Case Study Part 1 – Dad Jokes

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After talking to a mentor whose opinion I value, I decided to blog about the steps to build my Dad Joke business.

Yeah, it’s true. You can start a dad joke business online.

A couple years ago I started a Facebook group called Dad Jokes and Memes.

This was just a fun hobby side project I worked on with a friend. We would make or re-post dad jokes in meme form. Enjoyable.

Since then, I decided to turn that idea into a bigger business than just a hobby.

Every few days or so, I make a dad joke like this one:

Yep, it’s a corny dad joke.

After publishing dad jokes for a while (I’ve made over a hundred), I decided to register a domain name. I purchased DadJokesAndMemes.com for around $8 on Namecheap.

I was rather surprised at how fast this took off.

I started this a year and some change ago, and today (April 10, 2020), I’ve gathered 5900+ Facebook subscribers.

Facebook stats when I started the blog... Around 5900 followers
Not too bad for making memes occassionally.

This taught me that humor is something that people really enjoy online.

The way I see it, I’m a dad and I could create dad jokes and memes each day.

I sent an email to a small group of 6 people that I considered an ‘accountability group’ so that I would keep this up.

I told them I was going to start a dad jokes business and needed them to hold my feed to the fire. Who were they? Friends who were business-savvy as well as some family members.

After I had a domain name and an accountability group, I decided it was time to get this going. I knew I was going to spend some money up front to get things going.

How much did it cost me to keep this going?

I spent some money getting everything set up. For complete transparency here’s where I’m at.

I’ve listed recurring fees first, and one time payments below that.

  • Training on how to do online marketing
    • $7.00 per month for upgraded membership
  • Website Hosting for DadJokesandMemes.com
    • Company: ASmallOrange.com
    • $8.80 per month for basic service
  • Website Hosting for RobWillmann.com
    • Company: Dreamhost.com
    • $6.94 per month for basic service
  • Email Autoresponder for my email mailing lists
  • Image Editing
    • Company: ImageFlip
    • $2.95 per month to remove watermarks
  • Advertising via Email.
  • Advertising via Email.
  • Lead Magnet Ebook cover
    • Company: Fiverr.com
    • $33.44 one time payment for 2D cover for lead magnet.

So that means right now, I am at $57.18 a month to keep my two sites, mailing lists, and training going. Not too bad at all.

I also plan on doing email advertising via mailers (more on this later) to promote my two sites and get subscribers.

I also paid imgflip a whopping $3 a month so that I can make memes online without having a ‘watermark’ on my images with someone else’s URL. #winning.

The $33.44 I paid a Fiverr member for the ebook cover was a bargain, considering I received two covers and a quick turnaround. I am a fan of Fiverr, and have not had problems using them in the past.

At this point I’m set up with everything I need to get this off the ground. I may pay for some advertising (such as Facebook ads, etc.) when I am starting out to prime the pump.

As it is, I think what I am paying is very reasonable, since it’s less than what I would pay for me and my wife Tammaney to go out to dinner once.

What am I Going to Do with All of This?

Now that I have my Dad Jokes website going, my goals are straightforward:

  • Build up subscribers to my Dad Jokes mailing list
  • Market dad-related products and humor-related products to dads and those who love dad jokes… ie: people on my dad jokes email list
  • Use RobWillmann.com as a place to publish my ‘Case Study’ (You’re reading it now) of how I built up my dad jokes site
  • Build up a second email list for this site, since those folks are marketers and those who want to know how to make their own site.
  • Market traffic, email, and marketing products to the seond list. Duh.

Sounds relatively straightforward. Plus I have my 6 person ‘accountability group’ to keep me going.

What can YOU expect as a reader?

I plan on blogging about my journey as an online business owner.

Technically, I have TWO: the dad jokes site, and my Rob W. site.

However, they both ultimately consist of the same thing:

  • Content – whether it’s a blog post or a dad joke, good content is good content.
  • Marketing – Content is great, but I need to drive traffic (IE: eyeballs) to the content.
  • List Building – I don’t just want visitors to my sites. I want those visitors to turn into subscribers.

I plan on blogging about the miscellaneous parts of this journey. Stay with me. 🙂

Continue to Part 2 of my Case Study. Click Here.

Rob Willmann
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