If you live in Africa, have a laptop or mobile phone, with access to the internet, you can earn a living in US dollars.
If you are in the online business space for a long time like I have, it’s easy to assume that everyone already gets it. You assume that everyone understands how making money online works. But the more I talk to people about what I do, the more I realize that majority of people are still ignorant of the many opportunities available for them to make money online.
The beautiful thing is that the internet has no gatekeepers. Anyone can benefit from the democracy of opportunity and economic inclusion. I’m especially enthusiastic about internet technology because of the immense opportunity it provides for job creation, poverty alleviation and financial freedom.
In today’s video, I’ll share with you 7 legitimate ways to make money in US dollars regardless of where you live, but with emphasis on people living in Africa. Because earning additional income in dollars will protect you from the financial devastation of inflation and currency devaluation prevalent in many African countries.
Before we get to it, be sure to subscribe to After School TV for more insightful videos like this. Be sure to watch this video to the end because you might just discover an opportunity waiting for you.
1. Become a freelancer
A new study from Fiverr – the largest freelance marketplace – says that more than 45 percent of US businesses increased their investments in freelance talent since COVID-19. In fact, the study found that the bigger the business, the more money they invested in freelance talent and the more likely they are to make lasting adjustments in favour of freelance workers due to the pandemic.
In other words, the demand for freelancers will continue to increase. What is more interesting is the global freelance market is open to anyone to participate. A freelance graphic designer in Kenya can offer their service to a business in Canada. A web developer in Nigeria can offer their service to a company in Australia. It is a globally integrated market, and freelancers are paid in dollars.
Here is another finding from Fiverr you will find interesting; digital marketing and website development are the key focus areas for large businesses hiring freelancers. Other lucrative areas for freelancers include app development and sales.
Bear in mind that if you want to get into freelancing, you are more likely to make money if you register with freelance marketplaces than if you build your own website to attract clients.
2. Build a blog
Blogging professionally is simply about attracting a steady flow of audience to consume the content you share on your website.
To get started with blogging, you only need to register a domain name for $12, host your blog for about $150, and start publishing content. But that’s the easy part. The real work of building a blog is getting traffic – a consistent flow of visitors – to your blog.
To make money as a blogger, you need to understand concepts such as keyword research, onsite and offsite search engine optimization, web analytics, email and social media marketing. You will also need to understand how to use tools like WordPress, Google Analytics, Keyword planner and email management tools.
Once your blog starts getting a sizable amount of traffic, you can earn dollars displaying Google Adsense and other ad networks on your blog. You can also make money promoting affiliate products to your audience.
Building a blog takes months, even years of effort and dedication to become profitable. But when your blog breaks through and starts attracting steady traffic from a search engine, it can make you a fortune. I have made hundreds of thousands of dollars from my blog.
3. Start a YouTube channel
There is a growing trend of YouTube content creators in Africa. The top YouTubers in the continent take home hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars yearly.
From my experience, building a YouTube channel is relatively simpler than building a blog. You don’t have to worry about the domain name, hosting, downtime, security issues and other things that come with blogging.
You simply focus on creating videos people want to watch. But you still need to understand how the YouTube algorithm works so that you can be more strategic with your channel and videos.
Once your videos reach a total of 4,000 hours of watch time and you have up to 1,000 subscribers, YouTube will start showing ads on your videos. YouTube will pay you a share of the ad revenue your videos generates.
You don’t have to wait until YouTube approves your channel before you can start making money from YouTube. Once you have a reasonable number of followers, you can promote affiliate products on your channel and make money when someone makes a purchase from your affiliate link.
4. Become an affiliate marketer
Affiliate marketing is one of the cool and easy ways to make money online. You can start making money as an affiliate marketer from day one, with few hours of work. And I’m not exaggerating.
You just need to find the right product or service to convincingly recommend to the right audience. If one or few persons use your affiliate link to purchase the product, you make a commission right away.
However, as much it is possible to make money within a short time from affiliate marketing, you’ll have to work smarter and be more strategic to generate consistent income. Your success as an affiliate market depends on sales coming through you. The more people buy through you, the more money you make.
And that requires that you have access to a growing audience. Affiliate marketers who succeed use a combination of strategies like building a blog, starting a YouTube channel, growing social media followers and email subscribers. This grants them unrestricted access to an audience to recommend affiliate products.
5. Invest in US Dollar
Another way to make money in dollars if you are living in Africa is to invest your money in asset classes that pay returns in dollars. Saving in the bank in your local currency is a risky financial strategy. You have to put your hard earned money to work against inflation and currency devaluation.
Thanks to fintech startups, you can easily invest in US dollar from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and many other African countries. Startups like RiseVest, Bamboo, CrowdyVest allows Nigerians to invest in the US stock exchange, US real estate and Eurobond, and earn returns in dollars.
6. Invest in Cryptocurrency
At this point, I need to clarify something. There is no guarantee that you will succeed in any of the 5 legitimate ways to make money mentioned so far. Your blog or YouTube channel may end up among the millions of abandoned blogs and YouTube channels. You may not succeed as a freelancer or affiliate marketing like many other people. Investing in stock is risky, the US real estate market crashed in 2008. What I’m trying to say is that nothing is guaranteed. I had to point this out because the common objection with cryptocurrency is that it is highly volatile; people lose money.
That is true. But that is not the only characteristic of the crypto market. You can also make money; sometimes a lot of it. You can hedge your savings from inflation with stable coins. You can be a mini-venture capitalist, investing in early-stage crypto projects.
But you have to be smart, safe, do your own study and find your own conviction. Don’t rely on some self-proclaimed crypto gurus. It’s your job to understand what you are getting into and manage your risk accordingly.
7. Export products and services
The internet made it easy for anyone living in anyone to connect with people across the world and offer services to them. And of course, the global currency of trade is the US dollars. Young entrepreneurs are seizing this opportunity to create businesses that export products and services to an international customer base. The product or service can be physical or digital.
Examples of digital products you can sell to an international customer base include software applications, online courses, eBooks, digital marketing services, local content consulting and other ecommerce services. Physical products include agric produce, African fashion wears and other local products.
Young people in Africa are making a lot of dollars legitimately over the internet from a combination of these methods. In fact, of all seven, the only one I don’t use is exporting physical products. You can easily use a combination of blogging and affiliate marketing; freelancing and YouTube. The important thing is that you take advantage of the opportunities staring you in the face. Until next time; YOUR SUCCESS MATTERS!
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