how to make money online in Ethiopia?

Hello there, let me guess, you are searching for this topic (how to make money online in Ethiopia) because of one of those reasons.

You are searching for a job but didn’t get any (honestly speaking nowadays you need to have someone in the company to get hired.)
Or you probably get a job but the salary is ‘ke ej wede af’
Or you might be a high school student and want a sidekick.

Honestly gn, the education system fail us aaaaa? You study for the past 12 – 18 years to get a job and then you have no experience to get the job. Are you kidding me?

Anyways if you are one of the above, this is a good place to grab some info on how to make money online in Ethiopia. So stay tuned.

Table of Contents

But first, make up your mind!

There are things you need to know while considering the subject

But for now, keep these 2 things in mind.

There is no easy way

The first thing you need to know is, there is no easy way or method. I am being honest with you guys. You may see a youtube video or ad which says do this and start earning cash the next day. It is all blush*t. There is no quick scheme to make money in Ethiopia. You need to work for months and years to get your first penny. But I think it is better than submitting your CV for days and not hired. Or get a job and fired on the second month.

So for me the first and the last thing you should have is patience. You need to be patient and focus on your progress. Don’t compare yourself with others. Just go with your pace and through time, you will master the things you need to make money online in Ethiopia.

You need to have a plan

Since there no easy way, you need to have a plan to make money online in Ethiopia. First, you need to choose the way either it is blogging or Youtube channel or freelance work, you need a detailed plan to make things right.

Planning has many advantages like good time management and sustainable progress.
You can have both short term and long term plan
it is amendable as you progress

For example, as you start, you need to decide on these things.

Pick a particular method

There are different ways to make money online, we will talk more about that in the next chapter, but for now, just pick one method to depend on your talent. If you are good at writing, blogging might be a better fit for you. Or you are good in front of the camera, you can create your youtube channel. Or if you can develop apps or design a website, you can start doing freelance work on different free sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

After choosing a particular method, the next step is to start researching your method.

Research on the topic of your interest

Nowadays, Google has enough information to get you started. For example, if you want to become a blogger, You can get information like ‘how to start your blog’, ‘best Webhosting company in Ethiopia‘,…etc on Google. If you want to start a youtube channel in Ethiopia, you can easily google and find detailed information.

Prepare important tools depending on your budget

There is one rule in every business. Spend something to gain something. You can start your journey for free. But if you are serious about making money online, you need to spend something to gain.

For example, If you decide to start a blog, I highly recommend you to start as a self-hosted site like yegara host. Not on free sites. Making video on youtube also need some budget like a microphone or professional video editing tools.

Don’t underestimate the power of first impressions. Because there are many sites and channels out there and you need to compete for an audience. And to grab that first impression, you need to spend some money on it like any other business. For example, when I first start blogging, I start on a WordPress site for free. And no one was reading my blog because my blog design sucks and I didn’t even research keywords when I write my topics. Even if few viewers found my blog post, they didn’t stick to the end because it was unprofessional and wasn’t user friendly. But when I start another blog on Yegara host and design it using premium themes, even my subscribers start to grow.

Different Ways to Make Money Online in Ethiopia

There are many ways to make money online in Ethiopia.

Build and monetize your blog
Start a YouTube channel
Start working on freelance sites – translator, website designer, graphic designer
Make money using your social media – Advertizing, Affiliate marketing, selling channel
Betting sites
Resell Webhosting
Resell domain names
Buy and sell websites
Sell your products online
Design a website for an organization
Publish your book
Make money online by watching an ad (PTC sites)
Make money online by taking surveys
Develop and sell apps online (See some of the Ethiopian freelance app developers on Upwork)
Create a digital course

Let’s see them one by one.

Build and monetize your blog

Yesterday I saw an interesting article in my Google feed. It was research done by Growthbadger.com, one of the known sites that are currently visited by thousands of business owners each month. They published research a while ago. It was done on 1,117 bloggers across the globe who have a different income from their blog. The admin asks each of them and summarize their opinion in this article. They were asked the same question which is,

How important are those factors for making a blog successful? (Scale of 0 – 10).

Asked by Growithbadger.com admin

Once you build your quality blog using all those factors and get a substantial amount of monthly viewers, you can use different methods to make money online in Ethiopia using your blog.

Start a YouTube Channel

You can make money using YouTube in Ethiopia. Even if Ethiopia is not an eligible country (not accepted by youtube), you can change your country name and monetize your channel after you reach to requirement set. But first, you need to start a youtube channel.

After you create your channel the next step is to monetize it. Youtube set a minimum eligibility requirement to start making money in Ethiopia.

Your channel should follow all the YouTube partner program policies.
You should live in a country or region where the YouTube partner program is available. (unfortunately, Ethiopia is not accepted by YouTube. So you need to submit another eligible country to start making money online in Ethiopia.) This method is not recommended and YouTube can delete your account if known. But there is no other choice in Ethiopia.
Your channel should have more than 4000 watch hours in the last 12 months.
Have more than 1000 subscribers.
Have a linked AdSense account.

After you fulfill the criteria, you need to submit your channel for review. YouTube will review your site, make sure everything is okay then approve it for monetization. If your channel is not approved, you can resubmit after one month.

Start Working on Freelance Sites

Some of the Ethiopian freelancers currently working on Fiverr

Different freelance sites are accepting Ethiopian Freelance workers online. Starting from logo design to website design and app development, you can work as a freelancer and get paid through Payoneer.

The most common service offer made by Ethiopian freelancers is a translation job. You can translate English to Amharic and other Ethiopian languages and vice versa. Another offer is an app development and website designing service. This can pay you up to 1000$. Another method is to design logos and other documents for a company and get paid 5 – 50$. You can also do voice over in Amharic and other Ethiopian languages. Or get paid by teaching Amharic, Tigrinya, and other Ethiopian languages to foreign customers.

There are different free freelance platforms to get you started. The most known sites are

Make Money in Ethiopia Using Your Social Media

Whether you have a telegram channel or a Facebook group, you can make money by different methods using your social media. You can advertise yours and other product or link (affiliate marketing). Or you can sell a channel after it got a good number of followers. You can also link your blog on your channel to drive traffic to your blog and make money by offering your or others product.

Betting sites

I am not sure if make money using the betting site can be count as an online business but it is one of the growing trends in Ethiopia. There are different betting sites.

You can resell Webhosting, domain names and websites

As you see in the above picture, you can buy reseller hosting (with unlimited Disk space and bandwidth) for 3000 birr per year then sell for 20 customers with a price you set.

Not only Webhosting, but you can also buy domain names with unique names and sell later. You can also build a beautiful website then resell it later at a good price. Different sites help you do that. Flippa is one of the most known sites where you can sell your domain name and websites for a good price.

Sell your products online

Thanks to the advanced technologies, you can sell your product online on different platforms.

Even on telegram and Facebook, some different groups and channels are giving this service. So that your customer doesn’t have to go to your shop physically. He or she can choose the equipment online.

Not only social media, but there are also Ethiopia-based online shops like Qefira where you will promote your product with the picture, discription, and contact address so that the customer can see the product and contact yours through the admin of the website.

On a more advanced level, you can also sign up to sell on Amazon, Ebay, and Shopify. You can set your online shop with a small price then you can sell your product online.

You can earn as much as 25,000 ETB with a little or no cost at you. Especially if you have already bought premium themes like DIVI, you can design as many websites as with no additional cost to you. That means you are selling your experience and service for a higher price which is a wonderful way of making money.

I am not saying it is easy if you have no previous experience. But you can learn it with patience. in my case 2 years ago I had no idea what a website was. Through time with a lot of trial and error, I manage to build more than 7 websites. I already buy the Divi theme so it is much easier to build a website now. But it is time-consuming and you need to have a lot of patience with your customer because your taste might be different from them.

So to get started you need to have

An experience or basic knowledge about web hosting and WordPress
A good eye for design
It is better if you have a premium theme since they are more customizable and unique
You need to advertise yourself to get new customers. For example – you may need your website where you showcase your previous work and plan & price of your service or you might need to register on freelance sites like Fiverr for example.

Publish your own book

if you are into writing or if you plan to publish your book but don’t know where to start, there is a way where you can publish your book online. Kindle Direct Publishing will take care of this for free. What you need to know is prepare your document, proofread it yourself or by a professional proofreader, prepare an attractive cover design then submit it to kindle for free. Publishing mostly takes less than 5 minutes and your book will be online on Kindle stores worldwide within 2 days. The best thing about the kindle is you can set your price and earn up to 70% of each sale. You can also make changes to your books at any time.

Make money online by watching an ad (PTC sites) and taking surveys

This is the most common way of making money online both in Ethiopia and worldwide. I think that is because it is the easiest way. Regardless, I don’t recommend it as a source of business for three primary reasons.

Because it is the easiest way to make money online, millions of internet users are using it. Due to that, you only get paid cents even if you spend hours every day.
It is full of scammers. After spending months, you will finally realize you can’t withdraw the money you already made.
it is not even a business. it is not something you can add your flavor to it. It is entirely controlled by the site owner, you will just spend your time and energy for months only to be paid a small fraction of money.

So these are legit ways to make money online in Ethiopia. Which one is a better fit for you? And if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comment below. And also don’t forget to subscribe to get news and updates on making money online.