Less than two weeks ago, 22-year-old Mathew Carpenter started a snarky site that sold a single service: It would ship your enemies glitter for a mere $9.99. Today, he's apparently sold the fledgling business for a casual $85,000. 
 
 The catchy idea – simple, clever, provides a great instant visual –and the spot-on nature of Carpenter's copy (glitter is so obviously, as he writes, "the herpes of the craft world") combined to elevate the bare-bones website into a viral sensation. 
 
 Orders began flooding in. Having started the service "as a bit of a joke" Carpenter was apparently ill-prepared for the onslaught. "I'm a 22-year-old dude that has too much free time apparently because now my plans for the next few weeks will consist of sending stupid glitter to terrible people," he told The Daily Mail Australia. 
 
 So he decided to shut it down; in a post on the startup news site Product Hunt, he implored potential buyers to stop ordering "this horrible glitter product" because he was "sick of dealing it." 
 
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 Here at Entrepreneur, we took him to task for committing the "cardinal sin in the entrepreneurial world," namely squandering an opportunity, "the eighth deadly sin of business" and "snatching failure from the jaws of victory." 
 
 And it's true: With more commitment and seriousness Carpenter probably could have had an actual successful business on his hands. (He claims he took in more than $20,000 in orders before he stopped taking them.) Instead, he decided put up ShipYourEnemiesGlitter up for sale on Flippa, a marketplace for buying and selling websites. It just sold for $85,000, The Guardian reports, so despite his lackadaisical attitude no one can say he's not walking away with a pretty profit. 
 
 In the meantime, real-life aspiring entrepreneurs have stepped in to fill where Carpenter left off. Still want to ship your enemies glitter? You're in luck, because a host of new sites will now do it for you. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the ShipYourEnemiesGlitter website, you'll now find this: 
 
 Purchasing has been temporarily suspended. You guys have a sick fascination with shipping people glitter. We've received all orders & working through them. There was a ton so be patient. You can spam me on Twitter for updates@matcarpenter or like the website on Facebook. 
 
 Related: We Should Never Forgive the Horror of ShipYourEnemiesGlitter ||||| Site which offered to send foes ‘the herpes of the craft world’ sells after owner asks users to ‘stop buying this horrible product’ 
 
 The founder of Ship Your Enemies Glitter, a single-purpose website that lets customers anonymously ship their enemies glitter, has sold his business for US$85,000 less than two weeks after starting it. 
 
 Mathew Carpenter, a 22-year-old Australian, launched the site with little but a PayPal account and some well-written advertising copy. But a week later, he was swamped by orders, leading him to put the whole thing up for sale in an attempt to rid himself of what he described as a “horrible product”. 
 
 The site was sold on Flippa, an online marketplace where entrepreneurs can trade in start-ups, domains or toolkits for building a business from scratch. Bidding rapidly rose to $70,000 in the first days on sale, before stalling until the last hours, when a further $15,000 was added on the price. 
 
 The buyer, who is currently anonymous, is believed to be legitimate, having spent $83,000 on the site previously. 
 
 In the four days Carpenter ran the site, he says he took more than $20,000 in sales, far beyond what he was expecting for a website launched “as a bit of a joke”. As a result, he closed the ability to make new orders, and later decided to be shot of the whole site. 
 
 The site gained fame, in part, because of its tone. “We fucking hate glitter,” is how its pitch opens. “People call it the herpes of the craft world. What we hate more, though, are the soulless people who get their jollies off by sending glitter in envelopes.” 
 
 Shortly before closing orders, he took to start-up news site Product Hunt to ask potential users to stop. “Hi guys, I’m the founder of this website. Please stop buying this horrible glitter product — I’m sick of dealing with it. Sincerely, Mat.” 
 
 In the meantime, he is continuing to fulfil older orders, although, in an email sent to customers, he warned that “there will be a bit of a delay with delivery times, as the site somehow got popular.” 
 
 Whoever has bought the site will find themselves with more competition than Carpenter experienced, however. A number of copy-cat sites have sprung up since he closed orders, including British-based Glitterbombs and America’s “Mat Won’t But We Will”. ||||| Screenshot from ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com 
 
 
 
 Yesterday, a Reddit post about an Australian website that allows customers to send envelopes full of glitter to their adversaries went viral. The site, ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.Com, quickly earned praise for tapping into something many of us probably feel but had never articulated: Glitter is kind of the worst. Or, as the site puts it succinctly, it’s "the herpes of the craft world.” 
 
 Perhaps predictably, the site crashed as it was bombarded by people looking to see what the fuss is about. (And, if they were lucky, pay $10 to glitterbomb their foes.) Luckily, Slate spoke with ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.Com’s founder, 22-year-old Australian Mathew Carpenter, to satisfy our curiosity. 
 
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 Slate: So, why do you hate glitter? 
 
 Carpenter: I've received Christmas and birthday cards over the years from family and friends who put glitter in the cards. I hated it, and I wanted the rest of the world to feel my pain. So that's how the website was born. 
 
 Have you done this kind of thing before? 
 
 I'm 22 and have never been to university, but I am in Internet marketing and have worked on other sites before. The one I'll show you now is www.dickpicoftheweek.com. That said, I apparently have too much free time on my hands because now my plans for the next few weeks consist of sending stupid fucking glitter to terrible people. 
 
 Even though it seems obvious, run me through how this whole thing works. Do you have a glitter distributor or do you just walk down to your local craft store and buy a few hundred pounds of it? 
 
 Actually, I do have an Australian glitter supplier. People decide they want to waste money on sending someone glitter in an envelope, I get their recipient's information, hand-fill envelopes, and ship that stuff out. 
 
 Are you on your own or is anyone helping you with this crazy plan? 
 
 The website is 24 hours old and despite my cries for help I stand alone. 
 
 What happened yesterday? 
 
 A couple of hours after launching, the website was getting pounded with too much traffic for the server to handle so it crapped itself. We had people buying every minute until I took the ability to purchase down. 
 
 In this case I think [traffic exploded] due to the combination of a unique idea, creative copywriting, and evoking an emotion in the user. 
 
 How many orders have been placed so far? 
 
 Over 2,000 of the world’s brightest people have spent money on this service. It's good for business, but bad for society. 
 
 Who, would you say, is your target consumer? 
 
 People with too much disposable income. 
 
 This might be a dumb question, but do you see this a long-term viable business plan?
– Not a bad Internet success story: Step one: A 22-year-old creates a goofy website that allows you to have glitter sent to "people you hate." Step two: It explodes in popularity, so much so that Australian Mathew Carpenter stops taking orders and pleads with people to please, God, stop asking him to handle glitter. Step three: Carpenter just sold the website, called ShipYourEnemiesGlitter, for $85,000, reports the Guardian. A decent result for sure, though Entrepreneur thinks Carpenter committed the "eighth deadly sin of business" by squandering a genuine opportunity: "With more commitment and seriousness, Carpenter probably could have had an actual successful business on his hands." Before he bailed, Carpenter wrote that he had taken more than 2,000 orders at $7.99 a pop, and he estimated a profit of up to $6.50 on each one, reports CNBC. (A woman is accused of using a glitter bomb, among other things, to get back at her former boss.)