40+ Best Lucrative Online & Offline Business Ideas for Students

Entrepreneurship has always been a key strategy to tackling unemployment and poverty in many countries. Most students, most especially those in universities and other higher institutions always ask: “Is there any profitable business one can start with little or no capital in campus?”. The answer is YES. In fact there are tons of business that can fetch you cool money, both online and offline without affecting your academic performance. The main secret is planning. Also, there are some talents that students have that can earn them money. I will reveal some of the lucrative businesses you can do as a student in the campus.

I started searching for lucrative businesses that can fetch me money right in my pre-degree year in the university. Though it wasn’t very easy to cope with both academics and business, but with proper time planning, I succeeded. Today, I make money online from blogging and writing books. I also make money from crypto trading and stock investment. Upon all these, I never joked with my studies. You also can be independent as a student.

The first step is to spot a lucrative skill, where to learn it and how to advertize, promote and monetize it. For the first step, you start with what you can easily learn or manage that will not disturb your academics. For online businesses, your market must not necessarily be students. But for offline business, a greater percentage of your market should be students. For the second step, you can learn the skill online or offline, depending on the nature of the work. Youtube is a free online learning avenue where you can learn virtually anything for free. There are other free online learning avenues. For the advert and promotion, you can promote it first within the campus. Then for online businesses, you can utilize the social media for promotion. Once you do good business promotion and advert, the money starts flowing in. Trust me!

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Best Online & Offline Business Ideas for Students

Bitcoin Trading

You can make cool money buy using bitcoin to trade other alt coins. Here, you target when the prices of these alt coins fall and buy them, then hodl them until the prices rise. You can target a particular percentage, from 10% and above. Some alt coins can even give you more than 100% profit.

You will need some crypto trading (exchange) apps like Binance, Kucoin, Huobi, etc. All you need to do is create account on these apps, fund your bitcoin wallet and start trading. It does not require much stress. All you need is a good mobile phone or laptop, a secured and trusted exchange platform, some funds and a strong internet connection.

Do you wish to learn the in and out of Crypto trading? Check out this kindle book: How to Make Money from Crypto Trading & Investing for Beginners.

DeFi Staking

Staking is one of the passive income opportunities provided by Decentralized Finance (DeFi). It is simply the act of locking up your crypto assets (Proof of Stake tokens) in order to help secure a blockchain network, and in return, you receive periodic rewards in that same crypto token you locked up. It is a way of earning passive income from your crypto assets, that is to say, you put your idle crypto assets to work and earn passive income from them.

You can stake both cryptocurrencies and stable coins and they bring you reasonable returns in form of APY (Annual Percentage Yield). There are many ways you can stake your crypto assets. You can stake them from your personal, non-custodial wallets like Trust wallet. Also, you can also stake on online exchanges like Binance, Kucoin, etc. Lastly, you can utilize the services of some third-party staking platforms like Fragment networks, Stake capital, Stakinglab, etc. Each of these staking strategies and platforms has its own pros and cons. You can learn more about staking from this article at Coinmarketcap.

Providing Liquidity & DeFi Yield Farming

Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap make use of Automatic Market Makers (AMM) in place of order books, as used by most Centralized exchanges. They make use of liquidity pools, which are collection of funds locked in a smart contracts. Anyone can deposit their assets (usually token pairs like ETH-USDT) into these pools and earn rewards from the part of the money these DEXs make from trading fees they charge users who use their platform. Once you deposit these token pairs, you will receive LP tokens which represent your share in the liquidity pool. These LP tokens can be used to redeem the initial token pair you contributed in the pool, plus extra rewards from the trading fees these DEXs charge users of their platforms. You can read this article at Coinsultra to understand how liquidity pools work. So why keep your crypto funds in your wallets while you can invest them and make huge profits?

Yield Farming is another passive income opportunity created by DeFi. It is simply the act of locking up the LP tokens you got by providing liquidity on DEXs for extra rewards. You can participate on Pancakeswap yield farm and earn up to 300% APR.

In conclusion, though there are many benefits you can enjoy in providing liquidity and yield farming, there are also risks involved. One of the biggest DeFi risks smart contract vulnerability. Hackers are always studying pools, looking for loop holes to attack or manipulate the prices of pools. Also, flash loan attacks are now on the increase. So make sure you only invest as much as you can afford to lose.

Earning, Buying and Selling NFTs and Collectibles

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are collectible digital assets that hold value in two main forms; as cryptocurrencies and as an art. NFTs are more than just a standard crypto, in the sense that you cannot trade one NFT for another and still have exactly the same thing, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.

One of the main aims of NFTs is to help artists and musicians monetize their talents in the digital forms as arts, music, videos, video games, etc. For instance, instead of making brush and paint drawing, and then share it on social media, which earns you just likes and compliments, you can mint them as NFTs, sell them online and make cool money. Also, you can now play some online video games and earn NFTs and collectibles. Some of these play and earn video games are:

Alien Worlds
League of Kingdoms
Lost Relics
Axie Infinity
The Sandbox, etc.

Some of the popular online marketplaces where you can mint, buy and sell NFTs are:

Check: How to Make Money from Play-to-Earn (P2E) Games

Investing in Stocks

Stocks are simply shares in a publicly-traded company which are available in the stock exchange. Stock investment has been proven to be one of the lucrative businesses that bring good returns, especially when you invest in stocks that have powerful future potentials at the right time and then hold till the value skyrockets. This is because the more profit companies that have stocks as security makes, the higher their stock prices become. Therefore investors who accumulated these good stocks earlier, make much profit when the prices of these stocks increase. Also know that investing in the wrong stock can also lead to massive losses, especially during bear seasons.

Before you can buy and sell stocks, you need to have a brokerage account, which gives you access to invest in other securities like bonds and mutual funds. Here are some of the recommended stock trading apps for mobile devices.

Blogging and Web Design

You can blog on Google blogger for free (you might need a custom domain) or under wordpress where you have to pay both for hosting plan and domain name. Both are good. But wordpress blogging has a grater advantage when it comes to blog popularity and fast ranking. You should also carefully select a niche for your blog. It must not be what you can write on, you should go for what people want to information people want to know more about. Lastly,make sure the niche is not too saturated. Blog monetization is mainly through Google Adsense, affiliate marketing and direct advert on blog.

Web design and development requires that you learn one or more programming languages like php, java, javascript, python, etc.

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Freelance Writing & Book Writing

If you are a good freelance writer, then utilize the opportunity and make money just for writing for people. You can write articles for webmasters or even companies and get paid either per article or as agreed by both parties involved.

Book writing is also another means to make money from a good writing skill. There are tons of online publishers and retailers who do Print On Demand (POD) on your behalf. Then they pay you a particular percentage per book sale. Some of the popular online book publishers are Amazon, Lulu, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc. Amazon pays you 60% for paperback after deducting printing cost and 70% for eBooks.

Here is a guide on how to write and self-publish best selling books on Amazon KDP.

Tapping from the Solar Energy Sector

There are many easy and lucrative business opportunities in the solar energy sector which you can embark on as a student. Some of these business opportunities include:

Starting Solar PV System Installation and Maintenance Business
Buying and Selling of Solar PV System Components
Selling Excess Solar Power to the Utility Companies via Net-metering
Starting a Solar Farm Business
Investing in Solar Energy Stocks
Manufacturing of Solar Panels
Production of Deep Cycle PV Batteries
Manufacturing of Power Inverters

You can learn about these solar energy business opportunities from this article: 5 Best Ways to Make Money from Solar Energy Sector.

Graphic Design

Are you good in graphics as a student? Then utilize the skill and make cool money both online and offline. You can make money offline by designing flex, banners, book covers for students and people living around the university environment or even during special occasions.

Online, you can make money by registering with some online sites like Fiverr. They pay you after collecting a small percentage of your total earnings.

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Hair Salon

Here, both male and female students can fit in. If you are a good barber, you can rent a shop or collaborate with your fellow barber who already has a shop.

The same thing applies to hair dressing. Currently, the most lucrative form or hair dressing is making of wigs using weavons.

Fashion and Design

This is for those who can sew or make nice indoor or outdoor decoration. You should also update your sewing skills by learning the trending fashion styles for both men and ladies, especially for ladies. If you have enough capital, buy a sewing machine and rent a shop, else collaborate with those who have shops already.

After Class Tutorial

If you are very good at academics, then you can make money from teaching your fellow student. It can be either your level mates or lower level. Schedule the time after official academic activities are over. You can also collaborate with other tutorial masters to get more students. You can charge per semester or per tutorial.

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Campus Affiliate Marketing

You can make money by acting as a marketing agent on campus for some popular online retailers like Konga, Jumia, Amazon, eBay, etc. They pay you a certain percentage of the money they make per sale from a customer that purchased their products through you.

Catering Services

IF you are a caterer, you can make cool money while in school by baking birthday cakes. You need to advertize your services through school whatsapp groups, social media.

Video Blogging on YouTube

You can also make cool cash from video blogging. All you nee do to is to create a YouTube channel and videos, upload and optimize them to rank well on search engines. When your channel videos have got up to 10,000 view in total, you can apply for YouTube AdSense and earn money monthly.

See:

Some Online Side Hustles that Pay Well

Buying Domain Names that have Potentials (Domain Name Parking)

You can buy them as low as $0.99 from namecheap.com. It could be company names, celebrity names, brand names, etc. In future you can make money from these domain names, when these companies, celebrities or brands want to use these domain names they will have to contact you and have a deal with you. You can make as much as $2m from one domain name that has massive potential.

Note that this is not a “get-rich quick” business idea. It can take some years before you sell some of your parked domain names, and you will also renew these domains from the domain registrar yearly. But the returns are usually huge. Imagine buying a domain name for $5, hold it for about 3 to 5 years, and then sell it for $5,000 (or even more). The ROI in this case is above 99,000%.

Asking Relevant Questions on Quora

Quora.com is a very popular question and answer (Q&A) social media platform where a user asks questions, and other users who have solution to such question answer them. Quora users or other online users can react to any of these answers by up-voting or down-voting it. Top CEOs, celebrities and high-profile figures make up a huge percentage of this popular Q&A platform.

If you keep on asking relevant questions on Quora.com that attract many answers, at a point, the Quora team will contact you via email and have a direct deal with you. You will be paid for asking relevant questions on Quora.

Taking Surveys Online and Getting Paid

Online (Internet) survey is one of the popular ways to collect sample data online. Here, a set of questions is sent out to a target sample or online users, who fill these questionnaire forms online, and submit them. The received sample data are then stored in a database for further analysis. There are sites that specialize in sourcing out these survey questionnaires to their respective target samples (online users), sometimes for a reward.

As a student or online user, you can make cool money by taking online surveys daily from some online survey websites. The reward can be in form of points (which can be converted to cash), gift cards, or real cash directly. It might require you spending few hours daily on these online survey sites. Note that there are many scam sites that cheat when it comes to paying the promised rewards. So you need to be very careful when choosing an online survey site to sign up with.

The best site I recommend for earning from surveys is cashkarma.io. The survey reward app rewards you with easily redeemable points (for PayPal cash) and Amazon gift cards for your time, even if you don’t qualify for the survey. You can also earn rewards and bonuses from the site for watching videos online. Here are some other platforms where you earn cool money for taking surveys, watching videos and playing games online.

NOTE: Avoid any online survey site that tells you to pay before you can use their site, they are purely scam. You are supposed to be paid for the time you spent online taking surveys. Do not pay any registration fee or what ever name they might tag it. Legit survey sites allow you to register for free, and then reward you for taking surveys.

Earning Money from Teespring.com

Teespring is a free platform where you can create and sell different kinds of products online without any upfront cost. Anyone can use Teespring, whether you are an entrepreneur who wish to start up a business online or a creator looking for a stress-free way to raise some funds by offering some merch to your fans. The company has all the tools you need to design, create and sell your products online for free. You also have access to their selling tools like online stores, buyer messaging, promo codes, etc. to make sales.

Also, through Teespring’s boosted network, your products can be listed to other top global marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc. The company also helps to process any buyer’s order, and ships the product to the buyer on your behalf. Once the order is processed, Teespring deducts a base cost from the amount made from the sell, while your profit is sent to the Payout section of your Teespring account.

Some of the products you can create and sell online through Teespring includes: Phone cases, mugs, posters, socks, pillows, hoodies and sweatshirts, T-shirts, Tote bags, etc. You can learn more about how Teespring works from this guide.

Here is a YouTube tutorial video on How to Make Money with Teespring, Step by Step Teespring Tutorial, Earn Passive Income.

Being a Marketer for Banks Online

You can visit the websites of banks on your country, contact them and tell them that you would like to be one of their marketers. They will respond to you and have a direct deal with you. You will be paid some percentage for bringing customers to them.

Other Small Business Ideas for Beginners

Chin Chin Business
Dropshipping
Crypto Mining
Selling of Photos and Videos Online
Reviewing Music Online
Creating Mobile Apps
Cooking Classes
Ice Cream Stand
Drawing Building Plans
Pop Corn Stand
Home Food Delivery
Modern Book Keeping
Photography
Fast Food Joint
Yoga Studio
Pet Business
Landscaping
Dance Studio
Music Studio
Travel Planning
Clothing Boutique

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Conclusion

Making money from small business as a student is easy. All you need is to define your target and work towards it, but don’t ever forget your main aim of coming to the higher institution, which is to read.

Are you a student looking for some advice on how to be a successful student and in life? Check out these success tips for students.

Do you have any other lucrative idea for students? Comment it below. Help your social media friends who are students to learn new skill and also know how to monetize their skills by clicking a share button below. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog.

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40+ Best Lucrative Online & Offline Business Ideas for Students