Are you interested in learning how to make extra cash as a digital marketing specialist?

Making money online in Nigeria is fun, simple, and easy!

From offering freelance services to starting online tutoring, getting a salary job, or starting your own online business, are numerous ways you can make money plus extra cash as a digital marketer.

And in this “online money-making guide”, I’ll show you the 11 most effective and proven ways to make money with digital marketing including important practical steps you can act on now that will earn you streams of income.

How to Earn Money Online in Nigeria as a full time or part-time Digital Marketing professional

Below are the most common easy methods to make money with digital marketing whether you are a student, fresh graduate, or banker; whatever is your position/level right now, the tips I’m going to show you will help you make a quick-launch decision for your career:

1. Make money online as a content writer
2. Become an SEO expert and sell SEO services
3. Make cash online with affiliate marketing
4. Sell consultancy services to companies
5. Earn cash online by displaying ads on your blog
6. Work as a social media manager and earn income
7. Make money online selling digital assets
8. Become a YouTube advertising partner
9. Become an eCommerce specialist
10. Become a digital marketing strategist
11. Start your digital marketing agency

1. Make money online in Nigeria as a content writer

Content writing involves researching, planning, and crafting unique content for online promotions across selected channels. Content writing is part of a digital marketing strategy and one that is most important in content marketing. Without content, there will be no marketing, of course. This content can, however, range from articles to blog posts, posts for social media, press releases, brochures, business proposals e.t.c.

As a content writer, depending on the task, you may be asked to write technical content, creative content, stories, web copy, email copy, and the list goes on.

To become a good, highly sought-after content writer, you’ll need to build some skills and meet specific qualifications. Skills like:

• Writing skills
• Keyword research skills
• SEO skills
• Analytical skills

In addition to these, you must be able to collaborate well using collaborative tools and excellent communication skills.

College degrees are less important when it comes to freelancing. If you want to work in organizations, your plan should include a college degree, usually in English, marketing, or communication and journalism.

A college or university degree isn’t always enough, and so getting content marketing certifications can help boost both your skills and reputation.

In addition to content marketing certification, It’s advisable that you start your blog. Writing for your blog or website is an excellent way to show recruiters your skills and your level of expertise without saying much during an interview.

Having your writing sample of work as a portfolio will also save you stress and time with clients.

Content marketing freelancers often get paid per piece (per article) for somewhere between $0.10 and $0.50 for each word they write. But the exact rate depends on the type of content you are writing, the delivery time, and your level of expertise on the subject.

You can also build the necessary skills and become a content marketing specialist. In this case, the average salary for a content marketing specialist is $81,000 per year. This number will vary based on your location and level of experience.

You can also develop yourself to become a content marketing specialist working for organizations, which could see you earning up to 600,000NGN a month.

2. Become an SEO specialist and sell SEO services

SEO is another fascinating digital marketing area that you can master within a short time and start earning money online in Nigeria.

As an SEO specialist, you can sell SEO services to clients. Your clients will most probably be business owners and bloggers.

Becoming an SEO expert isn’t something hard. SEO is not rocket science. Once you understand how search engines work and follow the best practices, and then study and know how to use SEO tools, you’ll soon be making money from the comfort of your home.

There are numerous videos on SEO courses you can find on the web, especially on Youtube. When looking at these online resources to learn SEO, it’s advisable that you search for a high-quality SEO course as you can easily get lost sifting through the endless amount of articles.

As you increase your expertise level with relevant online resources, you should get familiar with the popular SEO tools to streamline your work.

Search engine optimization is a constantly changing field, and as such, you’ll need to keep updating yourself every day. As an SEO Expert, you would want to set alerts online using Google Alerts tools to keep yourself informed with happenings in the industry.

SEO changes because search engines such as Google and Bing constantly make changes to their algorithms, making all SEO at the search engines’ mercy.

Learning the theory aspect of SEO doesn’t make you an expert. Seo is a broad field, and just like arts and science, you’ll need to practice regularly with the tools and implement them on your website or blog.

Having a website gives you a playing field to try it yourself and see what works and what will never work. This way, you can boldly create SEO services and market them to clients.

You can start a blog or website and drive targeted traffic, capture leads for email marketing.

You can also improve the speed of your web pages.

If you know how to do this, you’ll soon become the SEO expert you want to be.

How much can you make as an SEO expert?

This question is one of the most frequently asked questions on google. SEO often earns an average hourly rate of between 5,000NGN – 30,000NGN in Nigeria.

3. Make Money online in Nigeria with affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is part of marketing that’s been around even before the advent of search engines or social media. Affiliate marketing works by referring to sales of other people’s products while you earn on commissions.

The process is simple and very straightforward – you take my products and sell them for me, and then I pay your commission per the products you sold based on our agreement.

To get started, you will have to build your own website/blog, find a profitable niche, take products that sell fast, and start promoting them to drive interested visitors to your site.

In affiliate marketing, you have a standalone platform where you can establish an account directly with many companies, form and manage multiple partnerships on a single platform.

This single platform is your blog or website. It will function as the primary way of promoting different affiliate products.

What makes a successful affiliate marketer?

There’s no affiliate marketing without the ability to write unique content. Therefore to succeed as an affiliate marketer, you must understand at least the keyword researching methodology part of SEO and how to research and identify your target audience before settling on a niche.

Keyword research allows you to know what people that you have identified as your target audience are looking for. And develop a strategy on how to be there (at the forefront) the moment they’re looking for that thing.

Learn more about keyword research best practices and methodology here.

Once you identify the type of products people are searching for most and conclude on taking an affiliate partnership with a company, you’ll need to build your blog and start creating content.

Keyword research is essential because selecting the right keywords will make it easier to get started and earn a passive income within a short time.

You would want to ensure that you have quantified traffic before joining affiliate programs because traffic is the heart and soul of any successful website.

However, as you wait and drive traffic to your site, you can read about the requirements, privacy policy, terms and conditions of the companies you’re partnering with.

How much can you make through affiliate marketing?

At this point, I need to say this; affiliate marketing requires patience. If you can be patient, you can earn as high as 100,000NGN in a day, something many graduates don’t make in a month.

The earning potential is excellent, but you will need to establish your online presence and drive a good amount of traffic to your website to see meaningful results.

4. Selling consultancy services to companies in and out of Nigeria.

As a digital marketing specialist, I have worked as a consultant before. I got paid 3x of what I earn from working with an agency. But the fact remains, you’ll have many opportunities and multiple streams of income with little to no stress.

Once you acquire some digital marketing skills and experience, you can monetize your way by offering digital marketing consultancy services.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Identify your area of expertise – you’ll need to define the specific services to offer clients. Know your strengths and weaknesses because you need to start strong. You don’t want to fail in your first few consultations with clients. You might want to consider these areas as a starting point:

• Social media marketing
• Branding
• Video marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Local marketing
• Email marketing
• Web analytics and reporting

2. Start blogging

Do I need to blog as a consultant?

Yes, blogging is a demonstration of your expertise level and authority. Blogging will help you to build trust and credibility.

A website will serve as a means to communicate your knowledge and offer to help people solve their problems. Visitors who find your helpful content can visit again and share your content with their followers.

3. Create a youtube channel

With a website in place, you can now promote your brand to your audience by creating video tutorials or podcasts on YouTube and other channels.

4. Build a network of followers

The more you grow your network of followers, the easier it is to find new clients.

Invest time and money in creating shareable content on social media. Good content will always attract engagement, and people who engage with your brand may consult you or help spread the word.

How much can you make by offering digital marketing consultancy services?

The level of experience, expertise, plus the project scope at hand will likely determine how much you earn.

This is why a diploma certification in digital marketing course will go a long way in actualizing your dream and start earning big online.

5. Make money by displaying ads on your website

Another popular question commonly asked that I’m going to provide answers to is…

How do I make money online just by displaying ads on my blog/site?

It seems everything boils down to creating a website, right? Yes! It’s because if you want to make a decent amount of money online, you’ll need a platform to promote whatever you are selling.

Creating a website and connecting it to ad publishing companies like Google AdSense is a popular way to monetize your website traffic.

Getting Google to approve your AdSense account can be a bit difficult for newly created websites. Still, if you follow the Google guidelines on AdSense accounts, you could be up and running in a few months.

Google AdSense is not the only advertising platform you can partner with. There are many other available ones you can use to monetize your web traffic.

You make money from AdSense once you register your account and add the appropriate code to your website. Google will start serving ads on your web pages.

This displaying ads on your site can generate revenue through impressions and clicks.

Note, Google pays very little for impressions (views).

The amount that you can earn in a day will depend on the category your website belongs to, audience demographics, and the number of traffic.

• Google Adsense
• Ezoic
• Media.net and
• Propeller Ads

Are the most popular publishing company you can partner with to start displaying ads on your site.

You can also sell direct ads on your website, provided your website is already getting a steady amount of traffic. A direct ad allows you to have more control over the ads that appear on your site.

To start with direct ads, you Will need to make your site ready by creating an “Advertise with Us” page detailing the different ad formats available and how much they cost, including traffic stats so buyers know the value they are receiving.

How much can you make displaying ads on your website?

Google AdSense is calculated in RPM (revenue per 1,000 impressions) and can range between $0.25 to $3. So it depends on the number of traffic to your site irrespective of the ad network you’re advertising with.

6. Make money online as a social media accounts manager.

How do I earn passive income as a social media manager?

A social media manager manages social media accounts, creates and posts content, follows up for engagement, and monitors the performance of the content on the internet. It’s a great way to make money online through digital marketing.

Your responsibility as a social media manager is to grow the company’s online presence through a variety of marketing strategies, majorly on social media channels. And you can do all this working remotely.

These strategies can include creating engaging content, scheduling posts, creatively turning text to graphics, running ads such as Facebook ads, and replying to followers’ comments. And guess what? Several tools out there allow you to achieve your objectives in less than 2 hours, and in that 2 hours, you could be making half of what most graduates earn in 30 days.

What options are available for social media managers?

When it comes to making real, cool money online without stress, there are two basic ways, and each of these ways is totally flexible.

1.You can choose to apply for jobs in organizations as a social media accounts manager and get paid monthly – still working remotely.

2. You can decide to work as a freelancer,

Check out our guides on how to make money online as a freelancer.

Remember, if you’re interested in freelancing services to clients, you may need to create a strong portfolio for yourself.

How much money can you earn as a social media accounts manager?

Depending on your level of expertise and experience, you could earn between 150000NGN – 400,000 working in an organization. Still, a freelancer can earn 3x that in a month.

Your income as a freelance social media manager greatly depends on the number of clients you’re able to onboard in a month.

On major freelancing platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, social media managers earn between $15 and $100 per hour. Again, this depends on your level of expertise.

7. Create and sell your digital assets

How do I make money from selling digital products?

You might be wondering, “but I don’t have physical products that I can take online.”

Read on as I’m going to show you how you can make a product out of your digital marketing skills and earn real money online.

As a digital marketing expert, you can put your experience into use by simply creating and selling your own digital assets.

This even has lots of advantages:

1.You create once and sell almost forever – unlike the physical products that you have to manufacture again the moment they’re finished on the shelf.

2. High-profit margins since you’re not going to be creating products every now and then.

3. The ability to automate your business with ease.

Most common digital products – a lifetime asset that’ll give you a consistent flow of income you should consider are:

1. Publishing eBooks

If you have a blog or website where you regularly post unique content, you can compile that content into ebooks and sell. It’s very easy since you’re the copyright owner of the content.

2. Creating an online course tutorial

E-learning might be the future of education with the way things are going. No thanks to the global pandemic!

People are now turning to online classes for lectures, tutorials, solutions to assignments, and creating online courses is a great way to meet this demand. You can double your income by listing your courses on an education marketplace like Udemy.

3. Design website and graphic templates

If you have design skills, you should consider creating templates to sell online. You can create PSD web pages that can be easily converted to HTML and WordPress.

Theme forest is a popular marketplace where you can sell your graphics and web templates to a much larger audience.

You’ll need a blog to also show and promote them through targeted traffic.

Note: when you’re planning on selling digital products like ebooks or online courses, you should know that many people are offering free courses and free ebooks out there, and just as people love free things, you may find yourself in a very tight competition.

So to stand out and differentiate yourself, you should spend quality time conducting thorough research and ensuring that what you push out there is nothing but relevant, useful content that people will value that they’d want to share with their friends.

How much can you earn by selling digital products?

To give you an idea of how much you can earn from selling online courses, for example, take a look at a course on Udemy. And then multiply the number of people who have bought the course with the price and then you’ll realize how much you can make in a month.

8. Join YouTube advertising partners

Earning money through YouTube is simple. However, you must invest in creating quality content informed of videos before you can start making money. This investment is not an expensive one. If you have video production or sound production experience, you can get up and running in no time. What you need is a good camera and equipment to record your voice and software to edit the video.

How do people earn money from YouTube advertising?

The process is simple and straightforward! You create a channel on YouTube, record and publish videos on your channel and promote it through Search Engine Optimisation and sharing on social media to reach a larger audience of people.

You earn each time people watch your video, and different assortments of ads are shown to them.

As they watch, if they click on any of the ads, you’ll get a certain amount of money in your YouTube channel.

However, before you can be approved as an advertising partner, you’ll need to meet the following minimum requirements:

• Agree to all YouTube monetization policies.
• You must be living in a country where the Partner Program is available.
• You’ve accumulated over 4,000 valid public watching hours in the past 12 months.
• You have over 1,000 subscribers on your channel.
• You have an AdSense account linked to you.

How much can you make as a Youtube advertising partner?

Youtube advertising partners make between $0.01 to $0.03 per ad view on average, which amounts to somewhere between $3 to $5 per 1,000 video views.

Note: You need a substantial amount of video viewers to your channel to earn a significant amount of money with Youtube videos. Also, note that not everyone will watch the ads. So, therefore, you should expect your ad views to be lower than your video views. Some viewers will be on YouTube premium and will not see the ads

9. Make money online working remotely as an E-commerce Specialist

The E-commerce industry is fast growing. Nearly every business wants to take its products online. What this means for you as a digital marketing specialist is an endless opportunity.

The role of E-commerce Specialist

As an eCommerce specialist, you’ll be responsible for executing various marketing strategies, setting and monitoring campaigns for the company’s products.

Below are the details of an e-commerce specialist role:

• Managing website
• Monitoring marketing campaigns
• Improving website SEO
• Optimizing for better conversion rate
• Setting up email strategy for lead capturing
• Organizing up-selling and cross-selling campaigns

To function as an eCommerce specialist, you’ll need to be vast in all aspects of digital marketing.

Here are some of the most popular job sites to search for e-commerce specialist positions:

• Jobberman
• Indeed
• Flexjobs
• Glassdoor
• Google for Jobs
• WeWorkRemotely
• ZipRecruiter

10. Make money online as a digital marketing freelance specialist

How do I make money online with my digital marketing skills?

There are many freelance websites where you can easily create multiple gigs for your service. As a skilled digital marketer, you can create a gig for SEO service, PPC service, web design service, graphic design service, social media marketing services, and content writing. However, it’s better to set your focus on a maximum of 3 areas of digital marketing at a time.

Here are some of the most popular freelance platform to search for clients:

• Freelancer.com
• Upwork
• Fiverr
• SEO clerk
• PeoplePerHour
• WeWorkRemotely

How much can you make with a digital marketing freelance job?

Freelance digital marketing experts charge between $20 – $100 just working per hour. So, how much you can earn depends on your expertise level and experience.

11. Make money online by building your digital marketing agency.

This last one is the biggest of all. You can make over #1M by offering digital marketing services as an agency.

Starting a digital marketing company is a lucrative business. But you’ll need to be vast in all digital marketing aspects or hire (just as the majority of digital marketing agencies do) employees to fill in the various roles.

Once you put your in-house team in place, including the clients’ onboarding process, then you can start pushing your agency out to attract clients.

You can even outsource your team online and make them work for you on freelance terms.

Starting a digital marketing agency is more or less like starting any other type of business. You’ll need to put in lots of investment before you can begin to see revenues. You’ll invest in SEO so that when anyone searches for any of the digital marketing services that you offer, you can show up. You’ll also include social media strategy in your promotional campaign. But for faster results, consider running ads (Facebook ads or Google ads).

When it comes to billing your clients, here are some options for you to choose from:

• Hourly: This is where you charge clients based on the number of hours that you work on their projects. This method is easier but can be more difficult to track when offering certain complex services. It’s not suitable for a long-term contract. Only applicable mostly when you want to help clients to tweak something or fix something up on their websites.
• Retainer: This pricing method is most preferred by clients. Both of you agree on a flat monthly rate and Kickstart the project. Clients know how much to pay upfront and subsequent months.
• Percentage of marketing spends: This is commonly used in PPC campaigns. You charge your clients based on the agreed percentage of the amount they’re spending on marketing, that is, based on the marketing budget. The amount you can earn from this depends on your client’s marketing budget. The higher the budget, the higher your earnings.

How much money can you make by starting a digital marketing agency?

What you earn depends on how many clients you serve in a month – how many you can onboard in a month. However, the average cost for digital marketing services for small businesses in 2020 ranges from $2,500 to $12,000 per month. And in Nigeria, it’s way closer to that range.

Wrapping it up…

There are many different ways you can earn extra cash with digital marketing.

What you need to do is acquire the relevant skills, which Learntal can provide for you in less than 2 months and you could navigate your way to becoming a full-stack Digital Marketer. At Learntal, you’ll learn SEO, PPC management, eCommerce, content marketing, and social media management.

Having a blog will help you hone these skills and use them to attract new clients to your services.

Follow this link to learn how to create a website with WordPress in just 3hours

You can join an affiliate program or create a digital product of your own and start promoting them. An affiliate program is rewarding. As long as you drive relevant traffic to the site, you can be sure of stream of passive income between $50 and $500 a day.

And if you decide to take a job as a digital marketing professional, there are many companies already looking for you. One advantage I didn’t mention before now is…

You can join freelancing platforms while still working for a company.

You can join an affiliate program and still be head of the digital marketing team in your company.

When it comes to earning cool cash online, as a digital marketing manager, there are endless possibilities for you compare to someone with no digital marketing experience and skill. You can even create a site as Blogs Directory listings and earn from advertising.

The digital space will continue to widen up and taking the time to develop your skills now will worth the investment in a short time.