I'm shit at get rich quick schemes...
I'm always trying though. I've made a few quid through selling off old tat on eBay, but that doesn't really count does it? I've bought things before though with the express intention of selling them and making a fast buck.

A box of golf tees from Aldi - something like £4.99 for 500 of them, I thought I could at least sell them for a tenner. A bit of investigation revealed that in fact you can buy 500 on eBay for about £2.50. Arse.

Pay as You Go sim cards from O2, up to 10 per application free of charge. I got about 30, thought I could sell them for £4.99 each, found that eBay was full of £2.99 ones. Arse. Tried selling them for £1.99 each, got rid of about 3. At least they didn't cost me anything.

Little hand-held sander from Aldi for £7.99, thought I'd get £12 for it at least. I lost the fucking thing, so that was a dead loss.

Finally, I think I've had some luck: a couple of weeks ago I bought a guitar from Cash Converters for a good price, and sold it at a profit... still waiting for the money though, since I sold it to a friend I haven't seen since. I'm confident of getting it though, it's just taken longer than I expected.

I don't think Richard Branson needs to worry about me just yet...


/length? £1 per inch to you, that's a bargai... oh shit, no it's not, it's only 79p over there O_o
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 19:23, 2 replies)

For me, ‘Weird Science’, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Westworld’ were more like documentaries…

As far as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme goes, I realised that I must discover a new, as yet unexplored market and exploit it for all its’ potential.

As a result I’ve been working on a new invention; and on completion I think I may be on to a bit of a result.

My basic design is that of a human form exoskeleton surrounded in a super-realistic mannequin latex / play dough coating…kind of like the Terminator…without the homicidal tendencies.

It’s called ‘Shag-a-tron 2000’. There are two basic forms: ‘Shag-a-tron-M’ and ‘Shag-a-tron-F’.

Although initially packaged in a Brad Pitt / Angelina Jolie format, you can mould them to your exact specification with the unique set of attachments...in other words you can design the proportions with whatever floats your twisted, pervy little tug-boat.

As I haven’t yet perfected the biomechanics I’m afraid it doesn’t do much in the way of movement, just your basic stand / sit / walk / bend over / huge hip thrusts etc…but all in a sexy, smouldering / strong, silent understated manner of course.

I have also fitted a basic but spookily realistic speech synthesiser and voice response system (one that actually works, not like the Vista one that doesn’t understand a fucking word when you’re pissed)

Now in its ‘M’ form, the Shag-a-tron 2000 promises the following:

No snoring / farting / eating toenails
Puts the toilet seat down
It will NEVER say your bum looks big, even if you have the arse of an elephant acrobatic display team
It nods its head in an approving manner and looks adoringly and attentively at everything you say…without being needy
It sits and holds your hand through weepies / Rom-coms
Never treats you like shit or eyes up your girlfriends
Will go like a rabbit on Red Bull when required
(Deluxe models come with their own credit card)

…However, in its ‘F’ form:

Never nags / has a headache / has painters in
Will always actually mean what they say – none of that ‘Nothing’s wrong’ bollocks
Will happily wear ‘that’ outfit that you’ve always requested
Will watch the footy with you with a permanent smile on their face…whilst holding your beer
Cares not a jot about your nerdiness / disgusting habits / crap job
Stands happily in the cupboard waiting for you whilst you go out with your mates
Thinks drunkenness is sexy.
Swallows.
Let’s you put it where you want it (but not in a 'Nike advert' sort of way)
Will also go like the veritable clappers.

On both models there is also zero chance of babies or catching any of those ever-so-slightly-annoying STD’s (providing you don’t lend it out to your mates).

After preliminary tests the Shag-a-tron also effortlessly integrates with your family and friends on the premise of:

“(S)He’s just a bit quiet, that’s all.”

Each model comes arrives complete with full internet access so you can tailor their personality, and an adjustable ‘self-respect’ mode so you can make them as confident or timid as you wish.

And as you grow older – they stay the same age!

I’m not quite sure how much to charge but I was considering throwing in a 30 day full-refund guarantee…providing you wipe it down before returning it.

Anybody interested in trying one out?



…and as for length?... You decide!
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 4 Aug 2008, 16:27, 15 replies)

This may be a little controversial to start with...
1.Go to school everyday and work hard to achieve decent grades.

2.Use said grades to go to a good University, where you should study and degree that gives you a vocational skill if you know what you want to do with your life or a well rounded degree that emplyers will like if you don't.

3. Do work experience whereever possible.

4.Get a job.

5.Work hard, maybe stay late if you need to, help out your colleages and generally try and leave the role better and more efficient than when you arrived.

6.Save money every month.

7.Get promoted, make more money.

OR

1.Make sure you are born a "princess/little suck up" to Daddy who has contacts.

2. Fuck about constantly and sponge money from said Daddy.

3. Use nepotism.

4. Eat croissant on balcony.

5.Laugh at the poor people who actually work their tits off day in day out.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 15:31, 9 replies)

Bindun?
Set up an eyewateringly expensive premium rate line connected to an automated system that takes you round in circles.

Buy 4 or 5 crappy old transits

Stick a jolly big sign on the back of each van saying

How am I driving?

Please call (my premium number) if this vehicle is being driven discourteously.

Then hire chavs to drive the vans around the city centre all day and wait for the phone to start ringing!
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 14:47, 6 replies)

A serious one
Charity shops, car boot sales and Amazon's second-hand book market.

Buy the books dirt cheap, sell them on Amazon. Sometimes the mark-ups are ridiculous.

The best books to go for are degree-level textbooks. A lot of ex-students (or more likely their parents) dump their old, bulky textbooks on charity shops or flog them at car boot sales. Now charity shops hate these books, because they are almost impossible to sell (who the hell goes to a charity shop to buy their uni textbooks on the off-chance they'll have the one you need? No-one, that's who.). Thus these books are available for next to nothing (most uni texbooks cost £20 or more, and they're no more than £2 or £3 in a charity shop), and you can snap them up.

The books you will get are usually a couple of years out of date, so avoid subjects that change frequently (law, politics, compsci) and stick to subjects with subject matter that stays pretty much the same (philosophy, history, anatomy, literature). Even better, get a hands-free kit and have someone on the other end by a PC to check the ISBN numbers and their second-hand value.

My record was 3 Philosophy textbooks bought for a combined £2 at a car boot sale, later sold for a combined total of £41.

Kerching.
(Axeman Jim, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 14:21, 3 replies)

I did think of doing this a few years ago

I can't give you promises but I reckon at a reasonable guess you can but import Xmas trees from the Dutch for about £5 each delivered as long as you buy a fuck load.

Anyone see the price of a tree last year? well obviously a lot of you did and unless it was dead, I'm fairly sure it would have been over a fiver.

So chip in £500 with 4 or so friends and buy multiples of 100 trees and flog them for £15, under cutting everyone else in the area, just fudge up a load of signs and I think you'd make a killing. +£900 each in 10 days, more if the £2k is all yours and you can still do your normal job if you pay a flunky to look after your pitch.

In fact I may try it this year - so don't be copying my idea. Hmmm.


Regards
Kip



(Kip, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 13:55, 7 replies)

Pooflake's story just reminded me
of something I did as a poor student. I and one of my friends found that some fruit machines had cheats built in to them. You would give it some money and play it in a particular way, say refusing to take the features it offered you, holding down a particular sequence of buttons, or something like that. The idea was that the machine would then pay out the jackpot and that the jackpot would repeat until the machine was empty.

Now, we found one of these cheats on an message board somewhere on the tinterweb, it was for a particular type of gambling machine, I can't remember what the machine was called, it was somehow pie themed though if I remember right. Through careful scouting we found that there was only one pub in the vicinity which had this type of machine.

We went into the pub one afternoon, pockets jingling with pound coins, and started to do what the internet promised would pay out big time. At the start I was a bit dubious, I very strongly believed that it was complete rubbish, but I was willing to pay a tenner or so just to find out if it worked. It did! Everything went just as the internet had told us it would, everything except for the big manager bloke standing behind us as we played. We thought he was just another punter in the pub, until right at the end, when we were just about to collect our money (about £200 I think) from the machine, he put a hand on each of our shoulders and asked what the f*ck we thought we were doing in his pub, messing with his machine.

He told us to bugger off, we obliged, with thoughts that he might beat the hell out of us, or report us to the cops (to this day I have no idea how legal what we were doing was.) So we fled, leaving the manager to, no doubt, take all the money we had accrued in the machine for himself.

Apparently I'm too stupid to be a good criminal, weird really as I'm currently back at uni doing my PhD.

Oh, by the way, if your reading this, and you own a pub in Newcastle under Lyme, which used to have a pie based fruit machine in it, a few years ago (about 6 I think), I’m sorry I tried to steal from you, it was more the spirit of scientific enquiry than the theft which motivated me!
(Lord of Marzipan Fact: Clouds are worse than Hitler, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 13:52, 5 replies)

I remember being told about one enterprising chap...
Remember when banks used to have little piles of blank paying-in slips in the branches, so that if you'd forgotten your book you could still fill one out in the queue?

I heard about a rather cunning gentlemen who purloined a goodly stack of these, and then printed out his own account number and sort code into the blank boxes before replacing them in banks around the area. So the story goes, enough people just looked for blank boxes to fill in, not what they should have been filling in, resulting in a couple of weeks of people paying all their hard won earnings unwittingly into his account.

I have no idea how much he made before he got caught (couldn't have been hard to catch him out, they had his account details), but I appreciate the simplicity.
( jme, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 13:40, 5 replies)

Simple but effective
Put cider in a whiskey bottle (in the dark they look similar enough) then wander round a campsite betting people you can down the bottle.

Tried and tested in Newquay and will easily pay for the next bottle.
(the_spoon I am Jack's lack of talent, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 13:06, 2 replies)

Scam the scammers
My idea is to set-up a premium rate number that would work with international calls (about £50 per minute) Record a fax onto it (or possibly just set it up as a premium rate digital fax) and then hand out the number to as many Nigerian scammers as possible. Hey presto free money & no moral ambiguity. If you are interested I think you can set-up just such a line on the Cook Islands for about £100 you might as well get your .co.ck domain whilst you are at it :)

*Edit* I had also thought of doing this as a non profit enterprise by providing the Serious Fraud Offices/FBI's Fax details.
( Big Ian has stopped changing his sig, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 12:28, 4 replies)

Advice needed here please…

Before I start, I would like it to be known that I have absolutely zero knowledge of electrical gismos / mechanics and wotnot. I am also prone to believe urban myths.

In short…I am an cretin.

I have however, recently heard that your average ‘bandit’ gambling machine is run on differing amps (volts) for different tasks and that the mechanics of which mean that they can be controlled.

Thusly, the theory is that if you unplug said machine, then plug it back in but via a ‘dimmer switch’ adapter, you can adjust the voltage through the machine and set it to a lower voltage that triggers the automatic ‘payout’ or ‘empty’ function.

This sounds highly unlikely to me. Could it be true?
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 4 Aug 2008, 12:13, 10 replies)

CD's and Friends with no 'Net = Profit!
Back in the good old days of college, I had a few friends who were very unfortunate not to have the internet at home. These poor devils would always be whinging that they couldn't go on the sites they wanted at college without being kicked out. Poor sods.

Enter me, a young Stephen5555 with a net connection, CD-RW drive and the need for extra cash. For a small fee,* I would download thier requested revision material** and burn it to CD for thier own use. Surprisingly, the money was pouring in, as there was more friends than I thought without the net!

Excellence!

* = £4 a CD, or 3 for £10. Not like I was trying to promote sales or anything...
** = Namely the sort of revision material studied in bed with Kleenex to take "notes".

Length? 3 weeks of downloading/burning and £40 profit.
(Stephen5555 is posting on, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 11:57, Reply)

Charity.

Zebo, a half blind five year old African orphan, has to ride 7
miles a day to school with only one leg on a bicycle with buckled wheels
and no brakes.

Give just a small donation of £2 and we'll send you the video. It's fucking hilarious....

Shirley bindun?
(Mr Twisty Cheeky The worst kept secret in B3ta..., Mon 4 Aug 2008, 11:52, 3 replies)

Guinea pig work
Back when I was nineteen unemployed and on the least fun gap-year ever. I read an ad in the local rag for clinical trails. Quite simply the easiest way to make money ever.

I spent 1 day a week for 5 weeks either lying on a bed getting my heart monitored or playing pool and watching TV in the common room. And all I had to do was inhale some new asthma drug out of an inhaler which made me sleepy. Oh, and have a canula in my arm (I stupidly opened it in the toilet one day during an attack of curiosity and subsequently spent half an hour wiping blood off the walls) which wasn't too bad.

And what did I get for this? Well, they paid for my transport at £40 a trip where I was paying either a fiver or more likely nothing (back when fare-dodging was easier) and a cool £1200 (a lot of money when you're unemployed and 19) on top of that plus an extra £200 for making us come in a week early by mistake.

It's now 6 years later and I have yet to grow extra appendages or experience multiple organ failure and all I have to show for it are five little scars where the canulas went in. I also met a guy there who was on his fourth trail in two years. Nothing wrong with him apart from the fact he had so many canula scars he looked like a recovering heroin addict.

In conclusion, it's not as scary as it might sound. People do it all the time and that thing that happened in London where those guys nearly died was pretty much a one-off. That doesn't stop rumours among trailist of people getting offered legendary trails where they manually stop your heart and then use the drug to restart it. This apparently offered anywhere between £12,000-£20,000! Needless to say the story always ends with 'and there were no takers'.
( Raindance Work is inversely proportional to post-count, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 11:29, 9 replies)

Sell your old toys
After finishing my MA I was well and truly skint. It's amazing how much people will pay for old star wars toys, even those that aren't in great condidition. I made a good few hundred quid and don't miss the toys one bit.

Recycling your old mobiles is another way to make some hard cash.
(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 10:57, 5 replies)

Child Labour
If you do not have cute children of your own you may need to borrow some:

1. Teach kids to point at old people and say 'Nana' or 'Grampy'.
2. Go to Post Office each week on pension day and have kids work their magic. (make comments like 'the never knew their own grandparents' and 'you look so much like Nana'.)
3. Have kids create cards for newly found surrogate grandparents and be sure to have your return name and address inside. Give to as many old people as you can. Do encourage cute drawings of child holding wrinklies hand.
4. Sit back and watch the funds roll in on Birthdays and Xmas - and best of all if they pop their clogs you are in with a good shot of landing some lucre without the emotional turmoil of losing a loved one.

Everyone wins.

One thing, never invite oldie around your house - one they may meet the real grandparents and two you will never get rid of the piss stinking old scrote.
(Tugnut I got them all..., Mon 4 Aug 2008, 10:53, 2 replies)

Get rich quick?
Piece of piss!




( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 10:35, 3 replies)

Get rich quick with a chequebook
I know someone who made thousands this way.

He was quite badly in debt to the bank as it was, and his credit and debit cards had both been blocked, but he still had a chequebook and a £100 guarantee card, so presumably decided to sponge what he still could from the bank and then do a runner.

As far as I know the bank still haven't got a penny back.

The problem is that you can't draw money directly on a cheque. So instead, he came up with the following little scheme:

1. Go to Asda. Buy a TV for £99.
2. Drive to another Asda. Present TV and receipt at customer services. Get a refund in cash.
3. Purchase another TV. Pay for it by cheque. Repeat process until you run out of Asdas.

All I can say is, I wish I'd thought of that.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 10:14, 6 replies)

I set up websites…

Promising how you can earn shitloads of money a week by sitting on your fat asses watching daytime TV and basically doing cock-diddly all.

All you have to do is send me some money and blah blah blah

It’s all a steaming pile of bum chod of course…and already been done to death…but the really clever thing I do is advertise my shite in the top banner of this QOTW…

Enjoy!
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 4 Aug 2008, 10:05, Reply)

Reminded of this by Enzyme's story below
When the £1 coin was first released back in the 1980's, it didn't take anyone very long to notice that two old design 5p pieces stuck together and painted gold made a coin exactly the same size and colour as the £1. Sadly, shopkeepers quickly caught onto this.
The 2 5p pieces trick didn't work in vending machines as the £1 coin was a different weight, and machines look for both size *and* weight when a coin is put in.

To cut a long story short, it's amazing how much money could be made by two bored chemistry students with access to a lot of 5p pieces, a scalpel, some lead, and the departmental micrometer.
About £20 an hour, to be precise. Not bad for the late 1980's.
(davywavy, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 10:00, Reply)

Got rich due to computers!
After a long period of unemployment, I managed to get a job at a pretty large company (they were an international firm at the time I joined). I had been hired to work on the IT side of things (mainly programming) and really enjoyed my job until pay day came.

I was pissed off with the amount of tax I had to pay but quickly discovered a way to hack into the companies payroll and embezzle a shitload of money that (I thought) noone would notice. I was wrong, the company owner found out and instead of being pissed off he was interested in using my hacking skills for a few other business expansion plans. I wasnt going to end up in prison and the money I took stayed in my account so I wasn't going to complain.

Suffice to say my bosses business expansion plans turned out to be a bit dodgy and it all got out of hand. The computer project I was working on fecked up, going out of control and was only stopped after some bloke in blue pjyamas and a cape turned up and threw acid into it.

My boss was arrested and his company went tits up. For some reason I got off scott free, and as well as the money I had in my account (From earlier embezzlement) I was also given a job reference form Superman.

Love


Richard Pryor
(mon bison powered by magnets, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 9:57, 3 replies)

Not so quick......
..... But it's worth getting to know your relatives, at last count my maternal grandparents have left me 1/9th of their estate and my dad's left me a 6th of his.

However this wouldn't be quick money unless they were all dead, and I quite like all parties concerned so I think I'd rather go without it tbh.
(batmowes Internet Dating Superstud, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 9:53, Reply)

Banks
I bet they get rich very quickly indeed.

For instance, I put a cheque in on Thursday. It's still not cleared. Why not?

With today's super-fast computer networks and automatic processing, why:

1. Does it still take 5 working days to clear a cheque?
2. Why only 'Working' days?
3. If it's all done by computer anyway, why does it matter if anyone is there or not?
4. In today's world of 24 hour, 365 day a year business, why is the 'working' day, according to banks, still only 9-3.30 Monday to Friday? Even though they're open on Saturdays, why does no work get done?


Actually, I know exactly why it is. It's so they can hold on to your money for as long as possible. Theoretically, I bet it's entirely possible to have a cheque clear in two seconds from putting it in.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 9:52, 15 replies)

Look after the pennies...
I used to think that the phrase "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" was tosh. I'm beginning to change my mind.

In the first place, I've recently been informed that, due to the increase in commodity prices over the last few years, the metal in a one-penny piece is now worth more than one penny. It'd make sense to sell the coins for more than their face value. Can anyone confirm whether this is, in fact, the case?

Second, one-penny pieces used to be like golddust when I was an undergrad. Why? Well, I was at Hull University in the mid-90s. Hull is not connected to British Telecom: it has its own telephone company, Kingston Communications. For some reason, phone boxes in the city mistook 1992 pennies for 20-pence pieces. (Maybe they still do. Anyone know?) This being in the days before mobile phone saturation - and I'm not sure that younger b3tans will believe that there was ever a time when people didn't have mobiles - one was often reliant on public phone boxes. 1992 pennies were useful. And that meant that there was a market in them. You could sell them for 10p, and both participants in the deal would get a bargain.

Bonanza!
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 9:25, 5 replies)

Gambling
I was well on my way to getting rich in a casino once but then I got kicked out. Not for cheating though; I just misunderstood what the crap table was for.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 8:51, Reply)

I have no idea how to get rich.
But I know lots of ways that will stop you being rich.

For a start, stay single. Most girls are just failures at life. Its as simple as that, and as a guy you'll be leant on financially. This is after all the wooing her in by paying for meals, cinema, nights out etc. Seriously, the cheapest shag you'll ever get will be from a whore.

Secondly, never buy a car. They drink fuel like they are going out of fashion which is expensive. Then they need servicing and repairs. And at £75 an hour at the stealers (in order to keep your warranty" its a tad on the pricey side. Once driving you open yourself up to Parking fines, speeding fines etc on top of that. Not to mention road tax.

Thirdly, Dont have your own place to live. Rent, Council Tax, Gas, Electric, Water, TV License, Phone Line, Internet, Food, Maintenance Gee it adds up to a whacking great sum. Stay at home with the parents for as long as possible guys!

Fourth, avoid trendy bars. At £3 - £4 a for a pint of watered down pish, youd probably get more benefit from drinking your own urine. basically dont go out. Spend your Saturday nights wanking over free pron on the internet.

So its as easy as that. Stay single, walk, stay at home and never go out. You will be the richest man on earth then.

Oh and finally, dont get a job in I.T Despite what most people think. It doesnt pay that well. I know some cleaners who earn more per hour than I do.
(Miggyman, Mon 4 Aug 2008, 8:11, 10 replies)