How To Create a Passive and Wildly Effective Sales Funnel
Are you there busting your butt to create a nice income for yourself in your online business only to find yourself frustrated with the lack of results from your efforts and time you spent?
I hear ya.
I remember those days too. Working countless hours on the wrong things without even knowing it.
So what are you suppose to do if you want to move your business forward and make more money without having to put in more hours?
You create a sales funnel.
What Is a Sales Funnel?
In a nutshell, a sales funnel is an automated system that takes your website visitors through a sequential process with the goal of purchasing your product, service, or even an affiliate product.
You will find that not all sales funnels are alike. Some are simple funnels while others are more complex.
I prefer creating simple funnels – the kind that doesn’t involve a lot of techy stuff to setup but effective in making money whether you are working or just chillin’ out on the beach:)
My sales funnels consist of a 4 step process:
- The Opt-In Freebie
- The One-Time Offer (also known as a tripwire)
- The Main Offer
- Affiliate Offers For Infinity
Let’s get into it, shall we?
There are 2 main parts to my sales funnels: the core and the affiliates for infinity as you can see from the illustration above.
The first part of the funnel is used to promote the offers that you have created while the second part of the funnel is used mainly to promote your affiliate offers.
The Opt-In Freebie
You’ll want to create something of value that you could give away for free in exchange for a visitor’s email address.
You want to have a list of subscribers so that you could send them emails. Now, you don’t want to just send them any emails. Your emails need to be structured in such a way that gets subscribers moving along in your funnel.
Do you want to see how I structure my email sequences?
Grab my cheatsheet here to use when creating your own funnel!
Your freebie needs to be something that could be quickly consumed, not a lengthy ebook that your reader may never have time to read.
Both you and your subscriber want a quick win – something that can be quickly consumed to solve a specific problem and moves your subscriber through the sales funnel.
There’s no need to spend a lot of time and energy creating a lengthy freebie. Some good examples of freebies you could use include:
- checklists
- printables
- cheatsheets
- 4-7 day email courses
- resource lists
- audio downloads
- webinars
It’s up to you what you decide to use but make it super valuable!
Once a subscriber opts in to receive your freebie, guess what happens next?
They are taken to a page which presents your one-time offer for a limited time.
The One-Time Offer
Your subscriber is presented with an irresistible low-cost offer that relates to your freebie in some way. The more relevant the offer, the more sales you will make.
Before you go into the details of your offer, make sure you let your subscribers know that their freebie is on the way.
The offer should also be a really good deal in terms of price. So for example, if you normally would offer this product at a higher price, offer it at a big discount. The offer price should usually be between $7-30.
Make sure to add some urgency by offering your product or service for a limited time. This ensures that subscribers make a quick decision instead of leaving it to MAYBE decide later.
The Main Offer
Okay, now your funnel really gets interesting.
Through a sequence of emails, you are providing value for your subscribers and also presenting your main offer. This is your opportunity to make a lot more money while at the same time helping others achieve a certain result or outcome.
You can see it all in action and grab my sequences that work here.
Your main offer should be a higher priced product than your one-time offer since it should be more valuable and detailed. It could be as low as $20 or as high as $5000. You decide what your offer is worth taking into consideration the amount of hours spent putting it together, the actual value provided, and your particular niche market.
Wondering what you could offer?
There’s actually many possibilities!
Here are some examples:
- an ebook
- software program
- printables
- an online course
- a webinar or workshop
- done for you services
- high ticket coaching
- a ticket to a live event
- a monthly membership site
- consulting services
- a physical product
You decide what you want to offer!
Do I have to create a main offer?
No you don’t have to. You can simply use a really good affiliate offer in place of the main offer. Creating your own offer is ideal though, because your funnel will be more profitable.
How To Save Time When Creating Your Sales Funnel
The easiest way to create your sales funnel and save time in the process is actually to start with your main offer. Once you have your main offer created, the rest is so much easier!
You simply take a portion of your main offer and use it as your one-time offer and take another smaller portion of your main offer and use it as a freebie offer. You don’t have to do this but it just makes things easier so you could quickly get your sales funnel going.
For one of my funnels I used a small portion of my main offer as the freebie offer but have a completely different one-time offer.
What if my subscribers don’t buy my main offer?
Not every subscriber will purchase your main offer. You can generally expect about 1-3% of visitors will buy your offer. It could be higher, but this is generally the range. Keep in mind that you can tell your subscribers about your main offer at another point in time where they may decide to later grab your offer.
If you create a sales funnel similar to how I do it, you then have another opportunity to present a different offer, but more specifically, an affiliate offer. This can all be setup on autopilot so you can make that passive income that we all love:)
Affiliate Offers For Infinity
This is the fun part of the funnel:) Here you get to provide value to your readers while also recommending products you love. I have a specific email sequence that I use that you can grab for yourself here.
I have a certain number of affiliate products or services that I love and stick to only promoting those. I don’t promote everything under the sun.
Once you’ve chosen which affiliates to use, you can follow the formula for my email sequences to help you craft your own emails. Plug those emails into your email service provider (I use ConvertKit), and you are ready to make some passive income with affiliate marketing.
What do I mean by using affiliate offers for infinity? Well, that’s my secret sauce in my sales funnel:) It’s my strategy for ‘recycling’ my email sequence which you can learn about in Forever Funnels
The best and easiest way to earn passive income, in my opinion, is to create and use a sales funnel. It can work for you 24/7. Be sure to include the four steps mentioned with a really good email sequence in place. Don’t forget to grab a copy of my sequences that work cheatsheet here or you can get it by using the form below.
I’ve never heard of this before. I will look into this
I luv how easy your funnel is. How do you manage the content on the back end? Example offer infinity 1-3 do you create a list for each and how do you nurture each list?
TFS
Maggie
https:/cascadeavenue.com/blog
Hi Maggie,
I use the same list for all offers. All of them go through the same funnel and I have a sequence that I setup in advance. The formula for my sequence is in my cheatsheet. Thanks for visiting 🙂
Now that’s just genius. The affiliate for infinity part, I mean. Thanks for info!
Funnels can really change a business! Thanks for posting!
Maggie U,
I gotcha! Thanks 🙂
Thanks for visiting Jasmine 🙂
What a wonderful sales concept! For me it’s great food for thought. Thanks so much for breaking down the steps for creating an easy and effective sales funnel. I need to get on this ASAP!
Wow, thanks, dear Drica. Though, I don’t usually do such. After reading your article, it gives me ideas of what shall I be doing soon.
You know, I honestly never really understood funnels until reading this! Thank you so much!!! I am pinning this to return to it over the weekend!
Thanks Denay.. yes, the sooner the better!
HI Kori,
Glad to know you found it easy to understand. Thanks for visiting and pinning 🙂
I’m in the process of working on my upsell from a freebie right now so this post came at such a good time.
working on mine now, thanks for the timely and important info on sales funnels!
Such sound advice! I am working on a freebie right now. I hope I see some good results from it!
This was so helpful! I’m currently in the beginning stages of creating a sales funnel for a digital product I created and it feels SO overwhelming!
Hi Alexis,
I hear you. If you think of creating your sales funnel as a project, it becomes less overwhelming. Writing out a list of all the steps you need to go through to get it done and working your way step by step makes it feel much more manageable 🙂 Thanks for visiting!
Hi Dri how long have you been blogging for? I am wondering how long it takes to see build up success.
Hi Rosa, I’ve been blogging since 2009 with different blogs and mini sites. If you blog consistently every week, you can start realistically see results between 6-12 months. Not bad for a low-cost startup:) Best of luck!