Let’s get straight to business. If you looking for ways to make money in nigeria. This is the only article you need. It will serve as a guide for you, to help you make money online and offline.
I’ve made this guide easy to follow. It’s divided into two parts. Section one covers – different exciting ways to make money online in nigeria, while section two will teach you cool ways to make money offline in nigeria. Let’s go!!
You can use the links above to skip to the different sections.
Before we start with section 1, I think it’s important to note that all these businesses mentioned here can be done by both men and women. You know the popular saying – what a man can do, ….. (complete it)
Cool Ways To Make Money Offline In Nigeria
1. POS business
This is a very lucrative and popular businesss to start in nigeria if you want to make money. To start a pos business all you need is the pos machine, a good location and your startup capital.
You can either rent a shop to run your pos business or you can just use a small table and umbrella. For your pos business to be successful, you need to be in a good location where people can see and patronize you daily.
According to our research, you can get a pos from a major vendor like palmpay, opay, moniepoint etc for a fee ranging from N25k to N100k
2. Football viewing center
A football viewing center is a building where football lovers go to watch their favorite matches weekly. You can start a viewing center if you are looking for a cool business idea. It’s a really nice way to earn money in nigeria.
One interesting fact about this business is that there’s always a football match every week, about 5 days a week, so you can be rest assured of getting customers regularly. Your main expensis would be the fuel for your generator and cable subscription. The rest is profit.
Additionally, you need to be in a good location where men that’s close to the road so that guys and men would quickly notice your center and patronize you.
3. Car wash
If you are looking for a quick way to make money in nigeria, you can work in a car wash. Alternatively, if you are capable, you can set up the car wash yourself.
You can rent a space to setup your car wash. To be successful with the car wash business, you need to be close to the road because most of your customers would be car owners.
It’s really easy to startup a car wash business. All you really need is access to soap and enough water. If you are just getting started, you can start small and later scale up the business by employing other people to wash for you.
4. Game shop
Just like the viewing center, the game shop is another lucrative business to start in nigeria. It’s really easy to make money with a game shop irrespective of your location. The reason being that, your customers would naturally invite other people to your game center.
Gamers have a competitive spirit which is benefitial to you. The more they play and compete, the more money you’ll make.
To start your game shop, you’d need to have a playstation, game pads, a monitor or television and a shop.
5. Start a Hairdressing salon
This is very popular among ladies but it’s definitely not limited to ladies alone. I’ve seen many guys running a hairdressing salon. So, I think it’s safe to say anyone can do this business.
You need to learn hairdressing to be able to start this business. You can learn hairdressing from any hairdressing salon in nigeria usually for a fixed amount.
Once, you’ve learnt it, you can easily start your own hairdressing salon. Once cool thing about hairdressing is that you can start without any capital. You can start by offering home services to your clients.
But if you want to start up your own standard salon, you need to rent a shop, buy all the materials needed and you’re good to go.
6. Sell used items
If you are looking for one of the fastest ways to make money in nigeria. All you need to do is look around your house and find something you no longer need. You can sell used items on jiji.ng
Additionally, you can buy a used item from jiji or neighbors and friends, repair or retouch it and sell it for a higher price.
For example, you can negotiate to buy a phone or laptop from someone in need and resell it back for a slightly higher price to earn a profit.
7. Real estate
Real estate is one of the best ways to make money in nigeria. When done right it can serve as a passive income stream. With real estate, you don’t have to trade your time for money all the time.
All you need to do is build or buy a real estate property. It can be a shop, an apartment or an office space and rent it out.
There, are different ways to make money in the real estate business. You can make money:
- Buying and reselling properties for capital gains
- Building or buying properties to rent and make passive income
- By standing as a middle man (aka the agent) and make money connecting property owners to buyers or renters
It’s important to note that there are a lot of things related to the real estate industry. If you want to be successful with real estate, you need to learn all you can about it. You can learn using books but I recommend that you learn from a successful real estate investor in nigeria.
8. Painting business
Everyday, new apartment houses, shops, schools and churches are being build. As a painter, you would get business everyday. To start the painting business, you need to learn from an existing business owner. You need to be trained if you want to do professional services.
It shouldn’t take you anywhere from 6 months to a year to learn the trade. After that, you are pretty much in business. All you really need as a painter is the paint, your brush, some tapes (for accuracy) and some other basic things.
With these, you can successfully collect and carry out painting jobs.
9. Training center
There are a lot of training centers in nigeria. Just look around you. From the typing school to the coding-for-kids training center to the baking center. Even our regular tailor and artist are now adding training to their business model.
Why? Because it pays. Think about it. Let’s say, you charge N15-N30k to train a student for 2-4 months. If you have just 10 students every month. That’s an extra N150K-N300k.
Isn’t that a cool business?
So, what type of training centers can you start? Here are a few:
- Coding for kid
- Computer training center
- Forex trading training center
- Writing or blogging training center
- Copywriting training center
- Etc
The ideas for training centers are limitless. Just look at any skill in nigeria. You can create a training center for it.
10. Soap making
Soap is basic necessity in every family. You and I need to use soap everyday. To bath, to wash clothes and plates.
Therefore, there’s a very big market for soap in Nigeria. If you want to start the soap making business, you need to learn how to mix and make the soap.
You can quickly learn this from an already existing business or online. The most important thing you note is that there are a lot of people doing this already. So, if you are just getting started, make sure you distinguish yourself with proper branding.
11. Baking
Have you ever eaten an egg-roll, doughnut or fishpie? It was tasty right?
If done right, baking can be a really nice way to make money in Nigeria. We eat a lot of baked snacks all the time. The owners of these businesses make a lot of money.
If you want to earn money in nigeria too. You can learn how to bake one (or all) of these snacks. Again, to learn, you can visit a popular shop that makes these snacks and tell them about your desire to learn.
After learning, it’s time to start baking. But before you take your pans and start baking, you need to be in a busy location.
A location that’s highly trafficked. This way, your snacks would not waste any time on the show glass. Immediately you make them, they would be picked up.
12. Organize paid tutorials for students and workers
If you have good knowledge on some subjects or topics, you can easily organize a paid tutorial. For instance, if you are good in maths, you can hold extra lessons for waec and neco students.
But what if you don’t have any skills to teach people? You might ask. Why not take some time and learn it. Afterall, you don’t have to be the best on the subject before you teach. You just need to be a few steps ahead of your students.
You can charge any amount suitable for the training. To attract students, you can write about your offer on an a4 paper and just paste it everywhere.
You’ll need to do this before waec begins. Luckily, waec is written every year and if you do a good job with your students, they’ll also help you spread the word and invite more students.
13. Sell clothes
This is another very interesting way to make money in nigeria. There are many people selling clothes and you can be one too.
Clothes are very important for our everyday life to cover our nakedness and to beautify our skin.
People love buying and wearing clothes, so if you venture into this business you’ll definitely sell.
There are different types of clothes you can sell ranging from okrika to already made clothes.
If you want to start this business, you’ll need to go to a very popular market like onitsha where it will be cheaper and you can sell it in other states at a higher rate and make a profit.
14. Catering services
If you are a lady reading this article and you love to cook, this one is for you. This is a very lucrative business that can add some extra money to your pocket.
It’s very easy to start because you don’t have to buy anything to do this business. Once hired to cook for a party, you’ll need to rent pots and other things that would be used for the cooking and of course, buy the foodstuff that’ll be needed to cook the food.
I know of different people that do this business and they are making a lot of money from it. The only difficult part of this business is finding work.
In this case, to get work as a caterer, you’ll need to learn how to associate with others and build your network of people.
If they have any event where a caterer is needed, you’ll definitely be called upon. But, you must do a good job and leave a great first impression if you ever want to be called again.
By delivering a great customer experience to your customers, they’ll most likely refer you to someone else and that’s how you’ll continue building up your customer base.
15. Recharge card business
The recharge card business is one of the oldest ways of making money in nigeria. Right from the time of phone booth many nigerians have been using the recharge card business to sustain themselves.
It’s one of the most stable businesses because people cannot do without purchasing recharge card daily. They have to different calls daily. So buy venturing into the recharge card business, you’ll definitely make a profit.
Additionally, this business is one you can start with little capital. All you need to do is to get in contact with a major supplier and purchase different networks based on your startup capital.
- Become a lifeguard
- Print on demand business (offline)
- Dry cleaning service
- Mobile phone repairs
- Become a bouncer
- Even planning
- Driving school
- Start bulk sms business
- Gym instructor
- Sell students wears
- Sell shoes
- Sell cans
- Tailoring
- Poultry farming
- Become an agent
- Dj
- Modelling
- Open a provisions store
- Become a private teacher
- Soap making
- Become a photographer
- Open a barbing salon
- Become a real estate agent
- Teach
- Photocopy and printing business
Interesting Ways To Make Money Online In Nigeria
1. Blogging
Blogging is one of the coolest ways to make money online in Nigeria. With blogging, you have different ways to make money.
- Display ads like google adsense, ezoic ads etc
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling your own products
- Sponsored posts
- Selling direct ad spaces and
- Many other ways
Your blog will help you connect with more people and increase your influence. If you want to start blogging, you need to create your own website. I recommend you create your own website on wordpress or contact me to create one for you. After that, learn how to get google adsense approval.
Also, sign up for some affiliate products to start promoting. If you want to succeed as as a blogger, make sure you write quality content that your readers would love. Just look at the article you are reading right now. Isn’t it awesome?
Yeah, write quality content that helps people. Over time, you’ll begin to get more and more traffic and make more money passively.
Passively? What does that mean.
I use the word “Passively” because unlike the offline businesses I mentioned earlier in this article. With a blog, you create content once and over time, it would continue to make money for you.
Again, look at this article, I’ve written it for a while now. But you are here reading it today. Check the date and time. I’m doing something else now. I’ve written the content once and it’s making money for me everyday. That’s why I said – passive income.
2. Saas
The second online business model I want to share with you today is the saas business model.
What is saas? Saas simple stands for software as a service.
What’s that? It’s simple a tool hosted on a website that offers a service. For instance, canva is a saas tool for graphic designing. It was created once and many people can use it simultaneously.
Another example is instantdomainsearch.com a website that shows you whether a domain name is available for purchase. It was created once and can be used by thousands of users simultaneously.
So how to does saas make money?
You can make money with saas by offering it as a paid service and charging a monthly fee for it. That’s exactly what getresponse is doing. Their saas tool was created for email marketers and they charge a monthly fee for more features. Though, they also have a free plan.
The cool thing about saas is that you can make passive income with it. Though, it takes a lot of marketing to set this up. Once it’s set up, it can easily be scaled.
If it’s a paid tool. If you get 100 clients paying $10 per month. That’s an extra $1,000 per month. And you are not limited to just 100 customer. You can increase that number to 200, 500 and even a thousand.
3. Freelancing
Okay, you’ve learn of blogging and saas. They require some startup capital. If you are looking for a smart way to start an online business for free or without spending a dime. Then, freelancing is the way to go.
If you want to become a freelancer in nigeria, there are many options for you. There are many skills to learn as a freelancer to make money.
There are also many different platforms to offer your freelancing gigs. Sites like fiverr, upwork, freelancer etc
4. Run ads
There’s a saying that if you want to sell your products faster, you need to get as many eyes on it as possible. It’s very correct.
No one is going to buy your products if haven’t seen it in the first place. That’s where ads come in. Organic reach on social media platforms are drastically reducing. You’ve got to learn how to run ads if you want to make massive sales.
Of course, you need to run the ads with money, but when you start getting the needed exposure you need, it will definitely pay for itself.
Another reason why you should be using ads is because it will help you increase your customer base. Once you’ve paid to get a customer, you won’t pay again for them to buy from you. Depending on your product or service, if they enjoyed the first experience with you, they will either buy another one of your product or enploy you again (this time, without needing to see any ads because they already know you)
5. Crypto trading
If you’ve been on social media lately, it’s hard not to see or hear something about crypto. Everyday, new coins are coming into the market. We are hearing of crypto millionaires left, right and center.
Definitely, crypto trading is a cool and exciting way to make money online. But, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or you just need to buy crypto and you’ll automatically become rich.
When it comes to crypto trading, you need to do extensive research before you jump into it. Yes, it hold great potential for profits but at the same time, you can lose a lot of money if you do it the wrong way.
The idea with crypto is to buy it when the prices are low and sell it when they are high. If you want to learn about crypto and buy or sell crypto, check out binance. They have a academy that will take you from newbie to expert in the crypto world. And the best part is that it’s free!! Is’nt that great?
6. Sell digital products
Recently, I bought a course on blogging. The creator of that course had made it for over 2 years. So when I bought the course, it was just like passive income for him. It might have taken 5-10 hours to make but he’s made 100x the money for that effort.
Digital products can produce passive income for you if you set it up the right way. A digital product can be an ebook, video course, email course or even a template (yes, I’ve seen people selling templates)
The idea is to create something that would teach people something and help them do something you’ve already done
7. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing simply means promoting someone else’s product for a commission. For instance, mr A has a product but needs more customers, you offer to help mr A promote his product for 10% of whatever he charges. If you help mr A to get a customer, he’ll pay you 10% of the fee.
That’s just an example. There are many affiliate products that will pay you up to 50 or even 100% commission. Some will pay recurring commissions.
Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business if you know how to promote products. There are different ways to promote affiliate products but the easiest way is to become a content creator and mention the affiliate products in your content.
8. Email marketing
Email marketing is when you market products to people using email. It’s also very lucrative because you can start without your own product.
You can promote affiliate products to your email subscribers. There are various ways to build an email list. You can use organic traffic ( facebook, twitter, instagram, linkedin, your blog, etc) or paid traffic (native ads, facebook ads, youtube ads, google ads, etc)
You’ll need to build an email list of people interested in a particular topic for you to be successful in this business.
You can build an email list of freelancers and promote freelancing products to them or you could build an email list of business owners and promote business tool and resources to them.
9. Data reselling business
Data reselling business is one of the easiest online business you can start if you are in nigeria. It doesn’t require any startup capital and you can start with just your android phone.
As a data reseller, you’ll buy data at a cheaper rate from websites like mobileniq and resell at your own rates.
Many people are not aware of the fact that you can purchase data at cheaper rates from these sites. So, that will be your advantage.
The normal prices that the network providers offer data are usually higher that you’ll be buying in these websites, so anyone that hears of your offer would easily be interested.
After signing up with mobileniq, you can use canva to edit your banner and start advertising your service.
10. Print on demand (online)
Print on demand is a business model that graphic designers would quickly fall in love with.
With POD you can create a design and attach it to anything you like and sell it. All you have to create is the design. Once it’s created, you can add it to a shirt, skirt or mug cup and sell it.
There are different companies you can work with and sell your designs. If people like your design on the material, they’ll buy and the company will deliver the product with your design on it and you’ll both split the money.
Now, imagine you have 50 or 100 designs that have been created and attached to different materials. You’d be making sales almost everyday.
It’s just like passive income because you are creating the product once.
- Amazon kdp
- Survey sites
- Forex trading
- Sell on ecomerce sites
- Do online registrations
- Virtual assistant
- Cpa marketing
- Learn graphic design
- Website flipping
- Voice over artist
- Sell facebook pages
- Become a copywriter
- Web development
- Software development
- Start podcasting
- Become a translator
- Become a social media influencer
- Teach people virtually
- Transcription
- Offer user testing for apps
- Become a social media influencer
- Learn seo and help businesses rank on google
- Review books online
- Become a copywriter
- Dropshipping
- Mini-importation
- Resell giftcards