Are you a fresh graduate or an unemployed graduate and you want to start a business? If YES, here are 50 best lucrative small business ideas for graduates.
The job market is highly competitive, and even if you’re perfectly qualified for a position, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get it. But those graduate loans have to get paid off somehow, don’t they? The first thing that fresh graduates look out for is jobs.
There are plenty of job opportunities that the fresh graduates can go for. However, there are many new graduates who opt for starting their own business. For new graduates looking to start their own business ventures have a great future as there are many business ideas for fresh graduates.
Instead of waiting around for their dream job, you may also want to try your hands on other business opportunities. If you are a graduate looking to start a good business, you may want to consider any of the following business ideas;
Best Business ideas for Graduates
If your parent has an old car that has been abandoned for a long time, you can fix it and start a micro transport service. Chances are students need transportation to and from campus. And most of the time, the transport arrangements by school authorities are not very good.
Transportation is one of the oldest businesses in the world and is one business that can never go extinct because as long as the world continues, people would always have the need to move around from place to place. It is also one business that you can make cool cash from. So, some college colleagues would be willing to pay you to transport them.
As a college graduate, chances are you are particularly good in one or two subjects. You’ll make a lot of money by offering to teach others who are having problems with those subjects — most especially if they are very important subjects that students must pass before promotion or graduation.
To start a tutoring business, one prerequisite you must possess is passion. You must love teaching because if you don’t, you will see tutoring as a stressful and difficult task. Now why should you start a tutoring business and who should start a tutoring business?
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Career Counselling
If you have good communication skills, you can meet the recruiters and employers in the on-campus career centre to learn what they are looking for in job applicants. Then you can become a career coach and counsellor simply by leaking these secrets to students.
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Sports Training Service
If you are a good athlete and sportsman, think about starting a personal sports training service aimed at teaching students who are interested in becoming skilled sportsmen like you. You can use either an on-campus facility or a local fitness facility off campus.
There is globally increasing awareness of the multiple health benefits of keeping fit, but most people are just not doing so.
Some don’t have the time, while travelling to the gym seems tedious to many others. Personal training services are enjoying a booming demand because they provide a convenient way for people to get one-on-one fitness training under the supervision of fitness experts.
Most college graduates love partying. So, you can make decent income if you know how promote parties and get the best deejays and party people to events. You can also organize shows involving celebrity singers and entertainers. Now for those who don’t know, party planning is just a branch of event planning.
The procedures and protocols is exactly the same with wedding planning. The only difference is that wedding planning has more fashion inclination than party planning. As of present, the profit margin for a party planning entrepreneur falls anywhere between 30-50 percent.
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On-boarding Services for International Graduates
If your Alma mater admits graduates from other countries that have never lived in your country for long, you can start an on-boarding service for international graduates. Such students find the campus environment overwhelming, and they may have a hard time blending with the new system.
If you are compassionate, and you enjoy meeting new people, you can set up a hospitality or familiarization program for international graduates. You can either collaborate with the office of graduates’ affairs in your school or run your business independently.
If you have a knack for creative design and you are very good at it, you can start a graphics design business. You can offer your services to those who want to beautify their research and reports as well as their presentations. You can also make additional income by designing banners for events and occasions in your area and by designing creating greeting cards for birthdays and holidays.
Do you really have what it takes to work as a professional graphic designer? You need to give yourself a satisfactory answer to this question before going on with your plan to start a graphic design business.
If you are very good with words, then you can start a freelance writing service. This would involve handling writing assignments for clients — not students, because this is unethical and against the rules in virtually all schools and colleges.
You can hook up with clients over the internet by registering an account with freelance outsourcing sites. Yes! You can now earn a full time income by working part time as a writer on the internet. Gone are the days when writers are paid peanuts.
A few years ago, a 16 year old boy with a passion for writing took to the computer; in a cyber café to put his writing skills to use.
As years go by, the world became more fast paced and hectic. Therefore, dog owners who once showered their pets with as much care as they possibly can, have found themselves spending more time on their office desks than in the sidewalks walking their dogs. Luckily for them, creative entrepreneurs have provided a solution and that solution is: “Dog walking services.”
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Hair Styling Service
You can start rendering your services as a hair stylist or professional barber. Everyone loves to look good, and good hair care is one of those factors that improve one’s overall appearance. So, you will make a lot of cash off your neighbour by starting this business.
A hair salon business is just one of the sub sectors of the fashion industry and also the beauty care industry. Now it is a known fact that fashion is never static, it is an ever changing industry. When it comes to fashion or hair and beauty, trend is the name of the game.
Working class mums always need babysitters to take care of their children while they work or attend to their businesses. You can cash in on this opportunity by becoming a baby sitter and earning extra income to support yourself after graduating.
Babysitting is simply the act of taking care of someone else child or children in the absence of parents or guardians. When you engage in this act for a fee, it becomes a business; and that’s where the concept of the babysitting business was formed, taking care of other people’s children for a fee.
There are series of campus events from student parties to award nights, matriculations and convocations. You can offer your services and help in planning such events and get paid for it.
Although starting up might be challenging as you will need to be able to convince sponsors that you can handle the job perfectly. You can offer to do the first few jobs for free and start charging when you have proven yourself to be an excellent event planner.
As a graduate, you can also make money from cleaning other people’s homes or offices. Most people are often too busy to clean their homes or offices themselves so they simply outsource these services to other people. You can take out few hours daily from studying and get cleaning jobs to help you earn extra income.
If the office was left dirty because no one has the time to clean, would that not be a way of driving the customers away since no one likes to visit a dirty place? This is why a cleaner is needed in almost every commercial establishment. Companies are always willing to outsource the cleaning of their offices so that it can be professionally done, and the staff can concentrate on their jobs.
Our society has made keeping fit a necessity and many people are looking for ways to keep fit daily. Not many people have the time to visit a gymnasium and would gladly pay for a personal fitness instructor to come into their homes and train them instead. If you are someone who is passionate about sports, you can become a fitness trainer and earn decent income from it.
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Pet Grooming
Everyone loves a clean and nice smelling pet but most people either do not know how to groom their pets or simply do not like doing these themselves. You can become a pet groomer and make extra income from it. You will be required to bathe the pets, trim their hair and sometimes take them out for fresh air and exercise.
Fitness is different things to different people. It means looking good to many, staying fit to others, being healthy and also being mentally agile. It also means being tough with a high level of tenacity. A good shape, muscle tone and flexibility are benefits of regular attendance of fitness classes.
Most people are ignorant of the fact that their camera serve as a source of extra income. With a little imagination, a flair for showmanship, and the hustling spirit of an entrepreneur; an average man or woman or even teenager can easily make an extra $300 weekly with his camera.
You can become a professional photographer and make money shooting pictures at weddings, parties, events or as a freelance. You don’t need to have one of the popular, more expensive cameras or a lot of high priced attachments and equipment. In fact, a Polaroid or other “off the shelf” camera will suit the purpose perfectly.
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Master of Ceremonies (MC)
You can also become an MC and anchor campus and off-campus events and parties. There are lots of people who are in this line of business and are doing pretty well. If you think this is a kind of business that you will want to do, then you may want to consider doing your own underground research to be sure that this is exactly what you want to do.
As a graduate, you can make money as a part-time chef or by making pre-packaged meals and selling them to people. Food is one thing that will never cease to be in demand as long as life is in existence. What this means in essence is that food is needed at every point in time or country and food cart is one of the easiest way to make food readily available.
It is also one of the affordable ways to enter into the food business. One of the greatest advantages of this business is that it is mobile and you tend to sell faster because you are taking the food right to the door step of your customers.
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Sewing
You can make good money from helping graduates mend their clothes. This is a skill that everyone should have. If you do not have plans or the time to go to a physical sewing school, then you can look at doing some online courses that will help you a great deal.
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Dance and Music Classes
If you are really good at dancing or play any musical instrument well, you can become a music or dance instructor. Entrepreneurs who have built their businesses around the entertainment industry can attest to the fact that the industry is indeed a booming industry and it has the potentials to transcend the country where the business is established.
Little wonder entertainment TV shows, the Grammy Award, Most Beautiful Girl in The World – Beauty Pageant, amongst others, can be widely watched all over the globe just like the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games.
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Gardening
Do you love gardening, trimming lawns and beautifying homes? A lot of people wouldn’t mind paying you to help them keep their homes and gardens beautiful.
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Start Selling E-books
As a fresh graduate, there will be topics you are passionate about and you can make money by writing e-books about them and selling them on the internet.
Writing books would not cost you money but a little bit of your time and energy and this can easily be done alongside studying. When writing your e-book, you must make sure you research hot keywords in that niche and use them so that people can locate your e-book easily through search engines.
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Start Building Mobile Applications
Mobile Apps are hot right now and many businesses and individuals are hiring people to build mobile applications for them. Do you have programming skills? Then you can also make money as a graduate by building mobile apps and publishing them.
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Start Blogging
You can create a blog on blogger.com or WordPress and start writing about topics you are passionate about. All you need to start this is your computer and internet connection. If you write well and you gain much blog traffic, you can make money from Google AdSense or other third party advertising agents.
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Consider Affiliate Marketing
What an affiliate marketer does is to help promote products and services of other companies and earn commission from sales made. You will need a good knowledge of web marketing, sales copywriting and pay per click marketing to become an affiliate marketer.
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Ghost Writing
You can provide ghostwriting services to people who need it and get paid for it. The first business you can start as a writer is a freelance writing business; also known as ghost writing. Now there are wealthy individuals and corporate leaders who have ideas and experiences they would like to document and publish as a book; but they can’t seem to find time to sit and write.
A lot of busy professionals would not mind getting extra help in reading their e-mails, responding to enquiries and organizing meetings and tasks for them without having to hire a secretary or personal assistant. Many people prefer to hire a virtual assistant who would work from home.
You can become a virtual assistant and offer such services as long as you have a computer and an excellent internet connection. In order to save the cost of hiring in-house employees to handle secretarial and clerical tasks, many professionals and businesses now resort to hiring virtual assistants on a contract basis.
If you are very good with words and information presentation, you can help people write their resume in ways that would attract employers and get paid for it. If you have good writing skills, then i want you to know that writing articles online is not the only way you can make money.
You also don’t need to be a highly paid freelance writer for magazines or newspapers to earn a living. You can simply start a resume writing service from home and make a lot of money monthly. Now for those who don’t know what a resume is, a Resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV) is a piece of document that highlights in a comprehensible manner a person’s qualification, background and possessed skills.
If you are really good with accounting, you can become a bookkeeper and offer bookkeeping services to business and individuals online. Bookkeeping involves keeping records of financial transactions, analyzing those records and interpreting them to your clients.
Bookkeeping is very important because it helps people keep record of their financial transactions and make appropriate tax returns. Financial records may be used by business owners to make decisions, the government use it for evaluating tax payments and potential investors or lenders use it to make critical decisions.
As a graduate, you can go into website designing and get paid for it. You can also buy websites that are undeveloped, develop them and then sell them for a fee.
The awareness is increasing globally about the effectiveness of the internet as a tool for business growth and lead generation. And with this trend comes an escalating demand for all professionals who work to help individuals and businesses establish an online presence—especially web designers.
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Do Search Engine Optimization Jobs
Companies and business owners are always looking for ways to place their businesses at the top of search engines such as Google and Bing. You can make money by helping companies improve web page ranking. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the most widely adopted online marketing strategy by individuals and businesses.
This is because SEO attracts highly targeted search engine traffic on a consistent basis, and it guarantees long-term results. Due to the effectiveness of SEO as a tool for attracting prospects; most small, medium and big businesses are now dedicating a significant fraction of their budget to this online marketing strategy.
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Provide Language Translation and Transcription Services
As a graduate, you can offer language translation services. If you are very good in a second language, you can help people translate documents from that language to English or vice versa. There are also lots of opportunities for transcription services on the internet. Transcription entails converting recorded speech to written text.
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Start Organizing Webinars
You can organize seminars online known as webinars and share your ideas on a certain topic that people would be interested in while you charge attendance fees.
A lot of people are looking for ways to eat healthy so as to prevent diseases in future and a lot of people are also looking for diet plans for weight loss online. You can make money by selling weight loss meal plans or nutritional guides to people online.
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Become a Ticketing Agent
As a graduate, you can make money from selling air travel tickets to people who need it on the internet. If you are looking to make some extra income by the side, then you can start buying and selling concert tickets. This is known as ticket reselling or ticket brokerage.
Ticket brokerage is a fun way to make cool bucks, and it’s so easy, anyone can take a plunge and start making huge profits within a few weeks.
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Become an Online Tutor
If you are smart and very good academically and wouldn’t mind imparting knowledge in others, you can make money by becoming an online tutor. There are websites that offer such services and you can sign up to become one of their tutors or you can create your own website and start helping graduates get better at their academics.
To start a tutoring business, one prerequisite you must possess is passion. You must love teaching because if you don’t, you will see tutoring as a stressful and difficult task.
If you are very good with graphics, you can make money by becoming a graphic designer. There are websites where you can offer your services and get paid for it. Such websites include Freelancer, Odesk etc.
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Start a Property Finding Service
You can offer property finding services to people searching for accommodation or even to non-graduates. You will need to go around and search for vacant houses and list them on your website so that people who need such accommodation can contact you.
However, you will need to create awareness for your website by printing flyers and telling as many people as you can. Since most Americans dream of owning their own home, and 82% of all properties are sold through real estate agents and brokers, there are lots of opportunities waiting for you to cash into.
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Establish Online Directories
You can also create online directories and charge companies for listing their businesses. For more details on how you can do this effectively, you can undertake some good and thorough research on the internet.
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Engage in Online Surveys
There are lots of opportunities to make money from filling out online survey. Simply register on a legitimate paid survey site and get paid when you answer survey questions. Getting paid for taking surveys is one of the coolest ways you can make money online.
Although it won’t make you rich, taking online surveys can fetch you some extra cash to take care of some monthly bills. All you need to get started with taking paid surveys is your PC and a reliable internet connection. Survey sites don’t charge members for signup fees (except they are scams), and so you don’t need to pay any fees before you can start.
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Online Reputation Management (ORM)
A company’s reputation translates to sales most of the time, which is why companies pay people to manage their product and brand reputation online. A man without a goal is a man without direction.
The reason why so many people are where they are today is because they have failed to put their goals on paper. Like my pastor always say: “the shortest pen is longer than the longest memory.”If you are planning to launch an online reputation service from home, then map out your goals.
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Buying and selling stuff online
Buying and selling online has become one of the big money-earners in the digital age. The challenge comes in offering something unique or which stands out from other product offerings in the marketplace.
Cute and unique gift items presented in a website can sell like hotcakes especially during seasons like Christmas and Valentine. Reasonably priced cupcakes with creative designs can likewise capture the attention of pastry lovers or food gift buyers browsing the web.
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Game testing
Computer enthusiasts who use the Internet for research, emailing, and playing online games may find huge appeal in taking part in a business like testing new games and providing feedback on the games.
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Personalized messages
Making personalized invitations for occasions like baptisms, bachelorette parties, birthdays and special events may also turn out to be a money earner for graduates.
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Information Website
Graduates can also usually find making websites, writing and posting blogs about places they have been to or products they have tried a good way to earn money. It does not take a genius to try out and succeed in these unique business ideas for graduates.
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DJ and Song Mixing
Other creative ways for college graduates to make money and enjoy themselves in the process; depending on their hobbies and interests are arranging/mixing songs (which require initial investment on equipment); offering photography services with background design and CDs; and making beaded jewellery.
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Kids goodies
Indeed, graduates have many ideas on cool stuff they can sell that other kids would love to purchase. For some graduates who know where to source goods like slippers/sandals with a design twist, cute kiddie costumes or teen apparel.
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Online Product Consulting
Graduates can also choose among the reputable affiliate marketing programs online that sell products; then they can allot time to learn details about products the affiliate companies sell, like jewellery, supplements, apparel, gadgets, home wares.
Another business idea for graduates is using a leading e-commerce site to sell goods. What young enterprising individuals need to do is simply take good photos of the products they intend to sell and post these online, along with a concise product description so that potential buyers can bid on them.
Careful judgment must be used though, when dealing with online customers as there are individuals who are not really serious about buying but keep bidding.
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Start a legal transcription service
To become a legal transcription expert, you will need the same equipment as a medical transcriptionist, but you will have to swap those medical books and dictionaries for legal ones.
In conclusion, I want you to know that some unique small business ideas for graduates may be inspired by existing products in the marketplace. Take for instance milk teas, which now come in various delicious flavours and are snapped up by beverage loving customers.
Most small business ideas that start out small end up churning out huge profits, and the best thing about such businesses is that youngsters can manage them from the comforts of their homes or neighbourhood.