Top 10 Service Business Ideas in Nigeria (Most Profitable)

One of the toughest works in Nigeria today is learning a service rendering business and trying to make millions of profits out of it for a living. It looks like it is an impossible thing to do and this is true with the evidence we see around us.

I mean “how many youths in Nigeria today are even making thousands from their service rendering business?” very little and even those who are making money cannot make millions of profit in 6 months or even a year.

Although there are many reasons for these asides from lack of education there are also reasons like not going into the service rendering business. Do not get me wrong all service rendering businesses in Nigeria are good. I will repeat that again all service-rendering businesses in Nigeria are good but the thing is not all of them can truly yield a million in 6 months or worse in a year.

So I will say if you are just reading this article and you have not learned any kind of business in Nigeria that has to do with the rendering of services. This is your lucky day because this article will be like a foundation for you in letting you know the service business in Nigeria that are truly lucrative.

This article will help you choose perfectly not only the type of service rendering business in Nigeria but also how you can make millions of naira from it. In this article, I will be teaching you tips and tricks to win new customers and how you can retain your old customers year in and year out. This is the list of the top best service business in Nigeria in no order of priority.

What is a Service Business?

A service business is a business that sells services directly to its consumers or other businesses or it can regarded as a business that performs tasks for the benefit of its customers. A service business is filled with workers with vocational skills or handwork. Goods are rarely sold in service businesses. If they are it is just to supplement.

Best Service Business Ideas in Nigeria

Here are the best service-based business ideas in Nigeria.

1. Plumbing Service Business

Lately, I have been in real estate not doing anything much but just trying to study how things are done there and I must say I have been wowed so far. I used to think the plumbing service business was only a service business for the poor until I discovered that it is a multi-million naira business in the real estate sector in Nigeria.

I discovered this when a manager friend of mine told me how his plumber friends his making millions with his plumbing company by doing the plumbing systems of new houses that are built and also doing consulting for old houses that need plumbing renovations.

According to him, his plumbing business has now grown to the extent that this young plumber has employed much staff from Secretaries to accountants down to plumbers to help him out in the business so that he no longer has to carry pipes and plumbing tools to the work field himself.

All he does is supervise work done by his plumbers and add corrections. He pays every one of his staff salaries monthly and also gives them some benefits. I guess you know one plumber in your area right now and because of the way he dresses and the way he drags his legs you do not feel like learning plumbing not to talk of starting it as a service rendering business in Nigeria.

Well, I will say that the plumber that you know is in that position today because he does not know this method of making money with his service-rendering business. If he knew better he would be driving the best cars and you would envy him. And now that you know this secret on how you can make money from rendering plumbing services in Nigeria.

What are you going to really do about it? Are you going to start or still continue thinking unnecessarily? Well, just in case you are ready let me show you how you can your own plumbing service business in Nigeria. The plumbing service business is an untapped business in Nigeria.

You will not have much competition if you go into the business.

How to Start Plumbing Service Business in Nigeria

A. Learn Plumbing

The first step to starting a plumbing service business in Nigeria is to learn plumbing from a professional plumber or go to school to read it as a course. But I’ll say you learning it from a professional plumber is the best because this saves you a lot of time. In 6 months – 1 year before you can set out on your own, unlike school that takes about 3 to 4 years.

Another reason why learning one one-on-one is better than going to school is it helps you know the rudiments of plumbing on time because it is 100% practical, unlike school which is about 50% practical. Learning plumbing from a professional will cost you just like going to school but is not as expensive as going to school.

B. Get your Plumbing Tools/Equipment

The next step after learning to plumb is to buy your plumbing tools/equipment. You do not want to start getting jobs before you start running around to do this. If you do not have the money to buy the new ones it is okay you can simply buy fairly used ones. The most important thing here is to have your tools ready before jobs start coming.

C. Start your Plumbing Business

At this stage, you need to start connecting with big players in the real estate sector in Nigeria but whilst you are doing this you can be doing small jobs just to keep you going in the service rendering business. Small Jobs like house plumbing – repairing plumbing issues in houses and office plumbing where you fix plumbing problems in companies and business premises.

All you need is one contract. Once you are able to win your first contract for a new site you are on your way to make millions before the year runs out. But make sure you do your first contract and you do it well as this will be a reference to all the other contracts you will be getting.

And when you are done continue to connect with big men in the same area that is likely to develop their lands soon too so that they will have you on their mind to do plumbing systems when the time comes. You can also register with real estate companies in your state as a contractor to increase your chances of getting more plumbing contracts in a short time. Read our article on how to start plumbing materials business in Nigeria.

2. Auto Mechanic Business

The auto mechanic is also a lucrative service rendering business in Nigeria. It can yield millions in no time if you decide to do yours differently and that is by learning how to repair the latest cars. These new cars run on different energy like electricity, solar, and the like so it might take time to learn how their engine works.

But once you are able to understand it you will be making millions in no time from these businesses. Most auto mechanics companies in Nigeria only know how to repair old cars. Another benefit of learning this kind of service rendering business in Nigeria is that there are only a few that are into it.

So you do not have to stress yourself in looking for customers – customers will always find you. All you have to do is learn the work and do it well.

How to Start an Auto Mechanic Service Business in Nigeria

A. Learn Auto Mechanic

To learn how to repair cars not just cars but the new models you will need to learn from the best auto mechanics in Nigeria. So look for any auto mechanic company in your area the best out of the best and tell them you want to register with them as an apprentice.

Note: they might ask you to pay some sum of money or it might be free it all depends on the boss. However, prepare yourself. Register and learn everything you need to learn about new cars – how to scan engines to detect faults and malfunctions when you are done you can move to the next stage which is…

B. Buy Your Equipment/Tools

You can either go for new equipment or tokunbo equipment it all depends on you and what your money can afford. The most important thing here is for you to have tools to work with when you have to service cars.

C. Register Your Business

After buying your tools and equipment you will need to register your business and get a space to work (where customers can park their cars for repairs). Do not forget all you need to do is to show one rich man that you can repair his car and prove it. Once you are able to do this well he will refer his friends to you – what I call the spider and the web principles.

Check out how to register your business name in Nigeria.

3. Wedding Planning Business

Wedding planning is another highly profitable service rendering business in Nigeria because there is hardly a week that goes by in Nigeria that Nigerians do not have weddings. Unlike the old days when couples had to plan every aspect of their wedding with their friends and families, couples-to-be are now employing wedding planners to help them take care of their wedding so they can focus their minds on having a great time during their wedding instead.

The wedding planning business in Nigeria has come to stay, especially for the rich and because of this, there is a market for you. All you have to do is to first learn how the business works and get one contract – a contract and you are already on your way to making millions.

How to Make Millions from Wedding Planning Business

A. Make Couples Know a Wedding Planner is Needed

The truth is many couples already know they need a wedding planner to help them plan their wedding but they are just lazy about it so you have to make all couples you meet see the reasons why they need one.

B. Give Discounted Service

I am not saying here that you should make yourself cheap all in the name of looking for wedding contracts all I am just say is you should give some couples discounts. This will make them really employed even if they didn’t plan it earlier. Here’s is it! Let me break it down. So let us say you are supposed to charge 100k per wedding.

You can simply slash the price into 2 charging 50k. This will make intending couples feel they can squeeze your pay in their budget and at the end employing you to plan their wedding. Giving discounted charges might not make you be a millionaire on time with this business but it will surely grow your customer list on time which will later make you a millionaire.

4. Car Wash Service Business

I once talked about the car wash services in one of my articles here on the blog “small scale business ideas in Nigeria for men” and in that article explained how you can channel your car wash business in Nigeria that it will be making tons on profits that can yield millions but I will explain further here again.

You see if you really want to make millions from the car wash business in Nigeria in no time the most important aspect of the business that you must not joke with is the location – where your car wash business will be. The difference between the car wash in your village and the car wash in the city is not the name of the car wash neither is it really the equipment mostly used but the location.

Even in the city especially Lagos where we are, I know some locations where you can make more than a million naira in a short while and locations that might take you 3 years before you can achieve that same one million. Location is everything. The car wash business is also a daily income business in Nigeria because it will fetch you income daily.

How to Start Car Wash Business in Nigeria

A. Get Capital Needed

Depending on the location you want your car wash business to be in Nigeria you will need N500,000 to N1m to start. You need to get your capital within this amount. You will need capital to buy car washing tools or equipment and you will also need the capital to rent or lease a space where your customers can park their cars for washing.

So let’s say 40% of your capital will be for the tools and furnishing of the car wash space 60% will be for the renting or leasing of the space.

B. Buy Your Washing Tools/Equipment

There are so many tools now that make car washing easy. You can buy all of them or buy some of them depending on your budget.

C. Rent or Lease a Space

Like I said earlier your location really determines how much profit you will make in the business. There are locations that will make you charge N2,500 per car and there are locations that will make you not want to charge more than N500 per car. This is why you have to really sit down to do your numbers and your findings before choosing a space.

When you get the space of your choice, furnish it to your taste and start your car wash business immediately. Read our post on how to start car wash business in Nigeria.

5. Pet Food and Delivery Services

The pet industry in Nigeria is rising as every year goes by and we can not ask for less. Many high-income and middle-income citizens are now buying pets to keep them company at home. The best thing about this fact is these people do not give their pets eba or rice as they feel their pets need to be fed well. They feed their pets with ready-made pet food bought from pet stores.

This is where you come in. You can start a one-stop pet store for pets in Nigeria and go the extra mile by adding delivery to your services. You can make big money from this business by taking the stress of pet owners. All they have to do is order online from your e-pet store and get what they ordered delivered to their doorstep.

How to Start Pet Store Business in Nigeria

A. Get your Capital

Get your capital for the business. To do this you have to make the total estimate of what it is going to cost you.

1. How much to get a shop

2. How to register your business

3. How much to buy pet products

4. How much to build an e-commerce website for your pet store

5. How much will go to staff salaries

And so on. This should be your consideration.

B. Register your Business

Registration of a business name is very important in a business like this. You will need to register your business in order to avoid any tax problems in the future. Check out our post on how to register your business in Nigeria.

C. Rent a Shop and Build a Website

In as much as most of the sales, you will be making from your pet store business will be coming from your online store you still need to rent a shop at a good location to help you sell physically. This action is to help increase sales and profit in a short time. As for the website, you can start small then as time goes by add many other functions and options to it.

D. Start Selling Pet Foods

Start by giving discounts and doing free deliveries for intending customers. This will force buyers to start coming in. Read our guide on how to start dog food business in Nigeria.

6. House Painting Business

I must say house painting in Nigeria has been rubbished to the ground and the real cause of this is because many Nigerians that have learned the business do not really have ideas of how the business works. Part of this is also learning from the wrong boss and illiteracy.

Many people think starting house painting as a service is just about learning how to paint a house and mixing different colors they did not know it’s actually way deeper than that. Even I was oblivious to this. Do you know there are painters in Nigeria who get paid up to 100k for just painting an apartment?

I am not talking about a whole house here an apartment. This is because these hybrid painters feel there is more they can bring to the table, unlike the traditional painters who just ask you the colors that you want and then paint.

They do consulting – telling you all you need to know about painting like paints that work well on damp walls, recommend colors that blend, give you advice on paint products, and give you ideas on how to make your room look alive like it’s 3D. They do a lot. They also do different types of paintings related to art.

All these are mostly to gun after contracts of painting a whole house which could make them earn way more. The painting business in Nigeria is a good business if and only if you can package yourself like these guys – the hybrid painters.

How to Start a House Painting Business in Nigeria

A. Learn Painting

Just like reading plumbing as a course in any Nigerian polytechnic you can also read painting too but the best thing you can do to hasten things up is for you to learn from a professional painter – not just how to paint but the entirety of the business remember what I said earlier. This learning of how to paint maximum cannot take more than a period of 6 months then you can set out on your own to start fully.

B. Buy Painting Tools and Equipment

By the time you are done learning the next step is to buy your painting tools and equipment. This is to make your job easier when you finally set out on your own.

C. Start Attracting Customers

Do some free jobs for people you know who are influential and can advertise you and your company. I know I know you normally hear me say give discounts to attract customers and the likes but I feel this will not work here. If you try it all the people you did painting jobs for we mainly introduce you to their friends because you are cheap.

Oh! I have a guy who has a painting service company. He can paint your house perfectly at the cheapest price you can ever imagine. This is how they will introduce you and I am sure you do not want that.

You do not want customers and customers-to-be to be thinking of your brand and relate it with cheap benefits rather you want customers to think of your brand and say wow how I wish I can afford them they would have done perfect work in making my house look beautiful.

Doing some free work should not be done with a free mind there must be what you’re trying to achieve by doing it. When you do these works very well, these rich influential people will now start introducing you as the best house painter in Nigeria to their friends and colleagues and you can take it on from there.

When they meet you and say they also want free jobs from you, you can tell them you did it for free because that person was your friend or something else that really justifies why you did the job for free. You can also start attracting high-end customers for your painting business in Nigeria by painting houses for non-profit organizations or NGOs.

Since many people visit these places it will be a simple and straightforward source of advertisement to intending customers.

7. Photography Business

Photography business in Nigeria is another service rendering business in Nigeria that can yield millions of naira in a short while if you know what you are doing. Yes, I had to add the ending part so that many of my friends here will not think it is very simple. There are what we call celebrity photographers in Nigeria.

These are the photographers who are really making millions from photography business in Nigeria. And guess what? These photographers are not called celebrity photographers because they are celebrities. They are called celebrity photographers because only the rich can afford photo shoots.

You too can become a celebrity photographer today in Nigeria and become popular all you have to do is – package (brand) yourself and start connecting with rich people in Nigeria. You can read my article “How to Meet Rich Men in Nigeria” for more guidance on this. And read my article on “how to start photography business in Nigeria” just in case you need a head start on how to start your own photography business in Nigeria.

8. Website Designing Business

Website designing or website development is another service rendering business in Nigeria that is very lucrative. Lucrative to the extent that it should fetch a million naira in one year or two years to come. Reasons have been that there many small businesses in Nigeria that are coming up by the day.

Many of these businesses will need the services of a professional website developer to take their business to the next level by building a website for them and maintaining it. This is where a professional website designer makes his money. You make your money in 2 ways: the first one as a website designer charging 30k – 50k, and the second one as a website maintainer charging 50k – 100k.

Website designing services is a service you can learn in a short while if you are passionate about coding – understanding HTML, CSS, and JAVA. However, for blogging and website platforms like WordPress, you do not need to understand coding to 100% before you can build websites for customers.

Plug-ins like page elementor will help you out on that and make your work easy for you.

How to Become a Website Developer in Nigeria

A. Buy A Laptop

Website development is one of the business ideas in Nigeria you can do or start from home. You do not need an office. All you need to start is a laptop with good battery life. You can either buy this laptop new or you can buy a fairly used or tokunbo one. After buying this laptop, you should then buy a good amount of data that you can use to learn coding on Google and on YouTube.

B. Start Learning Coding

Depending on how good you are with this, you should be able to understand coding and it perks in 3 months maximum of 6 months. You can learn how to code on Blogger but from experience, I’ll advise you to get familiar with WordPress more. As soon as you’re done you should create a website showing your expertise in website design.

This website will make potential customers locate you from anywhere in Nigeria through Google.

C. Start Designing Websites

After designing your website to show your expertise in website designing, the worst thing you can do is to sit down and be waiting for people to find you. Go all out and get noticed. You can join tech forums to help people having problems with their blogs and you can join Quora to help give answers to tech issues.

These will help you to get noticed and popular on time. Read our guide on how to become a professional web developer in Nigeria.

9. DJ Service Business

A disk jockey service in Nigeria is another profitable service rendering business you should try if you are passionate about music and dance. We all know the music industry is big on its own creating millions if not billions of naira yearly and it is big enough for anybody that wants to be a part of it.

Forget all the DJs you know in your area that are barely making enough to keep themselves and the DJ service business going, there are ways you can make serious money from being a DJ. All you have to do is to first put yourself out there. Begin to go for music concerts and GIGS and in no time you will start playing for big parties.

You can only make money in Nigeria by playing for big parties, big clubs, and GIGs.

How to Become a DJ (Disk Jockey) in Nigeria

A. Learn to the Profession

Obviously, you have to learn the craft first because it is a skill, and the duration you spend learning it totally depends on how dedicated you are to understanding its perks.

B. Buy Your Disk Jockey Equipment

Disk Jockey equipment in Nigeria is expensive. You can either go for the new ones or simply buy the tokunbo ones and you have the option of also renting the equipment per show. It all boils down to your budget and how soon you are willing to start.

C. Start Playing at Parties

When you are done with all these you can start playing at parties and Gigs. How much you charge per show may depend on the location you are called to perform but this should not affect the target you want to achieve in a short period which is to make a million naira.

10. Business Consulting

Business consulting is can yield millions in no time. And it is less capital-intensive. It is one of the businesses you can even start at home so I can also call it a home business idea. All you need in this business to make your millions in a short while is to show your expertise.

Many businesses in Nigeria especially the StartUps are looking for someone that understands the Nigerian market and is willing to hold them by the hand to make a profit from their business. Since you can do this easily as a professional you can start guiding businesses on how they can master the Nigerian market.

You can charge 50K – 70K per company or business to help them grow their business in a year. If you can help 20 companies to do this at a discounted price of 50k that is 1 million naira. N50,000 * 20 = N1,000,000

How to Start Business Consulting Service in Nigeria

A. Register Your Consulting Company

The first step for you here is to register your company to make it formal. Companies will easily do consulting with you if your company is registered under CAC and FIRS.

B. Get an Office or Develop a Website

For those of us that can afford an office for your consulting business, you can go ahead to get an office where CEOs and people can come physically for consulting, and if you cannot afford an office you can develop a website to represent you online. And if you’re capable of doing both you can do it.

C. Start Consulting

In this kind of service rendering business in Nigeria, I must say to start making millions you have to give first for free. So help as much as you can and when it is the right time within a space of 6 months – 1 year you can start charging for your business consulting. Read our article on how to start consulting business in Nigeria.

Conclusion

I hope you really enjoyed this article and you learned from it. If you did consider sharing it with your friends as this is the only way you can support us and reach a wider audience. These are the list of service businesses in Nigeria that are highly profitable that I have discovered for now. As time goes by and I discover more I will add them to this article. Stay tuned!

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