At last! A get-rich-quick scheme that involves nothing more than dropping an ‘e’ – all that’s needed is a gap in the market

I NEED TO raise a lot of money fast, so it’s great to discover that social networks are the answer to all my dreams of avarice. I can raise a fortune not by joining a network, but by setting one up. I have analysed all the money-spinning social networks, and discovered they have one thing in common when it comes to financial success: their names. If I want money for old rope, then what I need to do is follow their naming protocols, and give my network a twosyllable name that ends in ‘er’. But here’s the clever bit; after I name my creation I must delete the ‘e’. And that’s the secret of how to become an instant millionaire.

Take Flickr, for example. Flickr is a social network where people bore the pants off one another with as many bad photographs as they can upload. There’s a 1TB storage limit, which translates to the equivalent of ‘a lifetime’s worth of crap in exchange for force-fed adverts and surrendered data’. Pro photographers are welcome to join in the fun for five hundred bucks, and get the alternative deal of ‘a lifetime’s worth of professional crap without the adverts’. More than 50 million crapmongers have already signed up, but it wouldn’t work at all if Flickr was named Flicker.

Then there’s Tumblr, which does for words and pictures what Flickr does for pictures alone. Tumblr has harnessed over a quarter of a billion willing members. If it had been called something stupid like Tumbler it would never have been valued at a billion dollars and flogged off.

So that’s where all my money is going to come from, at four US dollars per soul. I need to select a little noun ending in ‘er’, drop the vowel, and rake in the cash. Raptr does it for video gamers. The now-defunct Dopplr did it for people who can walk. Everyone’s at it, and revenue generation pulls the same trick every time: I will either get paid by advertising or get paid by subscribers not to view advertising. Brilliant.

The only thing missing from my scheme for instant wealth is to spot a popular activity and do the name thing. I was going for Tossr, but I’ve been beaten to the erectile gristle market by something called Grindr. Which is a pity, seeing as Grindr has more than six million members. I wanted to include a Satyr joke here, but I don’t speak Greek or have a permanent erection. Then I considered catering for the millions of us who regularly pass wind, by setting up Fartr. But it seems the flatulence social network has been running since it was successfully crowdfunded last year. In fact every market sector I’ve tried to bag has already been exploited. Except one. And it’s going to be more popular than Flickr bad photography. Bigger than Tumblr blogs. More universal than sex or even farting. I am going to set up a social network for the dead. Latr.