Anyone in social media knows, the first x followers are the toughest. The first 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1 million, whatever. Itās always hardest at first. Our goal for The Dad was to grow FAST. So we were considering acquiring other brands to jumpstart. None were a great fit. That initial audience is so important.
So I offered up The Glad Stork as an acquisition so The Dad wouldnāt have to start at zero.
I had about 75k followers on IG, and 10k or so on Twitter. Plus a bunch of content. Most of it unusable but some that could work for The Dad.
How much do you think thatās worth? How much would you pay for The Glad Stork in 2017? Stay tuned. Big reveal at the end.
When I started The Glad Stork in 2013, it was a ādad blog.ā I set up the WordPress site, wrote one essay, created a Twitter account, wrote one tweet, and was like, āYeah Iād rather write jokes.ā
Here was the original logo:
Big yikes.
I was having an existential career crisis and needed to do something else. I made The Glad Stork so I could explore content creation and see if I liked it.
In those early years, The Glad Stork was TERRIBLE. Cringey, offensive, poor quality, all of it. I loved it though. I got to do whatever I felt like without concern for what people would think. It was exploration.
When I created it, I was not loving my day job. I would have given anything to get a creative job. But I was soooo not qualified.
Letās say The Dad was started (by someone else) in 2012. If I were to apply for The Dad in 2013 as a freelance content creator, thereās zero percent chance Iād be hired. Zero. Or if I snuck through the cracks Iād have done a great deal of damage with my crap content.
Worth repeating: In 2013 I would not have been qualified to do ANYTHING for the brand I helped create just 4 years later. I mean that 100%.
You just have to put in the work. Thatās it. No matter what it is. It takes work and time and patience. A little bit every day for a long enough time puts you in the position to take advantage of opportunities that pop up.
The Glad Stork was all kinds of things.
I tried out a web comic. I spent hundreds of hours on it. It was bad. But it was a formative experience.
I explored Twitter, Facebook, Pinterestā¦ and learned the ins and outs of social media.
I wrote a novel. One chapter per week posted to Tumblr (!!!). Remember Tumblr? This taught me the value of creative routine. You gotta commit to a schedule and do the work even when you donāt feel like it.
Maybe the most important thing I learned was about audience and community building. When I was working with Jill on Scary Mommy, I got to do Scary Mommy Instagram takeovers as The Glad Stork. (One time I even live tweeted the Oscars as The Glad Stork, on Scary Mommyās account.) Inevitably after these takeovers, Iād get thousands of new followers. Immediately after this, Iād purposely post the weirdest crap I could think of. Just to lose followers who werenāt into it.
I donāt think anything I was doing was especially notable artistically. Not by any means. Iām not saying that. But I was consciously going out of my way to mold the community to expect the unexpected.
I donāt necessarily recommend that. But I DO recommend being conscious of what your audience expects, how they might react to what you post, and being very purposeful about combining those things with your goals and vision.
Some of those weird thingsā¦
I asked people to send me their most used Emojis screen and I read them a horoscope based on it.
I took celebrity mugshots and turned them into 80s style Olan Mills portraits for some reason.
I did āWine Wednesdaysā where Iād make sarcastically terrible Wine Mom memes every Wednesday.
I drew custom coloring pages of photos people sent me, I sent it to them, theyād print it out, color it, and send it back.
MS PAINT! I did so many drawings of people with the crayon tool in Microsoft Paint that I ended up getting pretty good at it. Hereās one of author Will Self that was actually published in a magazine in Englandā¦
I put Drake lyrics on pictures of Joe Biden and I called it #JoeVO.
So many stupid photoshops. SO MANY.
Why? Because I felt like it. Those were the days.
I also felt when I had an idea, I had to get it out of my system by creating and posting it.
And I do think that in order to get better at something you first have to get the bad stuff out of your system.
Okay so I have 75k-ish followers and a boatload of content. How much money did Some Spider pay for The Glad Stork? How much is 4 years and THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of hours worth?
Drum rollā¦
$25,000.
What do you think? Honestly, that feels fair to me.
I was happy to get paid for this little thing I did for fun (and personal growth). But I was mostly happy to have a jumpstart for The Dad, in terms of IG followers (which are especially hard to come by in early days) and in content. Some of The Glad Stork stuff ended up performing pretty well on The Dad.
I prepped my audience that a rebrand was coming.
I deleted all of the old The Glad Stork posts. And we changed the handle from @thegladstork to @thedadonline.
(It wasnāt until later weād snag @thedad.)
4 years, $25k. I calculate about $3 per hour.
100% worth it.
I looked through old content for this post and holy hell itās bad. Cringe town. But I still feel nostalgia about it. Was very necessary and Iām so happy I did it.
RIP.
What is your version of The Glad Stork? Start it today.