Domino's Pizza Mogul Lets You Make Money Off Pizza

If the Australian dream is making money off of eating pizza, then the down under branch of Domino's has just made everyone's dreams come true. In a brilliant marketing play, Domino's Australia has developed Pizza Mogul, allowing customers to make money by creating their own pizzas. By letting pizza lovers capitalize on their talents as pizza flavor makers and giving these flavor geniuses a tasty slice of the profits from their culinary creativity, Australia has just established itself as the best country for 20-somethings, bar none. I should've moved to Australia yesterday.

The Pizza Mogul idea, like all great ideas before it, is based on three very simple steps: Create. Share. Earn. First, pizza lovers are asked to design their own favorite pies, using any combination of toppings their hearts desire. Using the Pizza Chef feature of Domino's website, customers are encouraged to create a "better pizza...then have it listed on the Domino's menu in minutes." The current bestseller is appropriately named The Mega Meat Lovers, and is the brainchild of the legendary #pizza_master, who holds Domino's all-time record for most "dough" made on the site. The pizza is a carnivore's dream, and boasts the heart stopping combination of rasher bacon, barbeque sauce, ground beef, seasoned chicken, mozzarella, smoke leg ham, pepperoni, pulled pork, and Italian sausage, all atop a classic crust.

But for those of you with tingling vegetarian sense, Shannan Ricketts, a Brisbane mother who recently quit her job to care for her 11-month-old son, created a host of non-meat options, and has made a total of $1,400.

After creating your behemoth of a pizza, Domino's asks you to "Let people know about your pizza. Use the power of your social network and your creativity to spread the word." The more people you can attract to your tasty creation, the better it is for Domino's, and the better it is for you. This is because step three of the three-pronged fool-proof money making scheme is earning between $0.22 to $3.69 for each of your pizzas Domino's manages to sell. And if getting paid for eating delicious pizza just seems like too much goodness to handle all at once, you can also choose to donate a portion or all of your earnings to charity. So now, you can erase the guilt of eating your delectable pie by assuring yourself that you've done some good for the world.

Shockingly, the top pizza earner thus far — the Mega Meat Lovers maker #pizza_master — has made a whopping $20,569.60 off of the 13,721 pizzas he has sold. Pizza_master is far and away the most successful of the pizza moguls, with the second place title holder coming in at $8,864.97 off of 4,483 pies. But even so, I'd be happy making any amount of money off of pizzas that I didn't even make, and a few thousand dollars is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

The Pizza Mogul leaderboard allows users to check how many pizzas have been sold, how much money has been made, and most importantly, how much money has been donated to charitable causes. A user named Helen has "doughnated" nearly $3,600 of her winnings, and it seems that the total amount of money that has ultimately been given away by these moguls is quite impressive. The total donations from the top five "doughnators" alone stands at nearly $7,000 — not bad for money made off of Domino's pizza.

Crowdsourcing has certainly been a popular technique lately, from raising money for drunken cab rides to raising money for LGBT children's books, but never has any crowdsourcing campaign been so decidedly tasty. Participants of the Pizza Mogul campaign range from a variety of different backgrounds, and while some of them are Domino's employees, the vast majority of them have no affiliation with the pizza chain, other than enjoying the product, whatsoever. According to a Domino's spokeswoman, none of the top earners from the program are company employees. Moreover, those who do work for Domino's and have made money from the program are highly encouraged to donate at least a portion of their profits to charity, and "anyone directly involved in the project’s development donates 100 percent of their profit."

Ultimately, the popularity of the program seems to stem from customer empowerment, who are urged in novel and enticing ways to design their own pizzas. User-generated content has been a big trend in marketing throughout the food industry in the last few months, with Coca-Cola rolling out their "Share a Coke" campaign, which allowed drinkers to personalize their beverages and led to a spike in sales, and Lay's #DoUsAFavor campaign that allowed consumers to design their own potato chip flavors. But the Pizza Mogul campaign is perhaps the first to offer customers an actual slice of the pie in terms of profits, and may lead to the longterm success of the initiative.

Currently, according to Domino's Chief Executive Officer Don Meij, there are 30,000 active Pizza Moguls who participate in the pizza creation process, and that number is only going up. Meij also cites up to 5,000 videos on YouTube and Facebook that are raising public awareness of the campaign and bringing more traffic and customers to the site and to the program. If all goes well, Meij told the Wall Street Journal, he plans on taking Pizza Mogul to New Zealand and the Netherlands. So if you're looking to move anytime soon and don't have any job prospects lined up, those countries should be at the top of your list.

Images: Getty Images; Domino's Pizza Mogul