Weird Business Ideas that made Millions. Whether you like it or not, there are some bizarre business ideas that have produced millions while horrifying detractors. And the majority of these concepts were developed by individuals rather than businesses or conglomerates.
Weird Business Ideas that made Millions
Individuals such as you and me. These entrepreneurs have generated millions of dollars from their wild ideas, and they have given back to society by offering value as a culture to scale their enterprises.
Here are 20 out-of-the-box company concepts that made millions (some of which are still generating millions today).
20 Weird Business Ideas that Made Millions
Here is the List of Weird Business Ideas that made Millions:
1. Amazon
Would you believe that the Amazon concept was mocked at its inception?
Explain that to the billions right now. Amazon began as an online bookstore, and people didn’t understand the need for one until it made sense to reviewers and lovers.
Amazon now sells almost anything you can think of. There’s even an affiliate programme for everyone to take advantage of. On the platform, you may also get started with the selling and purchasing mania for profit. It’s worth more than a trillion dollars.
2. Facebook
It wasn’t always like this on Facebook or Meta. It was a virtual yearbook, and later it was a face match, which matched college students based on some visual resemblance algorithm on the server-side.
Then there was Facebook. Today, it’s Facebook, which has over 2 billion members on both Facebook and its daughter social media platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the world’s top ten wealthiest people, and he is the youngest on the list. The top ten list. After all, his notion wasn’t so strange after.
3. Letter from Santa
This is one insane concept that made a lot of money. Santa mail charged parents $10 to send Santa Claus mail to their children in the person of Santa Claus.
More than 200k parents participated because they wanted their children to experience the spirit of Christmas and get love from Santa Claus. Santa mail obtained a postal code in Alaska & mailed children in accordance with their parents’ wishes.
4. Blessed ink
Some company concepts are simply out of this world, and they become strangely amazing. One of these is blessed ink. Bernard McCoy, a priest, has envisioned a black powder inking company. On a nice day, he found he had run out of ink in his printer.
What exactly did he do? He switched printer ink for black powder and turned it into a company.
He definitely acquired a lot of jobs, and he sought help from other Cisterian Abbey monks. His business increased tremendously over time, from $2k to $2m+.
5. PayPal
Nowadays, everyone is familiar with PayPal. Paypal is currently the most dependable means of online payment over the web and across countries. There’s also a PayPal app for mobile, so you can keep your funds in your PayPal app until you’re ready to utilise them.
How did PayPal end up here?
It’s strange to believe that people would put their financial details in your hands. Nonetheless, it occurred (thanks to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel).
6. Craigslist (Weird Business Ideas that made Millions)
Craig Newmark created the iconic Craigslist marketplace we know today with a miraculously fantastic idea. He had the notion to create an internet platform where individuals could get pretty much anything they desired. And do you remember how the story ended? Kaboom!
Craigslist is now worth more than a billion dollars. Craig worked for Charles Schwab for years before getting this concept and making it a reality, and he had no bigger hopes until he was laid off. What if he was never fired?
Would Craigslist still exist as it does today?
The big question.
7. The narrative clip (Weird Business Ideas that made Millions)
The Narrative Clip is a one-of-a-kind camera that shoots two photos every minute it is attached to you. You can wear it and leave it on your shirt. The camera, which is manufactured in Sweden, costs $279 per device and can be worn pretty much everywhere.
It will be on you the entire time, and for every minute it will take two photos. The purpose of such a one-of-a-kind little camera is for you to record valuable moments in your life, memorable occasions, and more so you can obtain a complete picture of everything and relive those memories.
It also has certain advantages, such as the ability to document everything that happened during your day and recall what you did (and the people you met).
8. Furby (Weird Business Ideas that made Millions)
Furby ruled the 1990s and is now on the list of the strangest business ideas that made millions. A Furby is an electrical toy that talks gibberish and has a fuzzy. At its peak, the electronic toy brought in $500 million per year, and it had a reputation in the 1990s as a Chinese-made spy with listening capabilities. As a result, the National Security Agency banned it in 1999. Weird Business Ideas that made Millions.
However, according to Roger Shiffman, a key figure in the Furbies manufacturing chain, the toy lacks this ability. It’s easy for anyone to believe that you’re such a toy that jerks in the middle of the night can hear you speak.
9. HIV-Positive matching
The HIV-test/match website, Positivesdating.com, is a very controversial but nonetheless quite strange business idea that has earned a lot of money for the owners.
However, the website has a distinct method of matching individuals in that it not only targets but also matches HIV positive users. So far, users appear to like it.
10. Plastic wishbones
Ken Ahroni created and sold $3 plastic wishbones. If you’re unfamiliar with wishbones, they’re little bones or pieces of bone used to make wishes (lucky wishes).
It’s a legendary thing, but Ken Ahroni has made so much money since he started making plastic duplicates of a wishbone that he sells 30k pieces a day. If we do the math, that’s $90,000 in a single day. He undoubtedly made a fortune from this venture.
11. Phil Black exercise cards
Phil Black devised the concept of selling cards that encouraged individuals to do more than have fun and pass the time.
In a year, he made $4.7 million by selling his cards for $18.95 per unit.
He was an ex-Navy SEAL operative, and the idea didn’t appear to be profitable to sceptics at first until people fell in love with it.
And sales skyrocketed.
12. I wear your shirt
Jason Zook, who loved t-shirts so much because he charged others to wear them, had one of the strange business ideas that made a lot of money. That’s how I Wear Your Shirt got its start. Companies pay him to wear their shirts and tell the world about them.
In four years, he had made over $1 million from this unusual business that few people had conceived of before him. Jason possessed a unique talent. He was most likely an outgoing extrovert with a unique manner of achieving what he desired.
13. Beanies
Warner’s Ty Inc. made almost $700 million selling Beanies for $5 apiece in a single year. Ty Warner invented the Beanie Babies in 1993, a toy with beans embedded in it.
The company’s sales surpassed $1 billion in 1999, and the figure has continued to rise. Warner used a powerful tactic by refusing to sell Beanies in worldwide markets such as Walmart. They filled regular groceries with toy parts and yet managed to propel sales up the ladder.
As a result, the value continued to rise, and merchants could only sell a certain amount of items to every consumer who requested more than one. Warner is worth more than $2 billion, and Beanie sales brought in more than $5 billion.
14. Dr Seuss
Theodore Gisel was a writer who specialised in children’s stories. He met with a few publishers about publishing his children’s books, but he was turned down.
Fortunately for him, he met a friend with such a long arm in the editing profession, and thus Dr. Seuss was created. His acquaintance was a major person at an editing company, thus it was simple for him to publish Gisel’s writings.
15. The slinky
The “Slinky” toy, which was created by accident, has sold for more than $3 billion. Who would have guessed?
Rolling up the story, Richard James committed a blunder that resulted in the birth of this toy, which has both scratched the limelight as well as sold over 350 million pieces. The concept for this toy came from a tension spring that the designer threw on the floor.
As the tension spring struck, he watched it slink with eagle eyes. Although the concept was achieved at that moment, Richard James spent two years experimenting and manufacturing the perfect toy from start to finish without the need for fast modifications.
It’s amazing how one Slinky toy has made over $3 billion in sales. And also how Richard James came up with the idea for a toy out of a tension spring is awe-inspiring.
16. Pet Rock
The Pet Rock was born as a joke by Gary Dahl, who got the idea from hearing his friends remark about how difficult and time-consuming it can be to care for a pet. And in 1975, he invented the Pet Rock, which made him a fortune of at least $5 million.
Gary wrote a guidebook for the rocks and marketed them as “hassle-free” pets. You’re not worried about feeding a Pet Rock this time.
The concept sounded strange at first, but it was a huge success and quickly became an all-time trend, generating millions of dollars in sales. His company specialises in selling rocks!
Pet is fantastic! And each user received a printed manual.
It’s easy to believe that something like this will fail miserably, but Dahl was worth more than $15 million after founding his company. Thank you to his pals who complained about their pets. There are too many business ideas; you just have to think about them.
17. The koosh ball (Weird Business Ideas that made Millions)
Scott Stillinger developed the Koosh Ball in the 1980s, and Hasbro bought it for $100 million 17 years later. The Koosh Ball is a rubbery ball surrounded by fibres.
Time Magazine named the toy one of the greatest toys of all time. According to a Los Angeles Times article from the mid-1990s, the Koosh Ball was inspired by the desire for an object that weighed somewhere between a beanbag and a foam ball.
As the company flourished, millions of Koosh Balls were sold for $5 each. And now we’re discussing bizarre business ideas that made millions? What could be stranger?
18. Million dollar homepage
The million-dollar webpage is one of the strange business concepts that produced millions, but it’s also one of the ideas that doesn’t cross over so readily. It was built by a student who sold adverts on the homepage of a website.
He boosted the ad pricing and sold every place on the homepage to businesses and interested advertisers, earning more than $1 million. How did the homepage turn out?
Certainly, it was all lovely, but the website and the concept as a whole grabbed headlines.
Okay, so the college student’s name is Alex Tew, and he developed this concept when he was only 21 years old. He used many displays and sold 1 million pixels of advertising space for $1 per piece.
When the website first went live in 2005, it only took four months for it to acquire media notice and sell out all ad spaces. Alex was a college student who wanted to generate money online while studying at Nottingham University in England.
He finally made a lot of money, dropped out, and became a serial entrepreneur. Alex has since worked on a few startups, notably the billion-dollar firm Calm.
19. Snuggies (Weird Business Ideas that made Millions)
Scott Boilen had the notion to create wearables out of blankets. It’s not a new concept, but it’s one that’s been disregarded for decades because blankets wouldn’t compensate for a lot of wear (theoretically).
Surprisingly, over 30 million Snuggies have been sold, earning over $500 million in revenue. Snuggies are still in high demand today, and they make for a stylish winter ensemble.
20. Enclosed ecosystem (Weird Business Ideas that made Millions)
Improving on the Pet Rock narrative, several very bright minds collaborated to create a self-sufficient confined habitat populated with little algae-eating shrimps.
The algae survive by absorbing sunshine energy, and the shrimps survive by eating the algae. Everything was encased in a glassy, translucent globe. The creators made lots of money and sold thousands of copies. Weird Business Ideas that made Millions.
