How did these low budget trashy movies make money?

A lot of low-budget films did very well on VHS. People would run across them in the video store, like the cover, and rent them. Also, the fantasy genre went through something of a boom period during the 80s so people were gobbling films like this up.

Personally, I loved martial arts films growing up and I watched plenty of low-budget straight-to-VHS karate flicks that I rented from Blockbuster. I usually wouldn't have heard of the films before. I'd just go straight to the martial arts section, which existed at that time, and find something I hadn't seen before.