However maximizing profit from the businesses is key to making them a worthwhile pursuit, and there’s a lot of data the game doesn’t tell you upfront. It’s possible that your way of managing your businesses needs a whole lot of streamlining and optimization but you don’t even know it and profits might improve significantly as a result.

A useful chart put together by Reddit user Echobox419 (reproduced below) has reiterated that the Cocaine Lockup is the most profitable business, however some further intricacies of the business mechanic has been revealed as well. Much like in the case of our Vehicle Durability Guide, some of the underlying systems here aren’t apparent to the player.

Before we jump into the hard data, an interesting observation to remember is that the three Biker businesses centered around drugs produce at a misaligned ratio, meaning that a full bar of production doesn’t equal a round number of sellable units. This is why having one completed bar won’t allow you to sell any product with the Cocaine Lockup, for example.

The fractions add up to a whole number at 5 bars in each case, however in between there is always some excess product created, and that excess is wasted whenever you shut down a business. Keep in mind that these numbers come from MC businesses with fully upgraded Equipment and Staff attributes, so un-upgraded businesses may yield varied results.

Cocaine Lockup

Another thing to consider before immediately picking the Cocaine Lockup is your playstyle. Unlike in the case of CEO work, delivering more crates – or product, in this case – won’t give you a bonus on profit. You’ll get the same percentage payout regardless of how many units of product you deliver. If you’re playing solo, dealing with more delivery vehicles can be a pain and you might end up losing a whole lot more than you gain.

Since Cocaine doesn’t produce any sellable units with the first bar, and the second bar sells for less than Meth, Weed and Counterfeit Cash while selling for the equivalent of Documents, it might not be the best choice. It becomes the best paying business from three bars and up, which is also when delivering solo becomes tricky.

A different spreadsheet also exists which has somewhat different numbers, but reaches the same conclusions in terms of which business is the most profitable, leaving Cocaine at the top of the food chain. This other chart comes from Reddit user jc9289 and can be found by clicking here. The main advantage jc9289’s chart has over the one above is that it includes the exact time required to break even with your businesses, and the statistics can be important for solo players.

Counterfeit Cash

After Cocaine, Counterfeit Cash is the second most lucrative business, selling at pretty decent rates even with few bars. As a solo player, a good technique is to deliver fewer units more frequently to keep a high success rate. Delivering a larger haul alone is possible, but it requires skill and above all else, time. In the long run, multiple short deliveries will be quicker than fewer big hauls.

Supplying Your Businesses

You should also balance how you’ll supply your businesses. You might initially think that in the pursuit of more money, stealing the supplies is the best course of action as opposed to buying them, as this will lead to greater profit, however the best hybrid money making method relies on using businesses as a semi-passive source of income alongside Import/Export work.

The key here is that export missions yield greater profits than a business powered by stolen supplies. This means if you save time by buying supplies, and spend the extra time on export missions, you’ll end up with more profit than if you spend extra time on stealing supplies for your business. Of course, this mainly applies to solo players.

Playing With Friends

Things change significantly when playing with friends. Since buying supplies will only allow you to partially fill your bars, a good technique here is to buy as much as you can and then steal the rest for maximum yield. Then, go off and do other activities (Import/Export missions are also more profitable and quicker when done in a group) while the goods get cooked, and then you sell everything off in one go for a huge payout.

Cocaine Is King

The chart created by Echobox419 does all the math for us, and shows that a full set of Cocaine product sells for the best amount both in the case of stolen and bought supplies, though Counterfeit Cash with stolen supplies beats Cocaine with bought supplies. The absolute maximum profit you can make is GTA$ 112,000 with zero investment and GTA$ 93,000 with bought supplies. Cocaine is also the fastest producing business, with one bar of supplies being produced in just 24 minutes, and the whole batch completing in 2 hours. The other businesses take around half an hour for a single batch, and those extra minutes add up in the long run.

Ignore Document Forgery

The Document Forgery business is by far the least profitable, so much so that doing a local region sale with bought supplies leaves you with a net loss instead of any kind of profit. It would be wise to ignore that type of business altogether, even if you decide to take the route of operating multiple businesses.

Mixing It Up

On the topic of multiple businesses, it’s an option that might seem most appealing to players who plain and simple dislike Import/Export missions to the point of not wanting to play them at all. Generally speaking, Import/Export missions are more risky, since they require you to be in a public lobby opening you to PVP. However, if you lag yourself into your own public lobby, the game will scale up NPC resistance to make things hard on you.

Product Delivery missions, and even Supply Stealing missions, are fairly simple on the other hand. They can be done in private lobbies and the game doesn’t hike the difficulty in these cases, so if you’re running solo and find Import/Export to not be your cup of tea, running multiple businesses is a great way to make some nice cash in GTA Online.

Biker Businesses and Gunrunning?

With the popular theory that the upcoming gunrunning update may be linked to Bikers prevalent amongst players, some have suggested that it’s possible the new DLC will add to, or change, the business mechanic currently in the game. We can easily see further business types added to the game, and one change we’d suggest would be making Document Forgery not as utterly pointless as it is right now.

Regardless, this chart is a nice piece of insight into the inner workings of GTA Online. As time passes, players will likely test out and discover other similar, hidden aspects of the game to better understand the systems and mechanics that govern its world. If you’re hot on Bikers content, we have a few guides that can help you maximize your gains.

Don’t make the common mistake of dismissing businesses just because they’re not as profitable as CEO work – they’re a key element to performing the most effective money making method, and with this guide, you’ll know how to adapt them to your particular style of play.

Frequently Asked Questions

As baffling as it may be, some players actually don’t think much of businesses and their money making capabilities. Some players also happen to be very very wrong. When done right, running a business in GTA Online, or even several concurrently, is a great way to line your pockets with cold hard cash.

Here’s the thing, getting businesses up and running takes some minor initial payment and investment before it actually starts functioning. Once your business is yours and ready to work, you’ll have to keep it stocked with supplies.

There are two ways of going about these restocking missions: you can either buy supplies, thus decreasing your overall profit, or you can find and steal the supplies, not spending on operations and increasing your profit at the price of greater effort invested.

Regardless of which option you choose, in the end, a well-maintained business will earn you tons of cash with little effort needed from you, and once you’re experienced with the system, you can start operating multiple businesses simultaneously for even more cash.

Get a Clubhouse

Before we even get to buying your business, you’ll need to own a Clubhouse. Since these are essential for most content in Bikers, we’ll go forward assuming you already have one. In any case, they’re not particularly expensive, and you’ll make a return on the investment in no time. Clubhouses come in two variations – Single Story and Double Story. Expect to pay between GTA$ 200,000 and 500,000 for the property.

The Open Road

However, let’s start slow, shall we? Bikers uses it’s own, less elegant version of Securoserve in the form of The Open Road, which is a play on the real world “Silk Road”, an online black market. You can pick from five distinct business types: document forgery, counterfeit cash, weed farming, cooking meth and producing cocaine.

Each type has several actual businesses assigned to it, each in a different price range, allowing you to pick a location for your illegal enterprise, provided your budget allows it. The general rule is that the closer you are to the city, the more you’ll be paying while roughing it out in the countryside far from civilization is the cheaper option.

Note: A glitch may occasionally affect businesses production. However, this is easily solved by quitting and then logging back into GTA Online.

Cocaine Lockup

All in all, the cocaine lockup is the most profitable of the businesses, with the meth lab coming in as second place. Really, the only difference between the different businesses is location, so you won’t be at any significant disadvantage by buying the cheapest one. The cheapest cocaine lockup is located by the Alamo Sea, and will set you back $975,000. For reference, the most expensive one is in Morningwood and costs $1,852,500.

For a more detailed look at how the various businesses measure up to one another, check out this guide.

LJT / Long John Teabag

Now, before we proceed, it’s likely that you’ve encountered some complaints about one “LJT” on various GTA Online communities. This “LJT”, short for Long John Teabag, is the operator of the Open Road and is presumably Lester Crest’s alter-ego. If you jump into the Bikers business of your choice, get ready to receive a lot of calls from him. A lot. He’ll pester you if you keep your business running well, he’ll pester you if you don’t and he’ll even pester you if you get rid of your businesses.

LJT has become such a nuisance for some players that he’s been cited as the main cause of a rally of sorts to introduce the feature that allows players to block incoming calls from NPCs entirely. He’ll call you so bloody often that most players are up in arms about it.

However, if you can deal with all that, a lucrative future awaits in the cocaine selling business. Of course, when expanding later on, you can try out any of the other types of business, but there is no difference in gameplay, only odd factors like how much supplies you need, how often you’ll sell and what kind of profit you’ll make.

Upgrade your Business

Once you have the keys to your preferred business, it’s time to upgrade. Sure, it might seem like overkill to spend on upgrading the business since you just bought it right now, but you’re going to have to do it sooner or later anyway, and you might as well hit the ground running so to say.

Staff and Equipment upgrades are pretty much essential. These will allow you to maximize profit while minimizing the time between sales, allowing you to make more cash in less time. Security upgrades aren’t that important, as you’ll only need to worry about events which these prevent if you’re actively an MC president. Luckily for you, your businesses keep churning out product even when you’re not.

Total Initial Cost

All in all, the business itself (in this case, the cheapest cocaine lockup) and the upgrades together will set you back 2 million, plus the clubhouse if you don’t own that already. If you don’t, then add GTA$200,000 to that, which is the cost of the cheapest clubhouse.

Get Supplies

So, you’re $GTA 2 million poorer and the owner of the cocaine lockup. What now? After you complete the relatively simple start-up mission it’s time to either buy or steal supplies. Now, this is where whether or not you have buddies becomes an important question.

Buying supplies will cost you $GTA 15,000 for each bar filled, which is a pretty hefty price in the face of what you’ll be making with the sales. On the other hand, the supply missions are designed with multiplayer in mind, so all players can only carry one unit of supplies. If you’re soloing it, you might want to consider shelling out that $GTA 75k rather than spending a ton of effort on soloing supply missions.

Production

All businesses have limited story capacity, with a maximum of 60 units of supplies and 60 units of product. Production will only take place if there are supplies present in your business, but this is pretty self explanatory. You don’t need to be present while production takes place, nor does it involve any gameplay. It’s really just a cooldown of sorts.

Selling and Solo’ing (or not)

When time comes to sell, there are a few things to keep in mind. Unlike in the case of crates in CEO work, you won’t get a bonus for selling a full set of product. In essence, you get paid for what you sell, no matter how much you sell. Selling half of your product will get you exactly half the payout, without missing out on any special bonus rewards.

As in the case of supply missions, only one unit of product can be carried by a single player at any time. If you’re soloing, this will make thing pretty time-consuming, not to mention the fact that most sell missions are designed with teams of multiple players in mind meaning that in some cases completing the mission alone is downright impossible.

While soloing crates, for example, is a viable strategy, you’ll more of less need to get together with friends or fellow crew members to get those crispy dollars from the businesses. Sure, technically it is possible to solo, but it will be pretty damn difficult and definitely time-consuming.

For solo players, there are a number of activities which provide better results, such as running crates or importing vehicles. Team-players on the other hand can earn a massive amount of cash with operating several businesses concurrently.

Maximise Efficiency

The most advanced of techniques is a blend of various tasks. You’ll need to math out the cooldowns and timers to maximise efficiency, but putting together a formula of alternating between crates and importing vehicles while doing select VIP jobs and managing your businesses during cooldowns will result in the money flowing like there is no tomorrow, and soon you’ll have enough saved up that you don’t even need to continue with this technique.

What is your preferred method of managing a business in GTA Online?

GTA Online: Bikers – History

Bikers was first announced in 2016 in a brief teaser posted by Rockstar about the upcoming GTA Online update. Not much of the details about what new features will be added to the game were revealed, rather the post provided a basic outline of what to expect. When Rockstar later announced the release date, some more information came to light, but we were still mostly scratching our heads as to exactly how things will work.

Bikers is clearly an update that lived up to the hype – and then some. GTA Online has been expanded with all new game-modes, features, vehicles, weapons and customization options to get players into the whole Biker mentality and feel. It has a lot going for it, such as the content being modestly priced, which is always welcome.

What is Bikers?

The main gameplay mechanic in Bikers is, unsurprisingly, the addition of Motorcycle Clubs. Any player may purchase a clubhouse via the foreclosures.maze-bank.com in-game website (adding to GTA 5’s list of domains, which already outstrips that of North Korea) at any point after completing a tutorial. Of course, you need the cash, but there are no other restrictions.

Once you’ve bought a clubhouse, you can set up your MC of which you will be the President. You can recruit up to 7 Prospects, who can rise through the ranks and be appointed the titles of Enforcer, Sergeant at Arms, Road Captain or Vice President. Each of these higher ranks comes with a special ability which will come in handy when running Club missions.

The President will have control over many aspects of their club. You can set a general outfit style, which still gives prospects some wiggle room for personalization, but ensures that the members will have a coherent and matching appearance. Presidents can also select from a number of pre-made emblems, or even a custom crew emblem, which will represent the Club.

The outfit styles have been complemented with 250 clothing items, 100 new tattoos and 6 new hairstyles for both male and female character models, all new with Bikers. While GTA Online has had a varied and extensive wardrobe already, and creating a biker outfit wasn’t impossible, these new clothes allow you more options to find an outfit you like, while still sticking to the biker aesthetic.

Achieving a sense of unity through this loose interpretation of a uniform and the use of an emblem is crucial, as your tight knit group of 8 bikers will face enemies at every turn, and your members need to know that they can depend on one another.

Presidents will also be able to set the riding style of the club, picking between Relaxed and Normal. Another benefit, also available to the Riding Captain, is the Riding Formation

The Clubhouse Property

The clubhouse will be the strategic center and safe haven of your newfound GTA Online brotherhood. A total of 12 clubhouses are up for offer ranging from GTA$ 200,000 to 495,000, giving you a wide selection from which to choose your preferred headquarters.

Like the corporate offices introduced in Further Adventures in Finance and Felony, each clubhouse can be expanded beyond its default capabilities and looks by adding murals, changing styles, setting club emblems, buying a gun locker or adding a Custom Bike Shop, where your personal mechanic will see to the maintenance of your trusted stallions. The prices of these upgrades fluctuate within categories:

• Murals: GTA$ 86,500 – 150,000
• Style: GTA$ 138,000 – 400,000
• Club Emblem: GTA$ 50,000 – 62,000
• Gun Locker: GTA$ 320,000
• Custom Bike Shop: GTA$ 530,000

The default clubhouse benefits include a bar and darts board, both of which can be interacted with. The Arm Wrestling minigame will also be accessible in the clubhouse. Clubhouses also contain meeting rooms, much like the board rooms of corporate offices, where the planning of your exploits may take place. The meeting room also has the contracts wall, used by Presidents to launch new and unique Club Contracts.

Ranks

Take the MC ranks, for example. Each rank attainable through being promoted by the President yields some neat abilities. However, there really isn’t an easy way of finding out exactly what each ability is unless you’re either the President, or have been promoted to each ranks at least once. We also know that with the realities of life bearing down on some of our players that not all GTA Online fans have had a chance to play since the release of Bikers. So, here’s a rundown of the different ranks.

The four ranks that are available beyond Prospect and President all have the ability to launch a Member Challenge and to either drop resources or call in vehicles, plus some special abilities. The Enforcer can call in a hitsquad whenever the MC is in a tight fight to render assistance, drop body armor and to launch the “Rippin’ it Up” challenge.

Vice Presidents can drop bullshark testosterone, target any player in the session by marking them on the map, and can launch the Hit and Ride challenge. The Road Captain can set a riding formation, launch the Race to Point challenge and call in a Slamvan, Moonbeam, BF Injection, Dubsta, or unarmed Buzzard. Finally, the Sergeant at arms can drop molotovs (seems like a bad idea), ammo and start the On the Run challenge.

A well functioning and optimized MC will have one of each special role represented among its ranks. With apt communication, the use of the special abilities can make the club a fearsome force in any session. While the griefers of GTA Online have immediately taken to targeting MCs, organised groups will have no trouble warding off troublemakers.

Re-Creating or Re-Joining the MC

An important gameplay aspect of Bikers is that MCs exist on a session-to-session basis, while the purchasing of clubhouses is permanent. This means that once you’ve bought a clubhouse, you own it permanently, however you’ll need to re-create or re-join an MC each time you launch GTA Online or switch sessions.

Luckily, this isn’t much of a hassle, as the process of getting recruited or setting up the MC is pretty quick and straightforward. An added bonus is that as long as you don’t leave the session, you can ‘drop-out’ of the MC without leaving it. This is useful as you can switch between being a CEO and being a biker within seconds, leading to one of the newest and best money making tactics in the game.

Missions: Work & Contracts

Clubhouse Contracts include 11 different mission types, each with a different focus. These make up the PvE part of Bikers, as players will be faced by NPC enemies, many of whom have been encountered before in GTA Online.

• Gunrunning has players track down a protected weapons shipment, steal the cargo, and take it to a drop-off zone where they will be paid for the merch.
• P.O.W. tasks you with springing one of your underground contacts from prison.
• Guns for Hire sees your MC escort a convoy through dangerous turf.
• By the Pound has you act as a narcotics courier, completing a deal for the product and taking it to the buyer.
• Weapon of Choice gives you a specific target and a specific way of making people not live anymore. You know what to do.
• Nine Tenths of the Law has players steal bikes from protected locations and deliver them – in one piece – to the designated drop-off.
• Cracked has the MC storm a known base run by a rival gang, and steal the cash from their safe.
• Jailbreak tasks you with hijacking a prison bus and helping the convicts reach their getaway rides.
• Fragile Goods sees the return of the Lost MC as the enemy. You must track down their trucks and destroy them, along with their cargo.
• Outrider has your members pick up contacts scattered through the map with bikes, and driving them to their destinations while protecting them.
• Torched sends you on the offensive against rival gangs. You must destroy their ammo reserves.

On the PvP side of things, we’ve got an assortment of 4 Club Jobs, 3 Club Challenges and 4 Member Challenges. The first has different MCs competing against one another. The other two subtypes set the members of your MC against one another, with Club Challenges happening contextually during regular gameplay, and Member Challenges being their own missions.

• Jobs
  • Deathmatch has the members of two MCs duke it out to the death.
  • Joust is the same as Deathmatch, but on bikes instead of on foot.
  • Caged In is what happens when racing is mixed with Deathmatches. You have to reach the finish line first on your bike, but attacking others with melee attacks is fair game.
  • Stand Your Ground tasks one team with protecting a given area on the map from rivals, who in turn must conquer it.
  • Sell Product has you transport product to various locations from your business. If a member carrying product during the mission is killed, that product cannot be recovered.
• Club Challenges
  • Search and Destroy has MC members compete against one another to find and assassinate the target first.
  • Wheelie Rider tasks members to rack up the longest wheelie within the time limit.
  • Criminal Mischief has members cause damage to the most cars via drive-by melee while the timer ticks.
• Member Challenges
  • Rippin’ It Up has members cause the most damage within the timeframe while riding their bikes.
  •  Hit and Ride challenges you to rack up the most melee drive-by kills.
  • On the Run slams all members with a 5 star wanted level, and it’s last man standing from there on out.
  • Race to Point is pretty self explanatory. First one to the destination wins.

One of the best aspects of Bikers, however, is that unlike CEO missions, Club contracts can be done in a private lobby. If you want to try out the new content without having to worry about griefers, go right ahead. Most new missions added to GTA Online in Bikers can be completed solo, and they pay pretty well. Solo grinding these missions in a private lobby is a guaranteed method of racking up cash without having to worry about a Hydra raining on your parade.

Bikers Businesses

One of the other features that arrived with Bikers was the inclusion of new clandestine businesses. These businesses offer new ways to acquire money in GTA Online, and can be bought via the Open Road website accessible from the clubhouse laptop. These businesses include weed, forgeries, counterfeit cash, meth and cocaine.

These businesses work a bit like more active versions of the warehouses tied to CEO work. These businesses can also be attacked by rival gangs, however they have a more proactive role in adding digits to your GTA Online bank account. The businesses can be upgraded with more security, making it less likely that you’ll be attacked, as well as more staff and better equipment to make the business more efficient.

Like the black market ventures of Finance and Felony, these businesses also require an up-front investment to get them off the ground and profitable. The more you’re willing to sink into the business, the quicker and more it will pay out. Being one of the best revenue streams, these businesses rival the profitability of Heists or Crate missions.

To run a business, you need to supply it with Stock, wait for the workers to produce the product, and then sell the product. Stock can be either bought or stolen, and selling the product takes place in a mission. For maximum efficiency, we suggest stealing stock instead of buying it, even though it takes more time. While the production timer is ticking, you’re free to go off and complete other missions.

Bikers Vehicles

Of course, one of the main attractions of this DLC was always the prospect of new bikes, and damn, has it delivered. A grand total of 13 new bikes have been added to the game via Bikers, including vehicles of all kinds, ranging from modern sports bikes, through classic choppers all the way to trikes. The full list of new vehicles is as follows:

• Western Nightblade
• Shitzu Defiler
• LCC Avarus
• Western Zombie Bobber
• Wester Zombie Chopper
• Shitzu Hakuchou Drag
• Nagasaki Chimera
• Western Rat Bike
• Nagasaki Street Blazer
• Maibatsu Manchez
• Pegassi Faggio Mod
• Pegassi Faggio Sport
• Western Wolfsbane
• BF Raptor
• Western Daemon
• Pegassi Vortex
• LCC Sanctus
• Declasse Tornado Rat Rod
• Nagasaki Shotaro
• Pegassi Esskey
• Bravado Youga

Bikers also adds a nice little feature which extenuates the special bond between bike and biker. Whenever you’re using your most frequently ridden bike, you will get a damage and health regeneration buff, increasing both.

Bikers Weapons

The update has brought a whole lot more to GTA Online than just bikes in terms of items, though. Seven all new weapons have been added to the game, including three new melee weapons which you can use to devastating effect while riding your bike. That said, a number of long-range weapons have also been added which are also pretty destructive. The full list of new weapons is as follows:

• Pool Cue
• Pipe Wrench
• Battle Axe
• Compact Grenade Launcher
• Sweeper Shotgun
• Mini SMG
• Pipe Bomb

Slipstream Adversary Mode

GTA Online: Bikers has also brought a new Adversary Mode to the game, however this is bound to be a pretty controversial one. In the past, we’ve touched upon the fact that the community pretty much unanimously despises the slipstream mechanic used in racing. Well, Rockstar decided to go ahead and build an all new Adversary Mode entirely upon that mechanic.

Named Slipstream – obviously – the new Mode focuses on teams of racers, riding bikes, to pass through checkpoints simultaneously while catching up with one another, and speed-boosting by their opponents using the much hated slipstream mechanic.

Slipstream is basically an over-exaggeration of an actual phenomenon in physics, where the air resistance in decreased when moving close behind another vehicle ahead of you. 7 Slipstream maps have been added with the update.

Bikers Bonuses & Contest

The release of the new DLC also, as per tradition, brings with it a new week of special bonuses in GTA Online. Simply logging in, which I don’t doubt you’d do anyway, will net you a sweet shirt and hoodie, while buying a Western Nightblade will also unlock a limited edition promotional shirt.

There are also discounts on offer, including rebates on body armor, ammo and weapon tints. Ensure that you never run out of bullets when you’re in a tight spot with your fellow bikers with a generous 25% discount on Drum and Box magazines while the event lasts.

With the new event, a new Premium Race has also been designated. In keeping with the theme of bikes, the race this time around is Trench 1 locked to bikes-only. This is a great way for the slickest of two-wheeled racers to take home a massive 100k as their prize for coming in at first place.

Instead of waiting it out like in the past, Rockstar has decided to speed things up and just announce the Snapmatic Contest associated with this DLC right off the bat. Almost all major GTA Online updates brought with them a Snapmatic competition with a GTA $ 1,000,000 grand prize some time after launch.

If you’ve got a thing for biker culture, but also have a keen sense for photography, your task is to showcase the features and content of Bikers in just one shot. Five winners will be selected, whose winning shots will be displayed on the Rockstar Newswire, earning their creators some fame.

Amid all of this Bikers-themed goodness, Rockstar has managed to sneak in some other neat changes and tweaks to the game with the DLC. Beyond the numerous bugfixes that make the world of GTA Online all the more enjoyable, they have added the option to make Stunt Races non-contact, thus answering a long-standing community plea. They’ve also made the Western Bagger purchasable, and you can now race with destroyed or impounded personal vehicles.

Overall, Bikers turned out to be everything and more than what any of us could have hoped for. Granted, the DLC didn’t bring back a fan favorite GTA character as a contact, but it added more than enough other missions and content for that to be excusable. Between the motherload of missions, the 17 new bikes and the new businesses, there is plenty here to sink our teeth into.