In the rat race of making money online many people are programmed to start sites with ‘proven business model’. Here is a group of Startups that “go against the grain” and decided ‘crazy is beautiful’. Read their stories, get inspired and ‘embrace your inner wackjob’. Many from the list below are considered as most popular in their category. Do let us know in comments section if you have any startup in your mind which deserves to be on this list.

1. Million Dollar Homepage.

Alex Tew, at the age of 21, came up with what could be considered one of the craziest ideas for looking to pay for college expenses, when he attempted to sell pixels for a $1 from his website. And guess what-Alex made a million dollars in less then a year. The publicity from being on all the major television shows caused him to be the victim of a major DDoS attack. Because of the hundreds of copycats that followed, Alex never experienced the same success. But, in the end he got what he wanted, someone else to pay for his college tuition and books.

2. PickyDomains.

Being good at naming things, Dmitry Davydov decided to make a career of it. He targeted people that who were struggling to come up with domain names and gave them an offer they could not refuse – if he comes up with a name a client likes, he’ll charge $50. If not, the work is free. After the idea got peoples attention, he had more orders then he could handle on his own. This was the birth of an outsourcing naming agency that he aptly called PickyDomains.com. Anyone can try and create a domain name and get paid for it, if it’s selected by a client. Soon after The San Francisco Chronicle got a hold of the story, other’s followed close behind them.

3. GeesePoliceInc.

There is money in anything, and the Geese Police proves it, because David Marcks makes $2 million dollars a year just chasing away geese. No, really, this is the essence of the business. Working at the golf course that attracted geese David got to see the trouble they could cause. Killing them was not an option, so noticing that his border collie was able to chase the geese away gave him an idea that would soon make him rich. He decided to offer this as a service to other golf courses, land owners, and municipal parks with the same problem. 27 trucks and 32 dogs later he has a business that continues to chase away geese.

4. Doggles.

There is no funnier picture then a dog in sunglasses. The idea itself just seems crazy! Believe it or not the invention made Ken and Roni di Lullo millions of dollars. There Doggles are sold in 4500 shops in 16 different countries. The catch was they didn’t market the Doggles from a “Oh how cute” perspective. Instead they targeted the safety factor. These glasses where marketed as a way to protect and shield the dogs eyes from the damage of UV radiation. Even though they were the product of jokes and told that the inventions were useless, we all have to admit-there is nothing as cute as a dog in Doggles.

5. BugMeNot.

Guy King was not all too happy (like many others) when he found out that his favorite newspaper NYTimes.com made users register before they could have full access to the site. Most people simply complain and move on, but Guy decided to fight back by launching BugMeNot.com in 2003. For people who did not desire to be victims of corporate spam and waste time on registration, this site provides instant logins and passwords for all popular free sites. By 2004 BugMeNot had become really popular, especially after Wired magazine reported the efforts by some content providers to get the site shut down. Not only is the site still up, but has expanded to other niches like RetailMeNot.com.

6. WheresGeorge.

Ever wondered where your money goes or how far it travels? Well the owner of Where’s George realized that tracking money that used to belong to you could make him money. Interested in how it works? You take all your bills out and enter your zip and the serial numbers from the bills onto WheresGeorge.com. After you spend the money, if the next person that gets it does the same you can track where the money has traveled. Currently Where’s George is tracking 190,623,138 bills which totals $1,028,594,634 in US dollars.

7. effECTive.

Well, this is not exactly a start-up. effECTive Network based contact center provides services which are really helpful for various start-ups. Network based ACD is Automatic Call Distribution via hardware equipment located the premises of office. Whenever a network operator route calls to the contact center location the system automatically handles ques, overload, quality control, incoming calls & their monitoring, etc. Calls are automatically routed to person on site or if he is unavailable it is routed to second call to off site person. and all this can be easily configured using your PC Browser. This kind of system is really helpful for reducing the waiting time & routing calls to the specific person based on their requirements and available capacity.

8. ShoppingCartAbuse.

A site that is impossible to explain and has no description can only speak for itself. “The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse is an organization dedicated to preventing the pervasiveness of Shopping Cart Abuse”. Why is this even listed? Visit it and you’ll find out.

9. FindAGrave.

Talk about hobbies, how about visiting graves of famous people. On the weekends this is how Jim Tipton spent his quality time. After running out of dead celebrities close by, he decided to start FindAGrave.com. This site helps people to locate a grave of anyone in the U.S. Providing other paid services like genealogy research, this site has turned into a big business. And what we thought was a creepy hobby is now popular enough to have a term-’tombstone tourism’.