A selection of stories outlining the stupid ways people made their millions.
Inventions are important. They're the reason life has become so easy for us, and technology so accommodating. The market for inventions is enormous, and hundreds of new ones are patented every day. Since not everyone is a genius, many of them fall into obscurity immediately as inefficient or unimportant ideas. However, sometimes the silly ones we might be quick to dismiss are unexpectedly more profitable than the conventional method of doing whatever it is the newfangled thing does. Here are 15 weird and ridiculous ideas that made people rich.
1. Pet Rock
The Pet Rock is undeniable proof that people will buy just about anything. It's literally a rock with googly eyes glued to it, but the inanimate companion grossed a couple million dollars in 1975. The fad only lasted for that year before dying out, but the Pet Rock carriers, equipped with breathing holes and a straw as if for a real animal, proved irresistible for those wishing to give silly and ironic Christmas gifts.
2. SatLav
Really having to pee can be one of the most uncomfortable feelings ever. You can’t concentrate on anything else, you fidget, you frantically search for the bathroom. But what if you’re out in public and don’t know where to find one? Poppin’ a squat it picking a dark corner isn’t always an option, and many establishments have bathrooms restricted for employee or customer use only. Conveniently, anyone with a cell phone can now find the nearest public restroom just by texting a short number for a small fee.
3. Doggles
Do dogs really need goggles? No. Do they want them? Probably not. Does anyone sell them? Of course -- and they've made more than a million dollars off the idea. Giving dogs goggles is about as useful as giving a goldfish a monocle and cane, but that didn’t stop the company Doggles from doing their very best. At $80 a pair, Doggles is a multi million dollar company.
If you think about it, looking at the photo above (and ignoring the fact that this product shouldn’t exist in the first place), there’s no reason that goggle s for dogs should look the same as those for humans. The bridge of a dog’s nose isn’t directly between his eyes like a human, so this design is a little strange. They pretty much look like Seth Green’s character from Can’t Hardly Wait.
4. Million Dollar Homepage
How much is a solitary pixel floating around in cyberspace worth? Alex Tew thought $1 per pixel was a reasonable price. Tew was just about to begin studying business at the University of Nottingham, but the idea he came up with to fund his education proved that he already possessed the sensibility of a successful businessman. Tew bought a web domain, laid out an area of 1,000,000 pixels, and sold them in 100-dollar blocks. Ads ranged from online casinos, to Target and everything in between. This was The Million Dollar Homepage.Tew came up with the idea in August of 2005, and by New Year’s Eve, every pixel bar but one had been sold. Not only did Tew make a whopping $ 1,037,100 gross from his relatively simple idea, but he also managed to attract some big name clients, like Tenacious D.
5. Mungo & Maud’s Petite Amande Dog Fragrance
Even more absurd than dog goggles is the concept of a dog perfume. It's true that wet, dirty dog smell is an awful one... But how about wet and dirty mixed with floral extracts? It's like spraying air freshener in the bathroom -- it doesn't cover up the poop smell, just sort of hangs on top of it like an additional layer of sense assault. Here's an idea: give your dog a bath. If the dog is clean, it won't smell so bad. Don’t just cover the smell up like some French hooker from the 1700s. The fact that this invention has earned over a million dollars is downright ridiculous.
Another case against Petite Armande is that dogs have an exponentially stronger sense of smell than humans do. The animal most likely finds it unpleasant to be sprayed with irritating odor concentrates. If the smell is strong to us, it must be a billion times stronger for the dog. Suit yourselves, perfumed-pup-lovers, just don’t complain when Timmy’s stuck in a well an you bloodhound Biff can’t find him because his sense of smell is masked by the wafted aroma of Lassie Chanel No. 5.
6. Lucky Wishbone Co.
Amazingly, this might be the silliest product yet – which is definitely saying a lot, considering the cavalcade of weird stuff that’s preceded it. Wishbones are traditionally considered lucky, and are taken from an animal (which is typically being consumed) to break in half between two people. Holding each end of the tiny bone, the two parties pull until it snaps, and decide which player is the ‘lucky’ one according to who has the larger portion. However, Lucky Wishbone Co. doesn’t sell real wishbones. It sells fake little plastic ones, at around about a dollar each. This abortion of an idea also makes its creators the a ton of money.
7. SantaMail
Get a postal address in the North Pole, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids. Well, Byron Reese has sent over 200,000 letters since the start of that business in 2001, meaning he's made a multi-millionaire dollar fortune.
One of the best ways to make money out of people has always been taking advantage of their naïveté and dreams, and who's more naïve than kids? Byron Reese, sprung for a postal address in the North Pole, a place he'd never been, so he could pretend to be Santa. Even worse than the mall Santa who lets kids sit on his lap and drinks malt liquor in the parking lot, in some intangible way.
Reese writes back to the letters himself, but never reveals his true identity. At first, this sounds quite sweet, but consider this: What if little Susie (they are always called Susie) wants a little doll which Mommy and Daddy can't afford? Is Santa going to say ‘no’? What if little Jessica (she’s rich and has a last name like DuBois or something) wants a pony, and Santa’s all like ‘I think that’s a bit much to ask, little Jessica. Ho ho ho!’ but then Jessica’s parents buy her a really awesome pony with a Bose sound system and five LCD monitors? Then Santa all of a sudden seems nonexistent. Another million-dollar idea, this time one that depersonalizes one of the most beautiful mysteries of childhood by making it a capitalist business.
8. Excused Absence Network
Are you too lazy to show up to work or school on time, but don’t want to waste your creativity on coming up with your own excuse? The Excused Absence Network is a service which caters to all the lying employee’s needs; from a missed math test all the way to skipping out on your own wedding. The notes aren’t just those ‘little Johnny had a sore throat today’ notes from mom – these are excuse notes that look as though they come from a hospital or doctors office for just $25 per note.
9. Fetal Greetings
What is the worst way of telling someone that you're pregnant? The guys at Fetal Greeting have certainly come very close to nailing it -- their website suggests that you should surprise friends, family, & even the expectant father with these one-of-a-kind cards. It sounds almost like a scenario for Maury Povich – ‘And the card says…Bob, you ARE the father.’
As is the case with most everything else on this list, there seems to be a positive correlation between the inanity of the product and it’s commercial viability. Fetal Greeting saw sales being reported in the million and climbing steadily.
10. www.MannequinMadness.com
Mannequin Madness is a website that sells second-hand mannequins at third-hand mannequin prices. They boast that that have ‘the perfect body for you to buy or rent’ and the second-hand mannequin business is booming. The website stresses that the mannequins aren’t only good for traditional uses, like showing off clothes and making you feel bad about your body type. The website also suggests they be used for practical jokes and Halloween displays (read: causing heart attacks).
11. Big Mouth Billy Bass
The Big Mouth Billy Bass was designed with the sole intention of driving people insane. It's a product for old people, who are the only ones to find its autonomous song incredibly novel. The singing fish is otherwise given as an unwanted box where it sits in the box to gather dust or is put out repeatedly at the same garage sale for two months. These two criteria make up millions of people, and the Big Mouth Billy Bass has made millions of dollars.
With its success has come the delightful discovery that hacks could leave the Bass able to sing any song.
12. www.ICanHasCheezburger.com
I Can Has Cheezburger? burst onto the web scene in early 2007 and elevated the already rampant LOLcat meme to new level of ubiquitousness. The site, now a conglomerate of several extended memes, is primarily concerned with evoking humor from photos of cats with added, sometimes nonsensical, subtitles. The site was acquired a short eight months after is creation by a group of investors for a whopping $2 million.
Two million dollars for a website whose principle visitors are stoners and 13-year-old girls who have just learned how to use the internet. I Can Has Cheezburger? Revenue is solely advertising-based.
13. One Red Paperclip
Kyle McDonald may not be a household name, but he’s definitely internet-famous, and he definite has a household -- one that he traded his way to from a solitary red paperclip (which, to be honest, looks used). It only took Kyle exactly one year and fourteen trades to make his way from a twisted piece of metal to a home for his family. Along the way, he travelled to the far reaches of Canada, all across the US, met Alice Cooper and Corbin Bernsen, and basically had one hell of a good time.
Finally, Kyle settled with a home at 503 Main Street, Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada, and he still lives there to this day. His story stands as an example of how you can start with absolutely nothing, and then one day live in Canada.
14. Murder Clean Up
What is an ambitious real estate flipper to do with the abandoned house whose floors have been ravaged by the waste and habitation of a feral cat community? What about the family whose estranged hoarder aunt dies from eating herself into a corner surrounded by mountains of garbage and human waste? Advanced Bio-Treatment specializes in murder, suicide, drug lab, and (really nasty) waste clean-up. It sounds like a morbid idea for money making, but ABT raked in about a million dollars during 2009 alone. And if all else fails, at least grandpa has some interesting bedtime stories for the kids.
15. Eternal Reef
