If you’ve spent much time on social media, you’ve likely seen a meme or two. Memes are shareable graphic images paired up with a funny caption. They are often shared for their humor and ability to make people laugh. Businesses can use them as a lighthearted way to promote themselves.

Pros

  • Be your own boss.
  • Exercise your natural creativity.
  • Have fun while helping others.
  • You can create your own images or use images from the public domain.

Cons

  • Business memes are not a high-demand item like other graphic services.
  • Businesses may not want to pay as much for memes as for other types of graphic services.
  • You’ll have to promote yourself heavily in order to attract customers.

How to get started:

NOTE: Before you start your business, you should read the page on this website entitled “things to think about before you get started.” After you have taken the preliminary steps for starting any business, you can take the specific steps outlined below.

Step One

You should create a few memes and begin sharing them on social media to showcase your work. If you can’t promote your own business using memes, you’ll have a hard time convincing other business owners to hire you to create their memes.

Go to a free meme creator website like imgflip Meme Generator or Meme Generator and choose an image, write your text, and publish. Don’t forget to brand your meme so that others will know who created it. You can add a small logo to a corner of your image or a website address at the bottom of the meme so people know how to recognize you and find you.

Step Two

Start sharing the meme to your social media accounts.

Step Three

Start looking for clients. Ask your friends and family business owners they know. Offer your services for free to the first couple of clients so you can develop some samples of your work. Then charge a small fee to a few clients to get your business started. After you have a good base of clients, begin to raise your prices to account for your growth.

Step Four

Develop your own memes by using tools like Canva to modify images or create stunning new graphics.

Hot tip: Develop a handful of five or six branded memes that feature you. This can easily be done by uploading a selfie to the meme creation platform you use. If you create a template so that your contact information (website address, email address, and/or phone number) is located and easily visible on your meme, then your own memes can serve as a promotional tool that markets your meme creation business for you. Share them daily on a rotational basis on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and anywhere else you have a social media presence.

How much to charge:

Start small at first. Five or ten dollars for a meme using an image given to you by your client or made available by the meme creation platform is a good place to start, but you’ll want to raise your prices as soon as it is feasible to do so. And you want to use that image as it is with no modifications.

After creating a few no-modification memes, upscale your service by offering to modify images provided by your clients. You can charge more because it will take up more of your time for image modification. Depending on the level of modification, you can charge $25 to $100 per meme. Remember, you’ll also be writing the text for those memes.

If you can create original artwork, you can offer that service and charge even more. If you’re good at photography, hand drawing, cartooning, or other graphic services, you can charge as much as $300 per meme.

Taking it to the next level

Build a website to promote your meme creation business. You can also join Fiverr and offer your services at Fiverr. You’ll want to begin offering graphic creation services as a part of your meme creation business because you’ll make more money if your memes include original artwork your clients can’t get anywhere else.

If you’re not good at creating funny lines to go with your images, or you’re writing ability is not as strong as your graphic abilities, partner with a writer to create memes and share the profits. Better yet, hire a few writers to write the text for you. As your business grows, you can do all the graphics and your writers can create the text to go with them. This gives you more control as you’ll be able to ask your writers to rewrite anything that doesn’t fit with your standards.

Photo by Mark Decile on Unsplash