Right off the bat, it is good to know that this article is curated to include only reliable ways of making money online.
Key Takeaways
- Pick a niche on OLX and grow your hustle around it
- Use your special skill to dominate a Fiverr or Upwork niche
- Try ghostwriting for academic or article-writing websites
- Start a very niche vlog – YouTube channel – and get paid for ad placements
- Do online tutoring on global platforms
- Use your large following to get paid via affiliate links.
The list, therefore, excludes forex trading, filling online surveys, and referral link forwarding because these are almost 100% going to waste your time.
Selling things on OLX (Jiji)
This is an easy one and requires almost no capital – just get old products (second-hand) and sell them.
It is advisable to pick a niche and then become the ‘guy’ that lists specific types of items. If you try to sell everything from electric kettles to hats to cars it makes you suspicious because right off you seem like a broker.
And Kenyans don’t like brokers.
A good example is this guy on OLX that just sells knitting threads. His entire profile is just ads of knitting and he gets a lot of customers.
You can also sell new items on OLX but you will need starting capital to get stock.
However, if you don’t have the capital, you can approach a business (wherever) and ask to help sell their items.
You go to their shop, take good photos of items, get the prices, negotiate a commission and then list the items on OLX.
When a customer buys via your ad, you can then get you commission.
The good thing is that you do not need to do anything other than create the ads – customers pick the product from the shop or the shop owner will take care of the delivery.
Selling Very Niche Skills (On Fiverr, Freelancer.com, Upwork, and the like)
Are you a pro at any specific skill?
Video editing? Photoshop? Voice overs? Copywriting?
Then you can make money by working for people on sites like Fiverr. You simply pick a niche that you are good at and create a profile and then look for clients.
It is not an easy process to get the first client because most niches are competitive (and most customers do not want to hire Kenyans) but once you get going there is no end to the money.
A good tip on selling skills is to make sure you are really good at it first because these sites rely on your rating and referrals from such customers.
One mistake people new to selling craft make is thinking they are good at something and then finding out the hard way that the standard held by customers on the sites are really high.
A simple way to find out if you will be picked by customers in your specific field is to register on Fiverr as a customer and see which profiles appear top in the skill that you set up for sale.
For instance, if you want to get hired as a copywriter, go and try to hire copywriters on the site and see what kind of profiles rank first.
Ghostwriting (academic writing or article writing)
Academic writing is all about working on assignments for students from all over the world.
There are hundreds of sites that hire writers to do the work for a fee. To get an idea just look at Academia-Research, Uvocorp, Unemployed Professors, Edu Birdie, My Homework Market, etc.
The truth is that it is almost impossible to get hired by these sites if you are Kenyan because they are mostly based in the U.S. and U.K.
However, a workaround to this is buying an account with a site with a desirable profile from someone else (there are people abroad whose hustle is just creating accounts with these sites and selling them to people who can’t get hired directly).
Searching for Academic Writing groups on Facebook should get you started with whatever you need to know.
Also, just like most other online hustles, there is a learning curve to academic writing and it is harder than traditional writing because you are doing assignments all day every day.
It could however be easy money if you are really good at specific academic topics like accounting, math, programming, etc.
Article writing works the same way as academic writing only that instead of writing assignments you will be writing articles for blogs, magazines, or books (and e-books).
Some common sites to give you an idea are Textbrokers, Upwork, Scripted, TextMaster, etc.
Just like the academic writing sites, most of these sites will not hire you as a Kenyan unless you have a really good history and experience as a writer.
So, the same workaround used in academic writing for access to accounts is used by Kenyans to find article-writing accounts.
It goes without mentioning that you need to learn how to write before investing your money in any account.
The quality standards in most sites remain high and so even if you hide behind a good profile, they will not tolerate poor-quality writing.
Vlogging to a very niche audience
There is a type of vlogging that generates income – where you build an audience and then do product placements, promotions, and general ads.
This is arguably the most work but once you get it going it can generate much higher income.
There are numerous examples of people doing this in Kenya including Patricia Kihoro, Nancie Mwai, Ess, Abel Mutua, etc.
The reason vlogging is hard is that it is mostly associated with celebrities and brands easily trust them.
If you are an average Kenyan you need to find a way to create content that people want to watch.
Niche vlogs grow easily and build good audiences that brands may want to reach.
You just need a few thousand subscribers interested in the specific topic that you are vlogging about and with consistency you can get brands to work with you.
For example, a vlog dedicated exclusively to hair wigs with 15,000 subscribers is enough to convince a shop owner to pay you for an advert/shoutout.
Online tutoring to global students
This is a fairly new way of earning online but it works if you have the right profile.
Sites like Chegg, CourseHero, TutorVista, TutorMe, etc will pay you a lot of money if you can get in as a tutor.
Typically, you have to be an authority in the subject you want to teach. They will for instance hire you easily if you are already a lecturer for instance at the University Of Nairobi with a teaching experience of like 5 years.
Also, they prefer individuals who have done their postgraduate degrees either in the UK or US.
Tutoring is however not limited to the above accounts as you can easily get people hiring tutors for their children locally.
Admittedly, online tutoring is an easy way to make an income online because you will just repeat the same content to different groups of students but the entry barrier to the industry is very high.
Affiliate marketing – requires a large audience
Affiliate marketing is not as common in Kenya as it is in some countries like the U.S. but it still works in almost the same way.
The idea above on marketing things on behalf of other people on OLX is part of affiliate marketing.
In affiliate marketing, you join the affiliate network of an e-commerce site like Jumia and then you get links to products that you can share with your followers.
Every time a follower buys a product on the site you get a commission. Obviously, this can become a good income if you have a large following.
The way people build a following – audience – is by having a blog, a vlog, a Facebook group, etc – just anything that can get people interested in a specific together and have them buy products via your affiliate links.
You can for example set up a blog about facemasks and write articles on the different ways to use or apply facemasks, review products, etc.
The blog will get a following over time and then you can start incorporating links from your affiliate account to facemasks products.
A lot more goes into affiliate marketing and it could also become capital-intensive for someone who has no other source of income.
It takes a lot of time to build a following or an audience big enough to make an income from affiliate marketing and there are not that many options for affiliate marketing in Kenya.
