I failed you.

Somewhere along the way, I led you astray.

Unintentionally, I made it sound like all you had to do was build a random sales funnel, throw $10 at it, and you would become rich.

Allow me to clarify, THIS ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN!!

You will NOT get rich sending some traffic to a sales funnel you put together in an hour.

IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

Even if you spend 10 hours of your life building sales funnels and spend some money on traffic… you STILL WON'T get rich!

While technically, this sales funnel “stuff” is as easy as its ever been…

It's still, strategically and executionally, VERY DIFFICULT!

By building random sales funnels with very little rhyme or reason other than thinking the product will sell…

YOU WILL FAIL 99% OF THE TIME!

YOU WILL FAIL 99% OF THE TIME!

Yes, I typed it twice because you need to see that stat.

That's what you have to look forward to when you spray and pray funnels across the web.

Scary, right?

If a 99% failure rate doesn't scare the crap out of you, then I think you should leave my site because you're not going to “get” what I'm about to share with you.

What I'm about to unveil is how you can decrease your chance of failure from 99% to say 20%… and, that's only if you stop trying.

If you do not give up, success in some form or another is imminent.

To quote the great Albert Einstein…

You Never Fail Until You Stop Trying - Albert Einstein

Mindset: I'm Building A Business, Not Funnels

Some people get this, some don't… and it's OK if you don't.

You hear sales funnels are freakin' awesome, which is totally true… so, you hop in without much clue. (hey, that rhymes!)

As addressed in the intro, building random sales funnels rarely ever works.

You need a plan. You need to be methodical. You need to see the bigger picture.

The bigger picture? You are going to build a business.

A business, for all intents and purposes, consists of two things:

  • Products and/or services to sell
  • Someone to buy those products/services, ie. customers

That's it.

Sales funnels then, are simply a means to connect your customers with your products/services.

Sales funnels are just a tool. If you don't have something to sell and someone to buy what you're selling, things aren't going to work out very well.

The question you should always be trying to answer is: “How can I best serve my customers?” (ie. what can I sell to my customers that will help them)

Once you have that answer, and only once you have that answer, can you ask yourself, “What funnel should I build?”

I'm Prepared To Invest Money & Time

Since you're building a business, you can expect to invest money and time.

It's not much money. You don't have to purchase a building. You don't have to hire employees. You don't have to buy inventory.

All you need are a few tools and money for ads. You're looking at about $500/mo to start.

Regarding time, it's going to take, at minimum, an hour or two a day, 6-7 days a week.

You will need to spend time learning the tools of the trade. You will need to spend time building funnels, running ads, and developing advanced automations. You will need to test and tweak, and test and tweak, and test and tweak… forever.

This is a commitment.

As I said in the intro, you're not going to be able to spend an hour building a funnel, and get rich. It doesn't happen that way.

With all that being said, are you prepared to invest the money ($500+/mo) and time (1-2 hours/day) required to find success?

  • No? – You can stop reading this post and don't fret, there are a million business models out there and I'm confident one will be a good fit for you.
  • Yes! – Read on…

Step 1: Pick Your Audience/Niche

I see most failure occur right here at Step 1.

And, if you fail this step, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail all subsequent steps too.

Obviously, this makes this step incredibly important.

#1 Reason For Failure?

Why are so many people failing this step?

Because, they're not doing it!

It's as simple as that.

Instead of picking an audience/niche first, they're picking products/services first… which is the wrong order! (you need to be able to build your lists (see next section))

Please take this step seriously!

What Makes This Step Important?

One word, lists.

You've heard having an email list is important because you “own” that list and you can reach out to your leads and customers whenever you want.

But, there are other lists besides email lists…

There are audience or retargeting lists, phone lists, Facebook Messenger lists, and direct mail lists that you can take advantage of as well.

By having a defined audience/niche, you can grow these lists and make different offers to them time and again.

Whereas, if you don't have a defined audience/niche, your lists won't have any pattern or consistency which makes it incredibly hard to follow up with other offers.

How To Pick Your Audience/Niche

There are a bunch of ways to do this and I don't care how you do it, just so long as you pick one.

This is how I do it… I pick a topic/niche I am personally interested in and that I've purchased products for. That's it.

I figure, if it's something I care about and buy stuff for, there's gotta be at least 1,000 other people in this country/world that also care and buy stuff. And, you can make good money off of only 1,000 people.

Step 2: Build A Break Even Funnel

This is the hardest part.

You need to get ONE funnel that allows you to acquire new customers for free, ie. you put $1 in and get $1+ back out.

There are many methods and funnel models you can use to accomplish this. This post goes into detail on how to select the right funnel: What Kind Of Sales Funnel Should I Build?

If you don't want to read that post right now, the bottom line is this – you can build a break even funnel with a Front-End or Trip Wire Funnel, Webinar Funnel, Product Launch Funnel, Application Funnel, etc… any funnel model can be used to create a break even funnel. It all comes down to what you're offering and who you're offering it to.

For example, you could have a front-end/tripwire funnel where you give away your book for free and the customer pays for shipping. You then “beef up” the offer with an order bump and One-Time-Offers (OTO) for an audio version and complementary training. This way, you can cover the costs to print the book and acquire the customer (ad spend). Russell Brunson is a master of the book funnel.

Or, you can have a webinar that converts cold traffic into buyers of your $500+ offer. Dan Henry started with a webinar funnel which turned into a million dollar business in less than 5 months.

Or, you can drive massive amounts of people to your physical location with a simple 2-Step funnel.

The point is, all the funnel models can work as your initial break even funnel. You simply have to figure out which model works for your audience and offer and make it happen.

Really Freakin' Close…

Depending on your audience/niche/offerings, it can be really hard to build a break even funnel.

Maybe you're able to build one where every dollar you put in, you get $0.90 back.

This might be OK.

You're still acquiring customers. You're still building your lists. You're still growing your business.

You simply have to make up the difference on the backend – ie. you have to sell to them again, and again, and again.

A Funnel A Day For 2 Weeks

To give you an idea of the intensity it can take to build a break even funnel…

While building AliExpress sales funnels…

I once spent 2 weeks straight, 14 days, launching a funnel a day… I did not sleep until I launched my funnel for the day…

  • 7 of them completely failed, 0 sales.
  • 6 of them made some sales, nothing significant.
  • 1 hit. That's a 7% success rate.

To clarify, this wasn't a “million dollar funnel” hit… it was a “just above break even” hit ($1 in, $1.20ish out).

During this testing phase, I spent about $1,200 on ad spend and made about $550 back… I “lost” $650 doing this, but gained a break even funnel, found 6 funnels that kinda worked, and grew my audience and email lists in the process. (why it's important to decide on one audience/niche)

I took the 6 funnels that made some sales, tweaked them a little bit, and put them into the back-end of my break even funnel, ie. I retargeted my audience and pushed people to those funnels via email automation.

I've since launched other funnels/offers to this audience. Some have done well, others have failed entirely – but, it's been much cheaper to test these new funnels because I have my own audiences now!

By showing you this example, I'm hoping you can see that this is going to take time, money, methodical testing and tweaking, and that it's not as simple as launching a few random funnels in random niches and throwing $20 at some ads… it can take a lot of work… but, once you have it… man, it is worth it!

Step 3: Scale

Once you have your first break even funnel, it's time to scale!

There are several ways to scale and I'll outline a few here.

Scale Wide

I alluded to this scaling strategy in the “A Funnel A Day For 2 Weeks” section above.

It works by making more similar offers with similar funnels. Basically, you clone the funnel, swap out the products, and hit publish.

You typically scale wide with front-end/tripwire funnels that sell cheaper products, but you can also scale wide with lead gen funnels where you have multiple services you want people to see.

Scale Deep

To scale deep, you need different products and services at differing price points and value.

Scaling deep will also require multiple funnel models. For example:

  • You may have a front-end/tripwire funnel that sells a book for $7.95 and a few digital resources for between $10-$300. Let's say this is your break even funnel.
  • Then, you may have a webinar funnel that sells a $2,500 master class.
  • Finally, you may have an application funnel that sells access to a $10,000 mastermind.

This is what's called a Value Ladder and I highly recommend you read this post about them: How To Create A value Ladder For Your Business

Scale Wide & Deep

Scaling both wide (multiple products on the same tier/same funnel model) and deep (multiple tiers of products/different funnel models) is the optimal scenario; however, you're not going to get there in one day…

It will take months, if not years to truly build out your business.

However, ultimately – this is what you're going for.

Retargeting & Automations

I want to quickly point out that no matter how you scale, you need to connect ALL your funnels together via retargeting and automations.

You should be building a HUGE “macro” sales funnel that brings people in, builds a relationship, and makes multiple, different offers to them… mostly on autopilot.

I call my “macro” sales funnel strategy – The Interest Driven Sales Funnel. (<< blog post series I highly recommend reading)

Step 4: Build A Brand-Brand

This is optional.

If you have several sales funnels that are all sustaining themselves and turning a profit… congrats! You've done it!

However, if you want to turn your sales funnels into something more, then you may want to build a brand-brand around them.

What do I mean by brand-brand?

Well, you should have a “brand” when you start… logo, color scheme, personality, etc. This way, everything is uniform. However, I don't consider that a brand-brand.

A true brand is known.

Think about Nike, everyone knows what they represent – sports.

Conversely, think about the last blanket you purchased. Unless you know things about blanket brands… you probably have no idea who made it even though they have a logo and color scheme.

How To Build A Brand-Brand

This is a massive topic that I can't possibly cover here or we'd be here for years.

However, for the 30,000 ft view of how to build a brand-brand, you need to gain authority.

How do you gain authority?

Amazing “content”.

This “content” can be in the form of blog posts or videos or podcasts or even the products/services themselves.

You have to become the G.O.A.T. in your niche. (Greatest Of All Time)

It can take years to become the G.O.A.T., but if you're able to get there, your organic sales, reach, growth, and value will increase exponentially!

Summary

  • You will not get rich by building one random funnel and sending traffic to it
  • You will likely fail if you only build random funnels without having a plan
  • You need to be prepared to spend both time and money to have success
  • The first thing you must do is pick your audience/niche
  • The second, and hardest thing you must do is build a break even funnel ($1 out, $1+ in)
  • The third thing you need to do is scale by going wide, deep, or both
  • Finally, if you want to build a business that will be around for many years to come, you need to build a brand-brand