How we score every idea

Every idea gets the same scorecard

The point of this site is that a doorstep round costing nothing to start and buying an existing business can be compared without doing any maths yourself. That only works if every idea is measured the same way, by the same function, with no exceptions and no editorial thumb on the scale.

One function produces the Cash Score for all 453 ideas. It is in the repository, it is tested against every stored score, and no idea has a hand-adjusted number.

What the Cash Score weighs

Out of 100, before a risk penalty: accessibility, 22 points — how little money and how little existing skill it takes to begin. Speed to first payment, 20. Earnings ceiling, 20. Evidence quality, 16. Headroom, 12 — how crowded the field already is. Durability, 10 — whether the income recurs and whether it can grow past your own hours.

A risk penalty of up to 15 points is then subtracted, and it is larger when the ceiling is low. Risking your whole startup budget on something that tops out at a few hundred a month is worse than risking the same amount on something that could reach several thousand, and the score says so.

Evidence quality being worth 16 points is the decision that matters most. An idea with a real ceiling and no credible source behind the figure scores below a modest idea somebody can actually verify.

The four evidence grades

Verified — the figure is traceable to accounts, a platform’s own published data, or a primary source we can point at.

Self-reported — somebody doing it says this is what they make. Plausible, unaudited.

Estimated — we reconstructed the figure from rates, volumes and margins. It is our arithmetic, and we say so.

Mostly hype — the figures circulating about this idea do not survive contact with how the work actually pays. These ideas stay on the site with the real number on the front, because deleting them just means you read about them somewhere that is selling you a course.

The grade travels with the figure everywhere it appears. If you ever see a number on this site without one, that is a bug and we would like to know.

What the numbers are not

They are researched estimates, not quotes, offers or forecasts. Nothing here is a promise that you will earn anything, and no page is written to imply one — we do not put earnings figures in headlines for that reason.

Anything touching investing is education, never advice. We are not regulated to give financial advice and do not attempt to.

Money is converted from a US dollar baseline into your market’s currency at a rate we set per quarter, and rounded at the smallest priced item on screen so the line items always add up to the total you are shown.

What a commercial relationship cannot do

No affiliate relationship, payment or commercial arrangement moves an idea’s score, changes its evidence grade, or softens what we say about who should avoid it. That is a rule in the codebase, not an aspiration.

See the affiliate disclosure for how outbound links work.