Memes: More Than Just Humor
One of the most popular ways on the internet to get a quick laugh is through a meme. Memes are parts of internet culture that spread quickly. The idea is to take something that everyone (or everyone within a particular niche) can relate to in a humorous way. Many people learn how to make money with memes.
While traditional memes are simply an image with text either on the image itself or on top of the image, there are other forms of memes as well including gifs & video memes. It was only a matter of time before meme making became more than just a hobby. With their widespread popularity & ability to go viral, memes are now a huge money maker for many people.
People are able to create huge social media followings through posting humorous memes. I personally know of a person who started a meme account as a teenager and now 5 years later makes well over 6 figures based on his social media following alone. If you find any viral meme, try to trace it to its creator or source. You will find that not only is the creator of the meme making money, but many people who just simply pass the meme along are also generating income or influence from the popularity of the meme.
So How Do You Make Money with a Meme?
The key to making money off of a meme is social media. You can have a website dedicated to the memes where people can visit and you can make money off of apparel & advertising. However, social media is the bread & butter of most meme creators who are generating passive income. Think about it. How do you consume media/memes? Chances are that you are consuming memes through your social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many others. This is why social media accounts must be the primary focus if you are trying to make money with memes.
Quick Tip: Make sure to watermark your memes with your main social media account. This way, even if people directly steal the meme, you are still getting credit for it and possibly gaining traffic/followers even when people steal.
Once you have built a large social media following, you must be able to monetize that following. The two main ways people are generating money online from these accounts is through selling items & advertising for others. If you create a catchy logo for your account, then you can sell t-shirts, hats, bags, etc. with your logo on it. You could create a Facebook store, Shopify store, or simply make the shirts on TeeSpring to sell. I believe that selling apparel is a money-maker, but you must make sure the quality of your apparel is top notch.
The other way to make money online with memes, is to sell advertising on your social media accounts. For instance, another page who is trying to gain a foothold in social media may want you to share one of their posts. Of course, you want to make sure that the post is relevant & will resonate with your audience. You can charge anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to the thousands for one share or shout out. The amount will of course depend upon how many followers you have. If you have over 100,000 legitimate followers who engage with your content, you can easily charge over $1,000 per post.
One last thing to consider in this, is to make sure that your content is high quality and that your advertising does not turn spammy. If you are getting $1,000 per post, it is tempting to make 5 advertised posts per day. However, your audience is not dumb. They know when a site is spamming their newsfeed/timeline with ads and will quickly tire of that technique. Ultimately, they will quit following your page. One smart method is to create multiple pages. You can advertise your smaller pages on your larger pages to gain followers. Eventually, you can take those pages and reproduce the advertising method. That will help you to maintain success.
