What’s the smartest way you’ve seen someone make money online without scamming anyone?
December 13, 2025
What’s the smartest way you’ve seen someone make money online without scamming anyone?
31 comments
Oh great question
may not seem smart to others, but it seemed fairly clever to me. I knew someone who went into the more affluent areas of their city and offer to bring their trash to the curb for them on garbage day. They’d have to go around every night pulling trash bins and recycling bins to the curb, but they did get a bunch of people who were interested. I dont recall the money they made, but they said it was a nice side gig. Didnt make enough to live on though.
Toes
I have buddy who has access to wild grown mistletoe, he picks its, wraps a ribbon on it and sells it on ebay. He isnt making life changing money but it funds his hobbies.
There’s a bunch of stuff.
Investing generally. In the crypto world, you can buy and stake coins for a good APR return. Several options that lock your money for days to weeks or more, return (estimate) 5-20%. It’s not difficult, but there are a few nuances you should research if you go that route.
Or find something you’re interested in / knowledgable about and make short videos. In time you can monetize them.
Dropshipping business. It takes time to get rolling, but I know a few people that do very well.
Can you play the lotto online? 🙂
Guy I know of (but didn’t go to my college) worked on a social media platform idea for a couple of jocks (2 brothers) and figured why not just make his own website. He got mega rich running ads on the site but got sued by the brothers and eventually settled. By then he’d IPO’d and made more money than he could spend in a 1000 lifetimes. He still runs the company and lives in Hawaii with his family now.
I met someone who set up a store on-line that sells soaps and shampoo (if I remember correctly). He neither makes the product, manages the inventory, nor packs/ships product. That is all done by the manufactirer. He collects the money and sends a portion of that to the manufacturer – which is all automated. He said he clears $75k most years and writes off a lot of personal expenses to his business – like his car. He and his wife had FT jobs and he was preparing to retire at 45 with $4M saved.
You don’t make much money without scamming people.
I’ve recently gotten into affiliate marketing, within a specific niche. I’m not turning anything life changing into far from it. But it’s a start
My dad’s childhood neighbour started importing pots and pans in the early days of the internet and started selling them online. Last time I checked they were worth over 200 million
Only fans
Selling Adult Check ID’s in the mid 90s. I made bank.
Matched betting and value betting, tax free in the UK and somewhat low-risk returns. Has been a fantastic supplement to my income for years, although it becomes less profitable as the years go on.
OnlyFans and other pornographic methods
PS: OP, don’t be an idiot. Always remember that if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.
Knew a guy who bid on government contracts and just sub contracted all the work. He was a federal contracting officer for like a decade before doing this, so he knew all the regulations.
A guy who worked for me made Oragami. Sold swans and a few other animals he made on ETSY, ebay and some other platform. Said it was a $25K per year side hustle. Another friend’s son started buying old concert t-shirts from thrift stores and resold those on ebay for obscene amounts. Amazing what people spent on those
I have several side jobs I do a few times a year. Two are online.
– Checking English paragraphs for a university ($100 an hour)
– Checking English essays for a national exam board ($30 an hour)
The first one is done over email. In the second, I have a website I have to login to.
Both of those I got through work contacts. They pay well, but they are only three times a year each.
I also used to do surveys for a site called Prolific. Made a few hundred dollars.
Buying a lot of gme in 2020
Using ChatGPT agent mode to do online surveys all day autonomously
I know a guy who buys autographed pictures of athletes and then frames them and sells them on EBay. Obviously somebody could just frame the pictures themselves but something about seeing an already framed photo boosts the price online.
He decided to get into the independent comic market.
He started buying out books on speculation that he thought would have value.
Pretty soon he had cornered the whole market.
He had eBay sellers sending him death threats.
When his disability was done and he went back to his regular job he had made around 30k.
The Jeff Bezos guy seems to have a pretty good idea
Learned to “flash” (jailbreak) Xbow 360 back in collège (15yr old) and made ppl pay 50€ for every xbox. Posted the offer on internet and there was this dude in his late 20s who would drop 10-20 xbox every 2 week for me to flash.
My neighbor same age buyed stolen card on the web and used them on ebay, he would receive 10iphones some days and his mother never suspected anything…
Depends on how flexible your definition of “scamming” is, nevertheless it’s an amusing case.
Basically, this guy hosted a website catering to South East Asian superstitions, in which you could pay for him to cast hexes upon some “victim”.
Of course, he never did anything, and people generally justified the “results” as superstitious people do.
Is it *really* scamming if they get the same result as if it was the real thing?
A buddy of mine used to program raspberry pies remotely during the lockdowns for people who weren’t as tech savvy. He raked in about $5k before he got tired of people messaging him at random hours, in a rush.
What made it smart was that he would often save some of the projects and would just reuse it with some modifications if something similar came up later. Like at one point I asked him if he could program mine since I was trying to build a hydroponic system and wanted to automate the nutrients. Took him like 5 minutes since he already did it for someone who had a mini grow op. Not sure how much he charged the other guy but he accepted a $20 magic card that I drafted but wasn’t using when we were finally allowed to meet up again.
I think this is my time to shine…
I worked for a Builders Merchants in the UK (construction supplier for people outside of the UK). We were national and I had the power to discount and deliver to pretty much anywhere in the UK with almost no delivery charges.
I started selling their products on Amazon and eBay. I made an absolute killing. I earned more money doing my so called side hustle than my actual job.
years ago I worked with guy Good size company .every day he d go buy lunch different days differant places. He posted his schedule he added 1$ fee to pick up. He d call it in take his moped with big baskets . call it in go.. He all so had A deal worth places were he bought the food they gave him discount . He d charge you whats on the menu ..Tere were lot of people that had side hustles. one livedin next state were cheaper cigerates he sold them cheaper than the store,, was tool crib guys who were bookies. Was one guy who pased out cards for massarge place with HE.. his mark was on back of card.. He got free HE for everyone that went with his card.. Was so many more, guys there selling things..
A long time ago when Amazon was a smaller company their website was much simpler.
I was half decent with a popular language (PHP) and wrote an alternate version of Amazon that had a fully working shopping cart and product inventory. You chose your products, and you paid your money. Only you paid Amazon not me and they shipped your products and you got your receipt from them.
I got a referral credit for the sales. It did well for a year or so and then Amazon suspended my account for violating their terms.
The million dollar homepage. Guy sold pixels on a webpage for $1 each to raise tuition for school. It went viral (of course) and he sold all one million pixels. The page is still up twenty years later.
31 comments
Oh great question
may not seem smart to others, but it seemed fairly clever to me. I knew someone who went into the more affluent areas of their city and offer to bring their trash to the curb for them on garbage day. They’d have to go around every night pulling trash bins and recycling bins to the curb, but they did get a bunch of people who were interested. I dont recall the money they made, but they said it was a nice side gig. Didnt make enough to live on though.
Toes
I have buddy who has access to wild grown mistletoe, he picks its, wraps a ribbon on it and sells it on ebay. He isnt making life changing money but it funds his hobbies.
There’s a bunch of stuff.
Investing generally. In the crypto world, you can buy and stake coins for a good APR return. Several options that lock your money for days to weeks or more, return (estimate) 5-20%. It’s not difficult, but there are a few nuances you should research if you go that route.
Or find something you’re interested in / knowledgable about and make short videos. In time you can monetize them.
Dropshipping business. It takes time to get rolling, but I know a few people that do very well.
Can you play the lotto online? 🙂
Guy I know of (but didn’t go to my college) worked on a social media platform idea for a couple of jocks (2 brothers) and figured why not just make his own website. He got mega rich running ads on the site but got sued by the brothers and eventually settled. By then he’d IPO’d and made more money than he could spend in a 1000 lifetimes. He still runs the company and lives in Hawaii with his family now.
I met someone who set up a store on-line that sells soaps and shampoo (if I remember correctly). He neither makes the product, manages the inventory, nor packs/ships product. That is all done by the manufactirer. He collects the money and sends a portion of that to the manufacturer – which is all automated. He said he clears $75k most years and writes off a lot of personal expenses to his business – like his car. He and his wife had FT jobs and he was preparing to retire at 45 with $4M saved.
You don’t make much money without scamming people.
I’ve recently gotten into affiliate marketing, within a specific niche. I’m not turning anything life changing into far from it. But it’s a start
My dad’s childhood neighbour started importing pots and pans in the early days of the internet and started selling them online. Last time I checked they were worth over 200 million
Only fans
Selling Adult Check ID’s in the mid 90s. I made bank.
Matched betting and value betting, tax free in the UK and somewhat low-risk returns. Has been a fantastic supplement to my income for years, although it becomes less profitable as the years go on.
OnlyFans and other pornographic methods
PS: OP, don’t be an idiot. Always remember that if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.
Knew a guy who bid on government contracts and just sub contracted all the work. He was a federal contracting officer for like a decade before doing this, so he knew all the regulations.
A guy who worked for me made Oragami. Sold swans and a few other animals he made on ETSY, ebay and some other platform. Said it was a $25K per year side hustle. Another friend’s son started buying old concert t-shirts from thrift stores and resold those on ebay for obscene amounts. Amazing what people spent on those
I have several side jobs I do a few times a year. Two are online.
– Checking English paragraphs for a university ($100 an hour)
– Checking English essays for a national exam board ($30 an hour)
The first one is done over email. In the second, I have a website I have to login to.
Both of those I got through work contacts. They pay well, but they are only three times a year each.
I also used to do surveys for a site called Prolific. Made a few hundred dollars.
Buying a lot of gme in 2020
Using ChatGPT agent mode to do online surveys all day autonomously
I know a guy who buys autographed pictures of athletes and then frames them and sells them on EBay. Obviously somebody could just frame the pictures themselves but something about seeing an already framed photo boosts the price online.
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
Guys sold ad space for $1 per pixel.
Had a friend who was on disability for an injury.
He decided to get into the independent comic market.
He started buying out books on speculation that he thought would have value.
Pretty soon he had cornered the whole market.
He had eBay sellers sending him death threats.
When his disability was done and he went back to his regular job he had made around 30k.
The Jeff Bezos guy seems to have a pretty good idea
Learned to “flash” (jailbreak) Xbow 360 back in collège (15yr old) and made ppl pay 50€ for every xbox. Posted the offer on internet and there was this dude in his late 20s who would drop 10-20 xbox every 2 week for me to flash.
My neighbor same age buyed stolen card on the web and used them on ebay, he would receive 10iphones some days and his mother never suspected anything…
Depends on how flexible your definition of “scamming” is, nevertheless it’s an amusing case.
Basically, this guy hosted a website catering to South East Asian superstitions, in which you could pay for him to cast hexes upon some “victim”.
Of course, he never did anything, and people generally justified the “results” as superstitious people do.
Is it *really* scamming if they get the same result as if it was the real thing?
A buddy of mine used to program raspberry pies remotely during the lockdowns for people who weren’t as tech savvy. He raked in about $5k before he got tired of people messaging him at random hours, in a rush.
What made it smart was that he would often save some of the projects and would just reuse it with some modifications if something similar came up later. Like at one point I asked him if he could program mine since I was trying to build a hydroponic system and wanted to automate the nutrients. Took him like 5 minutes since he already did it for someone who had a mini grow op. Not sure how much he charged the other guy but he accepted a $20 magic card that I drafted but wasn’t using when we were finally allowed to meet up again.
I think this is my time to shine…
I worked for a Builders Merchants in the UK (construction supplier for people outside of the UK). We were national and I had the power to discount and deliver to pretty much anywhere in the UK with almost no delivery charges.
I started selling their products on Amazon and eBay. I made an absolute killing. I earned more money doing my so called side hustle than my actual job.
years ago I worked with guy Good size company .every day he d go buy lunch different days differant places. He posted his schedule he added 1$ fee to pick up. He d call it in take his moped with big baskets . call it in go.. He all so had A deal worth places were he bought the food they gave him discount . He d charge you whats on the menu ..Tere were lot of people that had side hustles. one livedin next state were cheaper cigerates he sold them cheaper than the store,, was tool crib guys who were bookies. Was one guy who pased out cards for massarge place with HE.. his mark was on back of card.. He got free HE for everyone that went with his card.. Was so many more, guys there selling things..
A long time ago when Amazon was a smaller company their website was much simpler.
I was half decent with a popular language (PHP) and wrote an alternate version of Amazon that had a fully working shopping cart and product inventory. You chose your products, and you paid your money. Only you paid Amazon not me and they shipped your products and you got your receipt from them.
I got a referral credit for the sales. It did well for a year or so and then Amazon suspended my account for violating their terms.
The million dollar homepage. Guy sold pixels on a webpage for $1 each to raise tuition for school. It went viral (of course) and he sold all one million pixels. The page is still up twenty years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage?wprov=sfla1
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/