Have you ever asked yourself, what are the ways to make money in Nigeria as a student?
As a student, it can be sometimes frustrating when you have specific needs that you cannot attend to because your allowance is insufficient. This presents a dilemma; “do I spend all my time studying and risk going hungry or is there something I can do to make some money while in school?
This dilemma is faced by many Nigerian students.
This article presents you with practical ways and things to do to make money as a student while studying for your degree. Take a look at this list and choose the one that works best for you.
Before you proceed, I have an article where I share 7 Businesses You Can Start With Your Smartphone in Nigeria Click Here to Read It.
Photography
Many students like taking pictures, especially the females. Tertiary institutions provide a lot of memorable events that student will want to capture, events like matriculation, convocation, award nights, inaugural lecture, swearing-in ceremonies and so on.
There is also a high demand for passport photograph by students for different registrations.
With this in mind, starting a photography business is a sure way of making money as a student in Nigeria. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to miss lectures as you can choose when you want to work bases on your schedule.
Online Registrations
As the school system moves towards digitalization of processes, students are always faced with the need to do one registration or the other, ranging from school fee payment to scholarships application, course registration, JAMB admission letter, among others.
This trend presents a perfect avenue to make money as a student. With a laptop, an internet connection and a Deskjet printer, you are ready to start making money as a student.
Organizing Private Tutorial
Organizing Private Tutorials is another way of making money as a student that will never go out of fashion.
Students differ in their level of assimilation and as such, many people would be delighted to get some help to enable them to better grasp the content of their courses.
I recommend you start out with students in your faculty as this won’t require so much extra efforts to distract from your main course.
To get started, simply offer to take any students that have difficulty in courses that you are good at. You can either charge them per hour or charge them per class.
Home Tutoring
You can decide to organise tutorial classes for secondary school students. Secondary school students mostly need help with subjects like mathematics, English language, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics.
You will need a space for the tutorial class, which you can get in the school environment.
Better still, you can take on private tutoring, a personal tutorial for secondary school students. For this you don’t need space, you have to go to their house for every lesson or the student comes to your house depending on your agreement with the parent.
Photocopy
Photocopying Business is one business that is confirmed to make you big money on campus.
Students will always photocopy documents and lectures notes. Lecturers also will do photocopy.
In the course of the semester and session registration, students will have to photocopy their documents for registration. During the lecture period, there is always photocopies of material, textbooks, past questions and other students note for the students that cannot copy their notes in class.
Lecturers also are not left out. They need to photocopy documents for their documentation and material for the students.
You can see there is a big demand for photocopying within the school environment. To start all you need is a photocopier, a steady source of electricity and a good space/location to station your machine.
Due to the lecture schedule, you can partner to do this business with a friend that has a different lecture schedule so that there will always be someone at the photocopy stand, and to prevent customer disappointment.
Do Professional Software Training
In this 21st century, everything is going digital. Statisticians no longer do scientific analysis on paper, they now use statistical tools like SPSS or MatLab. Architect rarely used paper and pencil to design. They now use applications like AutoCAD or Revit.
For each discipline, there is software that is meant to make life easier for the professionals, if you learn and master any of this software. You can make money from it by teaching other students on how to use the software for a fee.
Laundry Services
Looking good is good business.
Most students want to look neat and clean, but do not have the time to be wash and iron their clothes and professional dry cleaner charges are usually not within their reach.
You don’t need much to start, all you need is washing basins, detergents and space to dry the clothes, as the business thrive you can buy a washing machine to reduce the hard labour.
You can also get lecturers to give you their clothes for dry cleaning.
All this you can do your free period or lecture-free days. As the business grows you can then hire staff to oversee the physical runnings.
House Agent
With every passing session students will always have a need for accommodation.
Students are always looking for accommodation, the newbies need a place to stay, the returning students either want to move from the hostel or to a better place.
These present to you the perfect opportunities to make money.
All you need to do is to connect students with landlord/caretakers, and for each student that you recommend, you get a commission when they rent the house.
The best part of this job is that you only work in the beginning and end of each academic session because this is the time when students look for accommodation the most.
Recharge Card Business
Starting a recharge card business in the hostel is a great way to make money as a student in Nigeria. Your coursemates and roommates will patronise you.
Averagely, each student loads airtime thrice every week. They need a recharge card for their phone either to buy data or airtime.
Bulk SMS Services
Sending of bulk SMS can generate you a nice income as a student on campus.
There are a lot of religious bodies that need to send a message to their members. Associations need to send messages to remind its member of their meetings and other information.
With your laptop and internet connection, you buy unit online and sell it to your clients.
Bulk SMS is way cheaper than sending direct text message, and you can personalise the name of the sender.
Barbing Saloon/ Beauty Salon
Starting a salon business is a great way to make money in Nigeria as a student.
If you are a guy, you can make money by barbing for other male students on the campus especially those in the hostel.
Even if you live off-campus, you can either set-up in the front of your room or set-up shop in the hostel where you have a friend.
All you need to start is the skill and a clipper.
If you are a girl and you are good at plaiting, braiding and fixing hair. You do the same for the females in your hostel or your neighbourhood for a fee.
T-Shirt Branding
Every semester, there is always an event that guarantees that the need to brand t-shirts.
There is a demand for branded shirts by graduating students and newbie that want a departmental shirt.
Student politicians will need a branded shirt to use during their campaign.
If you don’t know how to brand shirts you can collect the projects and give it to a good printer to do the work for you.
Assist students to do Assignment and write Projects.
Some students don’t have the time to do assignment neither write their project not because they are lazy or don’t know how to do it but only because they don’t have the time because they have other things they are doing like running a business or working in a job. While some are just lazy. So they look for someone who can do a great job of writing their assignment/project.
I know a student that charge as high as N50,000 to write one original project, and every session he does have up to six clients that’s N300,000. N300,000 per session is not bad for a student considering you only work for six clients.
Production of Soaps and Disinfectants
Production of liquid soap, perfume, pink lip balm, air freshener, and other household soaps and disinfectants is a sure way of making money in Nigeria as a student.
Baking/Pastries Making
Students like eating snakes. You can make Buns, shortcake, puff puff, egg roll, sausage, popcorn and so on and sells.
You sell them to your neighbour or give to usual food vendors around the hostel to sell for you.
You can mix it by producing sobo, kunu, and other local drinks.
In this article, I have shared with you a few of the ways you can make money in Nigeria as a student. So take a second look at them and decide on the one you will engage in and let me know.
However, it is not advisable for a year one student to engage in any business, use that period to build your GP instead.