How to monetize social media in Nigeria

Almost every Nigerian who has a smartphone has a social media account. If we’re being honest, social media is addictive and takes up more of our time than we’re supposed to give. If you’ve fallen into the habit of scrolling through social media instead of doing more productive things like making money, you’re not the only one. 

You need to stop wasting your time on social media, and there are two ways to do this. The first is to quit social media completely, which honestly is both unwise and unfeasible. Social media is not all bad; it provides an opportunity to learn and keep up to date with recent happenings. 

The second option is to find a way to make money from your social media, so all the hours you spend on social media will be put to good use. In this article, I will discuss how you can monetize your social media. So, if you’re currently addicted to social media, then this article is for you. 

Ways to monetize social media in Nigeria

Here are reliable ways to monetize your social media accounts in Nigeria:

1. Build a strong online presence 

If you want to monetize your social media, you need an audience. And not just any audience; you need people who would be willing to spend money on your content. Before you even consider how to monetize social media, you should consider your target demographic. Once you know who you are creating content for, then it is easy to figure out the kind of content to create. What this all means is that you need to pick a niche, understand your target audience, and create content that will provide value to them.

When choosing a niche, pick something that you are knowledgeable in, have a passion for, and are confident in your ability to pass that information to others. Once you have all these figured out, then it is easy to consistently create quality content that your audience will like. 

Building a strong online presence is not something that will happen overnight. Never fall into the temptation of buying followers, as they are usually either robots or not your target audience. Your follower count is not a measure of how successful you will be, so allow people who genuinely like your content to find and follow you. The focus should not be on the number of followers you have, but on how great your content is and how satisfied your current group of followers are. You can make money from a small group of followers, as long as they trust you and like your content. 

2. Have a strategy

From choosing a niche to creating content and monetizing it, you need to have a plan. Let’s discuss the 80/20 rule, which is a fundamental principle of social media monetization. Your target audience should find 80% of the material you provide interesting and not sales-focused. This is the value you provide to customers and includes content like educational, entertaining, inspirational, or helpful posts. This kind of content with help you build trust and connect with your audience. The remaining 20% of your content can then be used to promote your monetized offerings. 

This rule puts your audience first and ensures that you are not only focused on making money, which will hurt your online presence in the long run. This way, you are focused on increasing the number of your audience, and their trust in you, so even a little effort towards monetization will have a larger impact. 

This is not the only strategy that works well, there are many others as well. You can even create your own strategy depending on what works for you. 

3. Affiliate marketing 

One of the easiest and fastest methods to monetize your social media is through affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer, you can promote a product on your social media account, and earn a commission whenever someone buys the product you advertise. It is quite easy and almost seems effortless on your part. However, to set yourself apart from others, you need to do your due diligence before advertising any product to your customers. 

The focus should always be on how much value you can provide to your audience, not how much money you can make. So always ensure that any product you advertise is relevant to your audience and niche, and is authentic and tested, preferably by you. Don’t promote a fake product, a product your audience has no interest in or a product they will regret buying. You should look at the bigger picture, your aim is to build trust and a lasting brand, not make money quickly.

To become an affiliate marketer, you typically need to register for an affiliate program and get accepted. Many brands and companies have an affiliate program, so research the ones you love and apply for their affiliate program. Affiliate agreements often specify how much you will earn from each sale, which is often a percentage of the product’s worth. 

4. Sponsored content and brand collaborations

A sponsored post is exactly what it sounds like—you are paid to publish. If you’ve put a lot of effort into developing a sizable following and you have a product that you like and would want to recommend to your audience, this may be a great way to monetize your social media. However, even more important than affiliate marketing, it should be a product you know, use, and strongly recommend. It will feel rather disgusting to try to sell your audience a product you don’t know or enjoy in an attempt to make money.

Sponsored posts may be approached in a variety of ways. You may get in touch with the marketing divisions of businesses you admire directly; some even have influencer marketing specialists on staff. These individuals are more likely to approach you with sponsored posts as your following grows, but be cautious—many spammers and fraudsters will try to contact you when you have a large following as well.

5. Offer a paid subscription service

Using premium or gated content is one strategy to make money off of your social media following. Using this model, you create content that is better than the content you normally post, then make your audience pay to access it. It just takes 100 people to earn N100,000 monthly if you charge only N1000 for your membership, making paid subscriptions one of the greatest income-per-follower figures. 

Paid subscriptions are fantastic because they allow you to make money off of the labor you already do (producing content), provide people with something they naturally want (a sense of belonging and human connection), and transform it into the best kind of business model (recurring income).

However, to be successful using this model, you must have a sizable following, have already established yourself as a professional in your niche, and make sure your premium content is content that your audience can only get from you. 

6. Sell products or services

Social media can be a way for businesses to market their goods and services. For instance, Facebook allows users to create online shops where they can add an infinite number of goods, categorize them, and monitor sales using an analytics dashboard. So, you own a business, or you’re planning on starting one, and you need to market it on social media. 

Displaying your products on social media is one of the most successful and tried-and-true methods of social media monetization, but selling is just the simple part. You need to create a community and a brand first, then offer products that your audience will want.

7. Create an online course

The internet has made information more widely available than ever before, and knowledge is power. Social media is an excellent platform for selling e-learning resources, such as self-published e-books and online courses, if you are an authority in an area and have something to teach others. People will be far more inclined to spend their money learning more if you offer material that informs your community. 

Creating an online course is a fantastic opportunity to share your expertise with the world and earn money doing it. Although passive income is perfectly acceptable, the landscape of online education is evolving. Cohort and live courses, as well as courses developed in active communities that provide course participants support and help outside the course content, are becoming more and more common.

8. Coaching

Unlike courses, where you can create one and sell it to many people, coaching requires you to spend time one-on-one with a customer or many customers at once. Coaching is another excellent approach for social media monetization if you have a large following of people who are eager to learn from you. 

You can coach people one-on-one or coach in a group. Coaching in a group gives you the added advantage of reaching more people at once. Additionally, your coaching clients benefit from working with you directly, often at a lesser rate than one-on-one. In addition to being a lot of fun, group coaching allows you to build a community of like-minded people who are interested in what you have to offer.

9. Advertise products

Building a sizable community of active followers around a well-defined specialty can help you attract advertising opportunities from major brands. Companies will probably start approaching you to promote their goods and services after you establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Advertising is the most popular way for YouTube producers to make money, but it’s not always successful. In actuality, there are stringent criteria about who is eligible to monetize, and earning any real money from YouTube advertisements requires a significant amount of viewing time.

For instance, you need 1,000 subscribers in addition to either 4,000 hours of viewing time in the last 12 months or 10 million short views in the previous 90 days to be permitted to monetize on YouTube.

Regardless, posting adverts is a great means of earning money from your social media page. 

10. Crowdfunding and donations

A lot of influencers and celebrities have made a lot of money from crowdfunding and donations. Platforms like GoFundMe have become a popular means through which well-known people with a lot of fans earn money. You would be surprised at the sheer number of people willing to donate money to the celebrities they like.

With a sizable following and fans who love you and the content you create, you could earn a lot of money this way. There is the added advantage of being able to focus solely on the content you create instead of monetization tactics.  

Conclusion

Social media monetization has the potential to replace your 9-5 job in Nigeria. You just need to know the correct way to monetize your content, create quality content, and be consistent. The 10 methods I highlighted above are a great place to start for anyone looking to monetize their social media.