The Hangover Beard: A Surprising Social Media Success (So far)

Few had hope that such a silly idea could prevail- selling fake beards? The thought! But as Halloween draws closer and closer, there are few signs that the Hangover Beard idea will be anything but a resounding success.

Editors Note: Please allow me to gloat a bit.

I came up with the idea to sell fake beards that looked similar to the one that Zach Galifianakis sports in the movie "The Hangover" and in every other day of his life. I myself cannot grow a beard, let alone a 13 year old hormonal mustache. Yep, the Beebe's were blessed with height and unmatchable looks but the facial hair evaded us. So I personally found a real utility in such a stupid idea.

So i started a website- hangoverbeard.com- with the hopes of maybe selling one or two beards. My past attempts into the digital world have met with differing levels of abmissal failure. Take H2HO Water Delivery. The concept is so simple- Hydration is sexy. So order drinks in bulk online and hot chicks will deliver them straight to your door, all the while admiring how sexy your hydrated self will soon be.

I didn't make one sale. Had one person ask if I carried Cherry Coke though. I didn't. The lesson taught me that business isn't as easy as The Apprentice will make you believe. Wearing a suit and being an asshole to everyone will not sell product. H2HO Water Delivery did teach me a few things: 1. My mom hates the word "Ho" and pleaded for me to change the name to H2WOW. No way ma, I already bought the domain name. 2. Hot girls love a guy who "has a business" and are all too willing to volunteer to be the sexy delivery chicks, but only if they can wear belly shirts. Notes to all college freshman/men everywhere- pretend to own a sexy business. 3. Having a niche business makes you seem quirky. Quirky enough to make it on Real World. After sharing my innappropriate flyers with my fellow auditioning Real Worlders, I made a few call backs. At some point, it became obvious I was not interesting or troubled enough to be exploited on MTV, so they stopped calling me. They didn't even order Perrier for the audition sets.

I've tried a handful of other online ideas but either was too lazy to finish or suddenly realized it already existed. Or sucked. Or both.

But this time something was different. I was older, wiser. I had more money to waste. Flash forward, I set up a website, a paypal payment system and a few social media profiles (Facebook and @hangoverbeard). I threw some money at paid advertising but little came from it. My main focus was seeing if I could create such a niche market product that if I contacted the fans of said niche, they'd be powerless not to buy.

I guess it kinda worked!

My Twitter, Fat Jesus (@hangoverbeard) started getting some fans after repeatedly targeting everyone who mentioned the words "beard, jesus, costume, or hangover". My final pool of fans is a rag tag bunch but they have so much spunk. Via the twitter outreach I started experiementing with other platforms- my aforementioned Facebook group was good at corralling my willing Facebook friends but few others. So I started posting to other related Facebook groups- Zach Galifianakis fan groups, The Hangover fan page, Beard aficionados pages. That worked. I posted to digg with a few articles, all just different enough to pick up some traction. That worked. And I eventually befriended the right Twitter profile who would turn out to be the Los Angeles Times Image Section. The moderator of it was intrigued when he read "Fat Jesus is now following you..." in his inbox. One thing led to another and BAM, Hangover Beard is in the LA Times:


Enough of this. I will be putting together a consolidated Case study of this adventure to share with others, highlighting what worked best and where the pitfalls are.

What I think this best illustrates is a few things. First, people will buy anything. Anything. I've toyed around with selling dog shit online and I think I have a market. Second, you will always have those "why didn't I think of that!?" moment or the related, more vengeful "I thought of that! I should have done that!" moment. Let me say- do it. Just do it. Even if it's a stupid idea, figure out what it'll take and then go for it. What's the worst that could happen? You're out a few bucks. Now you have a story. I never sold a drop of drink with H2Ho Water Delivery but I got something far better than money- a story. And now I have both.

Thanks to everyone who's supported me along the way. I really couldn't have done it without you. Well, maybe I could have, but I feel a lot better about it knowing I have your support.

UPDATE: MTV also wrote about my mighty beard. Too bad I had sold out by the time they got around to writing this- traffic skyrocketed. I could be swimming like Scrooge McDuck in a pool of Beard Money!