Infectious Laughter:
How I am requesting a dollar from everyone in the world and making my friends rich in the process

Article sections
Disclaimer
Summary
Introduction
Ironing out the process
Does it pay to laugh?
Conclusion
Comments

Take action
Don't miss out → get the jokes
Submit a joke → earn 5%
Join the newsletter → get notified
Share this article → help me spread jokes
Grow your Venmo → bigger share of the tips
Post a comment → take part of the conversation

Disclaimer

I didn't execute this business idea because it was brought to my attention that it was a pyramid scheme. This is a funny realization because I wasn't trying to build a pyramid scheme. The fact that this business idea is a pyramid scheme raises some interesting questions about the ethics of such a venture. I will be keeping this article up, and will be writing a follow up article on pyramid schemes.

Summary

I'm telling jokes on Venmo. For every joke that you tip for, I'll send it to your friends. I'll send you 36.8% of what your friends tip. I'll send you 13.5% of what the friend of your friends' tips. So on and so forth, forever. Will you make money? Probably. You can also submit a joke and get paid if I use it. So what are you waiting for? Go back to Venmo, accept my 5 cents, and wait for the first joke. If it doesn't knock your socks off, you're probably not wearing socks. 😁

Sample Joke
What's the best thing about Switzerland? I don't know, but the flag is a big plus.

Don't miss out
If you're not already my friend on Venmo and you don't want to wait for the jokes to get passed down through your friends, go ahead and add me @calebignace.

Introduction

If you are reading this, you probably got a message from me on Venmo. I appreciate your tolerance for the cheesy pun I made about 5 cents. Now, let me tell you how I am going to request a dollar from everyone in the world, and how you can earn money from participating.

The Venmo Message
Hey friend! 👋 I’m doing an experiment I’m calling “Infectious Laughter.” 😂 Accept this 5 cents to opt in. You don't have to, but you should. That’s just my 5 cents! Thanks. ✌️ For more info, read my 5-minute blog post at https://calebignace.com/laughter

I've recently discovered something incredible. Venmo has an API! I know I'm getting to this late since apparently in 2016, Venmo shut down its API. Somehow a Python package called venmo-api is still working.

Finding out Venmo has an API gave me an idea: Can I request $1 from everyone in the world? As with every random idea that pops into my head, I did a quick Google search to see if anyone has attempted it. No one has. The most interesting projects that I can find on using the API is an analysis on the structure of Venmo social networks, authored by the developer of venmo-api, and to automate requesting rent from roommates every month. Although those projects are cool, they are small-boy stuff, as Sam and Shawn from My First Million would say.

Coding it up would be the easy part. It took me just a couple days of work. Figuring out the structure of the messages and the sequence of messages would be the hard part. What exactly will I ask people to give a dollar for?

Ironing out the process

The message can be up to 260 characters to work with. I think a lot of things can be written in less than 260 characters. Namely, jokes, short stories, advice, quotes, predictions, news, etc. I'll start with jokes. I think laughter is a powerful tool. This is a grand experiment to see if a laugh can earn a buck.

The trivial way of asking every user for a $1 would be to blast all the users with the same request at once. I think the success rate of that approach would be low, and it would probably get my account suspended. Rather, I think the request has to be appealing, not just "Want to give to the Caleb Fund?" I have to give people something in return for their dollar. Furthermore, I don't want to have people leave Venmo to acquire the thing I am giving them. I want it to be contained in the request's message. I want people to interact with me in one click.

A sophisticated way to build rapport with strangers is to communicate that you know their friends. I think this is a necessary feature of my introductory message to strangers. I don't want people to report me even though I'm not doing anything wrong. I just don't want to deal with the hassle of getting my account suspended.

Being able to reference a stranger's friend is a huge value to me, so I feel obliged to pay for it. I've worked out the numbers: if my friends tip me for a joke, I'll give them 36.8% of what your friends tip. If their friends tip (the friends of my friends), then I'll give my friends 13.5% of those tips. So on and so forth. The percentages get smaller and smaller the further the joke spreads throughout the friend network. The 3rd and 4th percentages are 4.98% and 1.83%, respectively.

Now let me tell you how I'm coming up with those percentages and if tipping is a good investment for your hard-earned dollar. P.S. I'm about to get into some math in the next section. You can skip it if you don't like to read math.

Does it pay to laugh?

First of all, you might be wondering where I am getting these percentages from. It's from the negative exponential function, where is the percentage of the tip that I will give a person friendships up the chain of friendships. It's a good function because which means that for every person that tips me $1, I'll be giving away at most $0.58 for distribution. It is good to know I won't lose all my money.

Let's say that is the chance that a person will tip for my joke, on average (it's unknown). Let n be the number of friends that you have. Now we can calculate the amount that you make. Let's just do this for your friends, but realize the situation is even better if we include the friends of your friends, and so on.

You make , but you need to make more than a dollar, so the inequality becomes . Let's say you and each of your friends have 100 friends, that is . Then, solving for , you get . That is, 3 out of your 100 friends need to tip.

Well, I don't need to tell you that this is not a lot. In other words, you have a 97% chance of a tip earning you more than the dollar you spend. I'll be sending everyone their earnings in donations on the first of every month.

Grow your Venmo
After you add me on Venmo, share your username with on social media. This way you have more friends for me to share with and hence share tips with you, increasing your share of the tips pie.
Share to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or wherever your social networks are.

Conclusion

I'm spreading laughter on Venmo. If you get a joke from me, you should accept the request for a dollar if you think it's funny. I'll send it to all your friends if you do. That way you can all share in the joke. You'll also get a large percentage of what they tip because I appreciate you so much.

Are you willing to take a 97% chance of a laugh paying off? But maybe that doesn't matter much to you. Maybe you just appreciate the joke and are willing to tip for it and share it with your friends.

Join the newsletter. Submit a joke and get paid if I use it. Together we can make the world laugh. Go add me on Venmo @calebignace if you haven't already.

Comments

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