Freelance Memers: Fiverr Meme Artists Reveal Their Monthly Earnings

Commodified memes are often mocked relentlessly in the memeverse, and usually for good reason. You can witness this phenomenon every time a cringey brand attempts to meme on Twitter, or when a Presidential candidate pays meme pages to advertise their campaign on Instagram.

Despite this, there are still people trying and succeeding to monetize meme-making. One of the biggest hubs for this is Fiverr, where artists take meme commissions as freelance gigs. Some of these meme artists have hundreds of positive reviews and charge well-over $5 for their services, not to mention any tips they might be receiving.

So is the world becoming more open to monetized memes-by-commission? How much are these meme-makers actually earning? We talked to five popular meme artists on Fiverr to find out and learn more about this curious world of freelance memers.

Have any of your memes gone viral?

rtjkstudio: I have seen many of my memes get thousands of likes. It depends on the size of the audience of the publisher. I've made memes for dog training brands and they got a pretty good response.

erenll: Yes. On this Youtube channel called Normies. I made some memes about their inside jokes. They really liked them and posted them on their Instagram. I think it got like 1k likes. Their YouTube channel is huge, so it felt like it was viral to me. Another has 32k reactions on Facebook.

Mikecharette: I’m not sure. I don’t follow up to see how they use the memes.

iddieformemes: There are only a few of my commissioned work that I’ve actually found online, but because I know so little about the customers most of what I make I never see where they posted it, which is a shame.

How long do you spend making memes?

rtjkstudio: If a buyer says, 'Make 10 memes for me on any topic,' it'll take roughly 1 hour to make those. But if a buyer asks to make memes on a specific niche, I can make 40 such memes in an hour. Once I made 100 memes in 23 hours.

Afraznaeem: 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Meme-making is not the time-taking part. Gathering ideas for the memes is the real time-consumer.

iddieformemes: Some memes can take me as little as ten minutes, where others can take me around 5-6 hours. It all depends on the length of the video and how complex the editing is.

What are you earning on Fiverr?

rtjkstudio: I make roughly $400 [per month] from memes.

Afraznaeem: I'm making around $250 a month. Been on Fiverr for two months now.

erenll: For three months I didn’t earn anything. Then somebody ordered a $5 package and left a good review. You need to have some reviews to get promoted. I think I earn between $70 and $120 a month now.

iddieformemes: Some months can be pretty good where I’m making around $1,000-$1,500, and some I can make as little as $300. When all this corona stuff began my revenue started going down significantly.

Mikecharette: Not enough to quit my job.

How did you decide to start making memes?

rtjkstudio: I have been making memes ever since I was 10. I used to make memes of my friends and teachers in school. I even wish my friends a happy birthday with memes. I’ve been selling memes on Fiverr for the last 8 months.

erenll: I always liked memes and started to make them for my friends. I made some memes about inside jokes, funny situations, etc. Then, one day I thought, "How can I monetize this?"

iddieformemes: I would say my passion for meme style videos really took off while I was in film school. I always had ideas for videos that I wanted to make but, at the time my editing skills were too limited for me to execute them properly. It wasn’t until school where I learned more about editing methods and software, that my only limitation became my imagination.

Mikecharette: A comedian friend of mine mentioned that he was writing stand-up for people on a freelance site. Curious, I signed up. One order led to another and here we are!

Did you make memes before getting on Fiverr?

Mikecharette: I did! @jokespaymybills is my OG meme account on Instagram. At first, I was just reposting memes but then I started making ideas of my own. I discovered my talent when one of my memes went viral. It was shared by World Star, EllenTVSHOW (not the actual show), and Betches.

iddieformemes: Yes. I started on YouTube. After a few years of making videos for my friends, I started thinking of ways I could make money doing this. I had a job I hated and wanted to find a way out of. I monetized my YouTube account, but a few months in they changed their policy to what it is today, which lost my monetization abilities. So, I started looking for other ways to make money creating memes. That's when I discovered Fiverr. It only took a few days before I received my first order and it only grew from there. The only downside to Fiverr is they do take a good amount of the revenue, but it’s worth it for the exposure and the steady stream of work.

Do you see a future for yourself making memes?

rtjkstudio: I really want to make it a profession. I want to become a professional meme designer, meme marketer, and a meme analyst.

Afraznaeem: It's just a side gig. I'll even pause this gig as my exams are about to begin.

erenll: Well yes, but actually no. I don’t think you can make a good living by making memes on Fiverr. Although, I would have never thought that I could make money from making memes on Fiverr 6 months ago.

Mikecharette: Honestly, I don’t know. If you asked me 11 years ago if I could see myself making money doing stand up comedy I would have thought you were trolling me, but here we are. So, maybe this little meme gig will be like that.

iddieformemes: I hope to have a future doing this. Making memes is a huge passion of mine and something that brings me pride and joy. Currently, it doesn’t make me enough money to be my only source of income. I still have to work a doo-doo job until this can be enough for me to live off of. I’m getting closer to a position where I can make a comfortable living making memes.

Do you view memes as art or business?

rtjkstudio: Memes are art. They should be officially accepted as a form of art just like painting, singing, writing, etc.

Afraznaeem: I think meme-making is an art. It goes beyond basic graphic design principles. You need scenarios to make the memes work, and that's the real game-changer.

Mikecharette: Both. Businesses have gotten huge bumps in sales because of memes but memes are still art at the end of the day.

erenll: The first time I discovered memes I was like, “This is definitely an art form, these should be in museums,” but then I started to monetize my memes. After you make tons of memes for someone else’s business, memes become basic jpeg files in your eyes. Occasionally I make some very creative ones that make me go, "This one is special."

iddieformemes: I see memes as a way of sharing ideas and thoughts with people, just like good art does. It can take people a lot of time, hard work and creativity to make some of these memes. Just like most people who make art though it always starts from a place of passion but, when money starts getting involved it typically changes things. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that over time things have started to shift. I sometimes find myself not enjoying it as much as I once did. Even on my worst days dealing with annoying people and stressing out over deadlines, I still get to say that I get paid to make memes, and that’s pretty damn cool.

Thank you to all the great meme artists interviewed. If you want to commission memes from any of these Fiverr artists, you can check out their pages here: erenll, mikecharette, iddieformemes, afraznaeem, rtjkstudio.

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