The Annoying Orange (AO) is quite simply what the title says, and a whole lot more. Not only is it annoying, it is creepy, void of plot, horrible writing, and, quite frankly, pretty pointless. Therefore, it might surprise you to find out that by very conservative estimates, its creator has taken home close to $300,000 in ad revenue in under a year of the web series existence. It has amassed somewhere around 227,425,302 total YouTube views with around 1,100,095 subscribers.

This annoying piece of talking fruit has become a force to be reckoned with on the Internet. AO’s creator, Dane Boedigheimer, has quickly found himself at the center of a very popular, very odd, and very profitable web series. Which begs to ask the question, how the heck did he know that was going to be popular?

I am willing to guess, he didn’t.

Boedigheimer, took a chance at something different, something odd, and weird. As a result he now finds himself doing better than the vast majority of web entrepreneurs.

Julien Smith tells us to be edgy. He says that most of the labels that define people and things as different are actually positive attributes. Being different is scary because there are real emotional and material incentives to “play it safe”. But, if you never take a chance, if you never produce something odd, or strange, or annoying, then you aren’t exploring all the possibilities available.

Producing a product for the web has so many risk as it is, why not improve your chances by making something completely off the wall?