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:

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.

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
- Company: ClickTrackProfit.com
- $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
- Company: GetResponse.com
- $15.00 per month for basic service
- Image Editing
- Company: ImageFlip
- $2.95 per month to remove watermarks
- Advertising via Email.
- Company: ListNerds.com
- $12 per month for upgraded service
- Advertising via Email.
- Company: TrafficLeads2IncomeVM
- $4.49 per month billed quarterly
- 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.
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