People Who Got Rich Selling Weird Stuff

5 Weird Ways People Have Become Ridiculously Rich Selling Weird Stuff

  
      

Making money hasn’t gotten to be so much fun like it has in the 21st century. People have gone out of their way to make products that have been questioned for sanity, but yet are making insane amount of money.

I went through the internet some days ago to check the most insane ways people have tried to become rich. I found some weird products people created that were making them millions.

Some of them simply discovered a new weird way to do stuff and money started following from there. Some of these ideas surprisingly turned the owners into millionaires and in extreme cases billionaires.

Let’s take a quick look at the list of people making money off weird products they created or fine-tuned. The first on the list is:

1. Gary Dahl – A Man Who Knows how to Make Anybody Buy Anything

Pet Rock

The Gary story is one of the weirdest on the list. Gary Dahl created a weird product in 1975. The internet hadn’t happened then and a lot of cool gadgets we have now weren’t in existence.

He simply looked for a sincere need that humans cannot do without. Humans are always in need of a little companion. So he simply started a pet business.

How far did it go?

Well, the pets should have really been pretty because he brought in fifty-six million dollars within a few years. And he had close to five million happy clients who were happy buying his pets.

The question is – what kind of pets was he selling? Dogs? Cats? Cute mice?

No.

He was selling rocks.

Yes, ROCKS. Like the ones in your backyard. He called them “Pet Rocks”. I know it doesn’t make sense, but up to 5 million people were buying it. Dahl was getting the rocks from a local construction company and fashioned it with proper packaging and sold it $3.95 each.

The weird thing about this product of his is the fact that he didn’t invent the rocks. He didn’t create them by one scientific experiment. He simply picked up fine rocks you’ve probably stepped on your way to school and sold it right back to you.

This stuff can’t seem to stop getting weirder – he also includes a manual for the pet, so you will know how to cater to it.


Selling rocks is probably the most insane product idea you’ve ever seen before, but someone became a multi millionaire doing just that.

I sincerely should have thought of that.

2. Zhang Yin – The Weirdest Way to Become a Billionaire

Zhang Yin is one of the richest women in China (and in the world). As of 2010, she literally became the richest self-made billionaire in the whole world – beating Oprah and J. K. Rowling to the bucks.

Someone might wonder aloud – if she’s making that kind of money, then she’s probably making money from a business that makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, check out Oprah. She’s the richest black woman billionaire who makes money from her TV shows via huge multimillion-dollar endorsement deals. Yeah, that makes sense.

J. K. Rowling is another hit. She’s doing something we all love. She writes stories and novels that are translated into films. Her books sell in the range of 100 million copies each worldwide. For those who don’t already know it, Rowling is a billionaire and the owner of the Harry Potter series. Her reason for becoming so successful obviously makes sense.

But Zhang Yin’s reason for extreme success does not. She does her business quite differently. And no, it’s not real estate. Zhang simply became a billionaire by selling cartons.

Yup, that’s it.

She makes money by simply selling back to you what you throw out.

Let me enlighten you with a picture. These are typical cardboard boxes or cartons.

how Zhang Yin became rich

How did she do it?

It’s so plain and easy. She started the company with her whole savings of just $3,800. She simply saw a gap in the US and in China market and dived right in.

Zhang discovered that her country (China) was slowly becoming a global exporter worldwide and that meant literally everything that will be exported will be packaged in a cardboard box.

This became her game plan: Buy scrap papers, waste cartons, thrown out cardboard papers etc., at a cheap price in the States and take it home to recycle. When it’s recycled and converted into a cardboard box, she sells it to Chinese manufacturers/top companies for a higher price.

And that’s it. A few years later, Zhang was one of the richest women in the whole world, simply selling recycled paper scraps we throw out or leave out for waste companies to pick up.

Yeah, it’s funny. Zhang Yin’s company makes money simply from selling your trash.

And Zhang became a billionaire by buying your thrown out papers and waste cartons.

3. Matthew Carpenter – The Best Gift for your Frenemy

ship your enemies glitter

While people/companies are trying their best ship products to potential clients worldwide, a cunning guy named Matthew Carpenter thought in the opposite direction. He decided that his potential shipping recipients should be his client’s enemies. Now, let me explain what that means and how it actually works.

Matthew created a site called Ship Your Enemies Glitter. When it was originally launched, it did just one thing: send your enemies glitter that is well packaged in an envelope. When the recipients open the letter, the glitter blows open on their face, litters the whole place and mesmerizes the recipient too.

messy glitter

For those who don’t know it yet, glitter is a messy mix of shiny fine objects that are almost impossible to clean off.

That’s the thing; this product looks stupid and kind of annoying.

But that was what Matthew Carpenter’s product needed to make thousands of dollars within weeks.

Within weeks of creation, the site was getting up to 1 million visits and had been shared on social media 270,000 times. Matthew was making thousands of dollars in sales, with lots of potential customers lining up to place their multiple orders to their worst enemies.

The product got so popular that Matthew put it up for sale due to not being able to meet up with the rapid demands. The website sold for $85,000 and the new owner revamped the whole site and added other features that have made it cross six figures in yearly revenue. But it all started with a silly idea of sending glitters to your enemies.

4. Alex Craig – The Guy Who Sells Food Messages


Alex Craig’s biggest idea came on a particular day he went out to have dinner with his girlfriend. A romantic dinner turned out to become one where Alex would receive the most amazing and weirdest idea that would end up making him a lot of money.

He got a simple idea. In fact, the business model was very plain:

Buy potatoes and write personalized messages of clients on them and send to the recipient address given by the client. These messages are anonymously sent to the recipients.

Yeah, I know. It’s a stupid idea and probably won’t work.

The 24–year-old was plugging into a venture that looked 100% like a plan on its way to failure. His girlfriend laughed so hard at him and told him, “You will not sell a single potato. This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Well, it turns out that to everybody’s dismay (including his girlfriend’s), the second day of Alex’s site Potato Parcel generated $2,000 in orders.

It didn’t stop there. The site instantly became a hit sensation in no time and literally went viral.

In no time, Alex Craig started selling a lot of potatoes and has been making an awesome profit of $10,000 per month since the beginning of May last year.

Now, that’s what I call a weird/cool product.

5. Alex Tew – The Desperate 21-Year-Old Who Sells Pixel to Customer

The Million Dollar Homepage

Alex Tew’s story is one I read awhile back and decided it won’t be nice if I didn’t include him. OK, from the story, it turns out that Alex had a problem.

He was seriously desperate for the solution. His problem was actually unavoidable. He needed to pay his way through college. His desperation garnered enthusiasm and he got a bizarre idea.

What’s the idea?

Simple: Create a site (he called it The Million Dollar Homepage) and sell the pixel of every inch of that site to clients – his target was to sell one million pixel which will net him a cool $1,000,000.

It became an instant hit.

He put the website online and was selling each pixel for $1 each. The site went viral and in no time, the whole pixel of the site was literally taken and Alex made over one million dollars within a year of starting The Million Dollar Homepage site.

In fact, within six months the site was having as much as 25,000 visitors every hour. That’s almost over 600,000 people coming in per day.

The strange idea of selling every pixel on a website probably doesn’t make any sense. But it made total sense to Alex Tew who ended up not just paying for his college tuition fee, but he is now a millionaire who is currently running businesses that make six figures yearly.

What began the journey was a weird idea . . . and the rest is history.