Demand forces Aussie entrepreneur behind shipyourenemiesglitter.com to sell the website

HE’S the Australian hero we never knew we needed, and now Mathew Carpenter is cashing in. An idea he had on holiday is earning ‘Glitter Guy’ thousands of dollars.

Mathew Carpenter, 22, is responsible for shipyourenemiesglitter.com. Picture: Facebook

MEET the man behind a website that promises vengeance in the form of glittery mayhem — a 22-year-old from Newcastle who is about to turn his “New Years side project” into a huge pay day.

Mathew Carpenter watched his beautiful brainchild shipyourenemiesglitter.com explode last week then crash under the weight of demand.

His promise was to ship envelopes filled with glitter to “the people you hate”, along with a note describing how much their lives would suck. “One letter, endless frustration for just $9.99” was the promise, but one letter turned into two, then three, then 20,000. More than 2.5 million people visited the site.

‘Stupid glitter is guaranteed to go everywhere’

“My New Years resolution was to work on more side projects and this is the first thing that came to my mind,” Carpenter told news.com.au.

“As a child I would always receive birthday and Christmas cards from friends & family that had glitter inside them which I hated. I’m all for paying terrible things forward which is why the site was born.”

A week after the website launched, Carpenter is selling up. The young entrepreneur posted an ad on website Flippa, a marketplace to buy and sell businesses.

“I launched this website as a bit of a joke not expecting this level of attention,” he said.

“Heck, I launched this website whilst I was on holiday. For the past few days it has been stressful dealing with all of the media attention and even more so because this was only intended to be a small side project. It’s taken on a life of its own and I want to watch it continue to grow under a new owner.”

Shipyourenemiesglitter.com is being auctioned at 12.30pm AEST on Thursday. It has received more than 300 bids. The highest bid was $70,800 as of Tuesday afternoon.

2.5 million people hate somebody enough to want to send them glitter.

“I was definitely surprised, I didn’t think thousands of people were going to be spending their money on something like this,” Carpenter said.

“Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to stuff thousands of envelopes with glitter, nor do I want to hang onto the site and accept one of the hundreds of partnership requests I’ve gotten. Quite frankly, this project just isn’t for me - it’s that simple. I don’t want to be the glitter guy, and I’ve come to terms with that”

Carpenter said the buyer stands to make $5.99 to $7.99 profit on each order.