What kind of small business can I do with 100,000? I get asked this question very often. Fact! There’s always a small business that you can do with little capital. However, I don’t think this is the right question to ask when you are thinking of starting a business.
The reason is that asking questions like these compels you to focus more on the money than on the business itself. First focus on the type of value yo can create. The amount of capital you will need to create and offer that value will become obvious when you begin to plan how to create it.
That’s one of the purposes of conducting feasibility studies and writing a business plan. Having decided on how much you need to start the business, you can then begin to worry about how to raise it.
So the rule is:
Decide on the business, do your calculations to know how much you will need to start it and then decide on the steps you should take to raise the money.
Small Businesses You Can Start with NGN100,000
Now to the question: What Small Business Can I Start with NGN100,000?
With NGN100,000 or even less, you can start any business which you can do or take online. The internet is a massive marketplace. Much so like the Wuse market in Abuja or Oyinbo market in Lagos. Billions of people come online to buy and sell products and services. The cacophony of activities you found in your usual brick and mortar markets are also found online.
It then means that if you can’t do business or make money offline, it is not likely that you can do so online. But it is easier to start a business online than to start it offline. This is because you will need less resources to start your business online. For example, you don’t need to pay for shop, keep inventory or hire employees.
With a laptop and an internet access, you can start your business. In fact, there are many online businesses you can start with just your mobile device and a data subscription.
And these are some of the small businesses that you can do with NGN100,000. Some, you can even do without spending anything but your time and talent.
Also Read: Best 10 Profitable Businesses to start with 10000 Naira In Nigeria
#1. Information Products Business
This business is known by many names. Some call it information marketing, others call digital publishing or digital products marketing.
You may not know it but selling information based products is a huge business. It has been with us for a long time and it is not in a hurry to vanish. As long as human beings live on this earth, they will need information. Knowledge they say is power and knowledge come from information.
What kind of information you may ask?
Information that helps people solve a problem. It can be to live healthy life, maintain good relationship, make money, over come debt, satisfy their partners, or learn a trade. People will always look for ways to figure out things that bother them.
Is there anything you know that you know that people will like to know about. Package it together and sell. It is a big industry in which some experts earn in 6 and 7 figures.
You can package your information product in the form of
- eBook
- Videos
- Online Courses
- Email Courses
- Seminars
- Membership sites and
- Newsletters
All it takes for you to launch this small business is your ability to read and research as well as the use of the computer. You will also have to understand how to build simple landing pages and some ways to sell online. If building landing pages and digital marketing is tough on you, don’t worry. You can outsource it or use one or a combination of the many ready made platforms to sell your digital products.
Amazon, Udemy, Selz, Sellwire, and Sellfy are some of the platforms where you can sell your downloadable information products.
The beauty of this business model is that the information you sell doesn’t even have to be yours. You don’t have to write it. You can higher someone to write or produce it for you as a ghost writer or use Private Label Rights materials.
Selling information based products is one business you can start right now without capital. Your major investment is your knowledge, skill and time.
#2. Drop shipping
This business model is a smart way of tapping into the big pie of e-commerce. In 2019, global e-commerce sales was estimated to amount to over US$3.5 trillion. Fortunately you don’t have to be in the league of the big players like Amazon, Alibaba, etc to partake in this growing sector.
Drop shipping is a retail business model which allows the retailer to sell products without holding the inventory. Apart from not holding any inventory the drop shipper also doesn’t have to worry about fulfillment.
As a drop shipper, all you do is to create your online store, arrange with a wholesaler or manufacturer or a couple of them and list their products in your store. You then drive traffic to your store. When a visitor makes a purchase, the order is sent to the product owner who ships the products to the buyer. You receive payment, takes your mark-up and sends the seller what’s due to him.
With the help of purpose created software this whole process is automated and achieved without the buyer knowing that you don’t own the goods he has just bought from you.
Ordinary folks are now raking in millions of dollars with drop shipping. As a matter of fact a good number of the online stores you visit regularly to buy products are drop shipping websites.
To start this small business idea, you first have to decide on what to sell, find a supplier, create your online store (website) and install a drop shipping software. List your products and promote your business like crazy.
If you are looking for a small business you can start with little capital, drop shipping is it.
#3. Sell Other People’s Products
Selling other people’s products is another business you can start with nothing or less than NGN100,000. It’s another old business model which the internet has made easier and better.
It’s called Affiliate Marketing.
Your job as an affiliate marketer is easy. Simply recommend a product to somebody and when that person buys that product, you earn a commission.
There are a motley of products you can sell in this manner. Real estates, software, digital products, household goods, and even services.
With the internet as a pervasive tool these days, what affiliate marketers do is to set up a website and use content marketing tools to drive their business. They create content around the products they sell and recommend those products in the content.
And there are many organizations that provide opportunities for people to sell other people’s products. Amazon, JVZoo, Shareasle, Clickbank are just a few of these.
#4. Freelancing
Providing freelance services is one lucrative small business you can start with zero capital. Again like in the Information Product Business, your major investment here is your knowledge, skill and time.
Do you have any specialist knowledge or skill that is in demand? If you don’t have any, can you learn at least one skill that is in high demand. If you answered yes, then you are in business.
You see the internet is a big market place. Every body is selling something. Somebody likened it to the gold rush era. Every body was digging into the deepest part of the earth in search of gold. Some got gold, so many others didn’t. But those who sold shovels and other tools the gold miners needed made so much money.
Why? Because whether the gold miner was able to strike gold or not, he needed shovels and other tools. So the man who sold shovels was always in business.
To make money online, sell shovels. The shovels here are those technical and non technical services that everyone who is doing business online and even offline must need to succeed.
Website building, programming, graphic design, coding, digital marketing, etc: these are the shovels of online business. Learn these skills and you are in business. And the best part? Anybody can learn these skills.
Fortunately there are marketplaces, like fiverr.com and upwork, where you can go and compete for the teaming number of customers who come there to look for these professionals.
#5. Recharge and Get Paid
The last small business idea I highlight here is Recharge and Get Paid business opportunity. A certain network marketing professional set up this opportunity to help people partake in the new goldmine that is telecommunication business.
Virtual Top Up (VTU). It is so popular that it has become a huge revenue earner for banks. Each time you use your bank app to recharge your phone line.
The platform pays you each time you recharge your mobile phone, pays bill or renew your cable subscriptions. It pays you each time you do any of these for yourself and others. Now it has become a growing business model that is fast lifting ordinary Africans out of poverty.
The company was founded in Nigerian and is fast expanding to some other parts of Africa.
How do you make money with Recharge and Get Paid? You earn on your own usages and those of others that you referred into the network.
You invest as little as NGN5,000 to get access to a platform that, if you use properly, can make you NGN200,000 income every month.
If you are truly looking for a business you can do with NGN100,000 or less, contact me to join Recharge and Get Paid.
#6. Amazon FBA
Amazon is the largest global online retailer. It’s FBA programme makes it easier for retailers to sell on its platform. FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon.
Under the Amazon FBA, all a seller has to do is send his/her product to any of the millions of Amazon warehouses (fulfilment centers) and get the product listed in the marketplace. When a customer places an order for your product on the Amazon website, Amazon takes care of the order, packages and ships to the customer.
Amazon follows up with the customer and makes sure everything is ok. In order words Amazon takes care of fulfilment of all orders. The seller’s responsibility is to ensure the stock is available at all times. You also have to drive traffic to your product listings. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of products listed on Amazon. So it makes sense that you take steps to drive qualified leads to your own listing.
What can you sell on Amazon? A whole lot: books, electronics, clothes, toys, games, jewelries, computers, tablets, mobile phones and anything in-between.
A lot of people make 6-figure income with the Amazon FBA programme.
Important: To sell on Amazon, you must reside in an approved countries that is accepted for Seller Registration. Nigeria is not an approved country for this purpose.
However, a lot of sellers from Nigeria are finding a way round this challenge. A simple way is to partner with someone in an approved country and use the details to complete the registration.
Last Words
I have listed just a few of the businesses you can do with N100,000or less. Results are not typical, I must add. The fact that one person made so much money doing any of these businesses or any business at all, is not a guarantee that you will be as successful.
The amount of work you put into it, your creativity and capacity all work together to determine your success.
If you have any other idea, please share it with us here.
Buchi creates content and leads the Team at Kobotalk Management Services; a business development and investment consultancy firm. He provides strategic advisory to help SME's, small business owners and HNI's grow profitable business and make informed investing decisions.
