Glossary

Internet social experiment

A public project that tests how a large group of strangers online behaves when given a simple, open ended choice. There is no product being sold and no promised outcome. The result is the data.

Make One Guy Rich

A live internet social experiment at makeoneguyrich.com where a single public progress bar tracks how much money strangers have voluntarily sent to one person, climbing from a $1,000 first goal to a $10,000,000 final goal.

Live money bar

A progress bar whose value is read from real payment data instead of being edited by hand. On this site the bar recalculates from Stripe payments every few seconds, so it can go up at any moment and never fakes momentum.

Goal ladder

A sequence of targets that unlock one after another. Here the ladder is $1,000, $5,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000, $1,000,000 and $10,000,000. Reaching one target opens the next bar rather than ending the experiment.

Pay what you want

A payment model with no fixed price. The contributor chooses the amount. On this site there is no minimum beyond what the payment processor allows and no maximum.

Gifting economy

An exchange where value moves without an agreed return. A contribution here is a gift: no product, no service, no equity, no reward and no refund. The only effect is that the bar moves.

Crowdfunding

Raising money from many people for a defined project, usually with rewards, deadlines and a stated use of funds. Make One Guy Rich is not crowdfunding because there is no project, no reward tier and no deliverable.

Donation versus contribution

A donation normally goes to a cause or a registered charity and may be tax deductible. A contribution here goes to one private individual, is not tax deductible and carries no charitable status.

Million Dollar Homepage

A 2005 website that sold one million pixels of ad space for one dollar each and became one of the earliest viral internet money experiments. It is the closest well known ancestor of this project.

Baseline total

The recorded amount already contributed before the current live tracking started. It is added on top of live payment data so the displayed number reflects the full history of the experiment.

Keep reading

• Live stats and the current total
• Other internet money experiments