I know a lot of Nigerians, especially young people have this question to ask, “How do I make money on YouTube in Nigeria, with a minimum budget?”. You are not alone. Honestly, it’s quite easy to envy Nigerian YouTubers such as the likes of Dinma Umeh, MarkAngelComedy, Toke-Makinwa, Sisi Yemi. Seriously, these YouTube channels have serious traction, and that is due to only one thing – they have managed to grow their channels successfully.
I’m going to be quite honest with you: it’s not an easy venture. I know many YouTube influencer wannabes that dropped out of the race, simply because they lacked the determination and consistency that goes into growing a YouTube channel. Growing a YouTube channel is a full-time job, and requires many things. So if you want to know how to make money on YouTube in Nigeria, just stick with me.
Requirements you need to fulfill in order to start a YouTube channel in Nigeria
- A Google account
- A smartphone with a decent camera
- A staging area
- Internet access
Now let’s look at these requirements in detail.
- A Google account
This is the first thing you should do. Head over to Google and create a Gmail account. Gmail is Google’s email service. Once you sign up, you are welcome to use any of the Google services, including YouTube.
- A smartphone with a decent camera
Ok. You need a smartphone with decent camera quality. I would personally recommend Infinix smartphones, especially Smart 4 or Smart 5. If your budget is lower than that, you can go for an Itel smartphone.
- A staging area
This depends on the kind of videos you are going to be making. If your kind of videos are mostly indoors, then you need a staging area in your apartment. It could simply be your table with a nice background. If you are going to shoot videos outdoors, then you may not need this.
- Internet access
Lastly, you need internet access to upload your videos. YouTube is a video-only platform. Video consumes lots of data, that’s why you need lots of it. A monthly subscription of 3GB is a good place to start. That would cost you roughly 1K.
So let’s calculate how much you need to start on a budget.
- Google account – Free
- Smartphone – N30,000 – N45,000
- Staging area – Free. Part of your apartment.
- Internet access – N1,000
- Total – N30,000 – N45,000
Now the reason I put the figure at a variable one is because of different smartphone prices. But basically, a good smartphone costs between 30 – 45,000.
So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the next steps. Your niche.
How to choose a niche for YouTube in Nigeria
What is a niche? The short answer is: a niche is an area of interest. For instance, learning how to play a saxophone, graphic design, forex trading, travel, cooking, just about anything. You get the picture? So you must find your niche. To be honest, your success on YouTube depends to a large extent on the niche you chose.
What are you passionate about? What are your interests? What do you enjoy doing, without ever feeling tired or losing interest? If you can pinpoint it, then you’ve got yourself a niche! Also, look around you. What gets people excited in Nigeria? You can choose to make videos on our traditions in Nigeria (there are many tribes in Nigeria), or make videos about the various towns in Nigeria. You can choose this niche if you like to travel.
Once you narrow down your niche to an interesting one, this is one way to ensure that your videos get attention on YouTube.
Once you’ve found your niche, let’s move on to the next step…
Create and customize your YouTube channel
Once you sign up for Gmail, or any other Google service, you are automatically on the Google platform, which means you can open a YouTube channel.
On your smartphone, download and open the YouTube app. Once you open, you’ll see a thumbnail on the top right hand of the screen. Click on that and you’ll see different options. From here, you can fill in information on your channel. You can change the name of your channel if you like, add a cover photo and a profile photo.
If there’s any other information you need to add, fill them in and save.
You are ready now to start uploading videos.
Growing your channel
Growing your YouTube channel is a tough job. One of the things I have to emphasize on here is that you should never see your YouTube online business as a way to make money, but as a way to contribute to society. If you have this mindset, you’ll be successful on YouTube.
This is because if you see your online business as a way to be rich, you’ll drop by the wayside if things are not working out initially.
Take a look at one of the most successful YouTubers today, Marques Brownlee. Today, he has millions of subscribers. It wasn’t always like this for him. The story goes that he had over 100 videos, but with just 73 subscribers, and this happened over 2 years! That’s enough to discourage an average Joe.
But what did he do? He kept going, and today, he’s very successful, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. If Marques had set out just to make money, he wouldn’t have succeeded. He would have chickened out and probably said to his friends, “I tried. It’s not working”. Today, Marques has more than eight million subscribers and one billion accumulated views. His net worth is over $4 Million dollars. Impressive huh?
So here are some tips for growing your YouTube channel
- Create high-quality, original videos. Always shoot and upload in Full HD (1920×1080) resolution. YouTube will handle the rest when you upload.
- Always create videos that offer real value to your viewers. This is very important because it helps build your reputation level. If your videos are not valuable to your viewers, they will most likely never subscribe to your channel, or at worst unsubscribe.
- Always upload your videos on a schedule. You could upload maybe twice a week, or once a week. Just keep to a schedule.
- Always tell your viewers to subscribe and enable notifications. This is very important. If your video is super helpful to your viewers, they will most likely subscribe. But you know sometimes, they might forget. Your reminder gets them to actually do it.
- Always ensure you optimize your videos for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This you can do by adding keywords and a title. These help get your video found on YouTube.
- Add fun elements to your videos, such as clipart, laughter clips, funny memes. These help add some fun and break up the monotony in your video, especially if you are using the talking head method, where it’s just you talking before the camera.
- Don’t use clickbait. What this means is that you shouldn’t state something in your video title and thumbnail, whereas the actual video doesn’t provide the information you stated in the title, or showed with the video thumbnail. This hurts your reputation.
- Never use copyrighted material in your videos. YouTube takes this seriously and will not pay you for any video having such. Always make sure the materials you used in your videos are licensed, or free to use for commercial purposes.
- Be consistent and never give up. Never.
I’m sure that if you follow these tips, you are on your way to becoming a successful YouTuber. So, how do you monetize your YouTube channel?
Ways to monetize your YouTube channel
Yea. I guess you’re thinking, this is the most important part. There are several ways to monetize your YouTube channel. By monetize, I mean being eligible for receiving payments. Here are some of the ways you can monetize your YouTube channel.
- Google AdSense
- Affiliate Marketing
Google AdSense
YouTube has a unique system of paying creators, and the system is totally transparent and hands-off. You see, when you go on YouTube, after watching a video for like 3 minutes, you’ll see an advert begin to play. This is how YouTube makes money from advertising, and it shares the revenue with creators like you.
As soon as you accumulate 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers over a period of 1 year, you become eligible for monetization. This is the time you need to download and install YouTube Studio on your smartphone. It helps you keep track of your videos and see how they are doing. It has all the analytics and metrics about your videos.
Next, you have to apply for monetization. Once YouTube approves your application, you are required to create an AdSense account. This is the platform from where ads are served to your YouTube audience watching your videos. Just to be clear on this, the amount of money you can make on YouTube varies because of the nature of ads and what kind of audience you have. Some ads pay more, whereas some pay less. On average, you’ll be making roughly $5-$8 per thousand views.
After passing through these requirements, you are on your way to earning dollars for your hard work. Your earnings are wired to your domiciliary account every month ending for withdrawal. You need a domiciliary account if you are going to make money on YouTube in Nigeria.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is simply selling other people’s products, and getting paid for doing that. If you have a large subscriber base, you can recommend the products you use in your videos. It could be the camera, tripod, microphone, lighting kit, just about anything that you utilize to shoot and edit your videos.
Given that your subscribers know and trust you, they’ll be most likely to follow your recommendations. This is another way to monetize your YouTube channel.
Concluding thoughts
If this article was useful to you, please let me know in the comments section below. What challenges are you having on your YouTube journey? Please don’t forget to share this article.
I hope this article has helped you to be able to start your YouTube journey. The YouTube platform is a very competitive place, and there are thousands of creators like you. what will set you apart is your originality, creativity, focus and consistency.
