I Made 155,000 Naira From Teaching Ethical Hacking Basics

During my university days, I passionately taught people the basics of ethical hacking.


At that time, I was really interested in cybersecurity and I enjoyed learning about how things worked. I wasn't an expert, and I wasn't going to pretend that I was one. My knowledge was still limited, but I knew enough to teach the basics and, most importantly, I knew how to explain what I understood to someone who was just starting.


So I decided to monetize it.


I started offering ethical hacking training to people who wanted to get into cybersecurity.
The way I marketed it was simple.

I sold them a dream of becoming an ethical hacker and eventually being able to work for companies.

Of course, I knew that teaching someone the basics wasn't going to magically turn them into an expert ethical hacker. There is a lot more to cybersecurity than what I was teaching. But I wanted to give beginners a starting point.

My limit was basically the fundamentals.

I taught them the basics and also tried to include some practical sessions during the training. I didn't want everything to be just theory because, in cybersecurity, you can read about something for hours and still not understand it until you actually try it yourself.

I was still learning myself at the time, so there were things I knew and things I was still figuring out.

But one thing I was very serious about was the mentorship aspect.

I wasn't selling them a course.
I was selling them mentorship.
There is a difference.

A course can be recorded videos, PDFs, slides or some other material that you buy and go through by yourself.

But mentorship is different.


They were paying for my time.

They could ask questions. They could reach out when they didn't understand something. I could explain things differently when the first explanation wasn't enough. During the training, I tried to guide them instead of just dumping materials on them and leaving them to figure everything out by themselves.

That was actually how I differentiated myself from some of the people I saw selling courses at the time.

A lot of people were selling courses, but after the person paid and received the materials, that was basically the end of the relationship.

I didn't want to do that.

I wanted the people who paid me to feel like they actually had someone they could learn from.

But getting students wasn't easy.

I had to market myself.

I posted on Nairaland. I answered questions on Quora. I also went into WhatsApp DMs, reaching out to people and telling them about what I was offering.

I was basically doing everything I could to find people who were interested.


Facebook was another story entirely.
Facebook didn't favour me at all.

At some point, my account was suspended because I used the word "hacking."

Imagine trying to market ethical hacking training and getting suspended because the platform sees the word "hacking."

I understood why platforms could be cautious about the word, but it was still frustrating because what I was teaching was ethical hacking basics.
Eventually, after all the marketing, only four people actually patronized me.

Just four.
But those four people were enough to teach me something important.

You don't always need hundreds of customers before you can make money from something you know.


Each of the students paid around ₦40,000, although some paid ₦35,000.

When I calculated everything, I made ₦155,000 from teaching ethical hacking basics.

₦155,000.

This was during my university days, and I made that money simply by teaching something I knew.
Looking back, the money wasn't even the biggest lesson for me.


It was realizing that knowledge can actually be valuable when you know how to package it and, more importantly, when you are willing to give people your time.

I wasn't selling some expensive certification.
I wasn't claiming to be the best hacker in the world.
I wasn't even teaching advanced cybersecurity.
I was teaching the basics.

What people were really paying for was my time, guidance and the opportunity to learn from someone who could help them understand things they were struggling with.
And honestly, that experience changed the way I looked at making money from skills.

Sometimes, you don't need to know everything.

You just need to know something well enough to help someone who is a few steps behind you.

That was how I made my first ₦155,000 teaching ethical hacking basics while I was still a university student.