelancers who have the right skills are needed for strategy and execution under this category.
17. Music Promotion
18. Book & eBook Marketing
19. Podcast Marketing
20. Crowdfunding: raising money for causes is anything but easy, sometimes. If you have strong expereince with this, there are gigs you will make money from if you can offer the best strategy for crowdfunding online.
21. Affiliate Marketing

Writing & Translation

This is an obviously massive category with so many opportunities under it. There are so many forms of writing and translation that can be done remotely from Nigeria, on a freelance basis. Having good writing skills can indeed be relatively lucrative considering the high volume of opportunities out there. This category is indeed one of the oldest forms of freelancing.

1. Articles & Blog Posts: some businesses need people who can write articles and / or blog posts on a regular basis and this presnts a job opportunity.
2. Translation: either translating text content for website or video subtitles, many businesses require excellent transalation between major global languages like English to Spanish, English to French, or vice versa.
3. Proofreading & Editing: books, journals, lengthy articles sometimes require another set of eyes for proofreading and editing.
4. Resume Writing
5. Cover Letters
6. LinkedIn Profiles
7. Ad Copy
8. Sales Copy: its not enugh to just writing. It is very important to sales copy correctly in a way that can lead to good conversions.
9. Social Media Copy
10. Email Copy
11. Case Studies
12. Book & eBook Writing
13. Book Editing
14. Scriptwriting
15. Podcast Writing
16. Beta Reading
17. Creative Writing
18. Brand Voice & Tone
19. UX Writing
20. Speechwriting
21. eLearning Content Development
22. Technical Writing
23. Job Descriptions
24. White Papers
25. Website Content
26. Product Descriptions
27. Press Releases
28. Business Names & Slogans
29. Legal Writing
30. Grant Writing
31. Transcripts
32. Research & Summaries

Video & Animation

This is another major freelance category with a high number of specialised opportunities.

1. Whiteboard & Animated Explainers: this is common with companies that need explainers for their products or services.
2. Video Editing: putting together good videos requires good video editing skills. It is not uncommon for businesses to outsource their video editing even after recording the videos themselves.
3. Visual Effects
4. Subtitles & Captions
5. Lyric & Music Videos
6. Character Animation
7. Logo Animation
8. Animation for Kids
9. Lottie & Website Animation
10. Corporate Videos
11. Intros & Outros
12. Animated GIFs
13. Short Video Ads
14. 3D Product Animation
15. E-Commerce Product Videos
16. Spokesperson Videos
17. Crowdfunding Videos
18. Unboxing Videos
19. App & Website Previews
20. Animation for Streamers
21. eLearning Video Production
22. Video Templates Editing
23. Live Action Explainers
24. Product Photography
25. Local Photography
26. Drone Videography
27. Screencasting Videos
28. Meditation Videos
29. Slideshow Videos
30. Game Trailers
31. Book Trailers
32. Article to Video
33. Real Estate Promos

12 Freelancer websites

There are several freelancing websites out there. The popular ones include:

1. Freelancer.com
2. Fiverr.com
3. Upwork.com
4. Hubstaff Talent
5. Credo
6. Fiverr
7. Freelancer
8. Outsourcely
9. Textbroker
10. Workhoppers
11. Freeeup
12. PeoplePerHour

Trade Forex or Cryptocurrency

You can make money online in Nigeria by trading forex or cryptocurrencies.

A lot of people make money from hedging against the exchange rates fluctuations between fiat currencies in the case of forex, or fluctuations between fiat and crypto.

While this is a very high risky means of investment, it is possible to make a lot of money when done right, especially over a longer period of time.

Buy and Sell Crypto

Apart from trading, you can make money from buying and selling bitcoins and other popular cryptocurrencies on websites like Paxful and LocalBitcoins.

Simply, you buy at lower rates and sell at higher rates. The profit margin is thus the money you make.

Make Money from Online Jobs

This is just like any other job, except it is carried out remotely. This is quite common, especially in developed countries.

Some tasks are easy to carry out remotely, thus a lot of full-time jobs are available online.

Websites where you can signup to find full-time or part-time online jobs

• freeeup.com: it specializes in digital marketing jobs
• outsourcely.com: it supports full-time, part-time and even freelance jobs

Part-Time Online Jobs

This would be relevant where you already have a full-time regular job but wish to supplement your income with extra cash. Some companies and individuals are happy to hire on a part-time basis, based on their own requirements. They would usually allow you to work remotely from your home or a workspace.

Running a Business Online in Nigeria

Where you have some business management acumen in addition to the relevant skills you can offer, running a business online might be a good idea. Running a business can be the most challenging of the means to make money online, but it can also be the most rewarding when done right. Importantly, you need bankable business ideas, to succeed.

Depending on how big you wish to scale, you need to hire other people. This can also be done online. Your entire staff can work remotely over the Internet.

It is an excellent idea to register the business with the Corporate Affairs Commission in Nigeria and then open a business bank account that goes with the business. You need to create Email Addresses and create a Website for your online business to be effective. Social Media accounts can also help with reaching your target market.

You can make money online by running your own business, from activities including:

• blogging: you can start and run a blog to make money if you have good writing skills. You can monetize your blog for income using Google Adsense or dozens of other ad networks. This can be challenging considering this area is getting saturated but the right niche can give you a massive edge.
• supporting SMEs: you can offer services that Small-scale and Medium-scale Enterprises need, where you have the training and skills. Examples include Accounting, Web Design, etc.
• affiliate marketing: you can sign-up as an affiliate to big merchants and then market their products/services for commissions.
• app development: the smartphone industry keeps growing. Businesses create smartphone apps in other to tap into this industry to serve their customers better. You can set up a business to offer app development.
• digital marketing: this would include Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing, Social Media marketing and every other activity that would help with marketing a business online.

We have offered more details about running a business online in Nigeria here.

Learn a Skill or Polish Your Talents

Before everything else, it is very important to have something to offer the world, in the form of marketable skills. You can either learn new skills or improve on the marketable talents you already have.

There are dozens of credible websites where you can learn online. Some are free, others are premium. They all cover a wide range of topics including Design, Web & App Development, Business, IT & Software, Personal Development, Marketing, Photography, Music, Video Production, etc.

Youtube

Aside from the goofy clips, there are millions of extremely useful tutorial videos on YouTube, created by companies and individuals, that are eager to share skills with you. All the video tutorials are completely free of charge. You only need a good internet connection and a skill for searching, to find the best tutorials. Eventually, you would notice the best Youtube channels that cover the subject matter you are interested in. You can subscribe to these channels and enable notification, so you are automatically notified of new videos.

edX

This is another free platform. It offers Free courses designed specifically for interactive study via the web. It has a massive inventory of university-grade online courses. It is led by American universities: MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley.

Other Learning Platforms

Premium learning platforms: these are not free. You would need to pay. They offer knowledge using different payment models. While some require a monthly subscription, others allow you to buy each tutorial. Examples of these platforms are:

• Lynda – this is a subscription-based learning platform that is now owned by the business social network, Linkedin.
• Udemy – with over 80,000 courses & tutorials, Udemy delivers online courses that cover many topics and interests. The fees vary and they regularly offer steep discounts.
• Udacity – This platform offers a hybrid model. It provides free online courses along with a range of certification options for a fee.

With a good set of skills on hand, you are ready to make money online. The better your skills, the higher your chances of making good money.

FAQs

How can I make money online legally in Nigeria?
Any of the methods suggested in this article are very viable means of making money legally in Nigeria. We cannot suggest any illegal activity.

How can a Nigerian student make money online?
Anyone can make money online in Nigeria. Students, unemployed, under-employed or anyone else who wishes to make extra income on the side. The angle for students is that freelancing can be very flexible when managed properly. A student can work online during break or outside study hours.

How can I make fast money online?
Nothing worthwhile comes easy. With a bit of fortune, you may be able to make make money speedily sometimes but a wealth that lasts usually takes time to build. Thus, a lot of hard and smart work is required.

How can I make money online without paying?
It is possible to make money without a startup capital or investment. This would be applicable where you already have some marketable skills that can easily be converted into useful income. The word that comes to mind again is Freelancing.

How can I earn money online daily?
While a lot of freelancing work can result in daily income, payouts are usually done on a monthly basis. Ad networks like Google Adsense for example, only payout monthly.

Can I make money with Bitcoin?
You can make money either by investing in Bitcoin with the hope that it would gain massive value in future, or you can trade in the retail exchange of bitcoins for a profit.

How can I get rich online overnight?
Getting rich is one thing, overnight is another. The two hardly come together. Getting rich usually takes a lot of hard, smart and persistent work. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and one of the richest billionaires in the world is quoted as saying “All overnight success takes about 10 years.”

The answers above also apply to the other questions below:

• How can I be a millionaire?
• What jobs do millionaires have?
• How can I get rich in 10 years?
• How can I become a millionaire in one day?
• How can I become a millionaire in 2 days?
• How can I get rich in one day?
• What’s the fastest way to make a million dollars?