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A rock sold as a pet. A website made of pixels. Sunglasses for dogs. These ideas sounded absurd when they launched, but they went on to make their creators millions.
News18
Most people imagine million-dollar businesses starting with brilliant inventions, cutting-edge technology or years of careful planning.
But sometimes the idea that changes someone’s life is surprisingly simple. A rock sold as a pet. A website made entirely of pixels. Sunglasses for dogs. Even a toilet footstool.
At first, many of these ideas were laughed at or dismissed as gimmicks. Yet they struck a chord with consumers, went viral and ended up generating millions of dollars. Here are 10 strange, unlikely and downright bizarre ideas that turned ordinary people into millionaires.
1. Wordle
Josh Wardle created Wordle as a simple word game for his partner with no grand business plan in mind. Then millions of people started sharing their scores online every day, turning it into a global obsession. Just a few months later, The New York Times bought the game for a low seven-figure sum.
2. Dubai Chocolate
It was just a chocolate bar filled with pistachio cream and crispy pastry. Then TikTok discovered it. Videos racked up millions of views, stores sold out and copycat versions appeared around the world. What started as a local product helped turn a small Dubai chocolatier into a global sensation.
3. Pet Rock
Gary Dahl’s million-dollar idea was, quite literally, a rock. He put ordinary stones in cardboard boxes, called them pets and included a humorous instruction manual. More than 1.5 million Pet Rocks were sold within months, making him a millionaire from one of the strangest products ever created.
4. Squatty Potty
Most people wouldn’t expect a toilet footstool to become a blockbuster business. But a quirky advertising campaign featuring a unicorn transformed Squatty Potty into a viral hit. The company went on to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.
5. Poo-Pourri
Selling toilet spray hardly sounds glamorous. Yet founder Suzy Batiz built a business around helping people avoid embarrassing bathroom smells. Funny viral videos and a product people genuinely wanted helped turn Poo-Pourri into a company reportedly generating more than $100 million a year.
6. Cards Against Humanity
A group of friends created a card game filled with offensive jokes and absurd humour. They never expected it to become a cultural phenomenon. Instead, it became one of the world’s most successful party games and generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
7. The Million Dollar Homepage
In 2005, student Alex Tew needed money for university and came up with a bizarre plan. He created a webpage containing one million pixels and sold each pixel for $1. Advertisers loved the novelty and Tew earned exactly $1 million.
8. Liquid Death
Mike Cessario took one of the most ordinary products imaginable—water—and packaged it like a heavy metal album. The result was Liquid Death, a canned-water brand that looked more like beer than bottled water. What many assumed was a joke is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
9. Doggles
Sunglasses for dogs sounded like something invented for a comedy sketch. Yet pet owners embraced the idea, particularly those with active dogs exposed to sun, wind and dust. Doggles grew into a global brand and a multimillion-dollar business.
10. Fart Jars
Few business ideas sound more ridiculous than selling jars supposedly filled with your own farts. Reality TV personality Stephanie Matto did exactly that, and the internet couldn’t look away. She claimed the venture generated more than $200,000 before she eventually stopped for health reasons.
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