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Create Wealth and Forget Your Country

Making money online

The harsh realities of living in Ghana and pursuing an online writing career

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When I was in my final year of university, I became passionate about creating wealth. I wanted to live a life of freedom someday so I could do whatever I wanted without worrying about money. And what was the one thing I wanted to do? Philanthropy. But philanthropy wasn’t cheap. I needed a lot of money to make the impact I’d been dreaming of.

It was going to be tough, but I wasn’t going to give up. I read every book I could find on financial literacy and money. Think of any book on wealth and I may have read it before.

Most of these books emphasized creating wealth by investing in things like stocks and real estate. It was unrealistic for me because I needed a lot of money to start.

Yet, I was undaunted.

After graduating, I started my National Service as required by law. This was my first time working and getting paid by the government. With the financial prudence I had gained, I saved a lot of my salary and then later, invested in stocks and mutual funds.

That was the time in my life I felt like I had all my finances in control. I could create wealth, I thought. I just had to keep investing.

About two or three years later, I realized how utterly ridiculous the whole thing was. What I was doing wasn’t going to make me wealthy. My principal amount was so negligible that the dividends I was getting were just pitiful. I calculated how long it would take me to eventually amass wealth that will let me buy my freedom and pursue my philanthropy dream.

It would take over four decades. What the hell? So I’m supposed to be miserable in my youthful years only to enjoy life when I’m old and wrinkled? No thanks. I wasn’t about to waste my time like that.

Most importantly, I had no intention of going back to work in government institutions. Witnessing all that corruption back when I was a National Service Personnel had completely traumatized me and I didn’t want to go through it again. In fact, I was losing myself because the corrupt system was slowly sucking me in.

I didn’t want that to happen again, so I decided to create my own path.

DeMarco classified three financial paths in his book; the sidewalk, the slowlane, and the fastlane.

The sidewalkers are those who don’t care about their finances. They live way above their means and often end up in debt. These people, no matter how high their income, are still poor. They live from paycheck to paycheck and are only one salary away from being homeless.

Then there are those traveling on the slowlane. While the people on this road have a better grasp of financial literacy, they are still creating wealth too slowly. Their wealth creation strategy is as follows: go to school, get a good job, live frugally, save, invest in stocks, mutual funds, and bonds, and then later, maybe in the next forty to fifty years when you’re not dead, you’ll enjoy the fruit of your labor.

This was actually the road I was traveling on. My mindset had been unconsciously programmed to travel on this road not only because of all the financial books I’d read but also because that was what society told me to do. I mean, it sounds like a logical road. But once you learn about the fastlane, you begin to wonder why we’re never taught about that from the very beginning of our lives.

The fastlane was a financial plan based on leveraged entrepreneurship that creates extraordinary incomes and asset values in a short time. Time is irrelevant in the equation. In the fastlane, you can make money even while you sleep.

Passive income is king. But you probably already knew that.

The book talks about the five business seedlings that you can pursue to put your money-making system on autopilot.

These business seedlings are:

Basically, DeMarco said that if you choose any one of these systems and consistently apply the formula for wealth (as written in the book), you’re bound to get wealthy between five to seven years.

That’s right. Seven years.

I promise it’s not as fictional as I make it sound. It actually makes a lot of sense. So, I decided to apply it to my life. First, I had to choose one of the five systems.

That wasn’t difficult at all. I was already a writer so choosing Content Systems was a no-brainer. Before that, however, I had never thought about becoming wealthy by being a full-time writer.

I wasn’t delusional in thinking that I could make a lot of money as a writer. After, all the vast majority of authors will tell you that they can’t even pay their bills with their royalties. Writing as a career was never something I had thought about. To me, that was just a hobby. I wrote because I genuinely loved doing it. I had never thought about using that as a means to create wealth.

But after reading the Millionaire Fastlane, I quickly changed my mind. This was perfect. Not only will I get to create wealth to fulfill my philanthropy dream, but I will do it by doing what I loved — writing.

Now I had a purpose. I was going to pursue a full-time writing career online. Nothing was going to stop me. This was going to be a breeze. Seven years? Please. Make it five years.

Hahaha… Wait, excuse me… Hahahaha.

I found, to my utmost dismay, that nothing I did online worked because it was not accessible to people living in Ghana or most parts of Africa. I had better luck surviving on Jupiter than making money online in my country.

How do you become an online creator when an important payment system like Paypal is unavailable to you?

Still, I was too damn stubborn to quit. I found tutorials on creating a Paypal account while living in an unsupported country. Well, long story short, I got banned by Paypal three different times. Damn. These people don’t play. When they say you don’t belong here, they mean it.

Yet, I wouldn’t give up. So I tried Stripe. Even worse. While Paypal supported over a hundred countries including several African countries (not Ghana, of course), Stripe supported only a little over forty countries. Not a single African country was on the list.

It was almost like no one wanted to include Africans in anything. Paypal’s reason for blacklisting Ghana was that there was a lot of fraud in the country. Obviously, all thirty million of us here in Ghana, including unborn babies, are fraudsters. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

But I still wouldn’t give up. Okay, that’s a big lie. At this point, I was at the verge of giving up. I was frustrated, exhausted, and slowly losing my fucking mind.

Nothing was working. Everything seemed to be against me all because of where I was born. What the fuck was this? The opportunities were there, yes. But my geography made it impossible to access these opportunities.

All the hope I had just vanished into thin air as I spiraled into depression. Self-doubt, self-hate, low self-esteem, all of those self-sabotaging nonsense, I had them all. Trying to create wealth for yourself in a country like Ghana was like trying to find the warmest environment in Antarctica. Good luck with that. Global businesses will gladly take our money, yet they will do everything in their power to keep us from earning some.

I was so depressed I began resenting everything. I didn’t even want to write anymore. Previously, I did it simply for the love of it. But later, I didn’t care anymore. What was the point if nothing was going to come out of it?

All those books I read about wealth creation or whatever bullshit were written by Westerners for Westerners. None of that shit applied to me.

I remember just laughing in hysteria when it dawned on me. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t disappointed. I was no longer even frustrated. I was just… numb. After several months of wallowing in my depression, I had had enough.

Yes, I refused to give up. Again.

I told myself that if Ghanaian creators are finding it difficult to earn money online, then it was no one’s fault but ours. I still stand by this. You can’t blame the people keeping you out. Blame yourself for keeping yourself outside in the first place.

I understand that there is a lot of imperial history that explains why Africa lags behind the rest of the world. But come on, at what point do we take responsibility for ourselves?

Even our own politicians, the very people who should have our interests at heart, collude with foreign powers to exploit us. So again, whose fault is it? No one, but ours.

In Ghana, there’s a high rate of unemployment. You try to create your own business and the government will try to destroy it. So yeah, is it surprising that I can’t access European and North American platforms when my own country doesn’t give a fuck about me?

After a lot of self-reflection, I finally stopped feeling sorry for myself. Life was unfair. So what? Did that mean I should give up on my dreams? Not a chance.

I refuse to be held back by my country. Even if many of these opportunities online are not available to me, there’s still a chance that I can find some that are available. If I keep searching, I was bound to find good alternatives.

But I was still worrying too much about how to earn money from my writing while I completely ignored the writing part.

So, I adopted a new mindset. I will focus on creating content. I shouldn’t worry about making money from it. At least, not yet. Write. Learn the craft. Produce lots of high-quality content. The money will come if people find it valuable. That’s how the free market works.

I took my own advice and went back to blogging and writing novels. I also decided to use Medium as a gym to exercise my writing muscles.

When I heard about the Medium Partner Program, the first thing I thought was, “People living in Ghana can’t apply.” And fuck, I was right. I wasn’t even bothered.

Don’t get me wrong. It would be amazing to earn money on Medium. But it’s not possible at the moment because of where I live, so why waste my time worrying about it? I would rather focus on improving my craft.

If your location makes you feel like you’re not part of this world because many of these opportunities are not available to you, don’t worry. After a lot of trial and error, and tears, of course, I have found platforms that are supported in many developing countries. Your country might just be on the list.

Making money online is as simple as ABC. This is true if you live in a location that has all these opportunities available. What people in the West take for granted, people in developing countries will walk through the fires of Mordor to get access to them.

We’re practically cut off from a wide range of these opportunities. And unless we change our location, we’re practically fucked. Poverty is your portion, says the world market.

Yeah, well, I refuse it.

Instead of obsessing over what wasn’t working, and blaming everyone for it, I decided to look for other alternatives.

As an online creator, you simply cannot do away with this. If you’re going to get paid, you need an online payment system. Without it, you can’t possibly earn money online.

The most widely known ones are Paypal and Stripe. Unfortunately, these are only available in certain countries.

When you create valuable content that people love, it’s only a matter of time until you gain supporters for your work.

Ko.fi and Patreon are great examples of such platforms where you can receive support from your fans. But, they are integrated with payment systems like Paypal and Stripe. If you’re from supported countries, it should be a breeze.

If you’re from a country like mine, forget about it. But is that the end of the world? Nope. There’s another way to get support.

People who love your work can support you either by buying you a coffee or signing up for your monthly memberships. Of course, it’s a two-way street — you’ll get support only if you’re providing value. Just keep creating valuable content. You’ll get your tribe.

As an online creator, if you aren’t already selling your digital products (books, art, comics, etc), you’ll do it eventually. There are tons of avenues to sell your digital products online. Some of them include Gumroad and Payhip. I probably sound like a broken record by now, but I still have to say it. If you’re not on their list of accepted countries, forget about them.

So, if you can’t sell your digital products on those platforms, what do you do instead?

Not only can you use it to get support from people who love what you do, but you can also use it to sell digital products (or extras as it’s called on the platform) such as books, videos, audio, and art.

If you want, you can also export your subscribers to other email marketing platforms. It’s all up to you.

Since I found this, my stress levels have pretty much gotten near zero.

If you plan on making money online, affiliate marketing should definitely be on your list.

Don’t be fooled by this fancy name. It’s pretty simple. It’s about selling other people’s products and earning a commission when people buy the product. In that case, you the seller become an affiliate.

Many people will tell you that affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways of making money online. They’re not wrong. But they’re also very wrong.

To get started as a beginner, it’s better to sign up with an affiliate marketing platform. There are so many to choose from. Easy, right?

Wrong.

When I started, I almost gave up because some of these platforms were not available in my location. Even if they were, it was still impossible to withdraw your income because their payment system wasn’t available in my location.

Yes, it was the same old problem. As usual, my country was holding its massive middle finger in my face. Are you getting tired of reading this yet? Trust me, I’m even tired of writing it.

If you’re on the verge of giving up because it seems nothing works for you in your country, don’t give up. It gets better. I know, I know, it’s easier said than done. But it’s possible.

If you don’t have the means to move to a more ‘suitable location’, then the alternatives I’ve mentioned above should help you get started.

Do you want to make money? Create value. People will happily pay you if you give them value. Be patient with yourself. You’ll get there eventually.

Thanks for reading.

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