Ask HN: How would you make quick money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you make quick money?

10 pointsspark3k20 comments

If you had your current skills but were starting from scratch, in that you couldn't use any existing stuff you've built or any of your connections, and had exactly 7 days until your cash ran out completely, what would you do?

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Fun thought experiment, if I had to absolutely make money in 168hrs:

- Buy drugs from darknet rush shipping and go to sktechy area, sell for 50% markup while trying not to get robbed. Look for local customers on reddit, nightclubs, parties, college campuses, etc.

- Sex-work, apparently even men can make decent money camming for other dudes

- Pan-handling

- Get a job at local chipotle/mcdonalds/etc, would be interesting to see how fast you could get a paycheck

- Try to get some contract work for software on fiverr

It ain't much, but it's honest work

"apparently even men can make decent money camming for other dudes"

I'm not into this, but I am into making money. Any numbers on what the earning distribution might look like?

No idea, just heard this anecdotally from a friend of a friend, >50$/hr.

I'm rethinking if you could get this going in 7 days, though. Might take a few weeks to build up an audience and cashout the tips.

At $50+/hour I'd be tempted to quit my day job. I'm still a little skeptical that I could make $8k-9k a month burping the worm on cam.

Only one way to find out ;)

I would buy something semi-expensive from Amazon, lie to them that someone stole it, get a refund and then resell it to someone else.

I would sign up for the most profitable affiliate program, get a friend to sign up for something with free trials, cancel it, and then get a commission. I would ask multiple friends to do this in exchange for a split of the money.

I would spam Redditors with affiliate links in threads where they are looking for recommendations to buy something.

All shady stuff that wouldn’t benefit me in the long term but hey, you said I got 7 days to make $$$.

Sell everything that’s not nailed down.

There’s no good, legal way to make a living in 7 days. Manual labor can get you quick cash, but not much, and depend where you live you may have a lot of competition for unskilled labor.

I’d probably haunt expired domains websites, buy one that looked promising, update it w new content, then try to sell it. And repeat until I either had real money or went broke.

> If you had your current skills, but were starting from scratch, and had exactly 7 days until your cash ran out completely, what would you do?

Nothing special? Use my credit card, perhaps be late on a few bills until my next salary payment. Or if your premise is that I don't have a job either, then the same thing but for a bit longer until I find one.

I feel like the title and the text inside don't match - I don't get why starting from zero means that you need to make money fast.

Some places pay for plasma donation.

Day labor.

Sell your stuff.

Hustle people at something you're good at.

Not making money, but if you need money then a loan or charity.

Otherwise it's mostly illicit stuff for fast cash.

Oh plasma and sperm donation, didn't think of that!

Sell belongings online at places like eBay, Amazon, Craigslist (or equivalent), Facebook market place. Take on short term loans/debt from banks, lenders, friends, family to get a cash base. Use that to buy and sell something, e.g. could BBQ food or make coffee to sell to people, at an event or crowded places.

Also, if you're musical. Get a few gigs at bars or play in the street for money.

I would visit www.nav.no

Drugs

From what I've heard of the drug trade, this is not a get rich quick scheme. A lot of it climbing the drug lord career ladder, and pays out terribly early on. It's probably analogous to working at a seed stage startup that has sales figured out.

There's definitely an existing product market fit with drugs, but commissions are extremely low for entry level salespeople. Since there's a very low bar to entry, the business isn't defensible though if you are able to build up a consistent client list, you can look for more efficient arbitrage situations. Supply chain logistics can be hit and miss, especially if you're importing internationally. Also, manufacturers have wildly varying levels of quality control and the customers are quite fickle so one bad shipment can tank your customer satisfaction index.

You can avoid some of the supply chain and quality control issues by manufacturing certain products yourself - just like Jobs and Woz in their garage!

Payment terms are tough as well - your suppliers will demand Net-right-this-effin-second, while your customers will often be Net-I-don't-have-it-right-now-will-you-take-a-broken-VCR-instead.

Buying or selling?

Knock on doors and mow lawns until I have a enough to fly to Vegas and play poker.

Play for 6 days and hopefully don't go bust.

Apply to rev.com and outsource all the work to a 3rd world country.

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