There are hundreds of lucrative business ideas for Nigerian students to explore. As a student, you can provide people with valuable services and products they need in exchange for money. Although doing business in Nigeria can be very interesting, itโs not that simple. When dealing with as many unknowns as there are in Nigeria, it can take time to figure out what kind of business will make you the most money or last for decades for future generations to enjoy. Thatโs why Iโve put together this list of lucrative business ideas. Before you start any of these business, you can use our simple business plan template to draft a simple business plan. This helps you know how much you will spend and how much you will make.
33 Unique Business Ideas for Nigerian Students
1. Fitness Trainer
It is easy to schedule fitness training around your academic work. If you charge a nominal fee of โฆ3000 monthly, you can easily make โฆ60,000 monthly from 30 clients. If you want to earn more, then you have to either increase the price or look for more people who would require your services.
2. Digital Marketing Consultant
You can work with small businesses within your school to grow their business by offering to bring more customers for their business. With skills in social media advertising or search engine optimization you can charge these businesses on a monthly basis or based on milestones. Depending on location, you can easily charge a business between ย โฆ10,000 โ ย โฆ15,000 monthly. With 10 businesses only you would earn between ย โฆ100,000 to ย โฆ150,000 monthly with little or no capital invested.
3. Youtuber
As a student, you can start a YouTube channel within any niche of your choice. Starting a YouTube channel is not only profitable, its also an opportunity to build a community that believes in your message. You would be able to monetize the channel, using it as a source of traffic to support a business or by partnering with businesses to advertise student specific products.
4. Web Designer
Students with website design skills can easily build a web design agency helping local businesses or foreign businesses build websites. If youโre interested in this, make a list of businesses in your school and approach them with an offer for your service. You can also sign up on freelance platforms like Upwork and Fiverr to bid for jobs. Most web designers collect anywhere from ย โฆ30,000 to millions of naira for a web design job, depending on the client. Others also charge monthly maintenance fees to manage the websites for their clients.
5. Books Seller
If you are a book lover, you can sell books either online or offline. Having interesting reviews on the books can help you attract customers and build a community of book lovers that would form your primary sales channel.
6. Home Tutor:
Most families have secondary school students who need extra coaching on school subjects. If youโre academically sound, you should consider providing tutoring services. Based on your revenue goal, the subjects involved and the neighborhood, you can charge as high asย โฆ20,000 per family per month. By increasing the number of families you provide home tutoring services for, you can earn more money.
7. Agribusiness
Agriculture-inclined students can start agriculture related businesses like poultry, fish farming, snail rearing or arable crop farming. A well managed agribusiness can sustain and create a valuable source of income even after you graduate.
8. Palm Oil Business
You can source for quality and unadulterated palm oil from rural farming communities at a cheap price and either sell wholesale in urban cities or package it in smaller kegs and sell on Instagram or through retail outlets within your school. You can also take advantage of periods where palm oil is scarce.
9. Cooking Gas Business
Starting a cooking gas retail business in a densely populated location can unlock high profits. People want convenience, and if you can offer them a delivery system to pickup their empty cylinders and deliver their cooking gas filled, you can charge a nominal fee to cover your costs.
10. Blogging
A blog can be use to generate traffic to other businesses or your own businesses. You can charge an advert fee depending on duration and the conversion rates of people patronizing those business. You can also make money from your blog through Google AdSense or affiliate marketing. However, the backbone of blogging is providing quality content that people are interested in reading about.
11. Forex or Cryptocurrency Trading
With a bit of training, you can start trading cryptocurrency in the Foreign exchange market or cryptocurrency through platforms like Binance or Coinbase. Investopedia offers a very comprehensive beginners guide to that market. The goal is to earn a percentage higher than the amount you invested. Please note that trading is volatile and you should always do your own research before trading.
12. Invest in Real Estate
If you school in a rural community, look for opportunities to purchase land or already built housing structures. Real estate investments are a very lucrative option, especially if you have the patience to wait several years.
13. POS Business
A POS business is one of the ways to earn daily revenue. Starting a POS business as a student would give you access to a large customer base, especially because fellow students will find it convenient to do business with you. This guide can give you all the information you need to start a POS business.
14. Start a Logistics Company
A student operated logistics company can help small businesses deliver goods to students within different hostels for a minimal fee.
15. Personal Shopper
Helping students to shop for their groceries can be a very profitable business. If you charge a percentage of the order price or a flat fee, you can generate revenue. The more students you serve, the more your profit margins. You can also make it a monthly service where you purchase everything your customers need from a list at once. Assuming you charge a flat fee of โฆ5000 and do personal shopping for 10 students, you will earn โฆ50,000 monthly. To earn more, increase the number of clients and you have a very profitable business with little operational cost.
16. Stationery Business
Every semester, students need stationary such as books, pens, markers, e.t.c Starting a stationary business would be a profitable seasonal business. Come up with several trending notebook designs or give students opportunity to pre-order a unique and customizable notebook. The goal is to develop a lot of interest and business in advance.
17. Recycling Business
Waste management is a very profitable business. Develop a system to collect plastic waste from private estates within your location and be a channel for feeding recycling plants. To go into this profession, you would need to buy recycling machines to set up a plant and this can be capital intensive. However, the experience from being a collection center would help you when you need to setup a plant.
18. Professional Laundry Business
Most academic communities are also embedded within working class areas. The laundry business requires minimal capital to start and you can earn at least โฆ80,000 monthly. You should consider implementing a monthly subscription for most of your clients so that it guarantees you a consistent monthly revenue. If you need help starting a laundry business, you can read our guide here.
19. Drop shipping
Drop shipping is a method of selling products for others rather than directly from the store. Youโre essentially acting as an intermediary between the manufacturer and customer, ensuring that the product is delivered without any obstacles or delays.
The benefits of drop shipping are many: you get to choose which products to sell and when. In addition to this flexibility comes another bonus: no need for expensive inventory management systems like POS systems or barcode scanners because everything will be done automatically through Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon).
Once youโve decided which products would make sense for your business model, then all thatโs left is finding one that fits within budget constraints while still meeting expectations from customers. This can sometimes mean having them wait longer than expected, since items arenโt always available immediately upon request due to demand fluctuations and factors such as seasonality trends.
20. Exportation Business
Nigerians living abroad often need certain Nigerian items, including food ingredients. Setting up an export business to ship these food items abroad would help you earn in foreign currency. This makes for a profitable business given the current conversion rate.
21. Boutique Business
Students like to look fashionable every semester. if you have a keen sense of fashion starting a boutique creates a profitable stream of income for you. You can offer complimentary mix and match services for people who are not too fashionable as a way to increase your clientele.
22. Sales of Mobile Phones and Accessories
Selling of mobile phones and accessories while adding a repair center to the mix will ensure that you maximize the value chain.
23. Cook-on-Demand
A lot of students do not know how to cook good meals. Starting a cook-on-demand service would help you service such students and earn a decent monthly revenue. This service is quite different from a restaurant because in this case, you are cooking a large portion of food that can last a considerable amount of time.
If you know how to bake, then this would also be a very good business for you. Consider baking birthday cakes, departmental celebration cakes and pastries that your colleagues can use for snacks breaks. One way to minimize the stress is to operate on pre-order model.
24. Social Media Influencer
A social media influencer is someone who has a large number of followers on the internet but needs more financial resources to produce content independently. This person may work with a more prominent brand or company to promote their products and services.
Social media influencers can make money through various channels such as brand partnerships, affiliate programs like Amazon affiliate links (which pay out when someone clicks through while shopping), sponsorships, or advertising campaigns where they share free products/services in exchange for exposure on their channels/pages. They can also monetize by selling merchandise such as clothing items or accessories directly through their own websites/stores rather than selling them via an eCommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce, which charges higher commission fees than its competitors do โ this makes up part of why some bloggers can earn more money per sale than others.
25. Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistance is an excellent business opportunity for students because it allows them to work from home and still make money. Clients worldwide hire virtual assistants to help them with online tasks.
Virtual assistants have many benefits over other types of online freelancing: they donโt have to commute or deal with on-campus work hours; there are no office politics; youโll never get fired (unless youโre a terrible person), and you donโt even need a degree! The only thing that comes close is being able to read minds.
The skills required for this type of work include excellent grammar and spelling skills, communication skills (both written and verbal), computer proficiency (Microsoft Word/Excel), basic accounting knowledge (accounting software such as QuickBooks), Internet research ability through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter โ but these days any student who knows how Google works will do just fine.
26. Vlogging
Vlogging is the art and practice of creating videos daily. You can use it to make money by selling your videos online or sharing them with family and friends.
Itโs easy to start a vlogging channel, but it requires some initial investment in equipment, software, and other things you may need for your track (e.g., a camera). You can also monetize your content by selling sponsored ads on your site or partnering with brands interested in promoting their products through your video(s).
The best part about starting a vlogging business is that there are many ways to create content! For example:
- You could create tutorials on how to do something like cooking delicious dishes at home using ingredients from local markets.
- Or videos explaining how specific technologies work, such as drones โ all applications exist now.
27. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a form of advertising where you promote someone elseโs product or service in exchange for a commission.
If youโre interested in learning how to become an affiliate marketer, itโs essential to understand that this business model can be challenging. However, you can earn money without having much capital invested in your business (youโll need some money for upfront costs such as domain name registration and hosting). Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular online business ideas for students in Nigeria. It involves promoting other companies products and earning a commission on sales made through your referrals.
To become an affiliate marketer, you will need the following:
- A website with content that can promote other companiesโ products
- The skills to write or create content for this site (e.g., blogging)
- A blog where readers can learn more about the products youโre promoting.
28. Photography
Photography is a great way to make money online, especially if you have the right equipment and know how to market your photography business.
To start with photography as a side hustle or full-time business, youโll need essential equipment: a camera that can take high-quality photos (and maybe even video), some lighting for shooting indoors or outdoors, and an editing software program like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. You can also use free programs like Snapseed if you want something simpler than Adobe Lightroom but powerful enough for photo editing.
Once youโve got all of this set up, itโs time to start selling! There are tons of ways people buy photos onlineโyou might sell prints on Etsy; sell images through Amazon; post them on Facebook ads, or set up an Instagram account where people will see your work and follow along as they scroll through their feeds without realizing theyโre getting ads every time they click โlike.โ As long as thereโs demand for certain kinds of content (like wedding photographs), there will always be someone willing to pay good money for those types of images taken well by skilled photographers who know what theyโre doing in terms of lighting techniques.
29. Printing and Branding
Printing and branding (Flyers, Cards, Stickers, Uniforms, etc.) is a great business to start as a student. You can start by printing flyers or cards as your first product and print uniforms and other branded items for your business. If you have an idea for something special like a t-shirt or hoodie thatโs not available in the market yet, but you would like it to be one day, this is the perfect opportunity for you! The best part about this plan is that if it doesnโt work out within six months, then thereโs no harm done since all we need from our ventures is just enough income, at least enough money so we donโt have to worry about paying bills anymore because next month may be worse than this month but still letโs keep trying until we find success.
30. Petty Trading
This is a good business for students because it has a high-ish-profit margin. You donโt need much capital to start with this type of business, and there are many things you can sell as well. For example, if you have a lot of old clothes lying around at home, you could sell them online by posting them on Facebook ads or using other social media platforms like Instagram. If your parents donโt mind, they may even help out financially because they know how hard it can be to get money from everywhere else while studying.
31. Event Planner
Event planning is a great way to make money, especially if youโre looking for an outlet to help you grow your business. While there are many different types of events and venues, from weddings and anniversaries to conferences and concerts, most event planners specialize in one area: catering or food service.
Event planners use their creativity and knowledge of food trends to create delicious and affordable menus while still appealing to the tastes of their clientsโ guests. You could start by asking friends if they know anyone interested in hiring an event planner; if not, consider posting flyers around town advertising your services (and offering a discount code). If people contact you about booking an event but donโt follow through with payment at allโor worse yet, cancel after paying upfrontโthis might mean that it wasnโt such a good idea after all! But donโt let these minor setbacks discourage anyone from trying again sometime down the road.
32. Cleaning services
Cleaning services is a great business idea for students. You can find clients through word of mouth or by advertising in your local newspaper, and you can set up appointments with them by phone or email. You will have to charge per hour for this service, so make sure that you choose a location where plenty of people around need help cleaning their homes.
33. Data Entry
Data entry is a typical job, and it is done anywhere.
The best part about this kind of work is that you need not be an expert in any field; itโs just typing data into a spreadsheet or database, which can earn you between $10-20 per hour. You donโt have to go through rigorous training or even know how to use software like Microsoft Word, Excel, or Open Office (which has been my preferred choice). All you need is basic typing skills.
Summary
The conclusion from all the points listed above is that you need to start a business. No matter how young and inexperienced you are, there are viable ways to capitalize on your current knowledge and skills. The key to your success is to open yourself up to opportunities, seize on them, and build whatever you learn into a successful business. If you do this well, the sky will be the limit.
