Getting Rich Quick, A Product of Hustle or Luck?

There seems to be a never-ending supply of get rich quick schemes floating around, from creating your very own cryptocurrency as a joke to calling my sweet-hearted grandmother to help fix her virus-infected internet for a recurring monthly fee of $99 and 3 $250 Target gift cards (my hate for this person is endless). If you can avoid the ones that would make you nothing more than a disowned disappointment that validate God creating a middle finger, could these work?

I want to make it clear that if you’re here to see how to get rich quick, I’m sorry, this is not the feel-good article for you. If you want to see some statistics and honest truth about what works/doesn’t then stay a while and read on! 

I’m of the strong opinion (we will get more than just opinion here with some statistics and data) that get rich quick schemes work, but usually only for the creators of the schemes. So if you want some fast money, and don’t mind possibly hurting others in the process, then by all means the get rich quick scheme of making get rich quick schemes is for you.

Now that I’ve had my fun, let’s get into some data. I’ve grabbed the most common ways to get rich quick and their statistical chances for you if you were to give them a go.

The Lottery

To keep things easier, I’m only including 3 countries for lotteries, The United States, Canada, and the UK. Winning the Lottery has some pretty simple breakdowns as the chances of winning are usually required as part of the information on your lotto ticket. Here’s a quick breakdown of chances for the top prizes as of writing the article:

United States

• Mega Millions – 1 in 302,575,350
• Powerball – 1 in 292,201,338
• Lucky for Life – 1 in 30,821,472
• Lotto America – 1 in 25,989,600
• Cash4Life – 1 in 21,846,048

Canada

• Lotto Max – 1 in 33,294,800
• Lotto 6/49 – 1 in 13,983,816
• Daily Grand – 1 in 13,348,188

UK

• EuroMillions – 1 in 139,838,160
• Lotto – 1 in 45,057,474
• Thunderball – 1 in 8,060,598

(All numbers retrieved from the official sites for each respective lottery program)

Lottery Conclusion – On the List of Effective Get Rich Quick Schemes?

Given the numbers above, while there is a small chance to get rich quickly, there is a higher chance you could die by the following:

• Bicyclist – 1 in 3,825 ¹
• Lightning – 1 in 135,000 ²
• Asteroid or Comet – between 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 250,000 ²

So while I wouldn’t say these grant you a status of being a “disowned disappointment” seeing as there is no scam here, the reality is there is a very small chance of winning. Further, there isn’t any hustle that can be done to make these reasonably effective over time.

Short answer – NO

Multi-Level Marketing Companies

Oh MLM companies, they thrive with highschool graduates who don’t know any better. Giving the gift of knowledge of the immediate harsh truths to the world of making money could be one we would rather go without. I’ve heard it time and time again, “It really works, but only if you put time into it”, “You just need the book Win Friends & Influence People!”, or “You’re a people person you would do great!”. Then once you’ve followed everything perfectly and you signed up 5 of your friends, you maybe break even. Worse yet, now your friends are mad because they only lost money after trusting your reguritated jargon that was sold to you. Where’s the riches and fame, and why do my friends all hate me now?

Well if you’re in the same oddly specific pool or at least something similar (I was one, unfortunately) then don’t feel bad or alone, more than 99% of recruits in MLMs lose money according to the FTC³. Now that is just for turning a profit, of the less than 1% that don’t lose money, an even smaller fraction are making anything even close to life-changing money, and that is purely at the misfortune of others.

What would these statements be without some real world examples? Here are some common MLM companies and the data I’ve found.

Herbalife

Herbalife is an MLM company focusing on diet supplements. Founded in 1980, they operate in 94 different countries and have about 4.5 million members and .7 million distributors.⁴

Herbalife released monthly data on the average gross compensation for 2019: here are the numbers: ⁵

• First Year Distributors (about 22,000 sellers/Distributors)
  • 50% earned more than $175 ($1.01 an hour*)
  • 10% earned more than $1,030 ($5.94 an hour*)
  • 1% earned more than $4,740 ($27.34 an hour*)
• All other Distributors (46,000)
  • 50% earned more than $265 ($1.52 an hour*)
  • 10% earned more than $3,335 ($19.24 an hour*)
  • 1% earned more than $14,755 ($85.12 an hour*)

^{*This is only if this is being worked at 40 hours a week. Any data I could find did not give out how much time went into earnings. I am assuming some worked significantly less, and the top earners worked more.}

The next part to note here is that Herbalife had 146,000 distributors in 2019, but this data only includes a pool of 68,000. They note that “In a typical month, 68,000 earned money”. This means the other 78,000 were not included in the stated percentages as they were non-earners in a typical month. So the actual earner percentages should be cut in half to account for all distributors.

So unless you are part of the 0.315% (1 in 317 people), you can expect to make average to less than minimum wage. Further, Herbalife notes that top earners generally are President’s Team members that have been working for 5 to 11 years already and to get to that point it requires consistency and dedication. 

Herbalife Conclusion

If we take the top earners that are part of the “President’s Team”, and multiply that by 12 to get the yearly income, it comes to about $177,000. While that is a great salary for working a full time job, I wouldn’t consider this part of get rich quick schemes.

I would also argue heavily to not even consider trying Herbalife given the low success rate and past grievances.

Avon

Avon is a direct sales company specializing in jewelry, cosmetics, and other beauty/personal care items. They are the 5th largest beauty company in the world, making it a notable company aside from the MLM side we will be discussing below.

Getting statistics has been pretty hard as far as average gross compensation, the best I’ve been able to find is an article from The Finance Guy that breaks down the amount of revenue and averages it across the number of reps they have selling. Here is the breakdown he had from data in the 2015 Avon Annual Report:

• Avon Total Revenue – $6,160,500,000
• Representatives – 6,000,000
• Maximum Representative Earning % – 50%
• Max Average Pay Per Rep – $1,026.75 ($513.375 after 50% commission)

Now this data is again from 2015, so I took the liberty to apply the same assumptions based on the latest yearly report we have from 2019⁶.

• Avon Total Revenue – $4,763,200,000 ($1,397,300,000 less than 2015)
• Representatives – 5,000,000
• Maximum Representative Earning % – 50%
• Max Average Pay Per Rep – $952.64 ($476.32 after 50% commission)

Now, this is the best case scenario. A new representative will only earn 25% beauty commission after a minimum sale amount of $40 has been earned. This is also ONLY for beauty products, Fashion and Home products will earn 20% when starting and a max of 25% when hitting their top tier. In reality, you can expect to earn much less unless you have a large amount of sales and an already defined market ready to take your orders the moment you start.

AVON Conclusion

This again will take a long time to set up a network and get working as a regular business. It does not have a high success rate with the success stories (earning $20 an hour, nothing life-changing) taking multiple years before it is profitable.

Amway

Amway is yet another MLM company and is perhaps the most known on the list here. Specializing in health, beauty, and home care products, they have report sales generating $8.4 Billion in 2019 and are largely successful as a business.

Their data is publicly available making this pretty easy to research. Let’s break down the statistics from their site for 2020 as a whole(not monthly earnings).⁷ 

• 3 million IBOs⁸ (Independent Business Owners/Distributors)
  • 37% had no reported sales or involvement
  • 7% (assumed) had no sales but were involved (sponsored another IBO or earned some form of compensation)
  • 56% received at least one payment from Amway
• Top 1% (~16,800)
  • Average earnings of $83,032 ($39.91 an hour*)
  • Median earnings of $50,363** ($24.21 an hour*)
• Top 10% (~168,000)
  • Average earnings of $13,734 ($6.60 an hour*)
  • Median earnings of $4,402** ($2.11 an hour*)
• Top 50% (~840,000)
  • Average earnings of $3,149 ($1.51 an hour*)
  • Median earnings of $472** ($0.22 an hour*)

^{*This is only if this is being worked at 40 hours a week. Any data I could find did not give out how much time went into earnings. I am assuming some worked significantly less, and the top earners worked more.
**These are noted because the median is a better representation of the earnings. This gives an estimate that will not account for extreme highs or lows. It is literally the middle earner in a spread of all the earners provided.}

Just like with Herbalife, this data is only including the earners, not everyone distributor paid the $62 annual cost to register with Amway. The statistics are missing 44% of all IBOs, however, that is generally expected on Income Disclosures.

Amway Conclusion

looking at the top earners here, the median is $50,363 a year. That is pretty close to the median salary in the US for working a full-time job. So not great but not bad, though this makes a very small percentage of the participants and I wouldn’t be trying it any time soon. Just like the others, it takes a lot of work, and can’t be considered part of get rich quick schemes.

MLM Conclusion – On the List of Effective Get Rich Quick Schemes?

Seeing as how none of the examples above can earn you life-changing money in a quick amount of time, the answer is an easy no. Now how about for earning extra money as a side hustle? Also no, the amount of work that these take (on average) for these to work is comparable to a full-time job, and even then it is statistically risky.

Short answer – NO

Stock Market

The stock market is my honest go-to, but that doesn’t make it any better. I will be going over the common methods and the success chances of each. I will not be explaining what each method is as that will be too much for this already large article.

Day Trading/Active Trading

A form of speculative trading usually following either fundamental or technical indicators. There is a great article from VantagePoint Trading that explains the day trading success rate. I am going to be grabbing the quick details from that, but if you want to read something more in-depth, please give that article a read.

• Average Trader Success Rate Percentage – 3.5% to 4.5%
  • Statistic is for “valiant effort”, otherwise the success rate is close to 0%
  • This is also for those that start with a reasonable amount of capital
• Trading Success Rate with a Mentor – 8% to 10%
  • Still for those that have the drive to become successful
  • This is also dependent on the mentor
• Men vs Women – Including this statistic because it’s interesting
  • Success rate of men – 3.4%
  • Success rate of women – 40%*

^{*The sample size was small to begin with, the author claims to have verified this stat with other firm managers to increase its authenticity.}

• Taking Time Into Consideration
  • After a year of trading – 14% to 33%
  • For most successful, 6 to 7 months (800 hours) was the point of consistent success.

I’m sure you noticed, but I’ve listed no numbers here on how much is made. This is because it takes money to make money ($25,000 to start for anyone serious) and then it is all percentage and risk-based. Unfortunately, even while being profitable the variance of success can be wild. You can have some day trade options that make 1,000%+ on a good call (recently on something like GME) but then there’s the other that maybe only had a 1% gain.

Day Trading Conclusion

While I will recommend day trading, I recommend only investing what you are okay with losing, and then also paper trading (simulation with fake money) for at least 6 months successfully before using real money. As for getting rich quickly, 6 months is not a short amount of time (but then again, it is) and then you also have to earn money to invest first. Getting to the point, it is a valid way to possibly earn money quickly, but chances are not in your favor.

Position and Long Term Trading

Position trading is generally longish-term trading, where positions are done based on daily, weekly, or monthly charts. This type of trading has more success when the market isn’t volatile, the reason being that if you are trading based on trends, a volatile market makes it hard to determine reliably established directions. (please understand reliably is being used lightly here.)

Unfortunately, I was unable to find real data for trend or long-term trading, and my statements to follow are based purely on anecdotal evidence at best. I believe the reason it is so hard to find decent data is that it is widely understood that long-term trading just works. Position trading is generally based on technical indicators and thus is considerably more reliable than day trading. You can look for increasing highs and then trade based on established patterns. Additionally, there are tons of free tools you can use to be successful like the Finviz Stock Screener. I am lumping in long-term trading (1+ year holding) here so if you also include stock index investments it only increases your reliability to earn money.

While I am completely for position or long term trading, there are a couple caveats here.

1. You need money to make money, and again it takes a considerable amount of capital to earn anything worth while.
2. Making money requires a bullish market (where the market is rising and is expected to). The stock market is not always bullish, especially on the day this article was written (I lost 3.11% in my portfolio today alone).
3. Not for those that are impatient or emotional (If you’re looking to get rich quick, patience is probably not your strong suit)

Position and Long Term Trading Conclusion

Given those caveats, I would not list position trading as a get rich quick opportunity. While it is possible by chance, trading based on technical indicators over the long term is meant for small percentage gains not getting a 10x quickly on your current income.

Swing Trading

Swing trading is trying to capitalize on short term gains a stock might see over a few hours, days or weeks. Right off the bat, I will admit this can be extremely lucrative, but you can also lose more than what you make if you aren’t careful. I also couldn’t find good data to back up percentages here, but there are arguments for anywhere from 5% to 15% of swing traders are successful. Again, it takes a considerable amount of experience/time before success is realized, and having a mentor increases chances of success. With that said there are some caveats here that limit who can get into swing trading.

• Trading is limited to 3 same day trades within 5 business days unless you have a $25,000 portfolio value. 
• A typical trader will risk 50% of their capital on a single trade. ⁸
• Smaller accounts have less potential for gains than day trading. ⁸
• A typical month will see 3% gain. ⁸

Swing Trading Conclusion

I will recommend this as an alternative to day trading, though I would still recommend paper trading to begin. I cannot recommend it to anyone wanting to start out on their path toward financial freedom. This again takes money to make money, and you need a decent chunk of money to trade effectively.  

Scalping

Scalping is similar to swing trading, however, you are looking at up to hundreds of trades in a day held for minutes or even seconds at a time. There are generally strict exit strategies that are followed to ensure success. As this is typically considered a type of day trading some of the same rules apply here as well.

• limited to 3 same day trades within 5 business days unless you have a $25,000 portfolio value.
• not much sucess until a large amount of training and then experience is gained.

Scalping Conclusion

At this point, I am going to sound like a broken record going through similar stats from previous stock trading activities. Again, I would recommend scalping, but only after paper-trading for a significant amount of time. As for getting rich quick, it takes decent capital to get started so I can’t recommend this as the scheme for you.

Stock Market Conclusion – On the List of Effective Get Rich Quick Schemes?

I would argue that the stock market does work for making money, although it will depend on how committed you are and how much investment you have to start. As far as getting rich quick, this would be a definite no as you need to have some decent capital to begin with. That’s not to say it isn’t possible if you were to get very lucky with a pumped option call, but given the risk of loss, I cannot recommend it. 

Short answer – Unlikely (but it is possible)

Going Viral

For this post we are going to take a look at YouTube strictly. There seems to be quite a buzz around going viral, especially post pandemic. The reason being is that if you do become successful there is a decent payout from ad revenue you can see. Here are the numbers:

• 38 million YouTube Channels (as of 2020)⁹*
• 230,000 channels have 100k subscribers⁹
• 22,000 have 1 million subscrilbers⁹

^{*This isn’t the amount of users, but instead channels with 5 to 10 subscribers or more.}

Let’s say viral is reaching 100k subscribers. That means there is a 1 in 165 chance of going viral based on these numbers.

So now that we have the chance of going viral, what about revenue numbers? This is going to be dependent on whether you are having sponsors, just ad revenue, affiliate marketing, or other avenues of revenue generation. Going just off of ad revenue, YouTube pays an average of $18 per 1,000 ad views.¹⁰ Luckily a few YouTubers have disclosed their YouTube revenue as well:

• Graham Stephen (2020) – 2 million subscribers : ~$6,000 a day
• Andrei Jikh (2020) – 1 million subscribers : ~$1,850 a day
• Metics Media (2020) – 18,300 subscribers : ~$31 a day

As you can see here, even with 18,300 subscribers a decent amount can be earned as a side hustle. Further, staying consistent with uploading and providing content, it increases more with time as Metics Media is now at 43.5k subscribers now at the time of writing this article.

YouTube Conclusion – On the List of Effective Get Rich Quick Schemes?

Uploading content that will attract people takes time and a lot of persistence. That makes this an easy answer of no, this shouldn’t be included in the list of get rich quick schemes. Now, how about a possible revenue generator? Unfortunately we do not have enough statistics to make a decent conclusion, however, with a 1 in 165 chance for making a 5 to 6 figure salary, this isn’t exactly something I would take a chance on unless it is something you are truly passionate about.

Short answer – Unlikely (but there is a chance, so give it a go if it’s a passion)

Being a Webcam Model

This item was originally added as a joke, just because everyone at this point has made something similar to the joke “I’m sick of work! I’ll just make an OnlyFans!”. So after doing the research out of curiosity I found someone who had used a VPN randomizer and automation to scrape data from the site to get an estimate of earnings.

For this I’m going to only focus on OnlyFans as it is probably the most common one currently. I’m not going to break down what the service is, nor what the sign up process is like, only statistics.

• Top accounts make ~$100,000 (these accounts are not included in the following metrics)¹¹
• 1% of accounts make 33% of all money¹¹
• 10% of accounts make 73% of all money¹¹
• The median account pulls $180 a month¹¹
  • After commission, this is less than $145 a month¹¹

I do want to note that there isn’t enough data to support a claim one way or the other. I would also note that this is going to be highly dependent on how attractive a person is (a definite no go for me and my dad bod).

Webcam Model (OnlyFans Edition) Conclusion – On the List of Effective Get Rich Quick Schemes?

I highly recommend giving the article these metrics were pulled from The Economics of OnlyFans. It explains how the metrics were pulled, as well as other statistics that may be beneficial if this is of interest to you. As for my conclusion, I find this is more successful than MLM projects, but less successful than smart investments in the stock market. There is a low chance of success unless you already have a decent following (assuming the following would be interested in this sort of thing).

Short answer – Unlikely (Arguably No)

Dealing Drugs/Ponzi Schemes/Counterfeit Products/Smuggling/Illegal Activity

So here we are, the worst of the worst, despised wrongdoers, lawless delinquents, etc. Say you are so desperate you want to start considering these options? It has been shown a large amount of criminals get away with robbery, burglary, and theft. Unfortunately there does not seem to be much for data on smuggling, counterfeiting, etc, as there is often no person immediately impacted to report the crime unlike when being robbed. Here are the available statistics regarding robbery since we do have that data:

• 30.5% of cases are cleared* for Robbery¹²
  • 2018 data shows an average reported robbery of $2,119¹³
• 18.4% of cases are cleared* for Larceny-theft¹²
• 14.1% of cases are cleared* for Property Crime¹²

Cleared in this instance would almost be considered solved, but not necessarily prosecuted.  This means that actually caught criminals is likely less than the data above. This is crazy because that means 69.5% of robbery cases will remain open/unsolved.

Crime Conclusion – On the List of Effective Get Rich Quick Schemes?

If you could hear me sigh while writing this, you would understand how much I don’t want to write this conclusion. Please don’t be this kind of person, and I by no means endorse crime of any kind. As far as get rich quick schemes go, this will have the highest success rate even when factoring in prosecution rates, but again there is not a high pay-off (at least for robbery). Finally, there is the part where you are hurting others to benefit in a worse way than the other options (except for MLMs which are practically legalized robbery).

Short answer – No (and you should be ashamed!)

Getting Rich Quick the Right Way

The point of this article was mainly to show that get rich quick schemes do not have high success rates, and when they are successful they are most-often not life-altering amounts of success. Warning, the rest of this article is mainly opinion driven, so again, I apologize if you were looking for cold hard facts on how to get rich quick.

I’ve long been of the opinion that if something is a proven method for making tons of money fast, everyone would be doing it, and in turn it becomes less effective. So with that said the only method I would argue works is hustle, be patient, be minimalistic, work hard to increase your current base pay, and then invest a large amount of it into other new/upcoming projects or your own entrepreneurial endeavors.

This is easier said than done. I’ve seen some people take a shotgun approach (invest a small amount in many different things) and come out successful, and then I’ve seen others be so sold on a single thing that they invested life savings and miraculously it worked (don’t do that, please). Other times it might not work, but then you have to get back up, dust yourself off, and try again. Unfortunately, there isn’t any reliable data on how effective each approach is.

Final Words

So you could become part of a larger group that always mention kicking themselves for missing things like the dot-com bubble before it popped, crypto currency (Bitcoin or ETH in their infancy), or stocks like Apple, Amazon, and Google, or you can learn from it and try your hand at new upcoming projects. For myself right now I’m speculating on things like Cardano, other launchpads, and NFTs, but it’s already pretty late in the game for those so I’m keeping an eye out for new projects being released.

There is no secret recipe for success, but as long as you are doubling down on investments, keeping an eye out for potential technologies, and not killing yourself with worthless time sucks, you can see more success than the average person. I know this may be harder for some than others given the current job market and “good” job availability, however, that is a separate discussion to be had.

Let me know what you think, or if this article has been helpful/not helpful. As a reminder, I am as unqualified as I can get and am not a financial advisor or life coach, and you just might see some success in the things I am saying don’t work. I’m okay with being wrong but am always open and hopeful for friendly discussion or constructive criticism when I am.

Helpful Links (superscript number references, also known as sources)

1. Odds of Dying – https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/data-details/
2. Meteorites, Impacts, and Mass Extinction – http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm
3. MLM’s ABYSMAL NUMBERS – https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/trade-regulation-rule-disclosure-requirements-and-prohibitions-concerning-business-opportunities-ftc.r511993-00008%C2%A0/00008-57281.pdf
4. Herbalife Nutrition 2018 Annual Report – https://web.archive.org/web/20200101075116/https://ir.herbalife.com/static-files/8155864d-86df-4365-82c7-959a32fac511
5. HerbaLife U.S. Statement of Average Gross Compenation 2019 – https://edge.myherbalife.com/vmba/media/7b5c662a-d82a-4c1c-aa42-3f21238aaf54/web/general/original/statementofaveragegrosscompensation.pdf
6. Annual Report For Fiscal Year End (December 31, 2019) –  https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReports/PDF/NYSE_AVP_2019.pdf
7. Income Disclosure – https://www.amway.com/en_US/income-disclosure
8. Day Trading vs. Swing Trading – https://www.thebalance.com/day-trading-verus-swing-trading-4134456
9. How Many YouTube Channels Are There? – https://www.tubics.com/blog/number-of-youtube-channels/
10. YouTube Revenue Statistics to Know in 2021 – https://spendmenot.com/blog/youtube-revenue-statistics/
11. The Economics of OnlyFans – https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans
12. Crime clearance rate in the United States in 2019, by type – https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/bank-crime-statistics-2019.pdf/view
13. FBI: UCR | Robbery – https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/robbery

Christoph

Christoph is a technical integrations analyst who specializes in security infrastructure and coaching. He has found he thoroughly enjoys experiencing major market losses, falling for get-rich-quick schemes, learning about upcoming market trends, stocks, crypto, or anything related to investing and building income.