Everyone wants to earn more money; even Dangote and Bill Gates do too. But if you are a man or woman with a regular 8-5 job (which actually means 6:00am to 8:00pm in Lagos, Nigeria) and the pay isn’t so great, the picture may seem a little bleak because you ain’t just got the time. Or you have something you are passionate about and would love to make it a money spinner but you don’t want to leave the comfort a regular pay check provides. Welcome, this post is for you. I will group your options into two kinds- passive and active. The passive options don’t require more than few hours a month- just to monitor your investment while the active options will take at least a few hours per week. I will be discussing the active options first and the passive options in my next post.
Selling products online – E commerce started in Nigeria a couple of years ago and has grown in worth to over 12billion dollars since inception. You could either open an online shop with the heavyweights ( Konga, Jumia) for a fee or put a free online advert on tons of sites e.g Jiji, OLX etc. One of the advantages of opening an online shop with the bigwigs is that they have shipping options which do not involve you personally delivering the goods to every customer, which save you time and money though you have to register and pay a percentage of your sales to them. And if you decide to use the free advert sites, there are quite a number of logistics and transport companies who will handle your deliveries while you sit in the comfort of your office e.g Dhl, Redstar, Ace, Nipost etc. There are over 53 million people who use the internet in Nigeria, find your niche- from jerseys to electronics, toys, gym equipment. The possibilities are endless.
Selling services online– Would it surprise you to know that people would pay you money on the internet to do simple things like entering data on a spreadsheet? Well, this is the 21st century, where the internet keeps breaking barriers. There are several sites- Elance, Fiverr etc where you could offer services to a wide range of people. From graphic design, transcription to writing articles and homework, there is something you can do to earn extra income. The software gurus have better chances here because there are more and more software businesses that are open to having members of their team working remotely. So if you are a ruby or python programmer, a user experience engineer or a very good web programmer, there are lots of people who need your services. You can check out these sites- weworkremotely.com, remoteok.io, https://www.flexjobs.com. There are also options available locally- http://www.gigsnigeria.com, http://www.sourcegig.com, http://www.justfrom5k.com etc
Weekend services– There are businesses in Nigeria where all the action takes place on weekends-weddings, birthday parties and events. Baking, event photography, catering, make up are all businesses that can be done strictly during the weekend. Even being a part time hairdresser or estate agent isn’t a bad idea. You can even tutor what you do as your day job on weekends e.g data analysis, excel modelling, accounting etc. Sites like tutor.ng, https://www.tuteria.com allow you to tutor remotely and get paid for it.
There you have it. If you have more ideas on how to earn extra income, please add them in the comment box.
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