I keep hearing the statement, “Nigerians don’t read”, and I keep wondering, how do they get information when they need it? Let’s face it, the world has entered the information age many years ago, and information is locked up in books! So, have you been wondering how to sell e-books in Nigeria and cash out big?
That’s what I’m going to talk about in this article, and I encourage you to stick around till the end. You will find exactly what you need and how to go about it.
The e-book is one little and underrated piece of digital product which can make you millions, if you play your cards right. I’m about to reveal that to you in this guide.
Are you ready? Let’s jump right in.
Why Sell E-books in Nigeria?
There are many reasons why e-books are valuable and sell like hot-cakes. Here are a few of them:
They are small in scope
E-books are small in scope – meaning that they don’t have too many pages, just a few pages, like 15-30 pages. People don’t want to spend too much time reading through a large book to find what they are looking for.
They are digital
They are easily transferable because they are in digital format. You can easily download them to read right away on your smartphones and tabs, or laptops.
They are easily digestible
E-books contain just the right amount of information to satisfy your curiosity on a subject. They don’t overload you with information.
They cost less than paperbacks
E-books cost relatively less than regular paperbacks. An average e-book will cost about N1000 -N2000, depending on the perceived value. Paperbacks costs from N4000 all the way to N15,000.
So, you can see from the advantages that there are enough reasons why e-books sell faster and better than regular paperbacks. So, that being said, let’s move on.
Identifying Your Niche
Now, let’s talk about niches. What’s a niche? It’s simply an area of interest. Talk about football, betting (I know that’s popular among the youth), traditional medicine, content creation for YouTube, creating blogs for blogging, etc.
The reason why you need to focus on a niche and create an e-book for that niche is because you can’t just create an e-book on what you like, but you need to create something that people are looking for, and are willing to pay money for.
Tips for researching and identifying profitable niches
It’s not hard to find profitable niches for e-books you can sell in Nigeria. You just need to be smart about it, because the answers to this question is all around you.
Here are some options to consider:
Social media
Get on Facebook, X, or Instagram. These are starting points where you can find out what’s trending. If you look hard enough, you will find out what people need information on. Go on trending posts and sniff around. If for instance, people are asking questions on a certain post about a thing like importing from Aliexpress to sell in Nigeria, you know definitely that’s a clue to what might sell if you decide to sell that information in e-book format.
Google Trends
Google Trends help you to understand what people are searching for on Google. Go to trends.google.com and select Nigeria. Type in the term that you are researching and view the interest over time.
If there’s enough interest, then that’s an e-book idea worth working on.
Forums like Nairaland
Another place to consider is a forum like Nairaland. Thousands of Nigerians come to Nairaland everyday to find trending topics and get information on what’s happening. If you dig around, you will definitely find e-book ideas to sell.
Examples of the best e-book niches in Nigeria
Finance
This is by far the biggest niche in Nigeria, if not the entire world. It’s no longer news that the Nigerian economy is not giving her citizens joy. Because of this, people are looking for what will put money in their pockets.
Any e-book which addresses this pain point in a practical way will definitely sell. There are many sub-niches you can research, such as making money online, creating a working PayPal account to receive money, snail farming, etc.
Health
This is another big niche. You can write e-books on topics which help people to treat ailments easily using alternative medicine (what you call traditional medicine), without spending so much.
Any e-book that promises that kind of value will sell in Nigeria.
Education
You can publish an e-book as an exam guide for students, or past JAMB/NECO questions and answers. This will help students to adequately prepare for their exams.
Writing and Creating Your E-Book
Once you have identified a niche to base your e-book around, it’s finally time to create it. You can write it yourself, provided you are good with writing. If not, you have to contract it out to someone to write for you.
One thing you must have in mind when creating your e-book: make it as direct and on point as much as possible. Don’t try to be ambiguous. Deliver the information in as few pages as possible.
Tools and software for e-book creation
You can use Microsoft Word to create your e-book, but make sure you save it as a PDF. This is the most widely accepted format for e-books.
Ensure that you add a copyright disclaimer in your e-book. This ensures that you don’t tolerate someone reselling your e-book without your permission.
Marketing and Promoting Your E-Book
Once your book is ready, the next step is pushing it to those who really need it. This is where marketing comes in. you need a strategy for marketing your book. Without effective marketing, your e-book won’t get to the right people who need it.
You’re going to need some money to push this e-book out there, and that money will go to ads. You also need to price your e-book right. It doesn’t make sense that your e-book is priced at N5000 when you could have made more money by selling it for N1000.
The beauty of it is that you’re not spending so much to deliver it to them, just internet data. Another thing is that you get to sell it over and over again.
If you can sell your e-book of N1000 to 100 people, that’s N100,000 in your bank account.
Creating a marketing plan
you need a marketing plan. First of all, you need to understand that Nigerians are a unique people. Because of the spate of fraud (419) in Nigeria, it’s hard to sell to Nigerians online. Many people have been scammed and continue to be scammed by so-called online vendors.
I need you to know this from the onset: it is not going to be easy selling your e-book because people are already suspicious of you. Nigerians are relatively wiser, especially online.
First of all, you need what we call a marketing funnel. Your marketing funnel is the process of locating your customers and guiding them through the process of selling until the sale is completed.
A lead is a prospective customer who indicates interest in your advertisement, but has not yet bought from you.
A sales page is a page which practically forces the lead through the process of buying a product by eliminating other distractions and proving a way to make payments easily. I say force, not in an obvious way, but in a way the lead hardly notices.
Having defined these terms, here are some marketing strategies you can adopt while selling your e-book in Nigeria.
Social media marketing
You can run ads on social media like Facebook, Instagram, or X (Twitter). You can build a funnel that looks like this:
In this funnel, you need to chat with your leads until they make payment and you deliver your e-book to them. This is one of the hardest and least converting funnels, because the people don’t trust you that much and will less likely buy from you immediately.
You have to keep sending them messages over a period of time before they finally buy from you.
Your funnel could also look like this:
This is similar to the first funnel, but this time, you’re sending your leads to a sales page. It could be a Selar.co sales page (very popular), or a sales page on your own domain.
In this case, most people will not buy from you because they still don’t trust you enough. You will lose many leads because of this. However, if you’re quite good with crafting high-converting sales pages, you could convert most of the people to buying customers at this stage, but it’s not guaranteed though.
Email marketing
Email marketing is not new, but few marketers use it in Nigeria. However, it is proven to be very effective in the long run.
There are several email marketing services available such as Mailerlite (my choice), Mailjet, Zoho, Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, Eversend, Aweber, and others.
These platforms allow you to send customized emails to your leads for a fee. Most of them have free plans you can still utilize, like Mailerlite. I use them for my email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing has the highest conversion rate of all marketing channels, up to 35%. That means if you send an email to about 500 subscribers and 30% of them buy from you, if your product is priced at N1000, that’s 1000×0.35×500 = 175,000!
Your email marketing funnel should look something like this:
Your nurture emails should be up to at least 5 emails, where you reach out to them and give them opportunity to know you, and also give them some free stuff. Once you introduce your e-book, they will more likely buy from you, because they already know you. They will likely buy from you because you have given them free stuff, without asking for anything in return.
WhatsApp marketing
WhatsApp is another underrated marketing channel out there. People are making millions using just WhatsApp, and you shouldn’t be left out.
Your funnel should look like this:
This method is effective also because you have time to warm up your leads by introducing yourself and giving them value even before selling to them. You need to take your time, plan it effectively. You can offer part of the information in your e-book, and leave the critical one out.
When you finally announce the price for the complete e-book, they will more likely buy from you, because they already know you. People always buy from who they know, not some random stranger selling stuff on Facebook. Keep this in mind.
Security Considerations and Protecting your E-Book
So, you might ask, how are you going to protect your e-book from theft? What if you want to sell directly, without warming up your leads?
Let’s assume that you are utilizing this funnel:
Like I said earlier, this is one of the hardest funnels to implement, because you are selling directly to people who don’t know you. They are afraid to buy from you because they don’t want to be scammed.
So, here’s what to do: offer to sell to them with the option to pay on delivery. That is, you send them your e-book first, then they pay you. You need to explain this to them so that they will understand. Nigerians love the pay on delivery option, and I’m sure they will opt for it readily.
But hey, what if they scam me? you might ask. This is where you need to protect your PDF with an open permission password. You can easily add a password to your PDF by going to pdf2go.com (www.pdf2go.com/protect-pdf). This website allows you to protect your PDF with a password for free. If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional on your laptop, it can equally do this too.
With this password, nobody can open that file unless you give them your password, and it will help in protecting your book from those who may want to resell it without permission.
Concluding Thoughts
I hope you got some value from this article. Let me know in the comments section your experience selling e-books in Nigeria. Is it something worth doing?
I encourage you to check out other articles on this blog, and also bookmark this blog because we have lots of valuable information to share with you on how to make money online in Nigeria, and we will be there every step of the way to help you.
To your success.
