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Tech

A Bitcoin-for-Horse-Poop Company Made $10,000 Worth of Sales in One Month

How ShitExpress went from a marketing stunt to a real business.
​Image: Author

​A service that anonymously mails poop to your enemies in exchange for Bitcoin is an excellent idea. So it's no surprise that, in the first 30 days of ShitExpress, the startup sold shit to roughly 500 people, ​raking in more than $10,000 in sales.

​As we have explored before, ShitExpress offers a wonderful service, fairly quick shipping, and the thrill of, well, sending people pieces of shit. In a long-winded and very thorough blog post describing the origins of ShitExpress, a man named Peter explained how he turned the service from a "marketing experiment" into the standout players in the shitsending business.

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At first, Peter had no way of actually procuring the horse manure necessary to start his business. He mentioned that he had plenty of questions after flipping the lights on over at ShitExpress.com.

"What if someone placed an order? How to proceed? Where to get horse poop in this city? What about suitable, yet affordable packaging?," he wrote. "What is the right size and weight? How to wrap it? What else should be added? How to convince customs this is a real gift, valued at $3-5? And what about that weird feeling of bringing a box of horse feces to the post office?"

After actually receiving an order, he went to a nearby horse stable and asked for the shit, then went about actually packaging and mailing it. After Motherboard covered it, so did several other websites, which he said helped skyrocket his sales past $10,000 (each order costs about $20). Peter decided to start accepting PayPal in addition to Bitcoin, and has since sold shit to customers in 36 different countries.

"Thanks to strong support of our customers, we already developed a root base for additional services and new product line to be offered in the near future," Peter wrote. "Besides the shit, we definitely want to grow horizontally by covering more areas of business."

"I hope to make this a long-lasting experience, not just a temporary hype," he added.