GTA Online Nightclub Guide: How to Make Money (After Hours DLC)

Image: Rockstar Games

Human Made

My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.

Reviewed by Ashley Johnson

In this GTA Online Nightclub guide, we’ll be giving you a crash course in how to make money with your own personal dance club. Nightclubs in GTA Online are part of the After Hours DLC released in 2018. We will be covering everything from how to get started, where to customize your nightclub, and what upgrades to purchase.

For our top recommendations for ways to make money in GTA Online, check out our top 7 list here.

Strap yourself in, because we’ve got a lot to cover.

Getting Started with Nightclubs: Locations and Setup Missions

So you’ve made a name for yourself in Los Santos. You’ve smuggled illegal cargo, stolen hundreds of high-end cars, and even laid the foundations for your very own drug empire. Now it’s time to bring it all together and create the hottest underground nightclub that San Andres has ever seen! But how can a hardened criminal like you ever hope to make it big in the world of underground dance clubs?

Luckily for you, there’s a new kid in town in After Hours DLC, and his name is Tony Prince (a character making a return from GTA 4). Tony has a new business opportunity available to anyone with the funds and the guns to make it happen… And there’s no one else in Los Santos better suited for it then you.

To begin, you’ll need to head on over to Maze Bank Foreclosures. This is the in-game website that you can access from your phone. One you start it up, make your way to the “Nightclub” section and go over your options. There is a total of ten different locations available to you, and their prices will start at $1,080,000. The most popular locations include Del Perro, Strawberry, and Downtown Vinewood. What’s the best GTA Online Nightclub location? They are all serviceable locations, so just pick one you fancy. Personally, I went with Downtown Vinewood, as it’s closest to my apartment and some of my other businesses.

Once you make your investment, you’ll receive a phone call from the legend himself, Gay Tony. After he fills you in on the details, you’ll be able to head on over to your nightclub. Watch the introductory cutscene, where you’ll learn a bit about Gay Tony and his associates. Now head on upstairs into your office and access the desktop computer to get started on the setup missions.

The setup missions are fairly straightforward and won’t take up much of your time. You will need to pickup a bartender, and Gay Tony knows just the one for the job. He also has a lead on a nearby festival, where you can “borrow” some much-needed sound equipment. Lastly and most importantly, you’ll be tasked with driving to LSIA to taxi your first set of DJs over to your nightclub. All in a day’s work for your average criminal entrepreneur.

Nightclub DJs, Customization, & Interior Decoration

Now we get to the fun part. Although you already have one set of DJs, there are three more to choose from, each costing a measly $100,000. Thankfully, after you’ve purchased one for the first time, rehiring them will only cost $10,000. They don’t offer any real differences aside from their music selection, so just choose whomever you think sounds the best.

Customization has always been a big part of GTA Online, and your nightclub is no different. You can choose your club’s name, select the light setup, hire some dancers, and even purchase a smoke rig! Personally, I decided to name my nightclub “Galaxy” and go with a blue color scheme and the cathedral style light rig, which gave the interior an atmospheric space vibe. Another popular combination is the purple regal style and the dazzle light rig. It is the most expensive option, but if you want your nightclub to feel like a luxury palace, it’s what you’ll want to go with.

There isn’t as much customization with nightclubs compared to other businesses in GTA Online, so you’ll need to make the most of what you have. When you’re done customizing the aesthetics of your nightclub, you can lay down some cash for more practical upgrades. One of the most useful ones is to expand your private garage, which will allow you to store a maximum of forty cars at once!

There’s many options to choose from, and when combined together, you can create a nightclub that’s entirely unique to you! A lot of these interior decoration options are cosmetic only and it won’t impact stats, popularity, or earnings rate. Starting out, it won’t matter much which DJ you choose, so again have fun and pick out your favorite music. Once everything is finished, you can now start focusing on making the big bucks!

Nightclub Popularity

You invested your millions in creating the newest and hottest underground dance club Los Santos has to offer. Now its time to open your doors and start raking in the dough. See that little purple bar in the bottom right corner of your screen when you walk into your club? That’s the popularity meter, and the higher it goes, the more patrons will be visiting your club.

Anytime you bring in a new DJ to your club, the popularity bar will automatically reach its maximum level. If you don’t feel like dropping $100k every time it gets too low, you can always start a popularity mission using your office computer. These missions will have you doing everything from picking up and delivering a truckload of champagne, to raining down hundreds of posters from the sky!

Nightclub Popularity — Image: Rockstar Games via HGG

Making cash through popularity isn’t the best way to get money. It is, however, almost completely passive and makes a good side gig. Your earnings will pile up inside a wall safe, which can hold a maximum of $70,000 at once. Just walk up to the wall located behind your computer and press the button prompt to collect it once it’s full. Players have reported making anywhere from $100 to $10,000 dollars a day, depending on their level of popularity. So don’t forget to do those popularity missions often!

Accumulating Product with the Nightclub Warehouse

Of course, if you want to make big bucks, the best thing you can do is use the nightclub to accumulate product from your other businesses. The nightclub warehouse in GTA Online is what sets it apart from your other properties. Not only can you make passive income selling booze and a night on the town, you can also hire special technicians to make money from your already existing operations! Unlike the legitimate part of your nightclub, which will make you anywhere from $100 to $10,000 dollars a day, players who accumulate product can make that real good GTA Online Nightclub money. We’re talking millions of dollars from just one sale!

All you’ll need to do to get things going is use your desktop computer and select the “Warehouse Management” tab. Here you can assign a maximum of five technicians to any of your pre-existing businesses. The first technician is free, and the second one will set you up for $141,000. Just keep in mind that as you hire more technicians, their cost will consistently increase, reaching a peak of $312,000. Now that they are assigned, they will slowly accumulate more and more product for you, and when the time is right, Tony will call you to inform you that the warehouse is full and needs to be sold.

In practical terms, “accumulating product” just means that technicians will generate product for you to sell at a later date. Assigning a technician to one of your other businesses will not take away any product from or revenue from them. At the end of the day, you’ll still be making just as much as you did before when you sell from all of your other properties.

If you’re feeling impatient, then you can participate in business battles — random events that pop up overtime on the map — to manually bring in large amounts of product at once. These missions are generally very fun to do, and they allow you to get in on some PvE with other players!

Nightclub Sale Missions

After waiting a few in-game hours, you should have enough product stalked up to make your first sale mission. The neat thing about nightclub sale missions is that you have a little more agency in how you make your deliveries. The missions are more or less the same, but you can customize and armor up the nightclub vehicles you will be delivering with! Getting better armor and attaching some weapons will be your first priority. You can start upgrading them just by walking into your club’s garage, entering the vehicle, and selecting the option to start customizing.

Your first delivery vehicle will come with your nightclub, and will allow you to deliver a small amount of product. This vehicle can’t hold much product at once, and it’s very slow compared to some of the other vehicles in the game. It’s important that you buy a larger and faster delivery vehicle as soon as possible. Be sure to jump to the website Warstock Cache & Carry to purchase the Mule Custom for $95,760 when you get the chance. Later, you can purchase an even larger vehicle, the Pounder Custom, for $320,530.

Another thing to keep in mind is that other players are rewarded for destroying your cargo. This is why it’s important to upgrade your delivery vehicles as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can counter these griefers by exiting the game or finding a new session. This will remove a small portion of your product, but since the alternative is losing all your cargo, the choice is obvious. If you are playing on PC, you can go into task manager, performance, and select open resource manager. From here, you can select GTA V and press suspend process. After you wait ten to fifteen seconds, simply resume process and you will be the only player in your lobby!

Gay Tony will take a 10% cut of your profits after each sale mission. This is a small price to pay for the thousands of dollars you’ll quickly be making, as players have reported hourly earnings of up to $41,570 an hour! It may take a bit to earn back on your investment, but once you do you’ll have one of the most profitable businesses in all of Los Santos. Just be sure to get all of the right upgrades!

GTA Online Nightclub Income (Fully upgraded nightclub calculations):

Good Type	Max Earnings	Hours to Accumulate	Revenue Per hour
S. American Imports	💰 200,000	20 hours	💰10,000
Cargo & Shipments	💰 500,000	58 hours	💰 8,500
P. Research	💰 170,000	20 hours	💰 8,500
Sporting Goods	💰 500,000	67 hours	💰 7,500
Cash Creation	💰 140,000	20 hours	💰 7,000

Nightclub Upgrades

This wouldn’t be the ultimate GTA Online Nightclub guide if we didn’t tell you what the best and most important upgrades are available to you. Walk to your desktop computer in your office and select the “Upgrades” tab to get started.

The most important nightclub upgrade in GTA Online is the “Equipment” upgrade, which allows your technicians to create product faster. It is the most expensive upgrade, costing you $1,425,000. If you intend to make big money fast, this upgrade is a must have.

The “Security” upgrade is the next one you’ll need to shoot for. When at least 20% of your nightclub is stocked with goods, there is a chance you will be raided. When that happens, you’ll need to drop whatever it is you are doing and put a stop to it. Failing to do so will result in a popularity loss for your club. Thankfully, hiring more security will cut the frequency you’re raided in half. It will set you back $695,000, so be sure to get your wallet ready.

There is also a “Staff” upgrade, which will slow the rate your popularity meter drains by about 50%. This isn’t an essential upgrade, but if keeping your club popular is important to you, and you already have everything else, then go ahead and shell out the extra $475,000.

For this next upgrade, you’ll need to whip out your phone and head back over to Maze Bank Foreclosures. Select your night club again, and you’ll see the option to add more storage, letting you store more accumulated products at once. A fully-packed nightclub will net you over $1,500,000!

Become a High Grounder

And that’s it for our guide on GTA’s Nightclubs. We hope you found some great tips and tricks for managing your new nightclub and racking up some dough. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social for more guides like this.

Happy gaming!