Think that many young people are just lazy or up to no good? Think again. Meet 22-year-old Mathew Carpenter, a young man who just made almost $100,000 from an entrepreneurial venture that he wasn’t even expecting would succeed. How did he do it? He took quite the unorthodox path to make his almost-six-figure profit.
For starters, he had a highly unique idea: He started an online business that would allow anyone to actually ship glitter to his enemies. Next, he was the beneficiary of his website becoming a viral sensation, which only spread the word about his devious venture far and wide. The result: He was being inundated with orders at a much greater pace than he ever imagined. In short, he worked hard to get his site to how big it became. When he understood that he was unprepared to deal with all of the overwhelming customer demand for his service, he ended up selling the site for a cool $85,000 and is now enjoying his profit.
Not bad for a young kid with a freelance idea that, in his own words, was “a bit of a joke.” That just goes to show you that, in today’s interconnected world of the Internet, even small jokes can turn into relatively big paydays and successes.
Carpenter then used the website Flippa, a marketplace where people can buy and sell anything from sites and domains to mobile apps, to get rid of his popular website. He ended up getting someone to buy it for a nice $85,000, according to a report in the Guardian.
While publications like Entrepreneur were disappointed in Carpenter’s decision to sell Ship Your Enemies Glitter, it had been covering Carpenter’s unexpected and meteoric rise in such a short period of time, his story is still illustrative of what having a great business idea can do for a freelancer.
From his site’s unique and memorable value proposition of “We Ship Glitter to the People You Hate,” he created a viable business model that resulted in a flood of orders, apparently a bit too much too handle for the young freelancer. Carpenter took an obnoxious idea, turned it into a goldmine, and then walked away from it after pocketing almost $100,000.
Many business owners can’t say that about their own ventures, especially not their very first one.
This story also reveals that there’s a good-sized market for people who want to get revenge on people they loathe…by shipping them glitter! Who would have known? Even though Carpenter’s now walked away from the “get-your-enemies-back-by-shipping-them-glitter” industry, others have unsurprisingly stepped up to fill the void.
Sites like Mat Won’t, but We Will and Glitter Bombs are making certain that people with a score to settle can still have a healthy (though immature) outlet by way of their services. Hey, in the business world, there’s always room for competition and copying good, profitable ideas. Just look at Coke and Pepsi.
Ship Your Enemies Glitter briefly stopped taking orders as it was undergoing its change in ownership, but that seems to be over. The domain of Ship Your Enemies Glitter is still active, and, according to a recent tweet by Carpenter, the new owner has resumed taking orders. So this story does have a happy ending: Now, people with a grudge and a fondness for glitter can once again get their revenge-happy orders filled at the site that started it all.
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