In this episode, I share how book funnels work and how they can help you generate leads and make passive income 24/7. If you’re tired of working hard and want to automate your lead generation,  advertise without burning a hole in your pocket, and make more sales, this episode of the Books Open Doors () podcast will be a game-changer for your business!

Resources mentioned

Click Funnels Free Trial
Rockstar Author’s Toolkit

3 Key Points 

Book funnels get you leads and sales and create passive income for your business.

Creating a book funnel will help you clarify the products you need to offer between your lead magnet and your signature program.

Buyers buy so they will pay for shipping and a healthy chunk of them will buy your upsells, which will give you cash flow and pay for your advertising.

Transcript

Ellen: Hi and welcome, you’re listening to Books Open Doors Insights #21 I’m your host, Ellen Violette. If you’re not getting the volume of leads That you want and you’re working long hours maybe it’s time for a different approach. On this podcast, I’m going to share how you can generate leads and make money 24/7 and stop the grind. But before we get started, if this find this episode sounds a bit different than usual it is because my computer was in the shop so we had to make do. So enough about that, Let’s do this!

[1:04]  I started my coaching business in 2004, it was exciting. Everything was new, and I was learning. And I was making more money than I had ever earned in my life. I literally had made only like $5, $5.50 an hour. And at this point, my business was growing every year, I got to a six-figure income, and then the recession hit, social media came in, Kindle, everything changed.

And at that point, I was working with half the number of clients that I had been the year before, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I was getting burned out, doing product launch after product launch, creating more products to stay a step ahead of my client base, and actually starting to just feel bored because it was becoming kind of rote and feeling like a hamster on a wheel going nowhere.

[1:57] And I knew I needed to automate my business, but I was making enough money that I kept putting it off. And also because I wasn’t making that much money. Right? So, there was still that little bit of struggle going on, but enough to keep going. So I kept launching two to three times a year.

And then in 2012, I started doing number-one bestseller launches for clients and had 100% success rate doing that. And I kept that up until 2015 and that’s when I decided to take a break (on the writing bootcamp).

So, I didn’t do another launch until 2018, but in that time I was doing bestseller launches and I was getting $7,500  and then $15,000 a client. So I was making much better money with much fewer clients. And that was okay for a while. But then that started like becoming rote because that was all I was doing.

[2:54] And as a creative person, that’s a really hard thing. And I still had the cashflow problems because a lot of cash, a little cash. And since it was all referral, I was always wondering, where’s the next client going to come from? And then a mentor told me to start a podcast. At that point, I was like, at my low point, this was 2018. And I was at a low point because I decided to mix it up and therefore I was going to do the bootcamp again, but I only got one person signed up, and I was devastated. I mean, here I was, I’ve been doing this so long and I was so good at it and well known and nothing, crickets. So, I worked with her one-on-one, but I just was beside myself. So, when my mentor told me to start a podcast, I was like, “Fine, I’ll start a podcast.”

I’d actually always kind of thought about podcasts. I’d actually taken a course on it years ago and didn’t do anything with it because there was no coaching with it and I got overwhelmed. But then after I started it, I did that for like a few months. And I thought, “Oh, I got all these podcasts done.” And it went really fast.

[3:59] Then the beginning of the year came and a colleague of mine told me about book funnels. And that sounded like it was just what I needed because it was a way to start having some passive income finally. So I studied it and I started building my first funnel and click funnels and I got stuck with the tech stuff. And so I started looking around for somebody to build it for me. And it was pretty expensive, but I never gave up on the idea of wanting to do that funnel.

Unfortunately, after I’d put it together so much time had gone by that some things had changed. We rebranded. So, I needed to do some more work on it, which I’m doing now. And in the meantime, I put together this team to build the funnels for people.

[4:42] So, that’s kind of the backstory, but I want to talk about, why I love book funnels for a minute. So book funnels are powerful lead magnet that gets people to take action, whether it’s to opt-in for your free book or to pay for a book, whatever. They’re just a powerful lead magnet when you use them the right way. And when people raise their hand, whether they’re getting a free book or they’re paying for a book, it’s saying that they’re interested in what you have to offer, but especially when they pay for it or pay for something.

And there are many ways to market your lead magnet, but not all of them are created equal. And I want to share these seven reasons why I think creating a book funnel is one of the best ways to market your book and your business. So, listening to my story

[5:28] Reason number one:  first of all, if you’re going to go through all those different things and you’re burning out and all that, this really is a great way to go because now it frees up your time. When you do interviews, podcasts, live events, whether they’re online or offline, you have to be there, but a funnel, you don’t have to be there, right? You set it up and then it can give you leads 24/7. It can give you money 24/7.

[5:57] Reason number two is a book funnel gets the readers to take the next step with you. So you can start to build a long-term relationship with them after they’ve read your book very easily. And part of that is because not only are you building the relationship, but also like the next offer is right there, and they’ve already got their credit card out. And so, that is really cool. I’m going to talk about that more in a minute.

[6:18] Reason number three is book funnels start with the free plus shipping offer and customers get a print book, that’s the kind of funnel I’m talking about. And people love to get something for free, right? But a funnel is a win-win because the beauty of a free-plus-shipping offer is that, well, it’s essentially free-they are getting the book for free because the print book would cost them usually about 19 bucks-they’re still paying for something. What they’re paying for is the shipping.

But that means they’ve got to take out their credit card. And what that means is that they’re a buyer. So, you’re eliminating freebie seekers who are never, probably, going to make a purchase from you. And it shows you who your buyers are. So, you and the customer are both benefiting from a free-plus-shipping offer.

[7:01] Number four is buyers buy. And a book funnel gets buyers to buy because in their mind it’s free. So they’re excited and they’re getting it for free. But they’re also telling you that they’re a buyer, because there are people who will just go from free thing to free thing, to free thing, to free thing and never buy anything. And people who are buyers really do buy. I know because I’m a buyer, and when I want something I’ll buy. So, that’s just how it works.

And if you’ve already got a business and you look at it, you’ll see that you generally have people who don’t make one purchase. You generally have people who buy and then they buy again, and again, and again, if you’re making the right offers.

[7:39] Reason number five, a book funnel helps you clarify what products you need and in what order. So, let’s say you’re a coach and you have $1,000 product or higher. And you’re going to have potential clients who aren’t ready to invest at that level with you right now.

So when you do a book funnel, because these are passive, you’re doing advertising with them. And I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t get freaked out because it’s not going to come out of your pocket. The money is not going to come out of your pocket. But you’ve got to have those lower-price products.

And what happened for me was when I started my bootcamp, my writing bootcamp, I only offered it for a couple hundred bucks and it was very easy for people to get in. But then as I raised the price (and improved the training), I didn’t have any lower-price things to give them. So I had this bootcamp, but I didn’t have anything to lead up to that. It was just the books and the bootcamp, nothing in between.

So, a funnel forces you to create a funnel and it forces you to create the products that go into a funnel. And that’s one of the things that I help my clients with is deciding what are the right things to go into the funnel that are going to take people from your book to where it is you want them to go and making money along the way. So, that’s number five.

[9:00] Number six, a book funnel automatically make sales. Write that down, AUTOMATICALLY. Okay? So, the way a book funnel works is that after your customers indicate they want the book, they’re given another offer and it’s a lot easier to make a sale as long as you offer them the right product. They also, like I said, have their credit card out and buyers buy. So again, it’s just leading to the sales without you having to sell, and who doesn’t want that, right?

You can also sell multiple products in a book funnel. So if somebody goes to your site and all they have to do is opt-in and they get something, and then they’ve got to read it to get to something else, that’s harder to get them to do than in a book funnel where they go on the page and before they even put in their information for the free book-plus shipping, they get offered something else. And I don’t know where you live, but where I live in the U.S. there is this store called, what is it? Bed Bath & Beyond. And they’re all over the place.

[10:05]  And when you go into that store and you get into the line, you bought something, you get in line and you get up to the cash register. They’ve got this huge display of all these little things that we call “tchotchkes”, and tchotchkes are like little extra things. They just cost a few bucks and they make millions and millions of dollars extra at Bed Bath & Beyond at every single one of their stores, because they’ve got this right at the cash register.

So, it’s that same thing. You’ve already got your credit card out. “Oh, this thing’s only a couple bucks. Well, I’m already spending like $200, $300 on the stuff I bought in the store, but what’s another $5.” Right? But all those $5 add up. And so that’s what’s really cool about that.

[10:52] Reason number seven, you can easily sell multiple products in a book funnel. So again, like I just said, there’s another offer right behind that, right there. But guess what, there’s another offer behind that. You don’t do that just on your website, but it works really well in a book funnel. So while a book funnel are starter funnels, and there are other kinds of funnels as well, you can still sell multiple low- and medium-priced products in one book funnel.

So I’ve seen book funnels where they have up to like four offers that work. So,  do the math. If you have a $27, a $37, a $47 and a $97 offer, for instance, you would make up to $208 a sale. And with a 5% conversion rate (actually 4%), you would likely make $416 for every 100 people who go through your funnel.

[11:37]  And that’s going to give you anywhere from an extra $1,600 a month on the low end, like saying, if you only need one Yeah, with a 5% conversion rate every week, right?  you’d make $1,600, but you can make $12,000 a month or more. It just depends on the actual funnel, and how well it’s working.

[11:55] Reason number eight, a book funnel is self-liquidating. Okay? And I mentioned this before, which is the advertising doesn’t come out of your pocket. So what a self-liquidating offer means is that it pays for itself, and that is the magic behind a book funnel, because what most entrepreneurs do is they hire a high-priced ad expert and they spend thousands of dollars on ads and they lose their shirt. And this happened to a friend of mine.

And he was devastated. He’d spent over $6,000 and he had nothing to show for it.

Then I saw this other case study where somebody had spent $1000. It’s like, “Why would you do that?”  If you’re not making money at  $40, it’s time to go back and retool it, what’s it called? split-testing to make sure that it works. And that’s one of the things that I will help you do. And that doesn’t happen when you create a book funnel the right way.

[12:52] So with this model, you take the proceeds from your first offer, which is your free-plus-shipping book, put them into advertising,  and then the rest of your offers are pure profit. Then as you make more profit, you up your ad spend. Here’s the deal: those who can afford to spend the most on ads can dominate their market.

[13:11] So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the best way by far to purchase advertising, and then generate leads and create cashflow with minimal risk. And also, without working hard. It’s like you create it once and you’re done.So, that’s why I love book funnels. That’s why I’ve studied book funnels. And that’s why I really want to help other people start using the book funnels and not wait because I waited so long.

[13:38] I mean, I just saw the other day, there was a mentor that I really wanted to study with. And he was doing terrific, making millions and millions of dollars. And all of a sudden he disappeared. And then yesterday, or the day before, I saw on Facebook, he had reappeared and he was telling everybody what had happened. And he had gotten ill, very ill. He had toxic mold and it affected his brain and he couldn’t work. And then he realized that his whole business model was dependent on him being there. And that just didn’t work for him anymore. And so he had to change it.

Well, book funnels are a great way to start changing your business model and start moving towards passive income. Even if you feel like you don’t need it right now, trust me that you want to get it before you need it, because hopefully, you want to enjoy it, right?

[14:27] You want to have that passive income. You want to have the leads. You want to do what you love doing right now, but you also don’t want to wait until you need it. And what if it’s not there? How are you going to pay the rent? How are you going to live? How are you going to eat? How are you going to take care of your family? And your health, I mean, if you burn yourself out and you get sick, you’re no good to anybody.

[14:52] So if you’re interested in learning more about how to add a book funnel to your business, I would really love to talk to you. I’m doing a beta with five people. I’m going to only take five people and at a very discounted rate. And if that’s something that you think you might be interested in, you can go to bookwithellen.com and we’ll see if you’re a fit for our done-with-you beta program. I’m going to coach you through it, and then we’re going to build it for you.

We have a limited number of spaces. So if you’re interested, be sure to book your call as soon as possible. And to get the transcript for this call that will be at booksopendoors.com/leverage-your-book. And if you don’t have a book yet, be sure to pick up the Rockstar Author’s Toolkit with checklists and more to get you started. So again, that’s at booksopendoors.com.

So,  till next time, bye-bye.

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