“Get rich quick” schemes are, by and large, just that schemes, where the only one getting rich is the person selling the idea in the first place. After all, solid businesses can go under and the invisible hand of the market can make established companies struggle, so conventional wisdom would suggest that getting rich is a combination of hard work, perseverance and a dash of luck.
Someone asked “What’s the most ridiculously absurd way you’ve seen someone get rich in no time?” and people shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites, take some notes and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments section below.
#1
My uncle invented micro machines. Little toy cars in the early 90’s.
EDIT: when I see my uncle next I will show him this and all the people he brought joy to.
Image credits: 022ydagr8
#2
My cousin recorded the audio of a fan for 8 hours about a decade ago and now has north of a billion “white noise” YouTube views and is one of the top podcasts on Spotify.
Image credits: Patient_Fruit_826
#3
Kim Kardashian f****d a low rent rapper and got her mom to sell the tape. As far as ridiculous and absurd goes this is about as good as it gets. .
Image credits: kimkardashian
#4
A friend of mine once struck it rich overnight by selling "designer" pet rocks online, complete with little outfits and backstories. It was a wild idea that somehow took off!
Image credits: mustafizn73
#5
Friend of mine started selling her socks after wearing them at her retail job. She started making $7k a month just from that alone.
Image credits: Big-Routine222
#6
Forgot that he mined a dozen or so Bitcoins over a decade ago on his spare notebook.
Remembered three years ago that he still had that laptop in a drawer.
Image credits: sakatan
#7
My uncle's company made wood shaving tools. One day martha stewart used one to grate cheese on her tv show. Thus the Microplane was born.
Image credits: leelouislinden
#8
Go to work for a little startup called Dell straight after college in Austin, Texas in the 80s. Get a bunch of meaningless ‘future shares’ as a sort of ‘welcome to this startup’ sweetener. Work there for a while, company goes public, meaningless shares were suddenly worth a fortune. Epitome of ‘right place at the right time’.
#9
The person who made bank by livestreaming themselves sleeping on TikTok. Literally getting paid to nap—today’s dream job!
Image credits: moongirlLupe
#10
The guy that made the Million Dollar Website.
Selling 1 pixel advertisements for 1$ must be some of the most absurdly genius ways of making loads of money.
Image credits: Dynekongen
#11
I once knew a guy who bought a lottery ticket on a whim while waiting in line for coffee. He won, quit his job, and spent the next year traveling the world on a “find myself” tour. He came back with a massive tattoo of a pineapple on his chest and a story that made him richer in life than most millionaires. Turns out, the real jackpot was the freedom to be absurd.
#12
Ok so university lecturer at my uni, he was a deep sea biologist. He was given a sea slug which had been collected on an automated underwater vehicle dive.
In the mucus of this sea slug, he isolated a bacteria which produced a protein digesting enzyme which worked at low temperatures. He sold this biological enzyme to one of the big company's I think proctor and gamble.
The whole "wash your clothes at 30/ low temperatures" biological washing powder etc. that was him .
Went from driving a ford escort,.to a jaguar, to retiring in about a week.
#13
Friend of an friend sold d***s in the early 2010s. Some sales were done in bitcoin. Went to jail for five years and came out with a what was now a few million in Bitcoin that he didn't touch during it's biggest booms. I suppose it took a decade but what had seemed like a huge f**k up left him an accidental millionaire and meant he didn't need to return to a life of crime when he got out. Went on to live a frugal lifestyle as a humble "crypto trader".
#14
My brother's friend worked minimum wage jobs. Then he and his wife started buying lube in large quantities from overseas and repackaging it in much smaller quantities in their garage and reselling it on Amazon.
Really just classic middleman stuff, but they made SO MUCH money that they quit their day jobs almost immediately and haven't looked back.
Image credits: buffaloplaidcookbook
#15
Do y’all remember silly bandz? My friend’s dad came up with rainbow silly bandz and became a millionaire from that.
Image credits: Glittering-Gold3141
#16
A small time YouTuber (think under 500 subscribers) I personally knew used to make RuneScape videos. One day he decided to change things up and do Creepypasta readings. Bam, went viral and had 10,000 subscribers in two videos. Last I checked he's just shy of a million.
Image credits: Kent_Knifen
#17
A good friend of mine started trading stocks after retirement. He trades ETFs everyday in his underwear. He does it all on his phone or ipad. He retired 3 yrs ago. So far this year he's made $1.3 million. It is ridiculous.
Image credits: Sharp-Engineer-4090
#18
He and his brother developed an online game where two cowboys walk away from each other, then turn around and shoot and one dies.
The game was entirely automated. You could just bet money on who wins, and if you got it right you would x1.95 your money, with 5% going to the house.
They got unfathomably rich. Saw them race sports cars around the world. Last time I checked though, they went to prison for tax fraud.
#19
I once watched a guy turn his viral TikTok dance challenge into a million-dollar merchandise line overnight. He just tossed on a silly costume, danced like nobody was watching, and somehow convinced everyone that wearing a chicken suit while moonwalking was the new black. Now I’m left wondering if I should start practicing my own absurd dance moves or just invest in rubber chickens.
Image credits: Itchy_General_1290
#20
I went to high school with Bo Burnham. One day he had a youtube video go viral. Like a week later he was represented by the same agent as Drew Carey.
Ironically, the kid who joked about being unpopular was suddenly really popular due to the success from his jokes.
Image credits: Arbiter_89
#21
A classmate in high school climbed and subsequently fell off a electric transmission tower and got hurt pretty bad. Even though he was an idiot, because there were no warning signs or a fence around it he received a bunch of money as a legal settlement from the electric company.
Image credits: Herr_Poopypants
#22
Not rich but my friend told me about how he went to the strip club one night downtown. He stayed until 3:00 a.m. and then when he left, he walked outside to find a ton of $20 bills just blowing in the wind down the street, so he grabbed as much as he could. He couldn't explain where it came from, no one was around at the time and the streets were empty.
#23
Big lotto winners who aren't satisfied and keep buying more lotto tickets and win *again*.
I don't mean a mil or 2.. but those megaball types who hit 10 or more, then play and win million+ like a year later.
Image credits: MirthandMystery
#24
A friend was employee number 8 at a tech startup and resigned after they listed on the stock exchange with $35 million.
#25
A day time TV show many years ago about flipping repossessed houses bought at auction where they showed three folks/couples buying a house, fixing it up and selling it. One chap bought two houses but did nothing to them, didn't even clean them. All he did was sell them at market value and made a bunch since the auction price was peanuts. The show edited it as if he was new to the flipping house game so maybe he'd have a better go the next episode even though his profit was more than the other folks. The next two episode he did the same thing with another seven houses before the production team realised that he had no intention of doing anything to any house and was only there to use the production crew's contacts and for them to do a lot of the legwork as required for the show. He made over £100k+ on nine houses with doing barely anything. The show stopping dealing with him after that.
#26
Bro had an idea, patented it, pitched it to the owner of gopro, got 2.3 million for it
hes a good guy, but i am still a bit jealous.
Image credits: NOT000
#27
A house in a low-income neighbourhood caught fire. This copywriting whiz that was also a community leader started a campaign to raise funds for the family, purely on Whatsapp. He raised 200K over 2 days and handed all the money to them within the 3rd day.
#28
My ex back in high school (2015-2016) invested in bitcoin. he made really good profit then promptly spent it on the largest amount of d***s i’ve ever seen in my life. i mean stacks upon stacks of it. he rarely sold and just ran through it all with him and his two friends in like a month.
there’s reasons we aren’t together anymore….
Image credits: skyfully
#29
A friend of a friend was at the rubbish dump with a friend and found a bag filled with a bunch of cash. They split it and he hid it under his bed then used it to pay tradies and stuff. Very dodgy but sounds like something from a book.
#30
I germany during covid basically everyone was allowed to start a covid test station and anyone could go there and get tested and even had to get tested to go to work. But what a lot of people did they just collected hundreds of names family friends and distant relatives and booked them daily as tested. And the german goverment paid them around 15 € per test. People in bigger citys made millions without even testing anyone.
#31
Telling them about Bitcoin and watching them go buy 20 plus a bunch of Ethereum.
Image credits: NorthernH3misphere
#32
Runescape - Someone I know made millions selling and buying gp (the currency of runescape) then got served cease and desist letters by the game makers (jagex) so sold his company to a competitor with a royalty deal.
#33
I once read about this guy who bought a bunch of rare Beanie Babies back in the day and flipped them for thousands.
#34
A friend of mine used an app to create a bunch of different notebooks and diaries using free templates, then sold them through Amazon. Amazon would supply the books, print the covers onto them and sell them while my friend sat back and got paid for minimal effort. Doesn't really work anymore but they made enough to not need to worry about that.
#35
Making s****y music.
#36
PPP & ERC money during the pandemic! The general public doesn’t really understand how much money was handed out.
#37
Selling immediately the land they inherited from their parents. it funny and ironic how the older generation kept the land and took care of it thinking about their kid's future that they have a place, a land to build a house on only yo be sold right away because their kids prefer the money more. My cousins already sold their portion of land even though their mom is still alive and is not fully subdivided yet. it was a mess.
#38
Didn't one of the early investors/co-founders of Facebook (not Zuck) write a book about how fundamentally broken the current tech/capital markets are that he was able to amass >$1B fortune by doing just a few months' work?
#39
Friend of a friend found 23 bitcoins on an old hard drive in 2017 which he got for selling some mtg cards he had from high school on mt gox in 2012, sold the btc in 17 then put it all in tesla at 70 Euros pre-split. He's dumb as a brick, i remember helping him get the coins off mt gox 12 years ago. FWIW his mtg cards would now also be worth well north of 75k. He bought a house for around a million and paid in cash a couple of years ago, drives a top specced Q7 and smokes 5g of weed a day every day. I go to clubs with him occasionally and with a designated driver around he gets everyone hammered on the most expensive stuff they have available. He's a good guy but he is completely convinced he deserves everything he has and he was bound to get rich one way or the other.
#40
Both the Cash Me Outside and Hawk Tuah girls.
#41
A relative of mine cheated on her husband with a really rich dude and then went on to marry him. Does that count?
#42
Roaring Kitty, obviously.
#43
Became friends with some dudes in college who turned out to be the founding members of Dude Perfect. He’s now a regular and just won an Emmy for shows he’s done for them.
Another is Britney Dawn, just google her. It’s a whole thing. The crazy thing is realizing both these people went to the same high school, in the same year. In a class of like 100 people.
#44
Ring tones...
#45
Pointy hat on YouTube worked for it but still 2 years to a second income while working full time is a great fall back. Many of his coworkers don't realize he makes more in a one day shoot that they make all week.
#46
Someone in my close family circle made a company around cryptocurrency security, it was worth 75 millions euros 6 months after and 1,5 bn 5 years later. Kinda fast.
#47
Selling used bath water.
#48
Somebody got over a hard bump in his computer biz by selling Nu Skin in multi level marketing. Then he hit the jackpot.
#49
Distant acquaintance was in China before Covid kicked in and anticipated the need for masks. Back home he went to his bank but they didn’t want to give him money so he borrowed 100k from local d**g cartel to buy a container load of masks from China. Fast forward 2 months and these masks were worth 2.5 million. He paid back his depth and is a rich man now.
Pretty bad**s move though.
#50
Get elected as a politician.
