Day 18 – Funnel Set Up
Your Funnel!
Ok, what’s a funnel?
This is something you’ll want to start working on early on – like after you get your initial 5 awesome posts up on your website and your extra pages. It’s basically starting an email list and getting people to join it.
With an email list, you can send offers to that list when you want and some of them will take action and then you can make some money. There’s more to it than that but that’s the nuts and bolts of it.
It’s called a funnel because a lot goes in and a little comes out. That’s kind of how it works. Average conversion rates (people who take action) are from 2-5%. So if you have a list of 100 people, you can expect between 2 and 5 of those people to take action. If you make $10 per action, then your earnings are between $20 and $50 for 100 people on your list. That makes every person on your list worth $0.50.
If you email your list 3 times a week and give them an offer twice per month (the rest of the time, you give them good information), then each person on your list is worth $1 per month. If you grow your list to 1000 people, then you should make about $1000/month from your list.
These are just made up numbers but $1 per person per month on your list is generally accepted as an average amount in the Internet Marketing industry.
How to Set Up Your Funnel
It’s pretty simple but there are a number of steps. The first one you set up will take some work but after that, you’ll get it and it’ll be easier.
Start with creating something. For me, I created an online course – the one you’re taking. You don’t have to do that but you can come up with a checklist or small book. For people to get that book, they join your list. Your list’s autoresponder sends them a link to the book you promised. The page they see after they join is called the “Thank You” page and you can put an additional offer there.
Again, this should be pretty easy to visualize because that’s basically what I did when you signed up for this course. You should be doing the same thing.
First, Come Up With Your Giveaway
What you give away should be something like a PDF file, which you can make from a Word document. You’ll do some research and come up with something with value to give out for free. Think of it as an article that you’re posting in a PDF file instead of on your website.
It can be a checklist of things, a small book, a list of resources, a zip file of other files (images, videos or something else). I’ve even had a spreadsheet I made as a giveaway. That spreadsheet was simple but it saved people the effort of making it themselves. It can also be a simple e-mail course like I’m doing.
There’s even another method you can use. It works but I don’t use it and I’ll explain why…
You’ll basically find an affiliate offer on Clickbank or somewhere and then put your email list in front of it. For example, there’s a hot weight loss offer and you put together a page or banner on your website that explains a breakthrough in how to “Lose 10 Pounds in 18 Days” or whatever it is. You then have people sign up and in your email back to them, you give them a link to the affiliate offer and send them on their way. You don’t have to create a thing here – except some hype that you have a great offer for them.
The downside is that people might think you swindled them by just passing them on to an ad, basically. You might have a lot of people leave your list this way. I prefer to instead give value in order to keep people on my lists.
Next, Go to GetResponse
After you come up with your giveaway, you’ll want to set up an account at GetResponse. There, you’ll set up your list, which is basically a database or a place where it’s stored. They take care of the legal stuff like making sure there’s an address (your address, actually) on all emails that get sent – this is by law and what I do is just get a PO Box and use that.
You’ll also set up your opt-in form there. It’s easy to design. You then connect it with your list.
After that, you’ll set up your autoresponders, which are a set of emails that get sent out when someone signs up. You’ve seen mine. With the first one, you deliver the product, which is a link to it (you host it on your website). After that, you give them more help and then give them an offer once in a while.
You don’t want to spam your list with offers or people will leave. Give them more value. Give them content they can only get if they are on your list – kind of like how you got to this article, actually. Being on my list is the only way to get to this article.
There are real people on your list, so treat them well.
Conclusion
There’s a lot that can be said about email lists. There are endless courses out there and lots of free help, too. I just wanted to get you started and make sure you got at least of of them set up because I wish I would have years and years ago.
The folk at GetResponse actually have a LOT of videos on YouTube that can walk you through doing about anything, so they offer a lot of help. They have good service and it’s not too expensive.
