Before I gained admission to study religious and cultural studies at the University of Uyo in 2014, I had already set up my music and videography business.
I was making money from my recording studio as well as from doing video coverage and editing for lots of clients. And it was these two businesses that enabled me to sponsor myself in school and still take care of my wife and kid back then.
One thing that I used to observe was how my colleagues were struggling to graduate with a first class or second class upper without getting the awareness of the rate of unemployment ongoing in this country, Nigeria for a very long time now.
My immediate junior brother stayed at home for 10 years without a job before he bought a car and started bolt transportation business, and till today his certificate is still unable to secure a job for him.
I was compelled to write this article and show Nigerian students how to make money online in 2024 when one of my colleagues posted the certificate he received after undergoing tailoring apprenticeship for two years.
Imagine someone who graduated with a second class upper in 2018 ending up as a trained tailor five years after all because her degree or certificate was unable to secure a job for her. I consider her lucky because she didn’t have to wait much longer before making that positive decision to get a side hustle and not wait for a certified job that might never come.
However, it is very important to make this kind of decision while you are still in school so that before you even graduate you will have already have an income source that will even make you not suffer to look for a job that might never even come.
For that reason, I am writing this article to show you how to make money online as a Nigerian student in the year 2024, and I hope you are able to get a positive result after reading and implementing any of the side hustle you are going to see in this article.
But before I show you how to make money online as a Nigerian student in 2024, let us briefly look at the challenges you are going to face when trying to make money as a Nigerian student.
Challenges of making money online as a Nigerian student.
The main challenges you will face when you try to make money as a Nigerian student are lack of capital and the time to face your studies.
Even if you aim to make money on social media, you will still be required to create content, which will ultimately cost you money. You can however overcome this challenge if you have someone sponsoring your education by making a little savings from whatever you will have left from your school fees, textbooks and even pocket money.
As for the time to focus on your studies, the side hustles I will show you in this article are the ones that will give you much time to face your studies. So without any further ado, let’s look at the side hustles that will enable you to make money as a Nigerian student in 2024.
How to make money online as a Nigerian student in 2024.
To make money online as a Nigerian student in 2024 you must choose a side hustle that will allow you much time to focus on your studies. Below are some of the side hustle I recommend:
- Build and monetize a blog.
- Start freelancing.
- Monetize social media accounts.
- Create and sell digital products.
- Create and sell online courses.
- Become a social media manager.
- Learn web design.
- Build and sell websites.
1. Build and monetize a blog.
Building and monetizing your blog is one of the ways you can make money online as a Nigerian student in 2024.
To however build a successful blog as a Nigerian student, you must ensure you follow the following steps:
- Choose a Niche: To choose a Niche for your blog as a Nigerian student, I recommend you look for the subjects or courses you are very good at in in school. It is a known fact that no matter how brilliant a student might be, there are various subjects or courses he will know far too more than others. And since Google algorithm focuses much on writing from an experienced or expertized point of view, you must ensure the topic of your blog is based on the subjects or courses you will know too well.
- Choose a domain name: Choosing a name for your blog is very vital because your domain name must be unique. This means that you must not choose a name that someone else is already using because if you do, there is no way you will be able to buy and host it. Also, it was very important to choose a domain name that aligns with your blog topic or niche from way back, but nowadays that is no longer relevant. And for that reason, you can even use your own government name as the domain name of your blog.
- Buy your domain name and hosting: Once you are sure your domain is not taken by someone else, the next step you have to take is to buy the domain name and hosting for your blog. There is an option of buying the domain name from a domain provider and after buying the hosting you point the servers to that domain, but to save all those stress as a Nigerian student, you can buy the domain name directly from your host.
- Install and design your blog: Once you are done purchasing your domain name and hosting, the next step is to install and design your blog. WordPress is the best platform that will help you to design a blog because it has free themes and plugins to help get you started on this blogging journey.
- Do keyword research: Keyword research is the process where you will be looking at the queries people are typing to search engines based on the topic you have chosen for your blog. There are several tools that will help you do this but I personally use Google search engine and Google trends to do my own keyword research and since they have been working best for me I also recommend them for you too.
- Start writing your content: Once you have come up with the titles for your blog articles after doing keyword research,, you have to start writing your articles right away.
- Monetize your blog: Traditionally you will have to wait six to eight months to start seeing traffic beginning to flow into your blog, and this however depends on how competitive your niche is. Once you start to see a steady flow of traffic, even if its a thousand visits per month, you can then go ahead to implement several monetization strategies that will help you to start making money online as a Nigerian student. You can read the article below to learn more about how to make money from youur blog.
How to start a blog and make money online.
2. Start freelancing.
Freelancing is a process that allows you to work and earn money online by performing a service you know best on a contract basis.
But before you dive into freelancing you must first and foremost learn how to get started as a freelancer in Nigeria.
It is however very important for you to learn or have a profession as well as know the skills you will need as a freelancer before you delve into freelancing and afterwards all you will need to do is focus on getting clients or job as a freelancer.
Several platforms like freelancer.com, Upwork, etc. will give you the opportunity to showcase your jobs to get clients who are going to patronize you. If you have some money on the ground, you can invest in building your portfolio website where clients can see the projects you’ve been able to execute so far and give you jobs.
Below are some of the best freelancing jobs that will enable you to start making money as a student in Nigeria from freelancing in no time:
- Videographer and editor.
- Photographer.
- Wed designer.
- Graphics designer.
- Content writer and marketer.
- SEO specialist.
- copywriter.
You can read the article below to learn how to utilize these freelancing jobs and start making money online as a Nigerian student.
15+ Best Freelancing Jobs In Demand Now.
3. Monetize social media accounts.
Nearly all the social media platforms today will allow you to utilize their monetization programs and make so much money online as a Nigerian student.
The only thing you are required to do is to obey their policy or community guidelines and create content to increase your followers in order to meet up their monetization requirements.
Once you are able to do that, you will be accepted into their monetization programs and begin to make so much money online even as a Nigerian student.
4. Create and sell digital products.
There are different types of digital products you can create and sell online to make money as a Nigerian student in 2024 and the outstanding ones are e-books and audiobooks.
Now some people believe that you need to have your e-commerce website to be able to sell any digital product, but that is a lie because you can sell your digital pras a student ioducts even on your free social media platforms, all you need to do is ensure you get a good number of followers who will be interested in the kind of digital product you are offering.
For instance, you can create and sell e-books on Amazon.
5. Create and sell online courses.
Another way to make money online as a Nigerian student in 2024 is to create and sell online courses. As I said in the introductory part of this article, you can create this courses based on the subjects or courses you know too well in school.
Also, several platforms will help you sell your online courses, some of them are Udemy, Teachable, etc.
6. Become a social media manager.
There are scores of individuals and business entities who do not have time to manage their social media platforms, or even know how to do so,, and for that reason they are always on the lookout for someone to help them manage their social media accounts.
Thus, you can learn the basics of social media management and become a social media manager in order to avail yourself of the opportunity to work for these kinds.
7. Learn web design.
Having the knowledge of web design will enable you to build and manage websites for both individuals and companies that need such.
As a web designer, I can confidently tell you that there is so much money in the business. Fr example, you can charge somebody 30,000 Naira for a website and end up buying a .com.ng domain extension for 1,200 Naira and a cheap web hosting of 700 Naira per month.
In sum up, 700 times twelve will give you 8,400 Naira and when you add that to 1200 Naira you realize you have built a website with less than 10,000 Naira and keep a profit of 20,000 Naira.
8. Build and sell websites.
The main challenge with building and selling websites is in increasing it’s value, and for that reason I always view this method of making money online as a long term investment because 24 months is the average duration of increasing the value of a website to a steady income flow if you are able to do everything right.
Below are the steps you need to take in order to build a website and sell it:
- Understanding the factors that influence increasing the value of a website. Some of the basic factors that will help you to increase the value of a website is the niche you choose for your website, the strategies you are implementing to bring traffic to the website, the monetization programs you have added to the website. Once you are able to do them right, it will be easy for you to sell your website.
- Gathering your traffic and financial reports. Before someone offers to buy your website, he will need to see how much the website is already making or worth. And you can clearly show this by gathering the traffic and financial reports about the website.
- Ensuring all necessary data applicable to the website are transferable. For example, some people make the mistake of adding the website they ant to sell to their already existing Google Ads account and that will pose a very serious problem when it comes to transferring the website to the buyer. Thus, you must ensure you create a separate AdSense account for the website you are going to sell so you can easily transfer it to the buyer.
- Having an option for the well-being of the website after the sale. You must be able to clearly show the person who buys your website the strategies you have in place for creating content in order to maintain or even increase the traffic coming to the website.
- Finding the right measures that will help you to sell your website. For instance, if you give your website to the wrong broke, you will have that website sitting online for years without anyone offering to buy it.
Good luck!
