Some people assume women make money simply by existing — from random strangers on the internet, fathers, suitors, imaginary boyfriends, and sometimes, married men propositioning them for sex.
When young women go on social media to flaunt flashy possessions, more often than not, you’ll find a significant number of people speculating that those things were gotten from a rich man. Ironically, society shames women who live off the male figures in their lives. Hustle culture in mainstream media is represented by men doing money laundering, romance scams, or ritual killings to make money.
On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine women doing anything other than sex work to make quick money. But women aren’t immune to the get-rich-quick syndrome, and there are a million ways to make easy money aside from sex work.
In this article, four women open up about the most unhinged things they’ve done to make money.
1. “I sent nudes for ₦2,500” – Jum’mai*, 21
Last year, towards the end of my final year project, a few expenses relating to the project came up, and I needed to pay 5k. I had not been paid at work, my parents were broke, and I had too much pride to ask my uncles or friends for the money.
I was talking to a guy at the time who I had told about my money problems. He said he would give me 10k if I helped him with a problem he had. The problem he was referring to was horniness — he needed me to send nudes he could masturbate to.
I was one of the top 5 students in my class, and not doing the project would have cost me an extra year in school. Out of desperation, I took the pictures and sent them. The infuriating thing is that after getting them, the madman sent me ₦2,500.
I was raised in a very conservative northern family, and that was my very first sexual experience. I sent it as a view once, but sometimes I’m scared that he could have copies of it elsewhere, and if those pictures ever came out, they would ruin me. I’m so glad he has left my city because if I see that man on the road, I may fall into the nearest gutter.
What hurts the most about the entire experience is that my elder sister sent me 50k a few hours later. The world is not very kind to hustling women. No one would ask a man for nudes or sex before sending him money.
I think about that day a lot, and I just wish I could have swallowed my pride or been a lot more patient.
2. “I Joined my Boyfriend’s Yahoo Ring” — Steph*, 21
When I was 17, I started dating a boy in my area who was using the latest phone at the time and could afford whatever it was that we wanted to eat. I later found out that he was into fraud. Anytime I think about it, I’m still pained because it turned out that he was using the money he got from scamming people to cheat on me.
At the time, I didn’t have any pressing financial needs, but I wanted financial freedom at all costs. A few months after we started dating, my boyfriend and I got into an argument on whether women could do the things men did better. At the end of the argument, he told me in a very condescending tone that women could do everything men did, but they could not ‘cash out’. I’d been itching to make money for a while at the time, so I decided I was going to prove him wrong.
On request, he started teaching me how to do what he did. I signed up for a dating app on his instructions. My first task after that was to find pictures of naked women. I would tease men from overseas over text with what I’d found. My job was basically to convince the target to send money to see more of her.
Keep in mind that you could find these pictures everywhere online, so they weren’t really paying for any service. When we got to the stage where they’d start to demand more explicit pictures, he would subscribe to the model’s OnlyFans account to get more. To him, it was a matter of making one small investment for bigger returns from the client.
The crazy thing about this entire ordeal is that I didn’t end up proving him wrong. The anger and expectation I started with soon became fear that we’d be caught and arrested. It didn’t help that I suddenly grew a conscience. I bonded with one of the targets over a movie, and he seemed to have actually fallen in love with me. Plus, I grew tired of seeing dick pictures from random men on the internet, so I quit.
I’m in a better place financially now, but it took a lot to get here. Most people won’t believe what I’m about to say, but honest work really is worth it. Work that won’t give you peace of mind will only get you in trouble.
3. “I Got Paid to Impersonate OnlyFans Models” — Bisi*, 22
I’m a small business owner: I sell lingerie, do makeup, and curate surprise packages for celebrations, among other things. Most of the capital in these businesses came from money I had saved up from my boyfriend at the time.
A year into our relationship, I took a big leap and decided to add lip gloss to the list of things I sold. After spending close to 200k on raw materials and packaging, we had a big fight, and we broke up. All my money had gone into production, business was very slow, and I had no cushion from the financial setback. It got to a point where I could barely afford three square meals. I had never been that broke in my adult life.
At that point, a friend told me about OnlyFans chatters. A chatter’s job is to log in to the backend of a model’s account and sext with her subscribers while trying to convince them to pay to watch her videos. I got interested because I didn’t need any capital to start. All I had to have was electricity, data, and Telegram. I joined chatrooms and applied for jobs.
It wasn’t as easy as my friend made it sound. Most of these jobs were only available at night, and I was working for 6 to 8 hours a day with a pay of $0.05 per hour. Later, I progressed to working 16-hour jobs. Some jobs would offer a 5-10% commission but no hourly pay. Making a decent living off commissions is hard because ten percent commission on a $6 photo is chump change.
I started the job when I was at my parents’ house, so I was constantly hiding in odd corners of the house, like the toilets, to work. It wasn’t the kind of work you could do in public because there are so many sexual things on your screen all the time — men in their 40s asking barely legal models for very disturbing things.
I also had to constantly run my generator because my area did not get electricity at night, and my laptop had a two-hour battery life. At some point, I was spending more than what I was earning on fuel. I spent all my savings and even borrowed money to meet the demand.
The bosses on these chatrooms would swear that it was possible to make $500 a week on that space. They’d promise things like vacations in London, and then block you two days to pay-day. There were a lot of scammers there, and the space was unregulated, so you had no way of knowing which jobs were genuine and which ones weren’t. I was very frustrated and depressed, but I kept going because of the promise of quick wages.
After a month, I quit, but I’d been scammed of close to $200 worth of wages, and I’d depleted my savings account. If I could go back, I can’t even say I wouldn’t do it again. I would have just been more careful. I used to be a lot more judgmental before I started work in the OnlyFans industry, but I know better now. It’s hard to enjoy doing such work with the kind of audience it attracts.
4. “I Tried to Sell My Eggs for Money” – Ifunnaya*, 23
I’ve always been interested in making money for as long as I can remember. What have I not actually done to make money? I’ve washed ponmo at events, sold small chops, started hairdressing, and sold perfumes – to name a few. I’ve been a waiter for a two-day event where I worked from 8 AM to 11 PM to be paid 3k and a bag of jollof rice. Some of these things were barely even legal. For instance, when I got into uni, I started a jewellery business and lied to my customers that I got my goods from Dubai so I could sell them for triple the price.
But what really took the cake was when I found out I could sell my eggs for money on Facebook. I needed money at the time, and I was not ready to sleep with men for it. The payout was ₦80k, which was a lot of money then. Fortunately, when we went to the clinic, they sent my friend and me away, saying that there was low demand for IVF in my state and that they’d already gotten all the eggs they needed for the year. In hindsight, I’m glad it didn’t work out because my family would’ve killed me if my ovaries didn’t beat me to it. I heard that the process is very painful.
At the time, I was very sad. I could only think of donating eggs because that’s all I had to give at the moment. I was already learning a skill, but I was broke. It’s really annoying when people say “go learn a skill” or “go to school” as though you immediately begin to earn a lot of money when you do these things. The entire idea behind this scheme was that I needed money, and I needed it fast.
What people don’t understand is that women are also allowed to want a shit ton of money, and we can get desperate fast for it. We also want to drive a Benz at 21 without people wondering if we slept with a bunch of men for it.
My goal is to create an environment where I can give young women opportunities to earn good money. I didn’t want to sleep with men; that’s why I tried to sell my eggs at age nineteen. I understand what it means to be young and money-crazy; I won’t judge any girl for it.
Next Read: How This 28-Year-Old Nigerian Woman Built a Business That Pays Her to See the World
