Every day gives us a new reason to go into one form of business or another. The unemployment rate is at an all-time high, qualified candidates for these jobs are even higher. Would you join this teeming population of unemployed individuals or would you rather go into business and be your boss? Don't forget that even those who are employed are either underemployed or suffer from burnout week in, week out. You would agree with me that it makes more sense to go into business and work at your pace and on your terms and possibly move on to being an employer of labor. With the over 200 million people living in Nigeria, you certainly can provide a product or service that a reasonable fraction of people need and is willing to pay for
Many of the names in business today started from scratch and never saw themselves becoming world-class. With hard work, smart work, determination, and proper planning, plus wise use of opportunities you can do as much or even better than some of these people.
Nigerian society is structured in such a way that those in the "upper class" would always need the service of those in the other levels of the social ladder. This is where you come in. This article focuses on small businesses that thrive in Nigeria.
Small Businesses in Nigeria today
You might wonder what exactly constitutes a small business? Well, a small business requires little start-up capital and can be run by a single individual or just a couple of persons. A small business refers to the woman selling provision in your streets who sometimes leaves her kids in charge of the online vendor that sells items and does his or her delivery. Business is said to be small when the owner has to manage or make do with available resources, especially humans. Another feature of a small business is the constant need to reinvest most parts of the profit back into the business to prevent it from running to the ground.
This article focuses on businesses that can be started with as little as 0-50,000 naira.
Small Businesses in Nigeria
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Daycare/After school care service:
Unlike school fees, daycare fees are paid every month. Some daycare proprietors charge as little as 5,000 per child and as high as 25,000 per child depending on how good your service is and your location. Imagine having 5 kids, paying 15,000 every month for an average daycare.
To run this smoothly with little start-up cost, you may need to rearrange your sitting room to create enough space for kids to move and play freely. You can choose to do this every morning before the kids arrive and go back to your former settings at the end of each day if it's not too much of a chore. This way the problem of location or space is settled especially if where you live is densely populated.
With that out of the way, there is a need to purchase a few basics such as; children's chairs, potty, tissue paper, toys, some kind of fancy wall decoration, a baby cot or two, etc. It is also important to have a banner that advertises what you do. Smart SMS solutions are a really smart way to help you advertise your business and are just a click away from helping you transport your business straight to people via our bulk SMS service.
2. Thrift sales
This is popularly known as Okrika clothes, aka, bend down select. To begin this business, take out time and go to one of the big markets in your vicinity, there you can buy a variety of clothes at a very cheap price, as low as 200 nairas and sell for 500. You can choose to sell these clothes the conventional way by just getting a little space in the markets and selling your wears or you can choose to do better by bringing these clothes back home, washing them, and ironing them nicely then posting them on your social media handles for sale. If you choose to wash the clothes and present them nicely, you do yourself a huge favor because that alone has raised the price of what you're selling which means increased profit.
3. Production and sales of organic cosmetics.
The use of organic products for skin care or cosmetics is as old as the stone age inventions. Before modernization people used whatever they could lay their hands on to take care of their bodies and make themselves look good. Over time they got to find out what was productive for the human body and what was harmful and unnecessary. The last few years have seen many people go back to the old ways of skincare and cosmetics routines. Fortunately, most of the items or ingredients required are homegrown and come cheap, and are almost always in season.
All you need to do is, do some research, get nice-looking containers for packaging and be on your way to being your boss.
4. Street food vending
Nigerians from all walks of life and social strata enjoy street food. Some of this street food or snacks are common across the country while others are peculiar to a particular region. Street food like Akara, Okpa, Massa, Abacha, Ewa, Boli, etc is loved by Nigerians. The good thing is they don't even cost a lot to start up, with as little as 20,000 you are good to go and are very profitable if done properly. Fortunately, you can make this in your kitchen, package it nicely and do home/office delivery especially if you do not like the idea of a roadside stand.
5. Cleaning service
This can be done in several ways.
First, you can choose to let people in your vicinity know that you are available to help them clean their homes for a fee once or twice a week or at weekends depending on how often they want their homes cleaned.
Secondly, you can offer the service of a professional cleaner to schools or other businesses around you. Your job would be to go in at the close of school or work each day and clean the environment up against the following day.
You can also help people wash their clothes and charge them per piece of clothing. Partnering with a dry cleaner to do the ironing would also be a plus for you.
Rather than continue at that job you hate so much, the one where you are underpaid, bullied, harassed, and stressed, or sitting at home every day waiting for an urgent 2k from above, choose one of the small businesses mentioned above and start-up something rewarding and satisfying for yourself. Whatever you choose to do, marketing is important. So get started by registering an SMS account with smartsmssolutions. Get to know how you can use SMS for your small-scale business