How to Make Money During A Lockdown (Nigeria)

A lot of us have been in a lockdown due to the COVID-19 for the past few weeks now, and that’s really a piece of bad news not only for people with jobs but also most businesses that requires some sort of physical contacts; eCommerce for example especially if you are not selling an essential product.

For a lot of people, that means there is no money coming in. But yet, we have to spend money on food and other essentials… in fact, most bills are still as active as ever in Nigeria. Expenses With No Income.

That is not a good thing in any way. And that is why in this post, I will be showing you How to Make Money While in Self-Isolation. I call them Corona-proof money-making businesses.

A little disclaimer: There is hardly a business that is going to be unaffected by this current situation we all found ourselves in, but the impact just varies for each activity.

One more thing, some of these businesses can be done entirely free, while some of them require little to significant capital. But one thing is that they all need some sort of effort from you… remember the saying; No Food For Lazy Man.

So, without further ado, let’s get into what I have for you.

Refer Your Friends & Family To PiggyVest

PiggyVest is a reliable platform that pays N1,000 naira for every single person you can refer to their systems.

PiggyVest is a savings and investment platform. I have been using them for a while now personally. They offer up to about 10% per annum on each of their savings plans. On the other hand, they integrate with several startups that are looking for investors. And you can invest as low as N5,000 on some of the businesses. Catchy, right? But ROI is usually around 20% per year. This may not be very juicy for people with little cash to invest.

But anyway, they also pay you N1,000 for every person that you get to sign up on the platform. Click here to sign up and start earning on PiggyVest.

Now, you may think N1,000 is small, but if you can get 50 signups (which is entirely possible), that is N50,000 free money which you can invest in other things or use as upkeep during this period.

Anyway, the referral platform is like the best entry to sell this system because other things they offer are not so exclusive. I am on other platforms that offer better deals.

Freelancing on Fiverr

If you’ve followed me between 2013 and 2015, you know that I was pretty much only doing Freelancing on Fiverr around that period. And honestly, I owe my Internet Marketing success to freelancing because that was how I made my first million and also the main reason I ever got popular in the IM space in Nigeria.

And freelancing (even Fiverr) still works like a charm for people. And the good thing is that is doesn’t necessarily require any capital at all. You just need to find a service in which people are interested, learn how to do it, and list your gigs on Fiverr.

If it helps, the three specific services that worked for me in those days are Website Traffic, Article Writing, and Off-Page SEO (which involves creating backlinks for websites). These services are still in high demand, but you will have to do your research too.

By the way, if you already possess a skill which people are offering services on Fiverr already. It is a good idea to start with that instead of trying to learn something new all over again.

Just go to Fiverr.com and explore the categories, and you may be amazed to find something that you already do.

If you have no idea where to start with Fiverr, then I will recommend checking out theFiverr Money Pot course by Ajeigbe Moruf.

Fiverr is not the only freelancing website; there is still Legiit.com, Konker.io, Upwork.com, PeoplePerHour, etc. Just go with one that you are comfortable with.

That said, a smart idea is also to pick a service from Fiverr and relist at double or even triple the price on these other freelance marketplaces. So any time you get an order, you will go back to Fiverr to place to order with the seller, and once delivered, you can keep your profit. This idea is popularly known as FIVERR ARBITRAGE!

Information Marketing – Sell Courses Online

If there is something you are good at, you can start creating some sort of training for it and get people to pay for it.

As an example, some times last year, someone approached me about how he can use a particular android app to create beautiful graphics on a mobile phone. And it was outstanding that you’ll hardly be able to differentiate between the outputs and those produced using high-end software like CorelDraw.

And he was offering the training to people using Whatsapp for some fee. I later showed him how to turn the package into a video course, create a sales page, and promote using the FB Ads.

His case is just an example; there is all sort of ideas you can monetize this way. It can be some cooking class, and it can be how to make money, tailoring, health, personal finance, and the list is endless. Here is a PDF from AWAI showing 101 book ideas.

You can package it in an ebook, audio, or video. You can even offer it via Whatsapp if you are comfortable with that.

If you have no idea or skill that you can simply go to the PLR platforms and buy a course that you can repackage and resell in Nigeria, my favorite PLR platform is IDplr.com.

You can also approach the owner of a course you enjoyed and request to buy the resale right.

You can also sell these guides internationally using a platform like gumroad.com.

Affiliate Marketing (Nigeria)

If you are unable to find an idea you can monetize by yourself, then you should consider promoting courses owned by other people. You can search for these courses, but I am connected to several course creators on Facebook, whom I can approach and request to promote their products.

You can negotiate the terms, but make sure to ask them to make a specific sales page for you so that you can easily track your referred sales. One thing though, is that I do not settle for less than 50% commission if it is a course. But, it may be hard to get up to that commission rate if it is service.

The easiest way to get products to promote in Nigeria is to become a member on a platform like Expertnaire, which already has products that you can push. Many of the products on their platforms offer 50% and above as commission, and it is easier because you don’t have to talk to anybody; just generate your affiliate link and start promoting the products. And this makes it unlikely to get cheated by the owners of the products, compared to going directly.

However, I don’t like Expertnaire for two reasons which are;

• You have to pay about N10,000 yearly to promote their products (I understand they are spending money to maintain the website and probably want to make the network exclusive, but..).
• The products become unnecessarily expensive because most sellers here don’t understand how affiliate marketing works.

Click here to join Expertnaire.

One advice I can give you, however, is to make sure whatever you are promoting delivers whatever it promises on the sales page.

Affiliate Marketing (International)

I am separating these two because there are a few differences. For me, I prefer the international type of affiliate marketing because vendors are more understanding. They understood that the value of a customer goes far beyond the first sale, so they will be able to give you the chance to earn a commission as high as 80 to even 100 percent for the initial purchase. And the sweetest part is that most of these products always come with backend offers. Furthermore, 99.9% of the platforms are FREE for you to join.

Some of the top platforms include JVZoo.com and WariorPlus.com. But to not waste your time, click here to download the 20-page PDF report, which I created about this some years ago. It shows you exactly what Affiliate Marketing is, how to get started, and how to begin making money with it.

Simple Method of Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

Well, you’ll be required to sign up for my mailing list, though.

Oh! One more thing, you’ll need to have a PayPal account to withdraw your money from these platforms, so you can watch the video below to learn how to create a Paypal account that you can use to receive funds since Nigerian based ones won’t work for receiving funds.

Making Money from Blogging

Blogging simply doesn’t get old. I’ve personally struggled with it myself over the years, but I found my voice last year after going through a Niche Website course by Augustus. The course was previously a paid one, but he’s given it all away for free now, I still don’t know why. I will link to his course later.

Blogging has to do with creating a website like this one and then posting several articles on it. It’s best to make it about a specific topic and post articles relating to that topic.

For example, this blog is meant to document my journeys in the internet marketing world. I also want to be able to share some tips like this one with you.

Yours can be about relationships, entertainment, politics, news, religion, or health and what have you.

Creating a blog is quite easy these days, you only have to buy yourself and domain name and hosting (I use Namecheap for both) and then install a WordPress (free) from the control panel. You then need to choose and install a magazine-type WordPress theme (free or paid), which is what will bring out the beauty of the site and make it function properly.

If you’re entirely new to this, simply go to Youtube and type “how to create a WordPress blog.” I can assure you that you will find a lot of videos that will be helpful.

And your audience can be local or foreign. It just depends on what you are trying to do.

If you don’t want to go through all that, you can use a service like Wpoomph, which will help you set up a WordPress blog, with premium hosting for free.

One thing to note, however, is to avoid all sorts of free blogging services like Blogger, Wix, Weebly, and even WordPress.com. They come with too many restrictions that won’t allow you to grow well.

Once you have your blog, there are many ways to monetize it. The most popular one is AdSense. But there are plenty of ways you can make money from your blog. Your niche will also be a significant determinant of the ways you can do that.

As an example, I have a foreign-based blog that reviews products for a specific market. Most of the audience are USA based, while the rest are from the other Tier 1 countries (Canada, UK, etc.). So, I simply link to the products which I am discussing on the posts via the Amazon Affiliate platform, and I get specific commissions on each order I refer to Amazon.

Also, I use Ezoic, which is an Adsense alternative to make more from the niche site/blog. So, you see, there are usually a lot of ways to make money from your blogs.

Finally, the biggest problem with blogging is traffic, and the two main methods are SEO and Social Media. Augustus did speak about SEO traffic in his course, which you can watch from his Sposh Marketing youtube channel, here (his tutorials discussed the amazon affiliate business). But for SEO, I use Pinterest for my foreign niche websites, but you can use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. You’ll just have to look for what works for you.

Self-Publishing on Amazon KDP

This isn’t a way to make quick bucks at all, but it’s one of those ways you can create for yourself a long-term income flow. How Amazon KDP works is, you upload your books on the platform, and then, Amazon will then make them available to people to purchase. On each purchase, Amazon will pay you a royalty depending on the price you placed on the book. A single book can pay you for YEARS! But the trick is to have as many books as possible to maximize your earnings.

There are two main types of books that you can go into;

1. Content Books
2. Low or No Content Books

A content book can be a fiction or non-fiction book. It can be about a story you made up (fiction) or a guide that teaches or explain something (non-fiction). Content books can be published as Kindle (for customers to read on their devices) or Paperback (printed and shipped to them by Amazon).

Low/No content books, on the other hand, are only available as Paperbacks. Examples are notebooks, lined journals, blank recipe books, gamebooks, comic books, coloring books, drawing books, etc.

If you want to learn how to make the content-based books, I will recommend checking out the Passive Income Machine Masterclass course by Gbenga Akinwole. He’s been into the game for years, and that’s the kind of person you want to learn from. Click here to enroll in the course.

As for the low content book, you can contact me here. I will give you some guides and templates which I am currently using. It’s not free, though.

Grow Social Media Profiles

Sometimes in 2018, I developed an interest in Instagram, and then I started growing several accounts (using automation tools/bots) and used them to make money via CPA marketing.

Well, the method went to shit later in 2019 when Instagram started frowning at these types of accounts/activities, and they started banning accounts like a starved lion will eat his prey.

But, that is when I realized the better method is to go legit and build amazing profiles which you can then monetize in all sort of ways you like. For example, you can promote your products, affiliate products, or sell shoutouts from your Instagram accounts.

You can even go ahead and sell the account once you’ve grown it to a level. A friend of mine sold an account with 34k followers last month for $250. But it is a foreign account, and the niche is also another factor the determines this.

A course that I found helpful is called Ascend Viral, I bought it I 2018, and it is 230+ pages and very in-depth. But what I loved most about this course is the owner promised a lifetime update, and he has honored that so far. The last update, for example, was done in January 2020. I bought at least three other Instagram courses at the same time, and those are hardly ever updated a thing.

Even more, they have a forum that you can use to interact with other people who bought the course. So, I highly recommend it. Click here to buy Ascend Viral.

The other two platforms I enjoyed at the moment are Pinterest and Twitter. Maybe I will talk more about them in the future.

Conclusion

There you go with eight surefire ways to make money during a lockdown.

Each of those methods I highlighted above is a proven way you can make money from anywhere you are in the world; Lockdown or not. Some of them require a little bit of capital while some do not. Again, some of them need time before they start giving you results, while some can begin paying you from the same day. But the common thing is that none of them is a get rich quick schemed and does require some efforts from you.

So, which of these methods are you going to be trying? Which one(s) will you add or remove? Is there anyone of them you want me to expand more on, maybe make a full post on it? Let me know in the comment section.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to share this post with others