Making Money Fast and Easy in 2021?

Actually, there are ways to make money fast. For example:

• You can play and win the lottery;
• You can gamble at the casino;
• You can inherit wealth;
• You can engage in sketchy activities;
• You can develop a Covid-19 vaccine, that’s 100% effective, easy to distribute and manufacture, and that has no side effects…

The list could go on, but let’s take a look at these methods from a feasibility point of view:

• Playing the lottery.
  Who wouldn’t like to win the jackpot and retire early, worry-free, on a yacht in the Bahamas? The reality is that you are more likely to be killed by lightning (1 in 56,439 chance), than you are winning the big prize (1 in about 30,000,000 – depending on what lottery you’re playing). So nope, you’re not getting rich fast from winning the lottery. Unless you are super lucky.
• Gambling at the casino.
  Unless you know what you are doing, it’s more likely that you will be losing money fast taking this route. But if you know what you are doing, then you’re smart enough to choose the games that you are more or less in control (real Poker, maybe?), than those who control you (electronic gambling machines). But then, it is possible that you’ll hit the jackpot with this one too, if you’re lucky, or super talented.
• Inheriting your family’s wealth.
  Super easy method, instant way to become super rich. Only problem is, are you that privileged to be a member of a wealthy family? And if you are, what are you doing here anyways..
• Engaging in sketchy activities.
  Definitely not endorsing this one, but people do make a lot of money very fast by doing this. In my opinion, this involves a lot of risk, and lack of morality.
• Making groundbreaking scientific discoveries, and owning a share of the Intellectual Property rights.
  This is in my opinion the most noble way of becoming rich fast. Fast from the point you’re making the discovery and find a way to monetize it, of course. To get to that point though, you probably need to be intellectually gifted, or assiduous, and it involves a lot of hard work along the way, and most likely a very long time to get there.

I don’t know about you, but most of these methods are kind of out of reach for me (or not interested in at all). But I actually just want to make money fast, like right now, and don’t want to waste my time. Is there anything like that? Well, apparently the Internet has lots of solutions to this problem. Let’s explore a couple of them.

Buying books, guides, and training sessions from “successful” people

These have been around for as long as I remember. Those long pages, containing lots of convincing reasons, testimonials, and pictures of smiling people, along with a big button every once in a while letting you know that you too can master the skill of making money fast of whatever that page is trying to “teach” you about. Some examples are: How to Start Your Own E-commerce Business in Three Easy Steps; How to Make Serious Money with Amazon with Only $250 in Capital; Becoming a Real Estate Mogul – My Secret Formula; Easy Money Making with Online Gig Platforms… And each of these guides, and the information within, can be yours for only $499 $39 (limited time offer). Oh wow, such discount, much steal, must buy now!! I say wait a second, let’s put our detective spectacles, and skeptical hat on, and do some research. There’s no denying that a lot of people find ingenious ways to earn a great living, but if they do, what would be their motivation to sell the secret to others? If this method is indeed a sophisticated and genuinely unique way of making money, then letting others know would make it mainstream, which means that more people would start doing the same thing, which in turn would make it lose its uniqueness, and therefore diminish its “effectiveness” at generating good money. Just imagine you discover a way to make your website turn first in search results for a keyword such as “buy auto insurance” – you would become millionaire overnight! Would you package this secret in a guide, and share it with everyone on the Internet for just $39? I doubt you would, in fact you would guard this secret more than your true name. Therefore, those who sell you the guides and “secrets” that you too can reproduce to earn good money, are actually not making money from the “secret” itself, they are making money from selling you an idea. And most often, this idea is not worth the money (even at that discounted price) since the information is easily available from other sources, that don’t cost a thing. You only need to do some research, run some search queries, and you will find what you are looking for – that’s the beauty of the Internet.

Learning a skill in 30 days – type of books

These type of books give a false promise that a skill which can help you become profitable, can be acquired in a very short time frame. Some notorious examples that I am aware of are books about technology skills. Learn Python in 30 days, or Become a Machine Learning Specialist in under 3 months. The truth is, if you don’t have a solid background in a field of study, then you simply won’t be able to acquire a skill that will make you rich in a short time. In order to make good money from your skill, you need to become an expert at it, and that takes a lot of years of practice. A book is a good way to scratch the surface, and pique your interest, but in order to become a true expert, you need experience, and experience requires time and effort. So, before buying a book or guide that promises you to learn something fast, do not pay attention to the time element, look at the value this book will bring you – and you can do that by reading reviews online, preferably from multiple sources.

Ponzi schemes, Pyramid schemes, and Multi Level Marketing Schemes

Slightly different by notion, these methods have a common element – to get this thing to work, the network needs to grow, at the expense of “new blood” who joins the network. The idea is this, in order to make money, you need to promote the network or product to new people, who – by buying the said product or access to the network – give you a small commission. And those who recruited you, will also get a small commission. And this percolates down to the very first “founders” of the network. At first, the concept of earning passive income from commissions sounds very appealing. But what most do not consider, is that recruiting other people requires a lot of effort from your part, mostly time. And sadly many people put too small a price on their own time. Although these schemes are considered illegal in most jurisdictions, there are some networks that seem to bypass the rules, and keep going strong. For example, there is a very popular network that sells health, beauty, and home care products that’s been running for over 60 years. Or that network that sells dietary supplements. Or that network that offers “the best tools and resources” for becoming a successful Forex trader. In my opinion, people who join such networks do so because they are successfully brainwashed by recruiters into believing that the products or resources that this network promotes have a huge potential. Little do they realize that it is them who are the product. What’s worse, is that these recruiters will actually pitch the idea of joining the network to friends and family, which adds a sense of credibility and lets the victims’ guards down. To make yourself aware of such networks, I recommend that you read this excellent article that describes everything in great detail.

The Nigerian Prince scams

In case you’ve never received one of those emails from a desperate Nigerian Prince, who has inherited $90,000,000 from his uncle’s diamond mining business, and needs to get the money out of his country fast, this is for you. And eventually, you will get an email like this, and by greatest odds, you were the lucky one selected to get a share of his wealth. But first, you need to make a wire transfer to them so that the can cover the wire-transfer fee, and to see that you are serious about it. As ridiculous as it may sound, people still do fall for these scams, just don’t be one of them. Mark as spam, and move on.

Making money with stock trading

What a year 2020 has been! But for some, it has been a great opportunity to profit from the stock market fluctuations. And those people do not write guides, or make YouTube videos to tell you where the next opportunity in trading will be – they are simply too busy minding their own business trying to turn a profit. But some have seen an opportunity to capitalize from the stock market fluctuations in different ways, and have created YouTube channels dedicated to discussing what’s happening in the stock market, where it’s going next, looking at trends, and whatnot. Some even created club access memberships (that you need to purchase, obviously) where they discuss “opportunities”. These are the people who can read a graph to you in a dozen nice ways, and mesmerize you with their talk. But if you analyze carefully what they are saying, you’ll notice that it’s all cheap talk, that provides you with no helpful information, or maybe it’s even doing more harm than good. The stock market doesn’t care about the past, it’s always looking at the future. Things that you know today, are already priced in, and there is always someone who knew that long before you did, because they have access to sources of information that you will never have. It is also important to discern between trading and investing. Trading involves buying stocks, or options and selling those when it has appreciated (hopefully), in a shorter period of time. Traders are mostly interested in the share price, therefore this involves a lot of speculation on their part. Investing on the other hand, is buying stock for the long haul. Investors are interested in good companies, that have potential for growth in the long term, that maybe even pay a good dividend. Investing is inherently safer than trading, because first, the company stock involved is usually of better quality, and second, because short term fluctuations and spontaneous decisions to sell are usually what loses money, and investors are usually resilient to such fluctuations (or should be). And because of the unpredictability of the stock market, trading is sometimes synonymous with gambling, so know what you want to be: investor, or trader. If you decide to take the investor’s route, in my opinion, the safest way is to start with good ol’ boring index funds. Once you understand how things work, you may venture into buying individual stocks. It is always a good thing to remember, that nobody knows where the stock market is going, so don’t give a lot of weight to investment advice articles, or even bank analysts – the decision you make should be yours ultimately based on your own research and due diligence.

Phone scams

Phone scams usually involve a scammer that claims to be a representative of a local authority: police, your tax department, post service, etc. They will try to obtain information from you that can be later used for identification purposes. Such information may be: your first and last name, date of birth, your social insurance number, PIN numbers, and so on. These scammers may tell you things that may make you feel panicky, for example that there are allegations against you and that you need to comply otherwise things will get uglier. Unfortunately, some people do fall for these scams, especially the elderly. It is important to not reveal any personal information over the phone to people you do not trust. You can always ask the caller’s name, their phone number and who they are working for. You can use this information to double check whether it matches the information on their website, or you can call a phone number you trust to inquire about the person who just called. This is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, and no one will rush you to reveal information when you do not feel comfortable doing so. For example, I got a phone call from Revenu Quebec (the tax department of the province of Quebec, Canada) one day and they mentioned that there was an issue in my application. I was aware that there was an issue, however I was not sure that the person who was calling was actually from Revenu Quebec. So I asked for their ID number, and a phone number, and used the information to verify that it actually belongs to the tax department. I then called the number, which was publicly listed on their website too, and asked about the inquiry previously made by the agency representative, the representative on call checked my file and confirmed that indeed it was them who called. I then proceed to discuss the matter with them.

So is there a formula for success, and making money fast and easy?

I am not aware of such formula that can make one money fast and easy, but I know that hard work, smart work, being consistent, reading lots of books (use your local public library!), practicing the thing that you do to the level of perfection, is what will ultimately make you lots of money, and hopefully be easy from that moment on. The purpose of this article is to make the point that there is no shortcut to easy money (for most people), and to raise awareness of some common scams that promise you that, especially in hard times (for posterity, I am referring to the Covid pandemic times) like this when people are most vulnerable. Moreover, a healthy dose of skepticism can only do you good, if you do your research before paying money or investing your own time. Lots of guides will appear easy to pick up at first, but they are omitting a lot of details and background that lead to one’s success (if it even did). The outcome of this, is you will blame yourself for not being able to achieve the same results using a method that has been “proven” to work over and over again. And maybe what has been discussed here is trivial to you, as it is for me, however I am sure there are still many people out there who will find at least something new in the article.