Let’s be real, none of us get into GTA Online wanting to be a broke street criminal robbing prostitutes to pay for bullets. Well, most of us don’t anyway. So you’re pretty quickly going to start looking for ways to make enough money for that flying car or high-class yacht, and the best way to do that, without a doubt, is businesses. Keep reading, and we will walk through the top five businesses available in GTA V, and go through their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Air Freight
Not the easiest or most profitable business, but the sky's the limit (I’ll see myself out)
What’s It Going To Cost You?
The cheapest hanger available is for $1,200,000 at LSIA
The other 4 hangers (one more at LSIA and three at Fort Zancudo range from $1,052,000 and $3,250,000
It’s worth noting that aside from location, there is little to no difference between the hangers. Though the ones in Zancudo do put you closer to a lot of the missions as well as allowing you to enter the fort without acquiring a wanted level.
If you upgrade any of them with a workshop ($1,150,000) you can customize your aircraft in a similar fashion to how you can customize your cars normally.
Adding a Living Quarters ($235,000/$375,000 depending on the style you choose) you can choose to spawn at your hanger for faster access to your business and aircraft.
What’s There To Love?
The best part of this business is that it’s not something you have to go out of your way to start. Buying a hanger gives you all the benefits of a hanger, and you get the business as a bonus.
Great if you are a bigger fan of flying than driving.
Doing Air Freight missions gradually unlocks discounts on various aircraft.
You can make a reasonable amount of money if you are willing to put in the time to do the missions and build up your stock.
How Much Can You Make?
Roughly $150,000 per hour with bonuses for selling larger amounts of cargo and different types of cargo.
4. Night Club
Passive income with a soundtrack.
What’s It Going To Cost You?
To start you are of course going to have to purchase a nightclub, these range from $1,080,000 to $1,700,000
There is a slew of upgrades you can purchase for your club. Most of these upgrades are merely cosmetic, changing how your club looks and feels, though one thing you will want to pay attention to is the ability to upgrade the storage space in the club.
You can add up to three floors to both your storage and your garage which will cost you up to $1,702,550 and $441,350 respectively On top of these club focused upgrades, there’s also three upgrades you can make to the more illegal business side of your club that are fairly similar to those you can make to biker businesses and bunkers. You can upgrade the equipment ($1,425,000) which will speed up how fast you can generate products to sell, a staff upgrade ($475,000) which will help keep your club’s popularity rating high for longer, and finally, a security upgrade ($695,000) which will lower the chances of your nightclub being attacked by enemies.
You will also want to hire techs, as you need one for each business you want to link to the nightclub and only the first one comes free. After that it costs you $141,000, $184,000, $240,000, and $312,000 respectively for each new tech.
What’s There To Love?
The club generates passive income, which means it will keep building up profits for you even whilst you are doing other things. This makes it play well with other more hands-on businesses like import/export
It’s great from a roleplaying perspective, as you get a large glamorous location that you get to be in charge of and walk around feeling important.
It gathers goods from biker businesses that you own, without reducing the stock of those businesses. This allows you to effectively benefit twice from the businesses you own.
Who hasn’t fantasized about owning a nightclub at least once?
How Much Can You Make?
The Nightclub itself will earn $10,000 every in-game day provided you keep its popularity between 100% and 95% via nightclub missions.
As for selling goods produced by your businesses, the returns depend on how many of said businesses you own. You can have up to five businesses linked to the nightclub at a time.
The payouts very depending on what businesses you own, but you can earn between $1000 and $20,000 per crate of goods.
3. Biker Businesses
Living out your digital mid-life crisis has never been so much fun.
What's It Going To Cost You?
To start buying biker businesses you will have to first buy a biker clubhouse to start your gang.
Clubhouses are scattered all over the map, and each offers different advantages and disadvantages based on where it is in relation to the businesses you are going to end up buying.
Clubhouses range from $200,000 to $495,000 making them some of the cheapest business-related properties you can purchase.
Each clubhouse can be upgraded with various cosmetic upgrades inside, as well as gun lockers ($320,000) and a custom bike shop ($530,000).
Once you have a clubhouse, you can start looking at purchasing businesses. There are five types of business you can purchase: Document Forgery, Cash Counterfeiting, Weed Farming, Meth Labs, and Cocaine. These all very in price, with the cheapest being a document forgery in grapeseed for ($650,000) and the most expensive being a Cocaine Lockup Los Santos ($1,852,000)
Each of these businesses has three available upgrades: Equipment (to speed up production, raise value and make supplies last longer), Staff (speed up production, and raise value), and Security (reduces the likely hood of being raided) These very in cost based on the business you chose, generally costing more on businesses that are more valuable.
What's There To Love?
Biker Businesses are great because when you have a few fully upgraded and producing product constantly, you have a reasonably solid stream of goods to sell.
When paired with a Nightclub, they effectively produce double the goods as the goods that accumulate at the Nightclub do not count against the goods accumulating at the business itself.
They give you an interesting variety of missions tailored specifically to each business type.
How Much Can You Make?
Biker Businesses are a numbers game; the more you own and the more time and money you invest into them, the more profits you are going to see.
Each of the business types produces different levels of profits, with Document Forgery being the weakest ($36,000 for a full supply), and Cocaine ($232,500 for a full supply).
In order of profitability they are Documents, Weed, Cash, Meth, and Cocaine. However if you set up a Cocaine and Meth business with a little time you should be able to be pulling in about $60,000 an hour give or take.
2. Import/export
As simple as it gets; steal stuff and then sell that stuff.
What's It Going To Cost You?
To participate in the Import/Export business, you will need either a special cargo warehouse, or a vehicle warehouse; or both of course.
Special cargo is more difficult and will make you less cash overall, but it is also cheaper to operate. The special supply warehouses range from:
$250,000 to $400,00 for a small warehouse (capable of holding up to 16 crates of special cargo)
$880, 000 to 1,017,000 for a medium warehouse (capable of holding up to 42 crates of special cargo)
$1,900,000 to $3,500,000 for a large warehouse (capable of holding up to 111 crates of special cargo)
Cargo costs: $2,000 for 1 crate, $8,000 for 2, or $18,000 for 3.
The Vehicle Cargo missions are simpler and allow you to earn money much faster, however the startup costs are definitely higher. Vehicle warehouses:
Range from $1,500,000 to $2, 850, 000 with the different warehouses only differing in location, they all have the same size (40 vehicles)
What’s There To Love?
There’s a lot to love about the Import/Export business.
It has the highest earning potential of any business per hour.
It can be played solo or with friends, though it’s overall more profitable to play with friends.
All the available garages and warehouses are in Los Santos, so you won’t have to be making many long-distance trips with this business.
How Much Can You Make?
For Special Cargo, you’ll make about $2,220,000 for a full large warehouse (111 crates), $735,000 for a full medium (42 crates), and $240,000 for a full small warehouse (16 crates) not accounting for bonuses and special events.
Between $15,00 and $80,000 per car in vehicle exporting, with bonuses for completing and selling specific sets of cars.
1. Bunker
Do you want to make a lot of money from your underground evil lair? Well, you are going to love gunrunning in GTA Online.
What’s It Going To Cost You?
Purchasing a Bunker is going to cost you between $1,165,000 and $4,070,000
Some cosmetic upgrades can be purchased for the interior, but in terms of functional upgrades there are a few as well.
You can purchase a living quarters, allowing you to spawn at your bunker ($265,000), as well as a weapons locker ($175,000) and a shooting range. ($740,000 for Black, $845,000 for White)
You can also purchase three upgrades that will make your life easier for accumulating product to sell: an Equipment upgrade (Increase production/research speed, stretch resources longer, and increase value of stock), a Staff upgrade, (Increase production/research speed and raises value of stock), and a Security upgrade (Reduces the chance of having supplies stolen)
What’s To Love About It?
It can generate a lot of money if you fill your warehouses
You get an underground bunker and that’s seriously cool
Entering your bunker immediately loses the cops, so it’s a handy getaway route if you are on the run
The Bunker allows you to customize certain vehicles with weapons and upgrades.
If you use the bunker for research instead or as well as production, you unlock upgrades for weapons and vehicles.
How Much Can You Make?
If you steal all the supplies you need instead of purchasing them, you will make a profit of $1,050,000 for selling in Los Santos.
If you would prefer to avoid the resupplying missions and just buy the supplies, you’ll still be making a profit of $675,000.
There are bonuses for working with friends and being in sessions with plenty of other players though.
Fully filling your Bunker with all upgrades will take almost 12 hours though, so pairing gunrunning with something more active like import/export is advisable to maximize your earning potential.
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