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There are two pages required to begin your journey to success as an online entrepreneur — an opt-in page and a thank you page. If you decide to sell your own products or services, you’ll need a few additional pages to manage the checkout process and product delivery.
These core pages make what in marketing jargon is called your “Sales Funnel” or “Marketing Funnel.”
To give you an idea of how simple a ‘funnel' can be… Here is a drawing of an affiliate marketing funnel:
Super simple stuff…
Funnels are not magic nor do they require fancy/expensive funnel software.
In fact, there is a 100% free sales funnel option available as of June of 2020.
The technology is so easy today that these core pages for your online business can be created and published in an afternoon. There are many systems you can build on, but I only recommend two as explained in this section.
Which one you choose will be based on your budget, how much free time you have to dedicate to your side hustle and how willing you are to jump in on the “Do It Yourself” side of things.
I explain how to choose the best option and I have created several videos to show you how to set up your core pages too.
But, before we dive into the tech… Let's cover the content and the goal of each page, first!
Your opt-in page
This is the page that offers your first, free irresistible offer in exchange for an email address. The simpler the design and layout of your opt-in page, the better.
The most important component to focus on here is the headline and the actual offer that you’re presenting. Many people try to add too much content to this page and it ultimately kills conversions.
Here is a video that reviews several high-performing opt-in pages from some of the greatest marketers in the world:
It is important to study what other successful marketers are doing, whether they are in your niche or not. You can learn a ton from their layout, design and overall approach to growing their businesses.
Now to help you focus in even more, I've created a second video that breaks down my opt in page that converts 45%+ of traffic into leads…
You can use this video as your personal template and I'll show you how to build this soon…
For now, you need to come up with your content for the page including the headline and bullet points as shown below.
Your Thank You Page
The thank you page is the page people will see immediately after opting-in. Your thank you page will either offer one of your own products or services, or it will promote an affiliate offer to help you convert leads into paying customers quickly.
This concept of immediately offering your leads something to buy is called a one-time offer and is commonly referred to as an OTO which stands for “One Time Offer”.
If you are promoting someone else's offer as an affiliate, this is often referred to as a ‘Bridge Page'.
A few years ago, I went through a year-long coaching program that was designed to help me grow my business to five figures per month and beyond.
At the time, we were collecting email addresses and simply following up via email, eventually offering a product for sale a few days after people opted in.
Although this was working to a certain degree, on average only 30% of people opened the email that contained our first offer. This meant that 70% of leads were not seeing the first irresistible offer.
The business coach made it very clear that setting up an OTO would ensure that 100% of leads will see the thank you page, which is displayed right after they opt in.
He also helped me realize that our most ambitious prospects are ready to dive deeper immediately.
Generally, about 1% to 2% of leads are ready to purchase immediately after opting-in if the offer is presented correctly.
I was skeptical about selling meditations immediately after people had opted in for a free meditation, but I trusted the coach and implemented our first OTO.
To my surprise, this worked wonders. We offered an extreme discount for users who were interested in going deeper with their meditation practice right away.
Customers purchased multiple powerful meditations that they loved at a significant discount, and they were ecstatic to have had that opportunity.
Before implementing this, I worried that our audience would complain about seeing an offer immediately after requesting something for free… But I never received one single complaint.
Having this one-time offer in place generated revenue more quickly, which allowed me to grow an advertising budget from the leads we were already receiving. This advertising budget allowed me to scale the business quickly without having to invest personal income into pay per click advertising!
And in case you are curious, we still promote additional products to email list subscribers several days after they subscribe, just like we did before. This second offer in the follow up email still works too!
You see, while some people are ready to purchase right away… Others need a little more information to be ready to purchase. Building your online business to satisfy both of these personality types is key to your long term success.
This one shift of adding an OTO resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in additional revenue for our business, allowing me to consistently increase my advertising budget and scale our niche business fast!
Optional Core Pages: Your Checkout Page And Product Delivery Pages
If you are selling your own information products, online courses, an ongoing membership program, or services, you will need a shopping cart system that allows your customers to check out securely and obtain what they’ve purchased.
The additional pages you will need to setup include: a checkout page, another thank you page and a product delivery page.
This is all incredibly simple whether you choose to use an all-in-one solution or choose the DIY solution…
Now that you understand what is required… On to your tech options.
UPDATE as of June 2020:
As the world of sales funnel software continues to see more competition, one great result is companies moving the free line and offering even more tech for free.
As of today there is actually a “forever free” option to build out all of the core pages, shopping carts, product delivery system, the opt in pages, etc.
It has a few minor limitations that I do explain in the video below, but if you are on a complete budget and need a 100% free funnel system to sell your course or membership… This may very well be perfect for you!
Now, I am leaving the rest of my previous recommendations intact here below…
Because personally I do use different tech because I am happy to invest a little money for additional features like A/B split testing and building my sales pages.
Depending on where you are in the growth of your business, you may be interested in the advanced options I'm using which are listed and explained below…
The Two Systems to Build Your Core Pages
Today there are many simple solutions that even the most non-technical person can set up in an afternoon.
Below are the two (and only two) solutions I personally recommend. Which one you choose depends on how much time you have available, whether you have any technical skills, whether you have a monthly budget, or whether you’re interested in the bootstrap, do-it-yourself version.
No matter which option you choose, I have personally created free how-to videos that will show you how to use each system.
System Number One: LeadPages
LeadPages is designed as an all-in-one solution that allows you to easily build your opt-in page, thank you page, OTO pages, checkout pages, shopping cart, etc.
You can get started for free with their 14-day free trial, and after the trial period, it costs as low as $25 per month (I'm on the $48/mo option), which I totally understand is not cheap, but if you have more money than free time, it is the perfect solution!
Also, if you are intimidated by technology and want the easiest solution that doesn’t require you to update anything and offers a customer support team to help answer your questions, this is a great option.
They have live chat there waiting to help you get your landing pages launched to the world, fast!
To get a 14 day free trial of LeadPages, click here, now!
If you are on a tight budget, if you have more time available or if you are code/WordPress friendly, system #2 below is probably better for you.
System Number Two: WordPress
WordPress is an open source content management system that is used by over 30% of all websites online.
“Open source” means it is free for you to use and that the core WordPress platform is consistently updated by volunteers from around the world. WordPress is infinitely customizable and can be used to make blogs, sales funnels, eCommerce websites and more.
When I started my side project while back at home with my parents, I was completely broke and I chose to use WordPress because all I had to pay for was web hosting.
I had no idea how to set up my hosting, install WordPress, etc… But I had no option because I had no budget to work with.
Over the last few years, WordPress has become even easier to use and is still what I use to run all of my websites, checkout processes, product delivery pages, etc. With the web hosting I recommend you don’t even have to install WordPress yourself, because they do all of that for you!
The theme I recommend has templates for all of the core pages and is very easy to use! It also has tools to run split tests, layout product delivery pages, etc.
WordPress is a great option if you are on a tight budget, you have more time than money, or feel comfortable enough with technology and want to do it yourself.
Also, if you love writing and know that sharing your ideas in written posts is an outlet you want to pursue, WordPress is the only option to consider because of its incredible blogging platform!
To teach you how to setup a basic funnel on WordPress, including setting up your hosting, installing the theme and building out the pages:
I have created a complete video series to show you the step-by-step process to creating your core pages on WordPress here: Setting up your core pages in WordPress
Required System Number Three: Your Email Marketing Solution
In order to collect email addresses, grow your list, and automate the process of following up with your leads, you need a professional email marketing system. This is not optional because your email list is the biggest asset of your online business.
There are dozens of options available, but I recommend only two of them. With that said, if you’re already using a system that has autoresponder and you are comfortable with it, it is probably best to stay there.
FREE Option – ConvertKit
In early 2020, convert to decided to start offering a free account that allows you to grow your list up to 1000 subscribers before ever having to pay a dime.
This is a limited account and it does not come with an autoresponder what you have the ability to send out broadcast emails to your entire list.
If you are on a complete bootstrapped budget, this may very well be the best option for you.
if you want to be able to set up automations and deliver a prewritten series of emails after the user opts in, the two options below are better options for you.
#1 – AWeber
AWeber is a simple system that allows you the ability to collect leads, automate follow-up, and broadcast emails and offers to your list at any time. I have been using AWeber happily for over eight years, and they are still my number one recommended solution.
Their deliverability rate is the best in the industry, and they are the easiest to set up, which is incredibly important to help you get started fast.
Click here to get a free 30 day trial of Aweber.
Once you get your free Aweber account, setup… Here is how to structure your first autoresponder series:
You will learn ‘what to say' in your email series on step 7, this is just to help you build the ‘foundation' at this point
.
#2 – Active Campaign
Active Campaign is a more advanced system that is a bit more challenging to set up. The benefits of Active Campaign are their automations and tagging systems, which allow you to segment your list and offer custom messages to different segments based upon different actions.
I am currently using both Active Campaign and AWeber. If you are a more advanced marketer, and you’re interested in dynamically targeting your leads based on their behaviors, Active Campaign may be worth the additional time and energy to start with.
Click here to get a 14 day free trial of Active Campaign
If none of that dynamic behavior stuff made sense just now, just use AWeber!
It’s easier and you can always move over to Active Campaign in the future as needed!
Your email list is the most valuable asset of your internet based business… I can't stress the importance enough of using a professional email marketing system from the start.
To help you make a confident decision on which platform is better for you, I've created a comprehensive Aweber vs. ActiveCampaign comparison here.
At this point, you need to choose your core web page system and your email system from the links and options above, then get your free trials setup before moving on!
Remember that Clickfunnels has a 14 day free trial and Aweber has a 30 day free trial, so if you want to get started with $0 down today, those are your choices.
Next we are going to talk about running ‘split tests' on your core pages so you can optimize them for conversions…
Which means you need to have your core pages setup…
So now is the time where you roll up your sleeves and get building!
Miles Beckler
P.S. If you want to jump to another step, here are the links:
- Know Yourself
- Who Can You Help?
- Two Irresistible Offers
- Your Core Web Pages
- Split Testing
- Facebook PPC
- Content Marketing
- Conclusion
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