Every week, Zikoko seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.

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What’s your earliest memory of money?

I have two, actually. 

The first happened when I was 7 or 8. I overheard my aunt telling my mum that she couldn’t leave her abusive boyfriend because she depended on him for money. I remember concluding I didn’t want to be in a situation where I’d endure nonsense because someone was helping me financially.

The other memory is from my first year at university in 2019. My dad lost his job, and he told me I needed to start doing anything legal to make money. It was clear that I was on my own and that I’d need to figure something out.

What was your family’s financial situation before your dad lost his job?

We weren’t rich. My dad could afford the basics, like school fees, on his teaching income. But I have five siblings, so there wasn’t much money to go around. My mum often supported the home with whatever she made as a trader, and we survived.

My dad has lost his job several more times over the last five years, but the 2019 episode changed my attitude to making money. I decided no one would just give me money because I asked, so I became proactive about hustling. My mum still supported me with textbook money from time to time, but school fees and daily expenses were on me.

So, what did you do?

I started selling data through a data re-selling website. But the profit wasn’t great, and I stopped after a few weeks. I made between ₦70 – ₦150 depending on the data volume people bought. I had a considerable Facebook following — I regularly wrote short horror stories — and some of my customers came from the platform. Sometimes, they’d send ₦1k for ₦900 data and ask me to keep the change. 

After that, I sold perfume oil. I bought each bottle at ₦200 and sold it for ₦500. The bottles came in a pack of 12, and I usually sold at least two packs in a week by moving from class to class. The business only lasted three months before I had to stop. Someone tried to make me sell edibles and started threatening me when I refused. So, I got scared of moving around school.

Thankfully, some of my Facebook friends who loved my writing began referring me to gigs. That became my next hustle.

What kind of writing gigs?

Mostly article writing for blogs. I didn’t know many professional writers or what to charge for my services, so I just winged it.

The first woman I worked with was supposed to pay me ₦15k/month to produce five weekly articles. Each article was at least 5000 words long, and she also expected me to manage her Facebook page. She paid the first month, then she started owing me. On top of that, she constantly threw abusive words at me. I stopped writing for her in the second month. 

Then, I got an SEO writing gig with a guy who owned a travel blog. When he asked me how much I charged, I said I didn’t know. To be fair, I didn’t know anything about SEO writing, and I told him this. He offered to teach me everything I needed to know if I worked the first month for free. 

I worked with him for two months, and he always complained about my application of the SEO bit. He still paid me ₦25k for the second month, though.

Working with him opened my eyes to the fact that I had much to learn about writing. So, I posted on Facebook offering to write for blogs for free to gain experience and build my portfolio. Several people reached out, and I wrote for them — mostly SEO articles. They only paid for my data. I also got a few paid ghostwriting gigs occasionally. At this point, I was essentially paying myself through school. 

How were you managing writing with schoolwork?

It’s funny you should ask that because I’m running an extra year right now. I was a bright student, but it was tough to actively chase gigs and show up at school. I also had some issues with a lecturer who asked me out. In my third year, I stopped attending lectures altogether. 

I went to school from home — I still do — and my dad’s on-again, off-again job situation caused a lot of financial stress. He was without a job for an especially long time in 2021, and my mum expected me to provide feeding money for my siblings. She’d intentionally leave the house for hours, knowing I couldn’t watch my siblings starve. So, I’d have to gather whatever I had to feed them. 

Fast forward to 2023, I decided to make conscious efforts toward making good money from writing. I joined a WhatsApp writing community and saw the writers share how they made money from ghostwriting. I remember one said he made ₦75k for every 50k words. That’s at the rate of ₦1.5/word. I didn’t know it was possible to charge that much; the most I imagined I was worth was ₦1/word. I even collected whatever a client offered. But entering that community opened my eyes. I needed to make good money.

How did you go about this?

I decided to take ghostwriting more seriously. I was eager to drop the SEO articles because they were boring. Ghostwriting was mostly fiction, so it felt like a better model. I met people in the writing community who showed me how to find clients who needed ghostwriters.

As a ghostwriter, I mostly worked on billionaire romance books. You know, the stories where the rich protagonist falls for a poor person, or the protagonist has a one-night stand with a billionaire, and they fall in love. 

So, like unrealistic Nollywood tropes

Haha. I worked on an average of two or three books in a month. My income varied depending on the word count  — usually 30k or 50k words — and the agreed rates. Sometimes, I made ₦60k/book if the rate was ₦1.2/word and an average of ₦200k/month. The money wasn’t bad, but I often felt uncomfortable that my clients were just using me for my work and passing my work off as theirs.

A year later, another friend told me I could make even more money writing for myself. He explained that clients who hired ghostwriters put the books on writing platforms and made money from them. Then my friend showed me his dashboard on one of these platforms, and I saw $1800. He said that was just his income for the month. I was shocked. 

Of course, I asked him to put me through. He explained that he’d face rejections eight times before even getting to write on the platform, but I was ready to try. If he could do it, I could do it too. 

How does this platform work?

So, there are a lot of them. They allow authors to publish their work and earn money when people pay to read the books online. The three most popular platforms are Stary Writing, Good Novel and LetterLux.

This is how they work: Authors apply for a contract by submitting about 5000 words and an outline of the book they want to publish. If the moderators like the story, they can offer the author one of two contracts: exclusive or non-exclusive. Once the author gets the contract, they can continue writing the book and uploading new chapters every 2-3 days.

An exclusive contract means the author publishes on the platform and nowhere else. The platform also has all rights to the book for some years. This type of contract typically pays more because the platform pays a monthly, sign-on, and completion bonus. 

Some platforms require the author to upload at least 50k words monthly and upload chapters every two days to get a monthly bonus of about $150, depending on the platform. The sign-on bonus — usually $100 — is for submitting a specific word count and becoming an author on the platform, and completion is paid when the book is finished.

If it’s a non-exclusive contract, the author is allowed to publish elsewhere but doesn’t get a monthly bonus. For both contracts, authors still make money on the profit the platform realises from the people who pay to continue reading a book after the first few free pages. The platform takes a commission from this profit. Sometimes 50%, sometimes as much as 90%. But whatever percentage that’s left for the author is usually still substantial.

Interesting. When did you start writing on these platforms?

2024, but it wasn’t a straightforward process. I was rejected thrice even though I studied the platform’s best-selling books to improve my writing. Then, a friend advised me to work on erotic stories because they performed better.

I submitted a homoerotic story and got my first contract in July 2024. In the first month, I wrote 30k words and got a $50 sign-on bonus in August. I’ve written several other books across different platforms since, but the first book is still my bestseller. I’m still writing it — some platforms allow authors to take 3-6 months to complete a book — and I’ve made $3k on that one book.

What’s your income across platforms like these days?

At least ₦1m, depending on how much I make from monthly bonuses and profits. I currently have a mix of exclusive and non-exclusive books on seven platforms, but they don’t all make me money simultaneously. A book can do really well this month, and another does really well on another platform. For instance, I made $694 from one book in December, while two others paid $150 and $300, respectively. I didn’t make money from the other books. 

Non-exclusive books make me the least money, so I optimise more for exclusive contracts. I don’t even care how long the platform wants to take ownership of the books. I don’t publish with my real name anyway. 

Why?

I like to keep that aspect of my life separate from my real life. It’s not that all my books are erotic; I still write some romance. I just want to maintain a separate identity.

Plus, it’s even a way to protect my identity. Several authors use pen names because a lot of them make good money, and there’s a way you can see how much an author makes by looking at the views on their page. No one wants to be a target.

A few months ago, someone on our WhatsApp community shared a screenshot showing that she made $54k from her books that month. People started trying to uncover her identity, which was a bit scary. Imagine how dangerous it is for people to know you have that kind of money in Nigeria.

How has your income growth impacted your lifestyle?

Not much. The most expensive thing I own is my laptop, which I bought for ₦400k. I eat out regularly, but I’m more of a saver because my boyfriend makes sure of it. I earn enough now to reasonably help my family and maintain a decent quality of life. I say “reasonably help” because my mum doesn’t know how much I earn. I only give her money occasionally, so she doesn’t become fully dependent on me.

I’ve seen her do the same thing to my older brother. When he got his first job and told her about his ₦40k salary, she started having one big problem every month. It got to a point where my brother started borrowing his salary in advance to send to her.

In September, I gave my mum ₦200k to rent a shop so she’d stop selling by the roadside. My brother also gave her some money, but she didn’t rent the shop. I feel like she thought I had a lot of money. Now, she’s pestering me to give her more money to start a business, but I tell her I’m broke. Imagine if she knew how much I earned.

I get you

I’m also saving for two major goals: to relocate to another state after school and start a business. Trying to write with my noisy siblings in the same house is a struggle. So, I want to get an apartment to be more productive. Plus, I’ll get to be closer to my boyfriend. I estimate I’ll need about ₦3m to move and rent an apartment. 

For the business bit, I once had a stint running something like a tech academy in 2023. I didn’t have the money or a clear idea of how to run it, but I had a vision. I hired people to teach skills like content writing, social media management and web development. Then, I paired them up with students who signed up to learn. 

I charged between ₦5k – ₦20k per student depending on what they wanted to learn and gave the tutors 40%. I even ran Facebook ads for publicity. I ran the academy for a few months, but I didn’t know a lot about how to manage something like that, so it fizzled out. 

I plan to restart the academy and be more intentional with it. I figure I’ll need about ₦2.5m to start so I can build a website and invest heavily in marketing. 

Sounds like a plan. You mentioned helping your family. How does this work?

I’ve begun taking responsibility for my younger siblings and supporting our feeding expenses. For example, I recently paid school fees for two of my sisters. One is in uni, and her tuition is ₦56k. The other is in a public secondary school, and her tuition is ₦15k. I also buy them snacks, textbooks, and most of what they need. 

I’m not under pressure to do these things; I just do them. But I make sure to give my mum the impression that I use my last card to help out. Sometimes, I even say I borrowed it just so she doesn’t get ideas. That’s the only way I can protect myself. 

What does a typical month in expenses look like?

I made my first million in September and only became intentional about saving in November 2024. I have about ₦1.8m in my savings now, but I intend to save even more aggressively this year so I can consider investment options. 

I’ll forward all the money I make from my more-paying books to my savings and survive on the ones that bring me an average of $150/month. That’s over ₦200k, and it should be enough for me. 

Is there anything you want right now but can’t afford?

I want to leave Nigeria, but maybe not right now. I’m hoping it happens in the next two years, though. I expect I might need like ₦10m to japa.

How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?

8. Over the last months, I’ve built strong friendships with other writers and realised I’m the lowest earner among them. I’m not jealous; I just see I have the potential to make far more. I’d feel fulfilled making at least $5k/month. I know it’s possible.

Find all the past Naira Life stories here.

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