Your First Sale
T
hings are going to speed up and get crazy fun from here.
You should be really pumped up at this point.
Take a look back at your 10-10K Workbook "Where are you going" tab for even more inspiration. :)
Now it's time to Benefit.
We're still building the relationship with the emails.
And we're still delivering value.
But up to now, it's all been pure, free value.
What's next?
Step 1: Find (or Create) a valuable product to sell.
You might have been wondering when we were going to get back to our product "extra large dog beds".
We're back.
This time we have an audience.
And we are simply trying to match their *real* needs with our *really good* product.
Don't skimp here.
You've put in a lot of sweat equity at this point. Remember though, in the D-V-B framework, all three items MUST be present or there is no sale.
I'm going to recommend you start with Amazon.com as an affiliate. Just sign up here. (Note: If you aren't able to be an Amazon affiliate for some reason, you'll need to do a little more work finding an affiliate program online you can join and that has great products to sell or just create a digital product from scratch that is very valuable.)
Step 2: Research the product thoroughly.
Research?
Yep.
Remember, Benefit is all about WIIFM. What's In It For Me?
No, not you. Yet.
Them.
Remember Tom and Bill and the duck and the tractor?
Put your "trading hat" on.
Imagine the scene in your mind using your real audience members you already know well now.
What will they like? What won't they like? What questions will they have? What will be too expensive? What will be too cheap? What will they give up to make this purchase? What will it look like being used in their life? What are they dreaming about when they buy it?
Step 3: Create the "Mother of All" reviews.
You want something really good.
It's even fine to tell them how much time you spent.
(I've seen two marketers do this just recently. In one case, they mentioned they'd spent 80 hours reverse engineering something until they finally cracked the code. Be honest. But be upfront about the effort you put into this.)
Think of it like the FAQ guide.
It's going to have all their questions answered. Everything they wanted to know. Summarize the good and bad reviews. Answer every single thing you can think of that might be an objection to the sale.
You can even review more than one product.
The output?
You guessed it. Another free, VALUABLE report, but this time, it contains your affiliate link.
Step 3: Send the email with the valuable report.
Write another story.
Tie in your report somehow.
Ask for the click.
You can just send this manually as a personal email for now. We'll setup Drip in just a minute.
That's it.
Step 4: Wait for the response.
A response to something like this will come in different forms.
The response you are looking for is clicks on your affiliate link, and ultimately sales.
Don't be discouraged if it doesn't happen right away.
As long as you delivered real value, to your audience, you're doing it right.
Then it happens...
And what a great feeling!
You got a reply from Debbie. She loved your report and she sent you an email thanking you for recommending the dog bed. Her husband had almost purchased the Deluxe Dog Masters version, and then she saw your email. Turns out, that version has a cover made up of 50% plastic and most large dogs end up ripping the cover in just a few months.
Debbie called her husband and he immediately agreed. She clicked your link in the .pdf, and bought the new dog bed.
And what a great feeling.
You just made money!
Debbie and her husband just bought the Big Barker, 7" Pillow Top model for $239.95
But that's not all.
Friday was payday, and Debbie also bought two books, a pair of shoes, and some plates, and three new shirts after she added the dog bed to her cart. (And after clicking your link.)
Her total Amazon order was $396.48
Since Debbie ordered 8 different things, you're going to get 6% in affiliate commissions.
You just made $23.79
But wait, there's more... (Said in my best infomercial voice)
Two weeks later, you see two more people took action and made the purchase.
And then one week later, three more come in.
The funny thing is, you only had 15 people on your mailing list. You're thinking that maybe somebody passed your .pdf to their friends and family. Who knows.
When you deliver real value, it tends to spread. :)
And when the final tally of all products purchased comes in, there are a total of 6 dog bed sales, and 26 other addon items made during the same visit to Amazon.
The new total is $1881.23
The total number of items purchased during the month was 32.
And since Amazon works on a variable rate, your commission % went up to 6.5%.
So, in total, you made $122.28
Sweet.
Now you really start to believe that you're going to make this thing work.
Told you so. :)
You've got $132.28 to invest in your new passive income source. (Unless you spent that first $10).
Step 5: Setup Drip.
At this point, we've been doing everything manually.
Your subscriber rate has been below 100, so you're not being charged anything for Drip.
Now we are going to scale things up.
Way, way up.
First, go find all those emails between you and your subscribers. All the emails you've sent and all the emails you received.
Now, see how you can modify them, just slightly, so that they still are very personal, but not so personal they can't be used with another subscriber.
And keep the exact wording in that first email. The one that people responded too. That one is golden.
Inside Drip, click on Automation.
Then, click on "New Workflow"
Welcome to the playground.
Drip allows you to setup many different kinds of automations.
You can add tags, if..then, wait, etc.
This is super powerful email automation.
For now, we just want to setup our first email series. Something ever subscriber to our list will receive.
Let's start with that first email.
First, let's add a tag trigger. Anytime someone is subscribed to our email list, a tag will be applied. When this tag is applied, this new workflow we are setting up will start. (For detailed help, Drip has an awesome knowledge base, and there are tons of videos on YouTube to help.)
Next, we're going to add that delay.
You see, automation should still resemble human behavior. We want a reasonable delay to that first email, to simulate as much as possible what it was like to get a personal reply from us.
When I look back at my emails that I sent, I usually sent a reply to them within 2 hours.
We're going to get Drip to do this same thing.
Next, we're going to add in our first personal email. The one we sent manually as soon as we got that first subscriber/reply. (Note: Pick your best one. The one that consistently got people to reply back.)
So, here is what the entire workflow looks like right now.
So, to recap, here is what will happen:
- New subscriber signs up
- Subscriber is tagged with "New Subscriber" in Drip
- "New Subscriber" tag triggers this workflow
- Drip waits for 2 hours
- Drip sends our first personal introduction email
- Subscriber exits this workflow
But we don't want #6 to happen...not yet.
Step 6: Add more messages to Drip.
There are a ton of features in Drip, and I encourage you to test them all. See what works and what doesn't
The key idea here is to just keep adding messages so that they don't exit the workflow.
Take your best emails, the ones that got the best replies and positive feedback, and add them to the workflow.
Add in your existing free report emails.
You can track open rates, clicks, downloads. It can actually get very advanced and comprehensive, but don't let that overwhelm you and keep you from making simple changes and taking action today.
Step 7: Create more value.
At this point, you already have a working funnel. While you could leave it at that, I'd encourage you to not stop now.
You might be tempted to go back to the Worksheet and start on a new project and just leave this one running.
But a far better use of your time is to invest in your existing subscribers.
Create some more reports. Find more products. Create products. Find different ways and mediums to deliver value.
Then add everything to Drip.
Congrats!
You've got your first automated sales funnel.
See, that wasn't so hard. :)
Now for the final piece to this puzzle...the one that really makes it scale.
It's the stuff that dreams are made of...
