With the Naira falling like gravity does not exist anymore, it has become a common practice for many Nigerians to want to either earn or save their money in dollars. However, before we get deeper into the ‘why’ part, let’s take a look at the whole picture.
A while ago, Naira fell to its lowest yet; N710 to $1. It was brutal. Before then, the Naira had already been steadily dropping. I remember wanting to convert my Naira to dollars so I went to this savings platform and saw that dollar was being sold at N565. I thought it was too high and resolved to come back when the Naira was a bit higher.
It shocked me like shoki when I returned the next month and saw that $1 was now equal to N621. I regretted not buying dollars when it was a bit lower. Now, this situation I just described is what many Nigerians have experienced as well and it fed their desire to convert their Naira to a more stable currency like the dollar. The point of converting currencies is not necessarily to earn more but to retain value. How? I will explain.
With the way the Naira falls, what your N1,000 could buy yesterday, it may only be able to buy half of that same value the next day. So, to keep your Naira at the same value, converting it to dollars is a feasible strategy.
However, converting your naira to dollars or euros is another ball game entirely. As a result of the fact that many Nigerians are clamouring for it, many others have started to swindle their fellow citizens for this service. By ‘service,’ I mean a way to earn in dollars which is by selling eBooks on Amazon, the international eCommerce company.
About two months ago, I had written a book as a sort of test run that I sold in Nigeria (over 50 copies) and I decided to push the experiment further by putting it on Amazon as well. I was a bit flustered by the amount of information I had to consume to do it so I just asked a friend of mine who was always posting about selling books on Amazon.
Well, maybe I should not have asked because this person would have me pay N100,000 – N150,000 for information I could find online if I was patient. Abeg o! I guess that is what sells them, people’s lack of patience. Anyways, since I did not have N150k to pay, I did what any broke person would do (lol), I made Google my best friend and it paid off.
Where am I going with all these? I want you to have a basic idea of what it takes to earn in dollars so that you do not get cheated by people who want to make a fast buck. There are TWO ways you can keep your money in foreign currency to preserve its value and these 2 methods I am about to share are ways that I have tried and tested myself and they actually work.
- Amazon KDP – Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a very easy and quite popular way to earn in dollars. It entails publishing your book on Amazon and you will be paid a number of royalties when people buy your book. Because Amazon is a very large platform, the tendency of total strangers to buy your book is very high as long as it fulfils a need and has the right keywords.
I will not be diving into the intricacies of this since Amazon has a whole help guide for this. However, I will encourage you, if you want to take this path, to make sure you are selling a viable product because this is not a get-rich-quick scheme and if it is done well, you have no idea the heights it can take you.
It would be wise to write a book, and get it through an editor, before selling it online to thousands of people.
Of course, if you already earn in dollars then you might not need this solution. However, it is not a bad side hustle to have for some extra dollars. - Open a domiciliary account and save your money – This option is very necessary even if you take the first option. Why? Amazon converts and pays your money in your local currency so what this means is that you would still have to change it to dollars and save it.
Either way, you can also convert a bulk of your money that is not currently in use and save that in a dom account so it either increases in value or retains value. Either way, you win!
Remember, saving in dollars is not for the sake of showing off but it is more of a response to the current economic crises in Nigeria. You will be saving yourself a ton of stress if you do this, but only if you have the right knowledge and are not desparate!
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You can share your experiences and any point you think I must have missed in the comments. 👇
I am Aunty Ronke and I am here to help you on the journey to making your small business a big one! Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @auntyronke for periodic updates and tips like this and hit the subscribe button to be notified when I make a new post.
