Sales funnels are like magic little money-making machines. I’m sure you’ve heard about them before, right? But what exactly is a sales funnel and how do you use it to make money? Most people think that sales funnels are like websites. They’re not. Funnels are much different than websites for several reasons.
Websites have menus and submenus, multiple buttons and sections, information about the company and its products, and so on. There are so many choices when you arrive at a website that it often leads to overwhelm. After all, human attention spans are dropping at a staggering rate and we now have a lower attention span than a goldfish.
Sales funnels are different. There’s no overload of choices. No overwhelm. Just one distinct path forward. That’s it. Just one. This laser-focused approach leads to far higher conversions because you are offering only one path forward. When combined with psychological levers that drive human behavior such as urgency and scarcity, sales funnels can transform any business literally overnight.
However, we’re not promising you anything here. While others have achieved massive success with funnels that doesn’t mean you will. But the proof is in the pudding. Thousands of funnels have now made it into the two comma club. Meaning that a single funnel made over a million dollars in sales in one calendar year. Many others have done over ten million with one funnel. And others have done over 25 million and 50 million.
What Is A Sales Funnel?
Before we dive into all of the excitement of how to make money using sales funnels and some of the different types of funnels you can build, let’s back up a bit. If you’re in business or you’re an entrepreneur of any kind, the concept of a sales funnel is a core component of your success. But the question is this—what is a sales funnel and what exactly does it do?
Imagine a funnel that filters a large amount of liquid at the top into a refined smaller stream at the bottom. That’s precisely what a sales funnel is. A large amount of traffic comes in at the top and sales stream down from the bottom. Along the way, there are many steps. But the concept is simple and straightforward.
Several elements make up a sales funnel. It relies on a few psychological levers. But it also includes your ability to build to share relevant stories that build rapport with a prospect. And your ability to describe their problem better than they can describe it. While many steps are required to take a person from the top of the funnel to the bottom, the key elements are straightforward.
The origins of the sales funnel come from a man named, E. St. Elmo Lewis who originally coined the concept of the sales funnel. Back then, he originally described it as the AIDA marketing model. AIDA stands for Attention (A), Interest (I), Desire (D), and Action (A). That describes the journey a customer takes when they enter a sales funnel (also known as a marketing funnel).
How Do Sales Funnels Work?
Imagine it this way. A customer walks into your store and your best salesperson personally guides them through picking the perfect product that solves the problem they’re struggling with. Along the way, this salesperson also helps them pick other products and services they may need with it. A sales funnel is kind of like that. Because sales funnels don’t have endless options, it’s a more refined, hand-held approach to making the sale.
While that best illustrates how a sales funnel works in the real world, how does it actually in the digital work? Sales funnels work when you understand how to work them. That doesn’t just mean you should launch sales funnels for the sake of having them. Without the proper targeted traffic, the right communication funnels, and the right structure, sales funnels fail.
Meaning that a sales funnel doesn’t work by itself. You must speak to the prospect and describe their problem better than they can describe it themselves. That happens both in the funnel and in the communication behind the funnel. Funnels, by definition, are megaphones that allow you to communicate with the prospect directly via email. This is an important piece.
In terms of marketing, email is still the highest driver of ROI of any marketing channel. Behind email is search engine optimization. The best part? Communicating via email to an existing list is free. All you need to do is first acquire those leads before marketing to them. That’s where really good sales funnels come into play.
Make Money Now vs Later
When it comes to sales funnels there are two ways to get paid. You can either make money now, which is the typical work now and get paid now formula. Or you can make money later. The make-money-later approach is different because it involves doing a lot of work on the front end for little to no pay, and potentially opening the floodgates to money down the road. It’s kind of like passive income.
However, most people want to make money fast. Not slow. They don’t want to wait around for ages to get paid. After all, that’s what they’re used to. This is known as an active income. Yes, you can make an active income with sales funnels. But there’s a far greater potential with sales funnels for a flood of leads and sales down the road. The choice is entirely up to you.
1—Sell Your Sales Funnel Designs
The simplest way to make money using sales funnels is to sell sales funnel designs. You can do this inside the funnel marketplace here. All you need to do is sign up as a seller. You’ll need an existing ClickFunnels account but this is a straightforward way to take the designs you create and sell them to a wide audience.
This means that you can do the work once and get paid repeatedly. This is the work now and get paid later approach. If you love designs and understand sales funnels, then consider selling the designs you create inside the marketplace. This can produce a good amount of passive income for years to come with the right designs.
2—Affiliate Sales
Affiliate sales are a great way to make money online. You can sign up for an affiliate to sell our sales funnel software here. There are other sales funnel builders you can affiliate for as well. The point is that you can make money with funnels simply by selling software. This takes the pressure off of you to build the funnel and run the business.
To succeed as an affiliate you need some sort of audience somewhere. That can be an email list, a YouTube audience, a social media following, or something similar. You can also run ads to a bridge page funnel or a reverse squeeze page. The point of a bridge page is to grab the prospect’s contact information before sending them to the affiliate landing page. A reverse squeeze page helps you deliver value and create authority before sending them to the affiliate offer, which usually results in a higher-quality lead.
3—Build Funnels For Hire
You can make money online with funnels by building them for others. You can use sites like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer and others to source your work. Plenty of companies require funnel builders to help them build out sales funnels. These are guaranteed pay because you’re working for a fixed rate or an hourly rate.
However, sites like Upwork and Freelancer require good feedback to secure the best projects. If you don’t have good feedback, expect to hustle in the beginning. You’ll need to do a lot for what will seem like a small return in the beginning. Over time this will improve. You just have to push through and keep trying.
4—Create A Lead Generation Funnel
Every business needs leads. Leads keep the lights on. They’re the source for sales and conversions. That’s why lead generation funnels are a great way to make money with sales funnels. All you need is to generate leads for a business and get paid for it.
You can do this in a few ways. The first way is to just reach out to businesses to see if you can help and negotiate a per-lead deal. Another way is to generate the leads then sell the leads once they’re generated. You can also generate leads for your business and implement the systems to convert those leads into sales by using expert-level copywriting and story-selling emails.
5—Make A Membership Funnel
Membership funnels are a great way to make money by offering ongoing value on a weekly or monthly basis. Ask yourself this question— what value can I offer to my customers? If you’re already in business, this is easier to do. If you’re not already in business, you must decide who to serve and what problem you’ll solve. Then base your membership funnel around providing ongoing value about that.
Membership funnels are easy to build using premade templates and a drag-and-drop editor. You don’t need any tech skills or coding knowledge. But you do need to and understand how the frameworks operate and how you’ll send traffic to it once complete. If you have an existing email or customer list you’ll find this much easier to do.
6—Debut A Product Launch Funnel
A product launch funnel is based on Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. This formula is great for launching a new product to an existing audience or an old product to a new audience. It relies on dripping valuable content for the first three days. You create valuable videos for your audience that build up the anticipation for the launch over three days. On the fourth day, you launch the product.
When you do the launch you implement psychological levers such as urgency and scarcity. That’s because the cart is only open for a brief period, and your audience knows that because you communicate it with them. You use story-selling inside of emails to build rapport with the prospects and sell a lot of whatever it is that you’re peddling.
7—Build A Webinar Funnel
Many big businesses were built on the backs of a webinar. That includes ClickFunnels, which was scaled out using the Funnel Hacks webinar. Webinars are extended presentations that use stories to break false beliefs the prospect holds. These false beliefs include false beliefs about the vehicle (product), internal beliefs (what they can personally achieve) and external beliefs (time, money, and so on).
You can learn more about how webinars work in a book called, Expert Secrets. This book breaks down all the core components of how to build and launch a webinar to an audience that creates a mass movement. If you’ve heard about webinars before, you understand that they can transform a business almost overnight. There are other ways to make money with sales funnels, but this is possibly the most powerful method.