There are hundreds of lucrative business ideas a student can do in Nigeria. You can get rich if you come up with a lucrative business idea of services or products that many people need and are willing to give you money in return for the value. Doing business in Nigeria can be very interesting. But it’s 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. That’s why I’ve put together this list of my favorite 33 lucrative business ideas I wish someone had told me years ago. Before starting any of these business you can draft a simple business plan to know how much you will spend and how much you will make using our simple business plan template.
What We Covered In This Article
7 Unique Business Ideas for Students
#1. Fitness Trainer
It is easy to schedule fitness training around your academic work. If you charge a nominal fee of N3000 monthly, you can easily make N60,000 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 N10,000 – N15,000 monthly. With 10 businesses only you would earn between N100,000 to N150,000 monthly with little or no capital invested.
#3. Youtuber:
As a students you can start a YouTube channel to teach students on difficult course work or to share you journey as a student. You would be able to monetize the channel either by using it as a source of traffic to support a business or by partnering with businesses to advertise student specific products.
#4. Web Designer:
Computer science students or any other student with website design skills can easily build a web design agency helping local businesses or foreign businesses build websites. Make a list of businesses in your school and approach them with an offer for your service. There are freelance platforms like Upwork and Fiverr that you can also sign up and bid for jobs. Most web designers collect anywhere for N30,000 to millions of naira for a web design job depending on the client. Others also charge monthly maintenance fee to manage the websites for their clients.
#5. Online Business via social media:
With an Instagram account you can start any kind of online business based on your skills and knowledge. Anything from trading, to providing professional services like cleaning services.
#6. Books Seller:
If you are a book lover, starting a bookstore to sell books either online or offline might be a better fit. Have interesting reviews on the books can help you attract customers and build a community of book lovers that would form your primary sales channel.
#7. Home Tutor:
Most of the families with students in secondary schools do need extra coaching for their wards. You should consider using your extra house to provide tutoring services. Based on your revenue goal, the subjects involved and the neighborhood you can charge as high as N20,000 per family per month. Increasing the number of families you provide home tutoring services for the more money you earn.
30 Lucrative Business Ideas for Students at Nigeria University
#1. Agribusiness
Students in agricultural departments should start agric-related businesses like poultry, fish farming, snail rearing or arable crop farming. It is easier for them to translate the knowledge in class into effectively managing the business. A well managed agribusiness can sustain and create a valuable source of income even after you graduate.
#2. Oil and Gas Business
Although capital intensive the profit margins are quite high. Delivering products to businesses that run on diesel and petrol on a daily basics with increasing demand would fetch you a substantial income. It is a tough business to crack but with the right strategies and connections it is a very lucrative business.
#3. Palm Oil Business
You can source for quality and unadulterated palm oil from the rural farming communities at a cheap price and either sale 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 the periods where palm oil is scarce.
#4. Cooking Gas Business
Starting a cooking gas retail business in a densely populated location is the key to unlocking high profits in this business. 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 cost.
#5. 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. Another easy means is to make money from Google AdSense or affiliates marketing. However, the backbone of blogging is providing quality content that people are interested in reading about.
#6. Forex or Cryptocurrency Trading
With a bit of training you can start trading the forex market or cryptocurrency through exchange like Binance or Coinbase. The goal is to earn a percentage higher than the amount you invested. Please not that trading is volatile and you should always do your own research before trading.
#7. Start a YouTube Channel
Starting a YouTube channel is not only profitable, its also an opportunity to build a community that believe in your message. This is also very useful when you have multiple business ideas in the same niche because it would help you to use the YouTube platform as a means of bringing customers to your businesses or the businesses of brands that decides to partner with you.
#8. Invest in Real Estate
If you school in a rural community, looking for opportunities to purchase a land for the purpose of land banking is a very lucrative option especially if you have the patience to wait several years.
#9. 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 based especially because fellow students will find it convenient to do business with you based on convenience. This guide can give you all the information you need to start a POS business.
#10. Start a Logistics Company
A student operated logistics company can serve small businesses to deliver goods to students within different hostels for a minimal fee. There are a lot of students that would pay a logistics company to help them pick up their goods.
#11. Personal Shopper
Helping students to shop for their groceries can be a very profitable business. Charge a percentage of the order price or a flat fee is a good way to generate revenue. The more students you serve the more your profit margins and it could be a monthly service where you go and purchase everything they need from a list at once. Assuming you charge a flat fee of N50000 and do personal shopping for 10 students you will earn N50,000 monthly. To earn more increase the number of clients and you have a very profitable business with little operational cost.
#12. Stationery Business
Every semester students will always buy stationaries like books, pens e.t.c Starting a stationaries 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.
#13. 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 professional 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.
#14. Professional Laundry Business
Most academic communities are also embedded within the working class areas. The laundry business requires minimal capital to start and you can earn at least N80,000 monthly. You should consider implementing a monthly subscription for most of your clients so that it guarantees you a consistent monthly revenue.
#15. Drop shipping
There are a lot of businesses selling student related products that you can partner with to drop ship their products and you earn a commission on any sales that you make. Most of these businesses can be found on Instagram.
#16. Exportation Business
Nigerians living abroad often need certain Nigeria food ingredients and food. 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.
#17. Rental Service
#18. Distributorship Business
#19. 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.
#20. Start a Block Industry
This is a bit capital intensive but is suitable for students whose school is in a fast developing environment.
#21. Electronic Business
#22. Foodstuff Business
Similar to the personal shopper dealing in foodstuff requires you to shop for food items for other students usually at the beginning of the semester and charge a commission or a flat service fee.
#23. Car Wash Business
Access to a good location with a lot of vehicular traffic is a critical factor to starting a car wash business. Outside rent for the space and a few washing equipment’s, this is entirely a low cost business to start and low operational cost.
#24. 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.
#25. Football Viewing Center
This is a hot business to start because most male students would want to watch the different leagues and providing that value for them makes a profitable business.
#26. 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.
#27. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is earning a commission from selling other peoples goods or services. They are standard platforms like Amazon affiliates or CJ Affiliates where you can sign up and promote products or services.
#28. Open a Gym
This is a natural progression from the personal fitness trainer model. With enough clients you can purchase a few gym equipment’s to start your own gym. Learning to build complementary services like meal plan for weight loss or weight gain would help increase the revenue. You can also have a retail outlet for gym wears.
#29. Open a Bakery
If you know how to bake, then this would 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.
#30. Cement Retailing Business
If your school is in a developing environment then this would be a very profitable business. although its in the class of businesses that require a bit of capital investment but in a nice location you will get this money back.
Online Business Ideas for Students in Nigeria
Having an online business is one of the easiest way to manage a business as a student. You can manage an online business from virtually anywhere and that’s one of the reasons its perfect for students. If you’re a student looking for business ideas, look no further than this article. I’ve compiled a list of some of the best ways to start your own business from an idea I had while studying at university.
#1. Blogging
Blogging is a great way to build your brand. It’s also one of the most popular businesses because it offers a lot of freedom and flexibility, allowing you to create unique and engaging content more than other forms of marketing. If you have a blog, you can make money by selling products or services related to your niche through links on your site. You can also promote other people’s products through reviews and recommendations to get them noticed by customers looking for these products in their search engines (like Google). With a bit of technical knowledge
#2. 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 benefits, including partnerships with brands, 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 – this makes up part of why some bloggers can earn more money per sale than others.
#3. Drop shipping
Drop shipping is a method of selling products for others rather than directly from the store. You’re 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, so if there are more popular sellers on Amazon than you are (or even if they have better reviews), then it might be worth moving on to something else before trying again later with another niche idea! 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 you’ve decided which products would make sense for your business model, then all that’s left is finding one that fits within budget constraints while still meeting expectations from customers–and this can sometimes mean having them wait longer than expected since items aren’t always available immediately upon request due to demand fluctuations due factors such as seasonality trends etcetera… But once those hurdles have been overcome over time,n things get good.
#4. Virtual Assistance
Virtual assistance is an excellent business opportunity for students because it allows them to work from home and still make money. Clients worldwide can hire virtual assistants who need help with online tasks.
Virtual assistants have many benefits over other types of online freelancing: they don’t have to commute or deal with on-campus work hours; there are no office politics; you’ll never get fired (unless you’re a terrible person), and you don’t 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 – but these days any student who knows how Google works will do just fine.
#5. 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.
It’s 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 – all applications exist now.
#6. Affiliate marketing
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 companies’ products
- The skills to write or create content for this site (e.g., blogging)
- A blog where readers can learn more about the products you’re promoting.
#7. Website design & management
Website design is creating a website for your company, organization, or business. With a website, getting clients from all over the world is easy. It also helps you connect with other people online in an efficient manner that can’t be matched by any other medium, like social media platforms.
So what are the skills required to become a good website designer? Well, apart from knowing how computers work (which everyone should know), specific skills make up the art of designing websites:
- You need knowledge about HTML code; this means knowing how HTML works and being able to understand it well enough so that when there’s any problem with designing something on your site (such as having too many images), it will still show up correctly in Firefox or Chrome browsers without having any issues with loading times or anything else related to that.
#8. Photography Marketing
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, you’ll 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 you’ve got all of this set up, it’s time to start selling! There are tons of ways people buy photos online—you 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 they’re getting ads every time they click “like.” As long as there’s 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 they’re doing in terms of lighting techniques.
What Business Can I Start With 10k in Nigeria as a Student?
In Nigeria, it takes work to start your own business. It would help if you had a lot of money, time, and resources to create something new. However, there are some things that you can do with 10k in Nigeria as a student that will make things easier for you:
- Start Your Own Blog
Blogging is a great way to earn money online and can be your first step toward a profitable business. You don’t need special skills or knowledge to start blogging, but you need a passion for the topic you plan to write about. If possible, create a blog that interests you or excites your curiosity so that when people read your posts, they will want more information from you (and so will Google).
Creating an account on WordPress is free and easy enough for anyone who wants their website without spending lots of money on hiring someone who knows how websites work like me.
- Work as an Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is a form of advertising where you promote someone else’s product or service in exchange for a commission.
If you’re interested in learning how to become an affiliate marketer, it’s essential to understand that this business model can be challenging. There are many factors at play when starting, and getting started on your own can take time—but once you get into it, there are plenty of benefits:
You can earn money without having much capital invested in your business (you’ll need some money for upfront costs such as domain name registration and hosting).
You’ll be able to work remotely from anywhere in the world as long as there’s internet access available at all times (no office space required!).
What Business Can I Start With 20k in Nigeria as a Student?
I’m a student. I’m still determining what type of business to start as a student, but I am pretty sure you can create any of these businesses.
- Printing and Branding
Printing and branding (Flyers, Cards, Stickers, Uniforms, etc.) is a great business to start with 20k. 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 that’s 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 doesn’t work out within six months, then there’s no harm done since all we need from our ventures is just enough income, at least enough money so we don’t have to worry about paying bills anymore because next month may be worse than this month but still let’s keep trying until we find success.
- Shop/Petty Trading Business
Shop/Petty Trading Business (you can buy and sell something tangible like used or new clothes, shoes, bags, etc.)
This is a good business for students because it has a highish-profit margin. You don’t 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 don’t mind, they may even help out financially because they know how hard it can be to get money from everywhere else while studying.
Small Business Ideas for Female Students
If you’re a female student, you have some ideas for your small business. Whether it’s designing dresses or baking cupcakes, there are plenty of opportunities out there for female entrepreneurs. The following are ten business ideas females can get their hands on:
#1. Start event planning
Event planning is a great way to make money, especially if you’re 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 clients’ 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 don’t follow through with payment at all—or worse yet, cancel after paying upfront—this might mean that it wasn’t such a good idea after all! But don’t let these minor setbacks discourage anyone from trying again sometime down the road.
#2. Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is a person who works remotely for an employer. They help their employer with tasks like managing the company’s social media presence, creating content for their website and blog, or researching potential business opportunities.
Virtual assistants can earn money in several: they receive payment per project (for example, $50 per hour) and either get paid hourly or by the piece. They also get paid commission if they sell products/services using their experience as an asset.
The average salary for a virtual assistant is around $25 – $35 per hour, depending on your work and how much experience you have under your belt! With this info in mind’,s easy to see why more women than men choose this career path – there are many opportunities out there waiting just beyond the horizon.
#3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money from home, especially if you enjoy writing and selling content. Affiliates earn more than just commissions for each sale; their sites can also drive traffic to your site and help build your brand.
To get started with affiliate marketing:
- Find a niche topic (e.g., beauty advice) with plenty of products on Amazon or other e-commerce platforms like Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Storefronts.
- Find an affiliate offer for that niche on one of the sites above.
#5. Cleaning services
Cleaning services is a great business idea for female 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 $30 per hour for this service, so make sure that you choose a location where plenty of people around need help cleaning their homes.
#6. Open an Etsy store
Etsy is a marketplace where people sell handmade or vintage items. It has a large audience interested in handmade goods, increasing your chances of finding customers. You could sell things like clothing, crafts, and other items you would make yourself if you were an entrepreneur. Etsy has a wide variety of products available from all over the world! There are also many different categories of sellers, such as artists who sell their work on Etsy as well as companies who sell wholesale quantities of products online at discounted rates through partnerships with independent bloggers (like me!) who earn commissions by promoting them through social media channels like Facebook groups/pages, etc…
#7. Care assistants
There are a lot of daycare centers looking for part-time and fulltime staff. Working in a daycare could also help you learn the skills you would need if you decide to start your own daycare business. If you are a student in Lagos or you are looking for a care assistant job in Lagos; you care check out if the are openings at the The Baby Lounge
#8. Earn by entering data
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; it’s just typing data into a spreadsheet or database, which can earn you between $10-20 per hour. You don’t 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.