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Great lesson to learn from dude that made 120K in 2 days

by Alan Petersen
40 replies
I remember seeing a thread or two from folks who had Osama Bin Laden domains and they came here asking what to do with it.

Well this guy ran home as soon as he saw the news about Osama's death on Sunday night. By 3:30 AM he had his website up selling t-shirts via Zazzle (so no inventory to carry) by Tuesday he had sales of $120,000. I don't know if that's gross or net but that's still pretty nice 48 hours.

Here is his story:

Osama Bin Laden t-shirt seller Maurice Harary, 23, makes $120k in 2 days | Mail Online

His first instinct wasn't to over think what to do, he just ran home and took action.

I don't mean to post this to be disrespectful or embarrass anyone just to illustrate the importance of just doing it like Nike would say.
#120k #days #dude #great #learn #lesson #made #osama #t-shirt #zazzle
  • Profile picture of the author Jayden Rivers
    Great story, this just prooves that spontaneous action with a mind for seeing windows of opportunities really do work.

    I received over 20,000 views of a few videos in a single day where I used KWR alone (Google Trends), all based on current popular events that took place that very day. Made a bit of cash also.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chri5123
    Very good point!

    It is so important to take action when you have an inkling that an idea will make money.

    Guess who went out and bought every British newspaper on the Royal Wedding day?

    Might be a slow burner but will be worth a lot of money in time!

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author sfmmentor
    its when two things are put together at the right time, many people might have had that great idea but how many would have known how to market it so effectively.....pure genuis!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author BloggingPro
    And with an article coming from a major news source he can expect to make even more sales as the story starts to spread around the world. This guy literally went from start up company to six figure business in two days.
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  • Profile picture of the author royljestr
    Yeah following the trends can definitely give you a huge boost. It's really difficult to build an entire business model out of doing that, but what the heck $120k is $120k!!
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    • Profile picture of the author paulie888
      Originally Posted by royljestr View Post

      Yeah following the trends can definitely give you a huge boost. It's really difficult to build an entire business model out of doing that, but what the heck $120k is $120k!!
      I can safely predict that by the time this month is over, he'll have more than enough money to transform what he has into a long-term business, or start a new one entirely.
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  • Profile picture of the author Darth Vader
    Kudos to him shows that making money online is as complicated as you make it
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    I think thats pretty sad to monetize the death of someone. Regardless of who they are.
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    • Profile picture of the author SteveJohnson
      Originally Posted by ramone_johnny View Post

      I think thats pretty sad to monetize the death of someone. Regardless of who they are.
      Isn't that what the funeral industry does?
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    • Profile picture of the author E. Brian Rose
      Originally Posted by ramone_johnny View Post

      I think thats pretty sad to monetize the death of someone. Regardless of who they are.
      As somebody else pointed out, the funeral industry does exactly that... and they charge extremely high prices for it. Every one of those catchy "He's Dead" newspaper headlines all profited from Bin Laden's death too. CNN. Fox News. CNBC. All profited by raising the price of advertising during their coverage.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jayshankar Dangre
    Originally Posted by Alan Petersen View Post

    I remember seeing a thread or two from folks who had Osama Bin Laden domains and they came here asking what to do with it.

    Well this guy ran home as soon as he saw the news about Osama's death on Sunday night. By 3:30 AM he had his website up selling t-shirts via Zazzle (so no inventory to carry) by Tuesday he had sales of $120,000. I don't know if that's gross or net but that's still pretty nice 48 hours.

    Here is his story:


    His first instinct wasn't to over think what to do, he just ran home and took action.

    I don't mean to post this to be disrespectful or embarrass anyone just to illustrate the importance of just doing it like Nike would say.
    That's pure spontaneous action which should be applauded in IM. Mindset like this can get you what you want in IM. Stop being afraid and take advantage of the opportunity. There is nothing wrong in this case.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    As i wrote in the other thread...how did he promote the site...how did he get traffic? Don't tell me he SEO-ed the site, this is not possible within a day. There is simply more to the story since creating the site alone would likely not give him many visitors WITHOUT massive PR.
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    • Profile picture of the author WebRank1
      Well massive PR I don't know about. But the designs I have seen were pretty funny and if Osama FB pages did get 100k with in an hour, I bet you can leverage those people to your t-shirt page. Especially with those designs.
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    • Profile picture of the author kf
      Doesn't look like he worried about any of that. Just plugged into existing traffic and buyers.

      From the MailOnline article: The website Zazzle, which lets customers submit designs for items such as t-shirts and buttons, said it has handled thousands of orders this week for merchandise related to Osama Bin Laden's death.

      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      As i wrote in the other thread...how did he promote the site...how did he get traffic? Don't tell me he SEO-ed the site, this is not possible within a day. There is simply more to the story since creating the site alone would likely not give him many visitors WITHOUT massive PR.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    He made about $300.000 (25.000 shirts/$12 a pop)..and is now REFUNDING EACH CUSTOMER since all of a sudden he regrets making the money by "celebrating someone's death"

    The Strange Story of the NYU Business Student and the Bin Laden T-Shirts -- Daily Intel


    [...]
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    • Profile picture of the author BloggingPro
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      He made about $300.000 (25.000 shirts/$12 a pop)..and is now REFUNDING EACH CUSTOMER since all of a sudden he regrets making the money by "celebrating someone's death"

      The Strange Story of the NYU Business Student and the Bin Laden T-Shirts -- Daily Intel


      [...]
      Ummm..... :confused:

      Maybe he saw how much of that profit Uncle Sam wanted a piece of lol.

      I wouldn't refund, but maybe donate it.
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      • Profile picture of the author rapidscc
        Originally Posted by BloggingPro View Post

        Ummm..... :confused:

        Maybe he saw how much of that profit Uncle Sam wanted a piece of lol.

        I wouldn't refund, but maybe donate it.
        LOL, well you know what they say, easy come easy go.

        The funning thing about it is he's covered both ends..

        How to make $120,000 in two days and how to lose it the following day.

        Hehehehe.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alan Petersen
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      He made about $300.000 (25.000 shirts/$12 a pop)..and is now REFUNDING EACH CUSTOMER since all of a sudden he regrets making the money by "celebrating someone's death"

      The Strange Story of the NYU Business Student and the Bin Laden T-Shirts -- Daily Intel


      [...]
      Wow, that's interesting turn of events. Hey whatever makes him sleep at night. My main point for this thread is hopefully newbies see that they need to action vs. over thinking things to death (no pun intended).

      As to how he got traffic. By being the first to market. His website was up and selling t-shirts by 3:30 AM Monday about 10 hours or so after Obama broke the news. So just by being first with his target keywords in his URL.

      As someone else posted that doesn't make for a long term marketing strategy or business but for the short term it works pretty well by moving fast. To the tune of 300K.
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    • Profile picture of the author KenThompson
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      He made about $300.000 (25.000 shirts/$12 a pop)..and is now REFUNDING EACH CUSTOMER since all of a sudden he regrets making the money by "celebrating someone's death"
      Or maybe there's more to that story than we know.

      I'd imagine he quickly fell out of favor and somehow became
      aware of it. Somehow...


      Ken
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  • Profile picture of the author Ben Gordon
    It's net, unless he could have printed the tees and shipped them for free. He probably got around $8 per sale (out of the $12 the tee costs).

    So IMO, I think he made ~$80,000 but when sales started spiking up he might have made a deal with a big company and shipped and printed the tees for a lower price. Either way, $120K was the net payment.

    But nevertheless, he did make a bunch of cash out of it.

    P.S. Time to keep my eyes on new news .
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  • Profile picture of the author Joshua Rigley
    Banned
    An interesting combination of a hot trend and controversy marketing. I'm impressed. Tasteless? Yes. But then, most marketers aren't known for their sensitivity to other people's feelings. And the controversy (and thus sales) continue to grow simply because some people are offended by what he did.
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        • Profile picture of the author Bill Farnham
          This whole thing smells like a three week old dead cod...

          His site propagated overnight, yea that happens to me all the time...

          Just for grins I searched on Geez and didn't see squat for a website to buy teeshirts (right when this thread was posted).

          Did he have a list?

          Too many weird things about this story...

          No wonder he wants to walk away from it. I wonder if the offers from the morning talk shows had anything to do with this...:rolleyes:

          ~Bill
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  • Profile picture of the author Joey Babbs
    So he sells 10000 @ $12 to make $120 000 but doesn't he have to pay for the shirts, the printing and delivery? DID HE REALLY MAKE 120 K ?
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    • Profile picture of the author J Bold
      Originally Posted by freddyfortunes View Post

      So he sells 10000 @ $12 to make $120 000 but doesn't he have to pay for the shirts, the printing and delivery? DID HE REALLY MAKE 120 K ?
      Yes, it's an important detail. I don't think they are giving him those t-shirts for free.

      Incorrect headline by the UK paper, but not surprising considering the source.

      He GROSSED $120K. Probably still made a lot of money, but he didn't "make" that amount of money, that's just what his sales before costs totaled.
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      • Profile picture of the author theemperor
        Devil's advocate:

        Assume 1000 people did this and made nothing.

        Assume 10% profit margin so he made $12000

        Then on average your expectation of profit doing this is $12

        I may be wrong about the exact math, but think about the bigger picture before calling this sort of thing good business.

        In analogy, many people "take action" and buy lottery tickets each day. And these can be purchased online. But I don't see a thread dedicated to the winners who made $10M for 5 minutes work.
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        • Profile picture of the author Alan Petersen
          I believe I read he used Zazzle so he doesn't print or ship the t-shirts, they do. He gets a %. Example:

          Volume Bonus Program - Example

          According to Forbes as of May 6 he sold 25,000 t-shirts at $12 for a total of $300,000. So that's gross sales. Figure out the Zazzle % royalty and he could have only made around 50K in 2 days.

          According to Forbes he got the idea at 12:30 AM worked and had the site up at 3:30 AM on 05/02. So that's 3 hours of work. By 05-06 he sold $300,000 worth of t-shirts.

          Again, people over think, over analyze, play devil advocates to in action.

          And this is just an example that struck me because as I wrote in the OP, I saw people posting here what should I do, while this guy stayed up until 3:30 AM doing (besides the moral implications of the subject matter it could be on whatever trending topic).

          And yes, this is not a long-term sound business plan. It's just a good to monetize trends. Now monetizing on death is not my cup of tea. But I remember seeing Charlie Sheen t-shirts on Zazzle for example. Or whatever is trending.
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          • Profile picture of the author Ehanson
            Great entrepreneurial foresight and recognizing an opportunity here but the news story leaves a lot of blanks that should be filled in.

            Such as his marketing. How did he get the word out about his site? I'm guessing press release and social bookmarking since he's in the news and that's a good way to get a flood of traffic like that in only a couple of days.

            And he felt bad about profiting off of the death of a terrorist who killed thousands of innocent people on 9/11 and in other attacks?

            A college student who might be faced with student loans and the prospect of debt upon graduation just gave back hundreds of thousands of dollars? Maybe he broke the terms of service somehow and they charged back customers... Something doesn't add up there also. Funeral services profit off of the death of someone too so I don't really get his reasoning here.

            I think there's more to this story than we're being told. Nonetheless this is a golden nugget of a lesson in timing and picking the right market. He may even start a whole new trend of making t-shirts for news stories. There will certainly be a lot of copycats like with the milliondollarhomepage.
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        • Profile picture of the author KabirC
          Originally Posted by theemperor View Post

          Devil's advocate:

          Assume 1000 people did this and made nothing.

          Assume 10% profit margin so he made $12000

          Then on average your expectation of profit doing this is $12

          I may be wrong about the exact math, but think about the bigger picture before calling this sort of thing good business.

          In analogy, many people "take action" and buy lottery tickets each day. And these can be purchased online. But I don't see a thread dedicated to the winners who made $10M for 5 minutes work.
          If he sold them on Zazzle it would be a 25% profit margin usually. If he sold them otherwise, $3 per a t-shirt and then around $4-5 to print in bulk at MOST. The minimum profit for high quality t-shirts printing it on your own would be around $50,000-$60,000 in this case.
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  • Profile picture of the author VOnline
    Good job on his part, tho I personally think the celebrating and hype is overrated. Osama is gone, no need to go around celebrating in groups or in this case making shirts

    The shirts aren't even great, but the opportunity and business view is great.
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  • Profile picture of the author iDebate
    Incredible story! Sometimes it is all about timing. Congrats to this bright idea!
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  • Profile picture of the author Jermaine Tabor
    What he did was land himself a lot of marketing credibility.

    Im sure he has larger projects in the pipeline.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinNoel
    Good things takes time, great things come all at once. Glad he catched the great thing that came to his life.

    A real inspiration for Internet Marketers like us.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tom Byrde
    Yeah, I saw his site. It was a great idea.

    Simple & effective.
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  • Profile picture of the author DomainSky
    Amazing, looks like he had some pretty good timing and much needed luck!

    It's not always good to act before thinking... otherwise it might result in poor decisions. In my opinion it really depends, for this case it was probably quick thinking and luck that got him to his major success.

    It's always important to think ahead on how profitable it will be, etc, before taking the risk.
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    • Profile picture of the author advertisethis
      Originally Posted by DomainSky View Post

      Amazing, looks like he had some pretty good timing and much needed luck!

      It's not always good to act before thinking... otherwise it might result in poor decisions. In my opinion it really depends, for this case it was probably quick thinking and luck that got him to his major success.

      It's always important to think ahead on how profitable it will be, etc, before taking the risk.
      In this case, the news was red hot and would sharply start to cool in the coming days/weeks. Admittedly not knowing the details of doing business with Zazzle, it would seem his upfront risk would involve some rudimentary expenses related to website creation and hosting along with a few hours of his time designing shirts, setting up his site and trying to bring it attention. The potential payoff for this "risk" was pretty much open-ended with the chance to really hit a homerun. The risks were miniscule and the time taken for ample market research and deliberation would've been catastrophic.

      That's a different scenario versus someone deciding whether they're going to go whole-hog on a certain niche and related keywords spending hours of their time week after week or many dollars on outsourcing over the course of 4-6 months or a year. And THAT is still a drop in the bucket compared to the risks involved for eventual success from most B&M businesses.

      It all largely ties in to how much is being risked and how long the window of opportunity might be.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Yeah, that is pretty amazing to see that he made that much in 2 days.

    This was a read HOT product and he took advantage of it very quickly. This guy is very smart.
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  • Profile picture of the author misharuski
    Thanks for this, great story!
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  • Profile picture of the author jrowe23
    That is a great story and awesome for him! Way to to advantage of a golden opportunity.
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  • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Alan Petersen View Post

    I remember seeing a thread or two from folks who had Osama Bin Laden domains and they came here asking what to do with it.

    Well this guy ran home as soon as he saw the news about Osama's death on Sunday night. By 3:30 AM he had his website up selling t-shirts via Zazzle (so no inventory to carry) by Tuesday he had sales of $120,000. I don't know if that's gross or net but that's still pretty nice 48 hours.

    Here is his story:

    Osama Bin Laden t-shirt seller Maurice Harary, 23, makes $120k in 2 days | Mail Online

    His first instinct wasn't to over think what to do, he just ran home and took action.

    I don't mean to post this to be disrespectful or embarrass anyone just to illustrate the importance of just doing it like Nike would say.
    So true, too many people over analyze; I used to do that and I have to tell you dt didn't really work. IT's good to plan for as the cliche saying, "if you fail to plan you plan to fail" but I mean at some point you got to "Jump In" (Book by Mark burnett)

    If you got all the planning stuck on the micro management and no action then not too sure how it's going to write itself?
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  • Profile picture of the author alexander13
    The action he took and result he got was great. Some news stories are lightning in a bottle. As for the moral implications as I see it there aren't any.

    He didn't force anybody to buy or profit off of death. Bin Laden died, people were looking for and going to buy merchandise anyway. He just happened to divert some money to himself instead of it going to big T-shirt companies and other merchandising large corporations.

    Is anyone getting on zazzle for selling Bin Laden shirts?
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