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What Started as a Joke Turned into $40K/year

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There are certain types of stories that I am drawn to. One type involves regular people who have an idea and have it blossom beyond their wildest dreams. I recently found one about a woman who created website as a joke.

Imagine her surprise when she started receiving emails from people wanting to order products on her site.

What is she selling? Assorted sizes of tumbleweeds.

Linda Katz finds her tumbleweeds right outside of her house and she is making thousands of dollars a year as income from them.

…the orders just kept coming — an average of 15 per week. Though she’s coy about her annual income from tumbleweed wrangling, she says it is over $40,000 a year.

[Via People of the Web Story (warning – a video will start right after the page loads)]

I imagine the press her company has received lately will help bring that income up a little bit. Even if it stayed at $40K/year, that’s pretty good money from something that started out as a joke!


17 Comments

  • Reply 10kportfolio |

    That is amazing, I hope her profits keep coming in! I am thinking of selling rocks….what do you think?

  • Reply ~Dawn |

    I would have to agree Tricia, those types of money making endeavors are very inspiring and help me keep my own eyes open to the possibilities.

  • Reply Mrs. Micah |

    Maybe I should catch and sell DC businessmen. Oh wait. Bad idea. No tumbleweeds here, unfortunately.

    That’s really awesome for her. Lol 😛

  • Reply Tricia |

    10kportfolio – when you said rocks, the first thing I thought of are pet rocks and how popular they were at one time.

    I don’t have any tumbleweed around me, but if I have a need for one, I know where to go now. I’m not sure what I would ever need one for, though…

  • Reply little_earth |

    I’ve been on a site that sold origami boulders (paper wads balls)… They swore it wasn’t a joke, you’d get a little certificate of authenticity, a stand for it, and there was a haiku or proverb or something inside, but he warned you couldn’t open it up to see because it would ruin the integrity of it.

    And people buy tumble weeds for decoration, silly as it may seem. And probably not a good idea because it spreads the seeds and continues the migration of those awful weeds (there are at least 3 I can name that are considered ‘tumbleweeds’ and there is another one that is native).

  • Reply bluntmoney |

    Oh my god. I seriously had this idea several years ago and didn’t go through with it because I figured it would be illegal to export weeds. (Russian thistle.) Guess I should have done more research 😛

  • Reply used vans girl |

    It’s a great idea I’m sure my dad who was a huge western fan would have loved to be the proud owner of a genuine tumble weed. I think the idea is great good luck to her business!!

  • Reply danielle |

    I think they probably buy it for decor purpouses. Otherwise, I can’t think of a reason, either.

  • Reply Keiichi |

    I’m going to steal her idea and sell some pine cones!!! oh wait… I think people already do that 🙂

    This story is pretty amazing though. Only if one of my jokes would cash in 40k/yr!

  • Reply LC |

    I think that she actually was setting up a fake website to learn HTML and then she actually got orders

  • Reply Linkin Park |

    Someone please tell me why I would buy tumbleweed? How did she even start this website? This goes to show that money can be made from almost any venture. Her joke turned into 40K a day and yet some serious business people don’t make that. With all this publicity, she had better hire people to collect tumbleweed for her.

So, what do you think ?