10 WAYS I TRIED TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE IN UGANDA, AFRICA

 Picture this…

A young bored teenage girl who has just finished high school and is supposed to be on her Senior Six vacation is then thrown a surprise punch in the gut known as the COVID-19 pandemic. This teenage girl is forced to be confined in her house with her family for what felt like years and ends up even more bored than before. So what does she do? She decides to try to figure out how her skills and boredom can make money for her and so she decides to google ways to make money online in Uganda.

That is just a summary of my tumultuous journey to learning how to make money online. Now I can tell you I have always been curious about how I could leverage the internet to help me make money but I never really took it seriously till the pandemic rolled in and threw the world upside down.  I had hoped considering the fact that this is the 21^st century and since almost everyone in Kampala has a smartphone, that there would be more information by fellow Ugandan creators on how one can make that dough! I was sadly mistaken and forced to navigate this confusing online money-making world basically blind and tried a variety of ways that I think you can use to make money online as well

Now I have tried many and failed at many, some I am still trying to make the best, and others I felt just wasn’t for me. There are MANY ways to make money online but not all the methods famous YouTube gurus share work in Uganda or even  Africa so I had to do some deep dives to find some of these methods.

My hope is that you either learn something new or are just inspired to try, try and try again because you never know when that one door opens up for you.

Let’s start the countdown

1.      Dropshipping

Now drop shipping can be a great way to make a passive income as long as you have the money to start your store. When I tried dropshipping, I relied on a lot of information on YouTube and I was misled to believe it was a simple way to make money, it isn’t. With drop shipping, you have to do a lot of product research to find what trending and before you decide to sell it.  On top of that, it relies heavily on ads specifically Facebook ads to generate traffic for your store and that means more money is needed for it.

Dropshipping is supposed to be you acquiring a supplier for products you want to sell and selling them without having to keep them physically in your own storage space. In other words, you have inventory but you don’t have it with you physically.

The upside is you don’t have to pay for the inventory until you receive an order but the downside is that you still need money for your domain name, E-commerce platform, and ads. So it is not exactly cheap to start but it can be worth the investment in the long run.

 2.    Blogging

I started blogging back in 2020, I believe, but I paused it for a while cause I saw no returns from it. Blogging is a great way to make money online not only in Uganda but worldwide because you just need to know what you want to blog about and what platform you plan to use (Of course there’s more than that but you get the picture)

Personally, I love fashion and hope to be a renowned fashion designer so I felt it only right to blog about fashion. But your interest maybe be cooking or Politics or Sports, you can blog about it and earn an income. But blogging isn’t a quick way to make money, most people don’t earn an income till after their 1^st year...I hope to surpass that belief.

There are so many platforms that you can open your blog on from WordPress to blogger and even Tumblr and some will pay you to post a blog article on their site e.g. Medium. If you believe you are a great writer and would love to do it in

 3. Influencer Marketing

Now one thing I realized is that they are few Influencers in Uganda who aren’t celebrities i.e. Musicians, TV show personalities, and Actors. Plus with the way the Influencer industry is set to be a billion-dollar industry, there is a spot Ugandans can fill for companies as their influencers.  You can get paid over $100 dollars to be an influencer for a company by just sharing a social media post.

Join Influencer marketing platforms like Fohr, Influencer, TRIBE, Aspire, and more. Grow your strongest social media accounts and focus on a particular niche: fashion, fitness, Food, or even art. Build a community with your followers by interacting with them. Now if you are serious, you can monetize your social media quick and start rolling in that cash.

NOTE: Being an influencer isn’t about just posting on social media but about showing your followers that the product you are offering will change their lives, if you can do that, then influencing is for you.

4. Freelancing

If you aren’t keen on being a social media celebrity in the making then use your skills to make money for yourself. I discovered  Fiverr which is essentially a freelancer marketplace. Looking for a graphic designer, they got it. Looking for a website designer, they got it. Need someone to translate a document for you, THEY HAVE GOT IT.

You are a blessed being with artillery of skills and talents, you can use to make money on freelance websites. If you are great at proofreading documents, list an ad on these sites and make that dough.

 

Don’t expect to get customers the moment you place your ad, sometimes you have to market your ad and share it with others to get a few customers rolling into your inbox. But if you are sure you can write a great business plan or be the best virtual assistant there is then you should check out the following freelance sites.

a.       Fiverr

b.      Freelancer

c.       Upwork

d.      Truelancer

e.      Workana

 

 

              5..Print on demand

Now, this I believe is for artsy people. You can create a store selling customized clothes or accessories that your own designs. Stuff like Graphic hoodies, T-shirts, even tote bags can be marked with your designs and ready to sell on your site. Also, you never have to keep the stock with you, the order is made on-demand preventing you from wasting resources.

As far as marketing goes, you can utilize social media and ads to generate traffic and start earning a pretty good passive income.

 

6.       6. Get paid to listen to music

I love listening to music, I listen to music every day as I’m doing my chores, finishing assignments even going to the supermarket so it excited me to hear I could earn from doing just that. I learned about this miracle on Pinterest, using the current app, I would be rewarded money for listening to music every day.

The downside to this is the small earnings of as low as $0.02 per song and you only earn when you are online, but if you are willing to keep the app and persevere unlike me, then I’m sure you stand to earn a bit of cash from this.

 

7.      7. Get paid to play games

I, too, thought this was a scam at first then I hoped they didn’t mean video games like call of duty or GTA and in fact, it was true and the games were fun mobile games that even a 10-year-old could play.

Through an app called clipclaps, you can get paid to play their games every day and even receive check-in points as well.

 Mobile game addicts assemble and make use of your legendary skills.

8.     8. Get paid to take surveys

This is actually one of the first methods I tried. Basically, you get paid to answer a bunch of questions on various topics. You can earn as low as $0.05 or as high as $1 per survey.

I started with Swagbucks but found that I rarely received surveys which were due to my location. So I tried to localize my search to specifically in Uganda and found quite a few platforms here in Uganda that will pay you to take surveys.

Take a look at Geopoll, which rewards users with airtime for taking a survey, or Triaba paying up to $2.25 for taking surveys.

It’s a fun way to make money but you need to be on more than 1 platform to fill the benefits of it.

 

9.       9. Affiliate Marketing

This is a method that has platforms that actually work worldwide. Platforms like click bank and digistore24 are some of the famous few that beginners often choose to use.

Affiliate marketing is basically marketing goods or services without ever actually getting/using them and earning a commission for every purchase made through your promotion. It is similar to influencer marketing except you have a choice of what you are willing to promote.

You can do this without money but would need to rely heavily on SEO to drive traffic to your landing page/site. You can also utilize TikTok since you can reach more people through the for you page. But do expect to have to do research on the products you are promoting and as you grow as an affiliate marketer expect to use paid methods of marketing like ads to drive even more traffic to your sites.

 

10.     10. Receive SMS messages and get paid

So as the title says, receive SMS messages and get paid for them. You obviously need a good internet connection when you receive these SMS messages and need to have the app running in the background but it is a pretty simple way to make $5 every few weeks or days depending on your network.

(I recommend getting a Lyca sim card because they don’t want any more Airtel or MTN numbers)

All you have to do is download the app, sign up, leave the app to run in the background, and wait for the SMS messages to come.

You will get paid $0.02 for every SMS you receive from the platform and can receive as many as 20 SMS from them in a day.

 Now I have a referral code that can get you a bonus of $0.25 when you register and gets me a little gift as well.

4GX5TC4H

 

 

Go forth and make that money.

 

If you have any more additions to this list that can actually work in Uganda, please share them in the comments.

Also, share this post with someone who might like it or learn from it.