Starting up a business in the rural part of the country might just be what you need to add an extra stream of income to your family. This article will give you ideas of the best businesses that you can start that have huge profit margins.
Most of the businesses listed here have been proven to perform in rural areas while some are fresh Ideas I came up with. You can start most of them with little amount and start making a profit in the first month.
There is no guaranteed profit expectations from the businesses listed in our list of business ideas for rural areas; how much you will make depends on how hardworking/consistent you are, your strategies and marketing efforts. For each business in the list, we will share some Ideas that you can use to increase your profit.
List of Businesses for Rural Areas in Nigeria
1. Delivery Business
This is a goldmine with three problems. If you can solve these three problems, more money for you.
There are lots of businesses in Lagos and big cities that run Facebook adverts to people all over Nigeria to sell their items.
Now, when these sellers get orders from States outside Lagos, it becomes a problem to deliver the goods.
However, there are delivery companies that can deliver these items to various states but these delivery companies will not take the goods to the customer’s house e.g. door to door delivery. The customer will have to go to the delivery company to get the item.
A lot of sellers do not like this because customers prefer their items to be delivered to their houses. E-commerce sellers know that if they do not promise door-to-door delivery to their customers, they may get low patronage.
This is the first opportunity – offer Door-to-door delivery in areas outside Lagos State. You can offer to help e-commerce sellers deliver their items to the doorstep of their customers in the state you reside for a fee.
Another part of this business is payment on delivery.
Because of trust issues, a lot of Nigerians that buy things online prefer to pay when they receive the items.
Most delivery companies do not offer payment for delivery services. This is the second opportunity – Offer Payment on Delivery
You can offer to help sellers collect payment at the point of delivery. After you have collected the payments, you must transfer the money back to the seller’s bank account. For security reasons, its best not to collect cash from the buyer.
Most businesses currently offering this service only get paid when the buyer receives and pays for the item. You could decide to copy this pricing strategy or charge a fee for both successful and failed deliveries.
Another part of this business is warehousing.
When a buyer rejects an item, the seller could tell you to return the item back to their location (where they shipped from).
But, what if the seller gets another order in that state?
Most smart sellers will tell you to keep the item for a while in case they get another order from the state you reside.
You can help them warehouse the items pending when they get a new order in that state.
You can offer them some days for free, then begin to charge them later. This is called demurrage in the shipping business.
2. P.O.S Business
Banks rarely open branches in rural areas. This poses a problem for people who want to withdraw money within those areas.
There are rural areas in Nigeria where people have to travel up to 12KM to use an ATM machine. Imagine traveling such distance only to realize that the machine is no longer dispensing cash. Imagine the long queues at ATM machines. People will gladly pay a token so that they do not have to experience difficulties accessing cash.
Now this is where you come in, you can open a P.O.S. business in your area.
P.O.S. is the acronym for point of sale machine. This device lets customers pay for goods and services with their debit cards (ATM cards) or via transfers.
In the P.O.S. business, your job is to help customers perform cash transactions.
Here is an example;
If John (a customer) comes to you to send 5,000 Naira to his sister in school, John will give you 5,000 Naira cash while you transfer the money in your bank account to John’s sister. You can charge John 200 Naira for this service or you remove the service charge from the money you are sending to John’s sister.
The company that owns the terminal (P.O.S device) will charge you a token when you transfer. Sometimes as less as 20 Naira.
Here is another example.
If Sandra (another customer) comes to you to withdraw 10,000 Naira from her bank account, she will slot in her debit card (ATM Card) inside the P.O.S. device and enter her pin. The P.O.S. device will automatically credit your bank account while you give Sandra her cash.
Since Sandra is withdrawing 10,000 Naira, you can decide to charge her 500 Naira for this service and give her 9,500 Naira cash instead.
One good thing about starting a P.O.S. business is that you can decide to start it separately or add it to an existing business. If you have a grocery story, hair salon, barbershop, chemist, boutique etc., you can add this business to get more revenue.
3. Grocery Store/Supermarket
In Nigeria, a grocery store is commonly referred to as a supermarket. A grocery store is where food items or general house hold items are sold. To commence this business, you need to rent a space, preferably in a busy area with high foot traffic. You will also need to do hire a carpenter to construct shelves, counters and other woodworks found in a grocery store.
You will need to get equipment like a refrigerator, generator, POS device, etc. Then you need to stock up the store with the items you will sell. If you are starting small, you may not need some of these equipments.
4. Football Viewing Centre
A Football viewing centre is a place where people come to watch football matches. This business idea is profitable if you have a large space and a big television where people can watch different football matches at the same time.
I must warn you, starting a football viewing centre can be capital intensive. You will need a lot of money to get started.
But the good side of this business is that you can add other services to it to make more money.
Here is a list of businesses that you can add to your football viewing centre to make you more money.
- Video gaming – set up video gaming and charge people to play video games during times when there are no football matches.
- Sports Betting: Add a sports betting service to complement your viewing centre business. Your customers can place bets when they come to your shop or they can place bets and hang around to watch the match once it begins.
- P.O.S service: If your viewing centre is located close to residential areas, you can also add a P.O.S service. Also, with a P.O.S. device, you can encourage your customers to pay you through their debit cards.
This will reduce the number of cash with you for security reasons and still make you more money.
5. Barbing Salon
Running a barbing salon is another lucrative business you can start in a rural area. People barb their hair every day.
For this business to be profitable from the start, you need to locate the barbing shop at a place with huge traffic – where many people pass through.
You will need to know how to make different haircuts to keep your customers. You can also employ someone who knows how to make nice haircuts.
In this business, you can cross-sell other services like;
- Dyeing of hair.
- Spotting waves.
- Sell hair or beard growth oil.
- sell male perfumes.
- Dandruff treatment.
- Home service to premium customers.
Offering this cross-sells will increase your income and add more value to your business.
If you can barb but you do not have a shop yet, you can offer home services to your customers. You go to their houses to barb them while offering them your cross-sells.
6. Video Game Shop
Video games are expensive and a lot of people cannot afford them. However, if they see where they can play these video games, they will gladly pay for it.
This is where you come in. You can purchase new or fairly used video game console and television sets, get a shop and offer this service to young people in your area.
You can get a new or fairly used Playstation 4 or PlayStation 3 jiji.ng and also get a TV set and a generator.
The most popular game on the Playstation is Fifa and most video game houses charge as little as 300 Naira for 10 minutes of play.
Now, most customers will come with their friends to play. If you charge 300 Naira each for a pair, you earn 600 Naira for every 10 minutes they play.
When you start this business initially, you could offer customers extended time to win their loyalty. Maybe 15-20 minutes for 300 Naira.
You could also organize a tournament in your first month of starting this business where the winner goes home with any amount of money that you feel your audience will appreciate.
7. Academic Tutor
Tutoring is a gold mine if you do it properly and it is quite easy and cheap to start.
As a tutor, you teach students of any level you are comfortable with on subjects you are good at. Many students have at least 2 subjects that they have issues with.
Now, you can either offer to tutor your students in their houses or at your tutorial centre.
If you choose to tutor at home, then your charges should definitely be higher. But if you choose to tutor at a centre, you can charge cheaper since you will be attending to more students at the same time.
As time goes on, you could hire more staffs that are good at other subjects.
Please note that it is not compulsory for you to know any of the subjects; You can hire someone that knows the subject and can teach it well.
To get customers in this business faster, you can partner with teachers.
Here’s how to do it;
Go to any teacher that you know and tell them that you have started a tutorial centre and you will pay them for every student that they refer to you.
To make your offer sweeter, tell them that you will keep paying them a certain percentage as long as the student remains your customer.
For example, if you charge 4,000 Naira every month for each student, you can offer to pay each teacher that refers students to you 500 Naira per month for each student they refer.
If a teacher refers 20 students to you, they earn 10,000 Naira every month while you keep the rest. The teachers will try to get you more students and also encourage them to remain at your tutorials.
You can also meet business centres involved in exam registrations and give them the same offer.
Note that tutoring is not limited to primary and secondary schools. You can also take your services to students in higher institutions.
8. Sell Water
Access to clean water in rural areas can be a daunting task. If you own the land and property you live in, you can dig a borehole or a well, create a water system and charge people to fetch the water.
You can also offer to deliver the water to their houses for a higher fee while you employ someone to do the delivery.
9. Sell Fairly Used Items
Most people who live in rural areas cannot afford new items. You can buy foreign used items from sellers in Lagos and resale for a profit or buy directly from . You could also collect used items from people who want to sell and help them sell it for a profit.
To sell these items faster, you can post them on your Facebook profile, Facebook marketplace or Instagram. You could also run paid adverts to build a community of people who are interested in buying fairly used gadgets or furnitures.
10. Freelancing
Freelancing means providing your skills or services to an individual or organization without being employed by them. Freelancing is more like a part-time job where you can work for as many companies/individuals as possible.
To become a freelancer, you must have a skill that you are good at. It could be graphic design, photo editing, web design, voice-over, content writing, digital marketing, social media management etc.
Whatever you are good at, you can render this service to people or organizations from the comfort of your home through the Internet.
You get paid after completing your task.
The amount you are paid as a freelancer depends on how much you bargain with the person that needs your service.
If you already have a skill, you do not need any amount of money to get started. You can register on some freelancing marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr to get started.
You can also advertise yourself on Facebook groups and Nairaland.
11. Affiliate Marketing
Do you remember the idea I gave in the Academic tutor business idea (number 7 above) where I said school teachers can recommend their students to other academic tutors for a commission?
The process is called Affiliate marketing and the teachers can be called Affiliate marketers.
In affiliate marketing, you recommend products or services to your audience to earn a commission.
Your audience can be anybody. It could be your family members, friends, colleagues or total strangers.
Let me give you an example,
Imagine that there is a new hotel in your community. Then, this new hotel announces to the community that they need customers and for anybody in the community that brings them a new customer, they will pay the person 2,000 Naira per customer.
On hearing this, you go to the motor park in your community at night and tell every stranger that comes down from the buses that you know a hotel where they can lodge or spend a night.
At the end of the night, you took seven strangers to the hotel, five of them paid for rooms, the other two did not like the hotel so they did not pay.
Since the hotel is paying 2,000 Naira per customer, they pay you 10,000 Naira for bringing them five customers.
Here is another example;
If you go to big markets, especially in Lagos, you will see people in or outside the markets trying to ask you what you want to buy.
Immediately you tell them what you came to get in the market, they will take you to a store that sells these items. If you buy from the store, they go back to those stores after you leave to collect their commission.
Hope you now understand how affiliate marketing works.
There are lots of companies online that have affiliate marketing programmes. Some of these companies are;
- Stakecut.
- Jvzoo.
- Jumia.
- Amazon.
- Expertnaire.
- Udemy.
- Shareasale.
- Commission junction.
- Rakuten LinkShare.
There are lots of them.
12. Start a Shawarma Business
This business is booming in big cities already, I believe it will do well in rural areas as well.
People in rural areas may not patronize food vendors as it is in cities but I bet you, everyone wants to eat something delicious irrespective of where they live.
Shawarma is delicious and it is not something everyone can make. If you can start this business in your community, I bet you, you will make good sales.
All you need to do to get started is to learn how to make Shawarma. You can learn how to make Shawarma on Youtube.
There are different kinds of Shawarma but I guess the most popular ones are the chicken and beef shawarma.
Once you have perfected your Shawarma-making skills, and get the tools and ingredients required to start, you are good to go.
13. Sell Smoothies and Ice Cream.
Who doesn’t like Ice cream? Everyone does unless the doctor says you should cut down on your sugar intake. Even if the doctor said so, you can go for smoothies, they are more natural with less or no sugar.
A smoothie is a thick blended beverage containing fruits or vegetables mixed with other liquids like fruit juice, milk, yoghurt or vegetable juice.
You can learn how to make either a smoothie or an Iced cream on Youtube.
This business can be done in a single form or you partner with someone into Shawarma or other fast foods. Customers who buy Shawarma may love to buy smoothies or ice cream and vice versa.
Conclusion
Now that you have seen the 13 business ideas that you can start in a rural area, you might be worried about which of them you should start.
Most of the businesses listed above require some kind of experience and money to start.
The business you should consider starting depends on your experience and how much budget you have to spend.
You can start one initially and add another later on to make more money.
Thank you for reading our article on business ideas for rural areas.
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