The Nightclub is one of the most profitable businesses in GTA Online, but only if you set it up properly. Earning money through the Nightclub is not for beginners as it requires a huge investment. But if you do it right, you will be set for the rest of your GTA Online journey. 

Setting up the Nightclub can be complicated and expensive. But as a result of your initial work, you can create an extremely profitable source of passive income. The Nightclub is considered one of the best, if not THE BEST, passive sources of income in GTA Online.

In this guide, we walk you through how to set up your Nightclub to earn millions passively. We highly recommend unlocking and running the Cayo Perico heist before you start this process, as you will need a lot of money to fund your Nightclub business setup.

The Nightclub

First, you need to purchase a Nightclub. You can find several Nightclub locations by visiting the Foreclosures Maze Bank site. The best location to purchase a Nightclub is in Vinewood. The ones in Vinewood are quite expensive but are the best locations since they are close to the highway, which you will use a lot to complete your sell missions.

The Downtown Vinewood Nightclub costs $1,670,000 (base price), and the West Vinewood Nightclub costs $1,700,000. If driving a bit further to the north isn't too much of an issue, you may choose a cheaper option on the southern end of the map. The cheapest Nightclub you can find is on the Elysian Islands, which costs $1,080,000 (base price).

Upgrades

Nightclub upgrades are purely cosmetic, except for the Storage category. In the Storage category, you can upgrade both Storage Space and Garage Space. It will cost you an extra $1,702,250 to fully upgrade your storage space and $441,250 for extra garage space, totaling up to $2,143,900 on top of the base price of the Nightclub. This is why the Nightclub is one of the most expensive businesses to set up.

The rest of the upgrades are cosmetics. You don't need to worry about those. You also don't have to spend all your money at once trying to upgrade the storage and garage space. You can do it periodically as you earn more money.

These upgrades are important as they will allow your Nightclub warehouse to hold more products to sell, so you can make more money. If you do not upgrade your storage space, you will be restricted to a small amount which is a waste considering how much time it takes to set up this business. We need to aim for the highest possible profit.

Setup Missions

Once you've purchased the Nightclub, you must complete some setup missions to make it functional. Three setup missions include picking up three staff members (Bartender, Bouncer, and Technician), equipment, and the resident DJ.

After that, you are ready to head to your Nightclub office, access the computer to set up the real business, and let it make money for you passively.

Making Money

You can make money using your Nightclub in two ways, the safe and the warehouse, and both are passive. 

Nightclub Safe

The first source of income here is your Nightclub safe. Your safe will periodically fill up with money as you play the game. But there are a few requirements for it to fill. The main requirement for the safe to fill up is you ensuring that your Nightclub's popularity bar is always full.

If your popularity bar is full, you will earn $50,000 every in-game day, which is 48 minutes in real-time. Your safe will be filled with $250,000 after 4 hours in real-time. But you must be in the game for the time to pass.

Popularity

Popularity is an important aspect of your Nightclub as it determines how much money goes into your safe. If you wish to maximize your Safe profits, you must ensure your popularity bar is always 100%. But how do we keep it up?

Promote Club Missions

The first method is to promote your club. Go to your laptop and go to Nightclub Management.

Here you will see a button that reads "Promote Club." When you click on that button, a promotion mission will begin. There are different types of missions, but they are all simple such as dropping flyers, placing posters, collecting clubbers, recovering supplies, etc.

Troublemakers Random Mission

This one is a random event that can occur in your Nightclub. From time to time, Marcel, the head bouncer of your club, will send you a message about a drunk clubber who is causing a stir in the club.

The mission will appear as a blue dot on your mini-map, similar to any other random event. It can occur anywhere in the club. The troublemaker might be found throwing up in the toilet, standing next to the truck in your garage, or lingering near the bar with some drinks.

All you need to do is interact with the blue dot person, and you will get a short cutscene of you and Marcel throwing the troublemaker out of the club.

Not only will it increase your popularity bar, but you will also earn $10,000.

Another variant of the same includes driving VIP clubbers back to their homes. You might occasionally find a blue dot that indicates a VIP member who is passed out. You will need to interact with them, and a mission will begin where you must drive them to their homes to increase the popularity bar.

Booking DJs

The most effective and fastest method to get your popularity bar up to a 100% is by booking resident DJs. You can do this by visiting the 'Resident DJ' tab on your Nightclub computer.

The first time you book a DJ will cost you $100,000, but it will increase your Nightclub popularity bar to 100%. When you book a DJ for the first time, you get a mission where you must collect them and drive them back to your Nightclub.

When you want to rebook an already booked DJ, you only need to spend $10,000 to get that DJ, and you do not need to perform any missions. Every time you rebook a DJ by spending $10,000, you increase 1/10th of your popularity bar. You can use this mechanic to your advantage.

First, ensure that you've already booked at least two DJs. Then cycle between the two by rebooking each of these for $10,000 each rebook to increase your popularity bar to 100% for $100,000. As long as your popularity is 95% and above, you will earn $50,000 every 48 minutes in real-time (or one in-game day).

You might think this is quite expensive, but when you start earning money through your Nightclub passively, you earn more than enough to balance this cost. You are getting $250,000 from your Nightclub safe and millions from the warehouse, our next money-making method revolving around the Nightclub.

Nightclub Warehouse

The underground warehouse is the next and the main source of passive income from the Nightclub. This business is a bit complicated to understand, but once you set it up, you will earn millions passively. This business has several layers to unwrap, so we do not recommend that beginners start the Nightclub warehouse business until they are more experienced.

When you navigate to the 'Warehouse Management' tab on your Nightclub computer, you will see some warehouse technicians that you can hire, as well as different businesses listed below.

You must hire each technician and assign them to these businesses to passively accrue goods for you. Once they've acquired enough goods, you can sell them for millions. Five correspond to MC businesses, one is a Bunker business, and one is related to your CEO Office or Hangar warehouse business.

You need to buy all five technicians, and the cost increases as you buy more. You will spend $878,000 in hiring all five technicians. The costs are as follows:

• Yohan: Free technician with setup
• Technician 2: $141,000
• Technician 3: $184,000
• Technician 4: $240,000
• Technician 5: $312,000

You can hire up to five technicians and assign them to different businesses. There are seven types of businesses, and they are only available if the player owns the corresponding business. The following are the seven types of goods and their corresponding businesses.

• Cargo and Shipments (Hangar or CEO Office)
• Sporting Goods (Bunker)
• South American Imports (Cocaine Lockup)
• Pharmaceutical Research (Methamphetamine Lab)
• Organic Produce (Weed Farm)
• Printing & Copying (Document Forgery Office)
• Cash Creation (Counterfeit Cash Factory)

Businesses to purchase

You don't have to purchase all the businesses. You only need to select the ones that profit the most per hour. First, we will take one of the businesses as an example and show you how to set it up. Let's take the Weed Farm business as an example (do not buy it, though, it is not one of the most profitable businesses in this list).

For the MC businesses, you must have a clubhouse. You cannot purchase all the MC businesses without a clubhouse. It serves as the central hub for all your MC businesses. To learn more about purchasing the clubhouse, check out our Bikers MC guides.

Once you've purchased the clubhouse and have it set up. You can buy MC businesses by browsing them using the laptop inside the clubhouse. You do not have to buy the most expensive ones, but purchasing the ones in the city will make it much more convenient. However, buy the cheapest ones available if you're low on cash. You need them to be active, which is done by purchasing a business and setting it up.

Once you've purchased your business (the Weed Farm, in this example), go to the location, which will appear on your map. When you get to the location, access the laptop inside to start a setup mission. You can see the status of your business reading 'Inactive' before you do the setup mission. Once completed, it will change to 'Active,' what we're looking for.

The setup missions are extremely easy and usually include going to a location and returning a certain item. When you return the item for the first time, your business will automatically be supplied, and the supply levels bar will be filled.

Now, if you want to, you can stop here. However, you can purchase some upgrades if you wish to increase your passive income profit further. You do not have to buy the upgrades immediately, but, long-term, we recommend that you buy these upgrades.

The two main upgrades that you should purchase are the Equipment Upgrade and the Staff Upgrade. You can purchase the Security Upgrade with extra cash, but you don't need to prioritize it over the previous two.

The other two businesses that you must purchase are not part of the MC clubhouse. The next business is the underground Bunker business which you can buy through the Maze Bank Foreclosures website. Learn more about the Bunkers by checking out our guide on the Gunrunning business. The main thing about all the business setups remains the same: you just need set them up and ensure they are active.

You need to purchase the following MC Businesses:

• Cocaine Lockup for South American Imports
• Methamphetamine Lab for Pharmaceutical Research
• Counterfeit Cash Factory for Cash Creation

For the Bunker, ensure you assign your staff members to 'Manufacturing' and not 'Research.' The 'Research' will not earn you any money. You can also purchase the staff and equipment upgrades for the Bunker down the line. But it is not necessary right now. Also, make sure you have supplies in your Bunker.

Finally, for the Cargo & Shipment category, you can purchase either the CEO office or the Hangar. I recommend going with the Hangar as not only will it allow you to accrue materials passively through the nightclub, but it will also give you a place to store your air vehicles. What's more, a Hangar business is now also considered one of the best money-making methods in GTA Online.

So, in summary, you need to setup the following five businesses:

• Cocaine Lockup for South American Imports (MC)
• Methamphetamine Lab for Pharmaceutical Research (MC)
• Counterfeit Cash Factory for Cash Creation (MC)
• Hangar for Cargo & Shipments
• Bunker for Sporting Goods

Now, we are finally ready to head back to our nightclub and assign our technicians to these businesses to make passive income.

Nightclub Warehouse Setup

Return to your Nightclub and access your 'Warehouse Management' tab by going to your laptop.

From here, click on the technician and then click on Cargo & Shipments to assign that technician to that business. Repeat the same with the other technicians and assign them to the rest of the businesses.

Once done, you are now ready to earn money passively. All you need to do is wait. Do other things in GTA Online while these technicians work hard for you.

You can occasionally come back to see how well they're doing, how many goods are already acquired, and what you can sell them for.

Warehouse Upgrades

You need to purchase equipment and staff upgrades as you start to earn more money, as it will help improve the quality of your product, doubling your profits. Equipment and staff upgrades are the standard upgrades you should strive to get for all your businesses in general.

Selling

You can sell your goods when you have enough goods or a filled warehouse. You have the option to sell individual types of goods or all goods. You should always sell 'All Goods' as it is the most profitable and solo-player friendly.

When you sell all goods, you are emptying out your complete warehouse and will be driving a single vehicle to several different sell locations. You can get anywhere between five to ten drop-off points and will have more than enough time to sell everything.

The game mechanic is similar to the land sell missions we've got in the Hangar business, where you only get one vehicle with several drop-off points near each other.

Selling More

If you want to sell more goods at once, to get more money and save time, you can purchase a Pounder Custom from Warstock Cache & Carry for $320,530 or a trade price of $241,000. Do not buy the Mule custom, as it only allows for delivering medium-sized crates, thereby limiting the number of goods you can sell at once. It will still let you sell more than your default Speedo custom, but not more than the Pounder custom.

When you purchase the vehicle for the first time, it automatically goes to your Nightclub Basement 1. Basement 1 stores all your delivery vehicles. Ensure you've entered the basement at least once so you can order your vehicle from the basement via your Mechanic. When you enter for the first time, you will see a short cutscene explaining everything about the underground warehouse. The basement will remain locked for you until you've entered it once.

This will allow you to sell more goods at once and earn millions instead of just thousands. You can also modify your vehicle for more security. You can upgrade the transmission and engine to get more speed when selling.

Profits & Production Rates

Since these goods are accrued passively by your assigned technicians, let's discuss how much you can make and how long it will take to acquire the goods when the warehouse is fully upgraded.

The following table shows all the data assuming you have a fully upgraded warehouse. This will give you a better idea about what goods are worth selling.

As you can see, the most profitable goods per hour are Pharmaceutical Research, South American Imports and Cash Creation. You should focus on acquiring these three businesses first, followed by Cargo & Shipments and Sporting Goods.

If you wait for all 360 units to fill up, you are looking at $1,931,000 worth of goods sitting in your warehouse. If you sell all goods, you earn $1,737,900, since Tony takes %10% of the cut.

Optimal Selling Strategy

The most optimal way to maximize your profits from the Nightclub is by waiting for 20 hours until your Pharmaceutical, South American Imports, and Cash Creation goods are completely filled. By selling goods just from these three categories alone, you can make over $688,500.

If you repeat the process and wait for another 20 hours, you can sell another batch for the same amount, effectively doubling your profit to $1,377,000, instead of waiting for other goods to fill completely. You will earn nearly $1.2 million every 40 hours. Keep in mind that Cargo & Shipment alone takes 58 hours and 20 minutes to fill up.

It's important to remember that no matter how much you sell, Tony will always take 10% of your earnings. So, if you were to sell $1,377,000 worth of goods, you would keep $1,239,000.

This approach represents an optimal way to actively make money from the Nightclub. For a more hands-off approach, you can allow your warehouse to fill up over time until you reach the maximum crate limit of 360 units while engaging in other activities.

Frequently Asked Questions