What was the unexpected project you worked on and it turned a profit?

What seemingly pointless effort turned out to be quite beneficial for you?
For me, it was two stamps (created for fun, sold on Etsy, and eventually bringing in twenty thousand dollars annually). The second was a short AI project that, despite not being profitable yet, is gaining more daily users than any other project I’ve ever worked on.

2019 -
My Merch by Amazon account was making one sale a month until the fifth month of effort and testing, at which point it unexpectedly made $200. By the sixth month, it had made an incredible $12k.

Unfortunately, I received nothing when the account was banned due to copyright violations involving items I was unaware were protected.
2) The year 2020

Before ChatGPT and Openai, my first simple writing tool was created with my developer cousin. It ranked in its first month, received about 10,000 monthly visitors from Google, and made about $500 per month.
Closed as a result of AI rivals and a drop in research output.

Unfortunately, I received nothing when the account was banned due to copyright violations involving items I was unaware were protected.
Which items did you not realize were protected by copyright?

I looked it up carefully and found that it was a popular saying that wasn’t yet copyrighted.
But after realizing it would bring in a lot of money, the owner registered it and prohibited anyone from using it on merchandise.
Because there was no trademark at the time, Amazon authorized all of my designs, which contributed to the issue.
My account was removed from Amazon when the owner informed them that it was trademarked, I believe, because my designs were selling well.

Which quote was it? Whoa, these people are jerks. Specifically, Amazon ought to have stated that it is now trademarked and cannot be used or sold going forward. not pay you for anything you produced or sold up until that point in the month.

Here’s a paraphrased version:

I started a dropshipping site selling Gorilla Playsets, not expecting many people to spend $3,000 to $5,000 on a product they hadn’t seen in person. It was my first attempt at selling online, and I ended up making $900,000 in six months. However, when COVID hit, Gorilla ran into supply issues with cedar for manufacturing.
This issue lasted for a year until they decided to end their dropshipping program. I briefly became their top online retailer, which was amusing!

I then tried switching to warehousing products instead of dropshipping. I ordered three truckloads and set up a third-party logistics provider, but all shipments were canceled because Lowe’s needed more stock and had a contractual obligation to prioritize them. At that point, I realized I had to shut down and start something new. It’s tough to run a business when confirmed shipments can suddenly be canceled.
Let me know if you need any adjustments!

I used to live in the middle of nowhere, and in the forest behind our house, hikers would frequently get lost.
I was simply fed up with search parties keeping me up at night and people getting lost.
I thus downloaded an openstreetmap map, improved the area’s data, added images of a few extremely noticeable locations, had it printed on some waterproof foil material, and hung a box containing the maps along with a donation box on our fence.
donated roughly ten times a week, with an average donation of $5.
I believe the new owner is still doing it at this time.
Poor reception may have been mitigated by the extremely wet trails and riverbeds.

I used Excel and macros to create a point of sale more than 12 years ago. It was surprisingly well-sold. This market category, which consists of relatively tiny enterprises seeking straightforward solutions, has a very high demand.

That is fantastic. We didn’t have a point of sale (POS) when I was offering merchant services about 12 years ago. Many of the people I was helping on the island lacked money. I suggested some small-scale open-source or excel-based solutions to them. Perhaps I sent you some offers.

I created a synchronized tally app that counts up and down. Unexpectedly, there’s a market for that.