Clickfunnels

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Start Earning As A Content Creator appeared first on ClickFunnels.

So you want to be a content creator?

Until the rise of social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, the idea of making money from creating content would have seemed impossible.

But not anymore.

In fact, a 2019 study on Statista revealed that 30% of children in the U.S. and U.K., aged 8 to 12, dreamed of becoming vloggers or YouTubers – more than those aspiring to traditional careers like astronauts or doctors.

But can you actually make money from being a content creator?

The answer is yes!

In many cases, being a content creator is more than just a side hustle – it can completely replace a traditional 9-to-5 job. In fact, ClickFunnels has already helped hundreds of entrepreneurs just like you monetize their content and even generate over $1 million from their channels.

In this blog, we’ll break down the 11 most profitable ways to make money as a content creator.

Ready? Let’s go!

What is a Content Creator?

A content creator is someone who produces and shares original material, such as videos, articles, podcasts, or images with the intent of engaging an audience.

Usually, content creators aim to earn revenue in the process.

The birth of content creators began with the rise of early internet platforms like Blogger, MySpace and YouTube in the mid-2000s. YouTube, launched in 2005, became a game-changer by allowing users to upload videos, grow audiences, and earn money through ad revenue.

Fast forward to today, and content creators are no longer limited to a few platforms. There is a wide range of apps, platforms, and websites you can choose to publish content on.

Here’s a breakdown of the major types of content platforms and their most well-known apps:

1. Video Platforms

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Dailymotion

2. Social Media Platforms

• Instagram
• Facebook
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• X (formerly Twitter)

3. Podcasting Platforms

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Stitcher

4. Streaming Platforms

• Twitch
• YouTube Live
• Facebook Gaming
• Kick

5. Blogging and Writing Platforms

• Medium
• Substack
• WordPress
• Tumblr

6. Membership and Crowdfunding Platforms

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• OnlyFans
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Skool

How Much do Content Creators Make?

According to Exploding Topics, the average annual revenue for a full-time content creator is over $100,000.

But that doesn’t explain the full picture.

Statistics show it takes content creators an average of six and a half months just to earn their first dollar. It can then take as long as 17 months to start earning enough to support yourself and transition to full-time content creation.

But don’t let that put you off.

If you start now and consistently work towards your goals, there’s no reason why you can’t be successful and join the small percentage of content creators who are making 6 figures.

And you know what’s even better?

With content creation, there’s no limit to your earnings potential. You don’t need a “raise” or to find a new employer to take more cash home at the end of the month. At the highest end some of the world’s top creators, like MrBeast, have a reported income of between $500 million to $700 million annually.

Let’s jump into 11 ways to make money with your content to see how you can get started.

11 Ways to Make Money as a Content Creator

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a monetization strategy where you earn a commission by promoting products or services and generating sales through your unique affiliate link.

You can make money with affiliate marketing by partnering with companies that align with your niche and audience. Earnings typically range from 5% to 30% of the product price, though some companies offer even higher commissions for premium products or subscription-based services. The more engaged your audience and the higher the sales volume, the greater your earning potential.

The most profitable platforms for affiliate marketing include:

• YouTube: Create product review videos, unboxings, or tutorials that include affiliate links in the video description.
• Instagram: Share visually appealing photos or short reels featuring the product and include affiliate links in your bio or swipe-up links in stories.
• TikTok: Post engaging, short-form videos demonstrating the product in action or highlighting its benefits, and share your affiliate link in your profile bio.
• Blogs and Websites: Write detailed articles or listicles about the product, including affiliate links within the content or banners on your site.
• Podcasts: Mention affiliate products during episodes and provide listeners with a unique affiliate code or a link in the show notes.
• Pinterest: Pin eye-catching images of the product linked to your affiliate blog post or directly to the product’s purchase page.
• Twitter (X): Share concise, compelling tweets about the product’s benefits with your affiliate link included.
• Email Newsletters: Recommend products directly to your subscribers, including affiliate links for easy access.

$1 Million Marketing ClickFunnels as an Affiliate

John Lee Dumas, host of the podcast Entrepreneur on Fire since 2012, has inspired thousands of entrepreneurs to build and grow their businesses. Through his podcast, he shares actionable insights and tools, including how to use ClickFunnels to sell products online through sales funnels. By leveraging his unique affiliate link, John was one of the first affiliates to generate $1 million in commissions simply by recommending ClickFunnels to his audience.

Click here to see how you can earn 40% monthly recurring commission by becoming a ClickFunnels affiliate.

2. UGC

User-generated content (UGC) involves creating content for brands to promote their products or services.

You can make money as a UGC creator by partnering with brands that pay for your content to use in their marketing campaigns. Unlike traditional influencer deals, UGC focuses on creating content for the brand’s platforms rather than promoting it on its own. Typically you’ll need good video editing skills or understand how to make viral content.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves collaborating with brands to promote their products or services through your own social media channels.

You can make money as an influencer by creating sponsored posts, videos, or stories that showcase a brand’s offerings to your followers. Micro-influencers, with 10,000 to 50,000 followers, are particularly in demand because their audiences tend to be more engaged and niche-specific.

Some of the most profitable platforms to start building a following include:

• Instagram: Share sponsored posts or stories featuring the brand’s products, including swipe-up links or tagged shopping features.
• TikTok: Partner with brands to create engaging, trend-focused videos that highlight their products in a creative way.
• YouTube: Film longer-form sponsored content, such as product reviews or integrations, to promote the brand to your subscribers.
• Twitter (X): Tweet endorsements, threads, or links to brand promotions, leveraging your influence in specific conversations.
• LinkedIn: Collaborate with B2B companies to create posts that align with professional audiences, showcasing tools or services.

4. Selling Digital Products

Selling digital products involves creating valuable resources for a specific niche or audience and offering them for purchase online.

You can make money by identifying the needs of your audience and developing products like ebooks, templates, presets, designs, or other downloadable tools. These products often require upfront effort to create but can generate passive income over time, as they are easily scalable with no inventory or shipping costs.

You’ll continue to generate new sales by creating viral or useful content that gets spread via word-of-mouth and platform-specific algorithms.

5. Membership Sites and Exclusive Content

Membership sites are similar to digital products in terms of niche selection, but they offer a different value proposition.

Instead of one-time purchases, you can bundle in perks like access to a private community of like-minded individuals, weekly live calls, direct communication, or coaching calls with you. Membership sites are also ideal for sharing high-value insights or exclusive information tailored to your audience’s needs.

Some of the most common and well-known membership platforms include:

• Patreon: Create tiered subscription options for access to exclusive videos, articles, or community engagement.
• Substack: Offer exclusive newsletters or reports for paying subscribers in your niche.
• Kajabi: Build a full membership site with gated content like courses, guides, and live sessions.
• Mighty Networks: Foster a tight-knit community with additional paid content, events, or discussions.
• Discord: Set up a private server with exclusive access to insights, tips, or conversations for paying members.
• Skool: Create an online community platform where members can access exclusive content, courses, and discussions, all in one organized space.

6. YouTube

YouTube is one of the most versatile platforms for content creators, offering numerous ways to monetize your videos and grow a sustainable income.

You can make money on YouTube through ad revenue, which is generated by enabling ads on your videos once you meet the platform’s eligibility criteria (1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours). Additionally, creators earn through sponsorships, affiliate links in video descriptions, product placements, and their own digital products.

6-Figure Business Publishing Air-Fryer Content

Cathy Yoder, the creator behind Empowered Cooks, has built a 6-figure business via a YouTube channel about air fryer recipes. Using a funnel built on ClickFunnels, Cathy sells thousands of dollars in cookbooks and membership subscriptions each month while also earning impressive ad revenue from YouTube advertisers – sometimes reaching $50,000 to $80,000 in a single month from the advertising alone.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

7. Coaching, Consulting, and Agency Services

Coaching, consulting, and agency services differ from other types of content creation because they’re monetized by a pre-existing business or expertise.

In this case, content serves as a powerful tool to attract new customers and generate leads rather than being the primary product.

By sharing valuable insights, how-to guides, or success stories through platforms like YouTube, blogs, or LinkedIn, you position yourself as an authority in your field. This content helps build trust and credibility, making potential clients more likely to hire you for personalized coaching sessions, consulting advice or done-for-you agency services.

8. Online Courses

Online courses are similar to digital products, but their growing popularity with the rise of online education makes them a category of their own.

As more people turn to the internet to learn new skills and gain knowledge, creating online courses has become a lucrative way for content creators to monetize their expertise. By developing structured, in-depth lessons on a specific topic, you can provide immense value to your audience while earning substantial income. You’ll then use a platform (or platforms) of your choice to spread awareness and create new customers.

9. Merchandising

Merchandising is a popular way for content creators to monetize their platforms, especially for those who grow large followings by sharing memes or viral content.

Instead of selling courses or educational resources, these creators turn to merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, stickers, or other branded items that resonate with their audience. By leveraging their unique style, humor, or message, they create products that fans are eager to buy, allowing them to generate revenue while strengthening their community.

$1 Million From Posting Memes About Grilling and Barbecuing

Paul Woolley’s I Love Grilling Meat is a perfect example of how merchandising can turn a social media following into a full-time business. He built a Facebook community of over 761,000 barbecue and grilling enthusiasts by sharing memes, tips, and content. Leveraging ClickFunnels, Paul launched a line of T-shirts, headgear, apron,s and BBQ merchandising, transforming his engaged audience into a $1 million business and earning him a ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club award.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

10. Blogs

Blogs might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “content creation,” But they’re still a profitable way to generate income.

By focusing on a specific niche, optimizing for search engines and consistently publishing valuable written content, bloggers can attract a loyal readership. This audience can then be monetized through methods like display ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and even selling digital products or courses.

11. Licensing Your Content

Licensing your content involves granting other businesses or individuals the right to use your original work for a fee.

This strategy is particularly popular among creators who produce high-quality photos, videos, music, or even written content. For example, a photographer might license their images to stock photo websites, or a musician might license tracks for use in commercials or videos.

To succeed with licensing, you’ll use your content channels to showcase your portfolio and then drive traffic to platforms where your work is available for licensing. By consistently producing top-notch content that appeals to a specific audience or industry, you increase the chances of your work being discovered and licensed by others.

Turning Beats Into a Million-Dollar Business

Adrian Wood, founder of Anno Domini Nation, turned his instrumental tracks into a million-dollar success. He uses ClickFunnels to sell his beats directly to artists and also has a membership program, The Inner Circle, which provides fresh, commercial-licensed beats for use in songs, videos, and more. He’s one of hundreds to have earned a 2 Comma Club award for generating $1+ million via ClickFunnels.

Adrian drives traffic to his licensed content through YouTube, where he has over 129,000 subscribers and regularly shares beats and instrumentals, helping musicians and creators discover and purchase his work.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

Final Thoughts: Making Money From Content

Creating content is about more than just gaining followers – it’s about turning your hard work into real income.

From affiliate marketing to merchandising, licensing, and online courses, there are countless ways to monetize your creativity. The key is to choose a strategy that aligns with your skills and audience.

But don’t fall into the trap of creating followers, subscribers, and viewers by not making a cent.

With tools like ClickFunnels, you can start monetizing from day one, turning your passion into a sustainable income stream.

Thousands of content creators around the world use ClickFunnels to create landing pages, sales pages, membership sites, and online stores. Then, by just sharing a link in their bios and their content, they can quickly convert their traffic into cash.

Get started today!

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

Thanks for reading Start Earning As A Content Creator which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Earn Income On Maternity Leave appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Want to make some money while on maternity leave?

Today we are going to share three ways to do that!

Real Talk: Can You Build a Side Hustle While on Maternity Leave?

There are a lot of articles out there that talk about building a side hustle while on maternity leave but we believe that most of them approach this subject in a way that is somewhat misleading.

In the United States, maternity leave is only 12 weeks, which is approximately 3 months. Can you build a business in that time while sleep-deprived, recovering from childbirth, and taking care of a newborn? Probably not.

In fact, getting a side hustle off the ground usually takes a few years of consistent effort, assuming that you are in putting in at least 20 hours a week into it.

Realistically speaking, if you only have 12 weeks of maternity leave, you can use that time to learn about various opportunities to make money online, pick one that appeals to you the most, and get started with it.

However, you probably won’t be able to make much money in those 12 weeks so starting a side hustle only makes sense if you intend to continue growing it after your maternity leave is over.

Meanwhile, if you intend to stay at home for the next few years until your little one is old enough to go to kindergarten, that is a much more realistic timeframe for building a business.

You might even be able to generate enough income to replace your old salary so that you can continue working from home!

Now with all that out of the way, here are three ideas for making money while on maternity leave…

#1: Do Gig Work on Microtask Platforms

Gig work on microtask platforms is probably best suited for making some extra cash on maternity leave. 

There’s no set schedule, these tasks don’t require much focus and you get guaranteed pay. However, that pay is going to be extremely low. 

In all likelihood, you’ll probably end up making less than $5/hour, especially when you’re new to these platforms and don’t have access to the best gigs yet. 

The most popular microtask platform is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk or MTurk for short. Once you create an account and get approved, you can start picking up Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs). 

That can mean participating in surveys, providing your opinion on various topics, categorizing artificial intelligence training data, and so on.

Most HITs take less than five minutes to complete and almost all of them can be completed in less than an hour. 

These tasks typically pay cents so you will need to learn how to choose them wisely if you want to maximize your hourly earnings. 

Task availability can also vary a lot so sometimes you might find yourself stuck doing time-consuming, low-paying tasks until something better comes up. 

Check out Google Chrome extensions such as MTurk Suite and Panda Crazy Max that you can use to scrape available HITs and automatically accept the ones that meet your criteria. 

These extensions can help you claim less time-consuming, better-paying tasks before they get snatched up by other MTurkers. 

In addition to Mechanical Turk, there are also other microtask platforms like Prolific, CloudResearch, and Data Annotation where you can pick up some work. 

The best way to maximize your income is to sign up for all of these platforms. Note that it can take a while to get approved, though. 

This approach might enable you to make $5-10 per day with a few hours of work, which adds up to $150-300 per month or $1,800-3,600 per year. 

Sure, that may not be a ton of money, but it’s still something. Perhaps doing microtasks will prove to be a better use of your time than doomscrolling on social media or watching Netflix!

If you want to get a better sense of what it’s like to work on MTurk, consider watching this video:

#2: Become a Freelance Copywriter

Freelancing can also enable you to make money while on maternity leave.

However, while its earning potential is much higher than that of working on microtask platforms, getting your first paid clients can take a while.

Why You Should Probably Start With Copywriting Unless You Already Have Another Marketable Skill

Copywriting is about persuasion via the written word: the text you see in ads, email newsletters, promotional emails, on landing pages and sales pages, and on business websites is all considered to be copy.

If you don’t have any existing skills that are suitable for freelancing, we recommend learning copywriting because it has a low barrier to entry and a high earning potential. Good copywriters can make six figures!

Where Can You Learn Copywriting?

There are plenty of copywriting courses out there but frankly, most of them seem to be wildly overpriced.

That’s why we believe that it’s best to learn copywriting from books instead, starting with our friend Jim Edward’s best-seller “Copywriting Secrets”.

This book covers all of the most important copywriting principles that you need to know in order to write copy that converts. It’s super practical so you can begin implementing these lessons immediately.

“Copywriting Secrets” is available on Amazon where it has over 2,000 global ratings and an overall rating of 4.7 stars. However, you can also get it directly from Jim for free. All he asks is that you cover the shipping!

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

We also recommend reading these three copywriting classics:

• “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene Schwartz – Physical copies are expensive but this book is in the public domain so you can get a digital copy for free.
• “Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins – This book was revolutionary when it came out because of its focus on split testing copy to see what works best.
• “The Boron Letters” by Gary C. Halbert – It’s written in the form of letters from a father to his son and features a mix of copywriting advice, insights into human psychology, and general life wisdom.

Finally, we recommend reading Robert Cialdini’s “Influence”, which covers the psychology of persuasion. Just make sure to get the latest edition.

Once you have read these five books, you want to start writing copy. Remember, copywriting is a skill. You can only get better at it through practice!

Decide What Kind of Copywriter You Want to be

Before you start looking for clients, you need to decide:

1. What type of copy are you going to specialize in? You can focus on ads, email copy, landing page copy, sales page copy, website copy, etc.
2. Whom are you going to sell your copywriting services to? You should target businesses and niche down to a specific business model: e-commerce, software-as-a-service (SaaS), info products, etc.

Specialization is important because it will accelerate your speed of learning. When you only need to master one area of copywriting, you can do it pretty quickly if you are willing to put in the work.

It will also make it easier for you to eventually land paid clients!

Start by Working for Free to Get Social Proof

Social proof is the evidence that you can do what you say you can do, such as customer testimonials and case studies.

As a copywriter, if you want to get paid clients, you need to be able to show them that you can write copy that converts. Otherwise, why should they hire you?

That’s why it’s best to start your freelance copywriting career by working for free so that you can acquire social proof.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to do that: simply start writing copy for your dream clients, email it to them, and let them know that they can use it if they like it!

Convert Free Clients Into Paid Clients

You also want to have a free service package that you can pitch to potential clients if they decide to use your initial free copy.

This free service package should be built around ongoing work as opposed to one-off work because that will make it much easier for you to eventually convert free clients into paid clients.

For example, if you wrote a free email welcome sequence for them and they decided to use it, offer to write a weekly newsletter for them free of charge for the next three months.

Once those three months are over, pitch them a paid service package where you will continue to write a weekly email newsletter for them at an agreed cost. It’s best to price it as low as you can initially.

If your free welcome sequence and free newsletter issues produce good results, they will probably be willing to hire you.

Either way, if they are happy with your work, ask them for a testimonial so that you can then use it to get more paid clients.

Use Cold Email to Get More Paid Clients

Once you have acquired enough social proof, you can stop working for free and start using cold email to get paid clients instead.

Make a list of of businesses that meet your dream client criteria, find the email addresses of the founders, and start reaching out to them.

We recommend reading “The Cold Email Manifesto” by Alex Berman and Robert Indries. This book covers everything you need to know to get started and includes proven templates for the initial cold email and for the follow-up emails.

Build a Webinar Funnel for Your Copywriting Business

Eventually, you should automate lead generation so that you would have more time for client work.

You can do that by building a webinar funnel for your copywriting business. Here’s what it looks like:

1. A webinar registration page – where you encourage the potential client to sign up for the event.
2. A registration confirmation page – where you confirm that the potential client has successfully registered for your webinar and tell them what they should expect next.
3. A webinar page – where the potential client can either attend the event live or watch the replay if they can’t make it.

In addition to that, you want to have an appointment booking page where potential clients can book a free consultation with you.

The webinar itself should last around 60 minutes:

• A 45-minute presentation – where you teach potential clients how to increase sales with a specific type of copy.
• A 15-minute Q&A session – where potential clients can ask questions about what you just taught them.

You want to end your webinar by pitching a service where you will write that type of copy for them, encourage the attendees to book a free consultation with you, and direct them to your appointment booking page.

Once you have your webinar funnel set up, it’s time to start driving traffic to it with paid ads. You can learn the basics of paid advertising on Udemy. If you wait for a sale, you should be able to get a reputable course for less than $20.

Note that although you could completely automate your webinar funnel right away with a pre-recorded webinar, it’s best to do live events for at least a year because that will help you optimize your webinar script for maximum conversions.

#3: Self-Publish Fiction Books on Amazon

If you love creative writing and have always dreamed of becoming a full-time fiction author, maternity leave can be a great opportunity to get started on this path.

Write to the Market

You want to pick a popular genre, choose a subgenre, and then write books that conform to its expectations.

For example, you could:

1. Choose the thriller genre.
2. Choose the Scandinavian noir subgenre.
3. Start writing novels about troubled detectives that solve gruesome murders somewhere in Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Iceland, with harsh Scandinavian winters as a backdrop.

Make sure to stay within the confines of your chosen genre and subgenre. Creativity is important but so is giving the readers what they want!

Learn How to Write Novels FAST

If you want to eventually become a full-time fiction author, you will need to learn how to write fast — we are talking 2-3 full-length novels a year. One novel every year is the absolute minimum.

Consider reading “How To Write A Novel In 6 Months: A Published Author’s Guide to Writing a 50,000-Word Book in 24 Weeks” by Thomas Emson, which provides practical advice on how to do that.

Keep in mind that in all likelihood, a disproportionate amount of your income is going to come from “superfans” who read one book, love it, and then proceed to buy all your other books.

That’s why the larger your back catalog of published books, the more money you will be able to make and the more stable that income is going to be!

Focus on Writing Book Series

It’s okay to start out by publishing short story collections, novellas, and standalone novels.

However, your ultimate goal should be to eventually progress to writing a book series because that’s where the real money is.

Think about it: if you can hook someone with book one and keep them hooked all the way until the end of the series, that initial first purchase will lead to them buying all the books in it!

Invest in High-Quality Book Covers

The covers of your books will have a huge impact on how many copies you will sell.

That’s why they should be professionally designed, aesthetically pleasing, and adhere to the genre and subgenre cover expectations.

If you don’t have graphic design skills yourself, you’ll need to hire a cover designer for this. You can find one on Fiverr or Upwork. Ideally, you want to work with someone who specializes in designing covers specifically for your genre.

Learn How to Write Intriguing Book Descriptions

Book descriptions are another factor that will have a huge impact on how many copies you will sell. They also tend to be overlooked.

Go to Amazon’s best-seller list for your genre and analyze the descriptions of the top 100 books.

Obviously, you shouldn’t copy someone else’s descriptions, but you want to figure out how best-selling authors pique people’s curiosity to get them to buy their books.

Make Your Books Available in Paperback, Kindle, and Audio Formats

You want to make your books available as paperbacks, Kindle eBooks, and audiobooks because readers have different media preferences.

You can use Amazon’s print-on-demand publishing service to offer the paperback option.

As for the audiobooks, although in theory you could voice them yourself, in practice it’s probably better to hire a professional voice artist.

That can be expensive so you might want to wait until your books are generating enough revenue to fund it!

Why You Should Sell Your Books Independently Even if You are Doing Well on Amazon

Realistically speaking, the majority of your sales are probably going to come from Amazon, as that’s where most people tend to buy books nowadays.

However, being completely reliant on a single platform is extremely risky, which is why you want to diversify your sales channels and make your books available on Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, and so on.

Most importantly, you should learn to build book funnels so that you can sell your books independently.

Here’s what a book funnel looks like:

1. A sales page where you pitch your book (e.g. the first book in the series).
2. An upsell page where you pitch a bundle of some sort (e.g. a box set with the complete series).
3. A thank you page where you thank the customer, provide order tracking information, and let them know what they should expect next.

Ideally, your sales page should also feature two order bumps: one for the eBook version and the other for the audiobook version.

You will need to learn how to run Facebook ads so that you can drive targeted traffic to your book funnels. You can find a course on Udemy. Make sure to wait for a sale.

We cannot emphasize enough how important this is. If you are serious about pursuing fiction writing as a career, you don’t want to be at the mercy of all these platforms that can suspend you at any time with no warning.

So take back control by building your own book funnels!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Earn Income On Maternity Leave which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Blogging For Beginners appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Imagine skipping the 9-5 grind and working on your own terms, anywhere in the world.

Blogging makes it possible. It’s one of the most flexible and rewarding ways to work independently and remotely – whether you’re at home, in a café or traveling.

But here’s the real magic: blogging lets you build a business around something you truly love. Whether that’s cooking, tech, fitness, or parenting, you can turn your passion into profit.

So how do you actually make money from blogging?

In this guide, we’ll break down 10 proven ways to make money blogging with methods you can start using today.

And to show you what’s possible, we’ll share the stories of how multiple people turned their websites into six-figure businesses.

Ready?

Let’s dive in!

What No Other Article Will Tell You About Starting a Blog

When it comes to starting a blog, most advice follows the same formula: “Write about your passions, and the readers – and the money – will just flow.”

Sure, that could happen.

But if it does, it’s more of an accident than a reliable strategy.

In his book Expert Secrets, ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson points out the #1 misconception he sees among entrepreneurs: the belief that a great product or service will “sell itself.”

It’s simply not true.

Whether you’re blogging, podcasting, running paid ads, or blogging… so long as you’re trying to make money you have to think of your blog as an advertising channel.

That doesn’t mean your blog has to feel pushy or inauthentic. In fact, Expert Secrets shows how to make advertising feel natural – starting with a single question:

“WHO do I want to serve?”

Grab Your Copy of Expert Secrets for Free!

The 3 Questions to Pick a Profitable Blog Niche

Russell emphasizes the importance of choosing your ideal audience by focusing on the three core markets: wealth, health, and relationships.

Almost every successful business operates within one of these markets.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Inside these markets are endless submarkets.

For example:

• Inside health, there’s diet, nutrition, strength training, and weight loss
• Inside wealth, there’s finance, investing, real estate, and sales
• Inside relationships, there’s dating, marriage, parenting, and love advice

And these submarkets aren’t static – new niches pop up all the time.

Instead of creating your blog about anything, pick a specific submarket within these categories that matches your expertise and passions.

Then ask yourself these three questions:

1. Would people in this submarket be excited about the new opportunity I’m presenting?
2. Are the people in this market irrationally passionate?
3. Are these people willing and able to spend money on information?

When you approach blogging this way, you don’t have to sacrifice authenticity.

 You can still write about what you love, but you’re doing it deliberately – matching your passion with a submarket that has a real demand for what you offer.

This is how you create a blog that not only feels genuine but also makes money.

Ok, now that’s out of the way!

If you’d like to read our separate article on the 7 steps to starting a blog (with more advice on picking your niche) then click here.

Otherwise, let’s get into the 10 ways to make money from your blog.

10 Ways to Make Money Blogging

1. Online Courses: Transform Your Expertise into Income

What Are Online Courses?

Online courses are all about packaging your knowledge and skills into a structured format for students to follow.

They’re particularly profitable if you have a niche skill, or you’ve achieved something extraordinary, and there are people out there who’d spend money to do what you’ve done. From fitness programs to financial planning, courses offer a scalable way to monetize your expertise.

The best part?

Create the course once, and sell it repeatedly to an ever-expanding audience. If you’re a blogger, your blog acts as the perfect launchpad – driving traffic and building trust with your audience before they even click “buy.”

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Creating online courses works best for bloggers who:

• Love teaching: You enjoy breaking down complex ideas into simple, actionable steps and providing resources to help others succeed.
• Have strong communication skills: Teaching requires a clear and engaging way of explaining concepts.
• Are organized and detail-oriented: Structuring a course requires careful planning, lesson sequencing, and goal setting.
• Know basic video editing: Courses often include video lessons, so familiarity with editing software is a plus.
• Enjoy creating value: You thrive on solving problems and empowering others to achieve their goals.

3 Examples of 6-Figure Online Courses

1. Dan Henry – Facebook Ads for Entrepreneurs (FAFE)

Dan Henry built a thriving business teaching entrepreneurs how to run Facebook ads. His course, Facebook Ads for Entrepreneurs, helps business owners master ad strategies to grow their businesses. Using ClickFunnels to market and sell the course, Dan has over 800 students and continues to scale his offerings. By focusing on a clear problem – how to use Facebook ads effectively – he turned his expertise into a 6-figure business.

2. Dan Lok – High-Ticket Sales Mastery

Dan Lok has created an empire selling courses on high-ticket offers. With prices ranging from $97 to $15,000, his programs teach people how to close premium deals and grow profitable businesses. Dan is one of few people to have grossed over $10 million in sales using ClickFunnels. He uses our software to attract customers to his lower-cost courses before upselling them to premium products. His success showcases the power of matching high-value content with an effective funnel system.

3. Kath Yoder – Air Fryer Mastery

Kath Yoder has carved out her niche with a popular YouTube channel that teaches viewers how to make simple and tasty recipes using their air fryer. Alongside the income she generates from YouTube advertising, Kath sells her $47 online course, Air Fryer Mastery, via ClickFunnels. The course provides step-by-step instructions and tips for maximizing the use of an air fryer, targeting busy home cooks who want quick, delicious meals. Kath’s funnel strategy has helped her earn thousands, and her success has made her a regular speaker at ClickFunnels events.

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2. Online Workshops – High-Touch, High-Impact Learning

What Are Online Workshops?

Online workshops are live, interactive training sessions designed to teach participants a specific skill or strategy in real-time.

Unlike online courses, which are pre-recorded and automated, workshops require active involvement from both you and your audience during the event. This personal touch often allows you to charge more for workshops, as attendees value the opportunity to ask questions and receive immediate feedback.

Workshops can be conducted online or in person. You can sell tickets to your workshop for profit or run them for free as a lead-generation tool, using the event to sell services or products at the end.

The urgency of a one-time event creates excitement and helps drive sign-ups, making workshops an effective way to monetize your expertise.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Running workshops works best for bloggers who:

• Are confident public speakers: You enjoy teaching live, interacting with an audience, and answering questions in real-time.
• Thrive on engagement: Workshops are dynamic and interactive, making them ideal for people who enjoy connecting with their audience.
• Have specialized knowledge or skills: You need a clear, actionable topic to teach, whether it’s property investment, digital marketing, or personal development.
• Are flexible and adaptable: Live events can be unpredictable, so quick thinking and problem-solving skills are valuable.
• Have sales skills: If you’re running a free workshop, you’ll need to pitch your services or products effectively at the end.

2 Examples of 6-Figure Workshop Providers

1. Paul Preston – Property Investing Fast-Track

Paul Preston uses ClickFunnels to fill seats at his popular workshops, like the Property Investing Fast-Track. These free, one-day events – offered both online and in-person – teach participants how to invest in property without a mortgage or deposit. Paul uses these workshops to sell books, guides, and further bootcamps that take place over a few days. By delivering immense value upfront, Paul has built a 6-figure business helping others succeed in property investment.

2. Desmond Ong – Wealth on the Internet

Desmond Ong is a digital marketing expert and international speaker who runs workshops like Wealth on the Internet. This free 2-3 hour training teaches attendees the basics of starting and scaling an online business, including offer creation, traffic generation, and conversion optimization. Desmond uses ClickFunnels to drive sign-ups and then uses the platform again to upsell premium courses like his Platinum Mastery Program.

Desmond has grown his educational business to serve over 25,000 people and generate consistent 6-figure revenue.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

3. Advertising – Monetize Your Blog With Display Ads

What Is Blog Advertising?

Advertising is the simplest and most popular way to make money from your blog.

By placing display ads on your site, you earn revenue every time someone views or clicks on an ad. The most popular option is Google AdSense, which connects your blog to a vast network of advertisers.

The earning potential for ads depends on factors like the type of ad, the category of your content, and your audience’s geographical location. For example, you might earn anywhere between $0.20 and $3.35 for every 1,000 views. While advertising can provide a passive income stream, it typically requires significant blog traffic to generate meaningful revenue – think 50,000+ monthly pageviews to consistently make $1,000 or more.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Advertising works best for bloggers who:

• Have high-traffic blogs: The more views your content gets, the more revenue you’ll earn.
• Don’t want to create products or services: If you prefer passive income streams without the need for customer service, ads are a great choice.
• Write evergreen content: Blogs that consistently bring in traffic over time perform better with ads.
• Don’t mind sharing space: Ads take up room on your site, which might not appeal to bloggers focused on aesthetics or branding.

5 Ways to Monetize Your Blog With Ads

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is the go-to platform for beginners. It automatically matches ads to your blog’s content, and you earn a small amount for every view or click. It’s easy to set up, but earnings are modest unless you have high traffic.

Mediavine

Mediavine is a premium ad network for blogs with at least 50,000 monthly sessions. It offers higher payouts than AdSense and excellent customer support. It’s ideal for established bloggers who want to optimize ad earnings.

Amazon Display Ads

Amazon Display Ads promote products on Amazon’s marketplace. If your blog’s niche aligns with retail (e.g., tech reviews or home goods), this option allows you to earn a commission every time a reader clicks through and makes a purchase.

AdThrive

AdThrive caters to high-traffic blogs with at least 100,000 monthly pageviews. It’s known for offering excellent revenue rates and hands-on support, making it a popular choice for professional bloggers who prioritize ad income.

Direct Niche Advertising

For blogs in specific industries like travel, tourism, or local guides, direct niche advertising allows you to partner with businesses. For example, travel blogs can feature ads for hotels, tour packages, or local attractions. Many niche providers specialize in connecting blogs to advertisers in their industries, such as affiliate networks for travel agencies or local businesses looking to promote their services.

See below for an example of direct niche display advertising from GetYourGuide, which was featured on a blog post about visiting eastern Spain.

4. Paid Subscriptions – Build Recurring Income Through Exclusive Content

What Are Paid Subscriptions?

Paid subscriptions allow bloggers to earn recurring income by offering premium content behind a paywall.

Instead of relying on ads or one-time purchases, subscriptions create a steady revenue stream by charging readers a monthly or yearly fee for access to exclusive materials. With platforms like Patreon, Substack, or your own website (using tools like ClickFunnels), setting up a subscription model is easier than ever.

This method works particularly well for bloggers who have cultivated a loyal audience willing to pay for extra value.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Paid subscriptions are ideal for bloggers who:

• Have an engaged audience: Loyal readers are more likely to subscribe to premium content.
• Create high-value content: Your audience should see clear benefits in paying for exclusive access.
• Enjoy ongoing content creation: Subscriptions require consistent delivery of fresh material to keep members happy.
• Want predictable income: Unlike ads or one-off sales, subscriptions offer a reliable recurring revenue stream.
• Can offer unique perks: If you can add bonuses like direct interaction or exclusive resources, you’ll attract more subscribers.

5 Ways to Create Valuable Subscription Content

Put High-Value Content Behind a Paywall

Reserve your most in-depth, actionable, or unique articles for paying subscribers. This could include comprehensive guides, case studies, or expert insights that go beyond your free content.

Provide Additional Resources

Offer subscribers downloadable templates, cheat sheets, workbooks, or step-by-step plans related to your blog’s niche. These resources add tangible value.

Add More Frequent Content

Create regular updates, such as weekly Q&A sessions, monthly deep-dive topics, or daily insights that are exclusive to subscribers. The example below is the screenshot from an email sent from a Substack blog, which offers more frequent content from a soccer enthusiast who covers regular matches.

Offer Community Perks

Create a membership group or private forum where subscribers can interact with you and each other. Building a sense of community can be a huge draw for paying members.

Include Direct Access or Bonuses

Offer perks like one-on-one coaching, live webinars, or direct email access to you. These personal touches make the subscription feel more valuable and unique.

5. Physical Products – Bring Your Blog to Life With Tangible Goods

What Are Physical Products?

Selling physical products is a classic way to monetize a blog. 

Whether it’s merchandise, niche items, or branded goods, offering physical products can help you strengthen your connection with your audience while generating income. For bloggers, this often means focusing on niche products or leveraging your existing brand to sell merchandise like apparel, mugs, or other custom goods.

While it can be tough to compete with mass-market products that require heavy paid advertising, physical products are an excellent fit if you have a loyal community or a strong niche audience.

By serving your readers with relevant, high-quality items, you can create a unique revenue stream that complements your blog.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Selling physical products is ideal for bloggers who:

• Have a niche audience: Your readers are passionate about your topic and will appreciate products tailored to their interests.
• Want to expand their brand: Merchandise like apparel or mugs is a great way to grow brand awareness while generating income.
• Enjoy design or creativity: Creating physical products often involves coming up with designs, packaging ideas, and other creative elements.
• Have an existing following: Selling physical goods works best when you already have a loyal audience who will buy your products.

2 Examples of Selling Physical Products Using ClickFunnels

1. Dan Lok – Leveraging Merchandise to Build Brand Loyalty

We’ve already discussed Dan Lok’s success with online courses, but he’s also mastered the art of selling physical products. In his shop, Dan offers branded apparel with slogans like “Don’t Hustle. Leverage,” alongside items like mugs, computer wallpapers, journals, wall art, autographed products, and his physical books. These products align with his brand’s message and serve as a natural extension of his digital offerings. Dan’s store is a great example of how bloggers can add physical products to an existing business model to boost revenue and deepen audience connection.

2. Paul Woolley – Building a Community of Pitmasters

Paul Woolley turned his love for grilling, smoking, and barbecuing into a thriving community of passionate Pitmasters. Using ClickFunnels, Paul sells a range of merchandise tailored to his audience, including apparel, hats, and other branded items. His products resonate with his niche audience, creating a sense of belonging and shared identity among his customers. Paul’s business has generated over $1 million in revenue, earning him a coveted 2 Comma Club Award. His success highlights the power of combining niche products with a highly engaged audience.

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6. Affiliate Marketing – Earn While Recommending Products You Love

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing allows you to earn a commission by promoting products or services from other companies.

You add affiliate links to your blog, and when your readers click on those links and make a purchase, you get paid. It’s one of the most popular ways to monetize a blog – second only to display advertising.

Unlike traditional ads, affiliate marketing gives you the freedom to choose which products to promote. This allows you to align your recommendations with your niche and your audience’s needs. It also feels more authentic, as you can promote products or services you genuinely use and trust, strengthening your credibility with your readers.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Affiliate marketing works best for bloggers who:

• Have a niche focus: A specific topic makes it easier to find and promote relevant affiliate products.
• Build trust with their audience: Readers are more likely to buy from your affiliate links if they trust your recommendations.
• Enjoy reviewing and recommending products: Writing product reviews, tutorials, or how-to guides is key to affiliate success.
• Create content consistently: The more valuable content you produce, the more opportunities you have to promote affiliate products.

5 Ways to Earn Money Through Affiliate Marketing

CJ Affiliate

CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction) connects you with well-known brands across various industries. From fashion to tech, you can promote products that resonate with your audience and earn competitive commissions.

ShareASale

ShareASale offers access to thousands of affiliate programs across a wide range of sectors. Whether you’re in lifestyle, finance, or health, this platform helps you find partnerships that match your blog’s niche.

Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is one of the most beginner-friendly affiliate programs. With millions of products to choose from, you can easily promote items relevant to your audience and earn up to 10% in commissions. It’s ideal for bloggers who review products or create shopping guides.

ClickBank

ClickBank is a global affiliate marketplace offering a variety of products to promote. With tools, support, and education, it’s a great option for bloggers looking to monetize their content through digital and physical products.

ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

ClickFunnels is not just a tool for building funnels – it’s also a lucrative affiliate opportunity. Affiliates like John Lee Dumas, host of the Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast, have earned over $1 million promoting ClickFunnels. John integrates the platform into his podcast strategy, which has grossed over $27 million since 2012. The ClickFunnels affiliate program rewards marketers generously, with some earning recurring commissions simply by sharing how they use the tool.

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7. Sponsored Content – Get Paid to Write for Businesses in Your Niche

What Is Sponsored Content?

Sponsored content is when a business pays you to create a blog post that highlights their product, service, or offer.

This type of content often feels like a regular blog post but is designed to subtly (or obviously) promote the sponsor’s brand. It’s a common revenue stream for online news publications like Buzzfeed, where it’s sometimes called “native advertising,” as the content blends naturally with the site’s regular posts.

However, you don’t need to be a large news outlet to earn from sponsored content. Even niche bloggers can thrive by offering sponsored posts.

Sponsored content works similarly to affiliate marketing, except instead of earning a commission on sales, you’re paid upfront for creating the content. This makes it closer to influencer marketing, where you leverage your authority to bring visibility to a brand.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Sponsored content is perfect for bloggers who:

• Have a specific niche: The more specialized your audience, the more valuable your blog is to businesses targeting that niche.
• Build trust with their readers: Your audience should value your opinion and be open to your recommendations.
• Have strong writing skills: Sponsored posts need to balance informative, engaging content with subtle promotion.
• Enjoy partnerships with brands: This approach works well for bloggers who want to collaborate with businesses and explore creative campaigns.

6 Examples of Sponsored Content Niches

Travel

Get paid to write reviews about hotels, trips, or travel experiences. For example, a boutique hotel might sponsor a review to attract eco-conscious travelers.

Fitness or Sports

Promote specific products, like protein powders, workout gear, or sports equipment, by sharing your honest experience or creating how-to guides.

Clothing or Fashion

Work with brands to write about new launches, seasonal collections, or even sustainable fashion initiatives.

Marketing or Tech

Tech companies or SaaS providers may sponsor posts to promote their tools, offering you early access and payment for reviewing or showcasing how their products work. The example below shows an SEO-focused blog (Backlinko) with a post about a specific SEO tool, Semrush. The post looks like a neutral or “native” blog post but features a special offer further down to use the tool.

Food and Drink

Food bloggers can create sponsored recipes or reviews featuring a specific ingredient, meal kit, or kitchen gadget.

Parenting or Education

Write sponsored posts about educational toys, online learning platforms, or family-focused products targeting parents with young children.

Local Interest

Local businesses pay you to write about their new opening, new launch, or to raise visibility – ideal if your website is focused on a specific town or region where you live.

8. Selling Services – Turn Your Expertise Into a Thriving Business

What Does ‘Selling Services’ Mean?

Services are intangible offerings where you perform a specific task or provide expertise directly to clients, unlike physical or digital products that are created once and sold repeatedly.

For example… you could be promoting local carpet cleaning businesses, wedding photography, real estate services, or even online offerings like digital marketing or investment management.

This model is particularly popular with coaches and consultants who use blog posts to establish their authority, build trust, and generate leads. By sharing valuable content via your blog, you position yourself as an expert in your field, making it easier to convert readers into paying clients.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Selling services is ideal for bloggers who:

• Have a pre-existing business: If you already own or work for a family business, adding a blog strategy can help attract more clients.
• Are a coach or consultant: Use your blog to share insights, tips, and strategies that appeal to your ideal clients.
• Want to promote a new service: A blog can be a cost-effective way to reach potential customers and test new offerings.
• Possess a specific skill or expertise: Whether you’re a fitness trainer, designer, or therapist, your skills need to solve problems people are willing to pay for.

3 Examples of 6-Figure Service-Based Businesses

1. Delsey Daruwalla & James Neilson-Watt – Functional Health

Functional Health is a local business providing solutions for chronic pain, stress, and anxiety. By using ClickFunnels to promote their services, Delsey and James help clients regain confidence and improve their quality of life. Their blog and funnels educate potential clients on the benefits of their holistic health solutions, turning readers into long-term clients.

2. Arthur Tubman – D4Y Brand Builder, Inc.

Arthur Tubman runs a full-service agency specializing in Facebook community page building, media buying, and monetization strategies. Using ClickFunnels, Arthur creates targeted campaigns to attract businesses looking for content marketing and funnel optimization services. His expertise has built a thriving business helping other companies scale online.

3. Joseph Wood – Image Counts

Joseph Wood is the CEO of Image Counts, a creative digital marketing and professional photography company. Specializing in on-location headshot photography, Joseph uses ClickFunnels to market his services to business professionals. He’s photographed over 50,000 people and has built a successful brand by giving back, having donated over $2 million worth of free headshots since 2016.

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9. Digital Products – Sell Your Expertise in a Click

What Are Digital Products?

Digital products are items that can be sold and delivered online, making them a scalable and versatile way to monetize your blog.

Unlike physical products, there’s no need to worry about inventory, shipping, or production costs beyond the initial creation. Online courses are one type of digital product, but the possibilities go far beyond that. Digital products can include: eBooks, guides, templates, software, apps, music, video content and more.

Because digital products can be downloaded and used immediately, they are a convenient way to package and sell your expertise to a global audience.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

Digital products are ideal for bloggers who:

• Enjoy creating reusable content: Whether it’s a workbook or a design preset, digital products work best when they solve repeatable problems.
• Have an audience looking for solutions: Readers will pay for practical, high-quality tools that make their lives easier.
• Prefer passive income streams: Once a digital product is created, it can be sold over and over with little ongoing effort.
• Possess technical or creative skills: From design to content creation, having skills you can digitize is key to success in this space.

2 Examples of Digital Product Success Stories With ClickFunnels

1. Camden Forrey, Nick Coats, and Thomas Delauer – Organic Pro

The team behind Organic Pro has carved out a niche in the organic food space by creating digital products that promote healthy living. Their offerings include meal plans, fasting guides, and resources on gut health, all tailored to individuals seeking to improve their wellness through organic nutrition.

2. Cole Humphus – Cole’s Classroom

Cole Humphus turned his photography expertise into a digital product empire. His business, Cole’s Classroom, provides photographers with easy-to-use tools that save time and improve results. One of his best-selling digital products is a range of lighting presets designed to help photographers edit their photos more efficiently and achieve professional-quality results. Cole’s ability to identify a clear pain point and provide a digital solution has made his products a must-have for photographers worldwide.

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SaaS – Turn Your Skills into a Scalable Tech Business

What Is SaaS?

SaaS, or Software as a Service, refers to software that users access via a subscription, typically hosted online. Unlike traditional software that requires installation and maintenance, SaaS tools are hosted in the cloud, making them accessible and convenient for users of all levels.

In the past, creating software required massive budgets and teams, limiting it to large companies. But today, the rise of micro-SaaS has changed the game. Individuals or small teams can create niche-focused tools to solve specific problems and sell them as a service. Whether you’re a programmer or someone with deep expertise in a particular area, SaaS offers an opportunity to monetize your skills by addressing common pain points in a streamlined, tech-based way.

Is This the Right Fit for You?

SaaS is ideal for bloggers or entrepreneurs who:

• Have a specific problem to solve: SaaS tools succeed when they offer clear, practical solutions that save time, effort, or money.
• Possess programming skills: While coding expertise helps, you can also partner with developers if you have a strong SaaS idea.
• Have niche experience: If you’ve performed a repetitive task over and over, you can create a tool that automates it for others.
• Want recurring revenue: SaaS subscriptions provide steady income, making it a scalable business model.

1 Example of Selling SaaS With ClickFunnels

1. Paul Clifford – Designrr

Paul Clifford’s Designrr is a prime example of SaaS success. The tool helps marketers turn blog posts or AI-generated content into eBooks and lead magnets, solving a critical need in content marketing. With subscription plans ranging from $29 to $99 per month, Designrr simplifies a tedious process, allowing marketers to build email lists effortlessly.

Paul used ClickFunnels to create high-converting landing pages that drive traffic from paid ads and convert visitors into subscribers. His strategy earned him a ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club award, and Designrr now generates over $3.5 million annually.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

Case Study: How Rachel Miller Built a 6-Figure Business From Her Blog

Rachel Miller started as a stay-at-home mom with a passion for connecting people through social media and blogging.

Over time, she turned that passion into a six-figure business, leveraging multiple income streams to monetize her blog and build a thriving community. Her success story is a great example of the power of combining creativity, problem-solving, and strategic tools like ClickFunnels to achieve big results.

The Challenge: Turning Passion Into Profit

As told to ProBlogger, Rachel initially struggled to figure out how to make money from her blog. While she was great at building engagement and growing her audience, she faced two major problems:

1. Monetization Confusion: She wasn’t sure which methods would work best for her niche.
2. Scaling Challenges: With a growing audience, Rachel needed a way to generate revenue that could scale alongside her traffic.

The Solution: Leveraging Multiple Income Streams

Rachel’s path to success involved a series of breakthroughs, each step building on the previous one.

She began by monetizing her blog with AdSense, earning enough to cover her $550 monthly mortgage and groceries. But she soon realized the potential to do so much more with her growing traffic.

Her first major breakthrough came through affiliate marketing, where she partnered with brands and earned a small commission for every sale. This taught her the power of mixing engagement with products, but she saw a limitation – commissions were often as low as 2%–8%. To increase her earnings, Rachel began dropshipping, where she sourced and sold products directly, earning 30% per sale instead of just pennies.

One of her first viral successes was promoting loomband bracelets, a product that went “bonkers” thanks to her ability to create engaging, high-traffic content around it.

Encouraged by this, Rachel scaled her strategy by turning one viral blog post into 29 viral posts, each with its own product. These posts brought in millions of pageviews – some as many as three million. Her blog posts became a significant financial asset, transforming her blog from a mortgage helper into a 6-figure business.

From physical products, Rachel transitioned into eproducts like online courses and digital resources. These were even more scalable, as she didn’t need to manage inventory or fulfillment.

By focusing on engagement, traffic, and diverse monetization strategies, Rachel created a lifestyle business that not only paid her bills but also provided for her family in ways she hadn’t imagined.

Why ClickFunnels Was the Key to Rachel’s 6-Figure Blog

Rachel used ClickFunnels to streamline her sales process and scale her business.

With ClickFunnels, she built high-converting landing pages for her digital products and affiliate campaigns, capturing her audience’s attention and driving them to take action.

She also created opt-in funnels to grow her email list, offering free resources like checklists and guides in exchange for email addresses. This helped her build a loyal email list of engaged readers, which she later monetized through product launches and affiliate offers.

Additionally, Rachel used ClickFunnels to upsell her products, turning small purchases into larger sales by bundling her resources into irresistible packages.

Start Your Journey With ClickFunnels

Rachel Miller’s six-figure blogging success didn’t happen overnight – it came from combining strategic monetization methods with powerful tools like ClickFunnels.

With ClickFunnels, she built funnels that worked 24/7, allowing her to grow her income while focusing on creating content and serving her audience.

Want to see what ClickFunnels can do for your blog?

Try ClickFunnels free for 14 days and start turning your readers into customers today.

Sign up for a free trial now!

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Thanks for reading Blogging For Beginners which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post How To Earn Money Online appeared first on ClickFunnels.

When business gurus talk about making money online, they often do so in the context of becoming a millionaire.

However, if you have never made a single cent by selling something on the Internet, the idea of somehow building a seven-figure net worth that way can seem like a pipe dream.

That’s why today we want to focus on a much more achievable goal: we are going to share three proven strategies that can help you make $3,000/month!

Strategy #1: Make $3,000 a Month With an Online Service Business

Sell a Service That Can be Provided Remotely

First of all, you need to decide on the service that you are going to sell. 

It needs to be something that:

1. Has a proven demand
2. Can be done remotely at a relatively low cost
3. You are either competent at already or can see yourself becoming competent at

Popular online services include content writing, copywriting, audio editing, video editing, various types of marketing, web development, and user interface design. You can definitely make $3,000 a month with any of these!

Niche Down: Who are Your Dream Customers?

Once you pick a service, you need to decide who you are going to sell it to. In other words, you need to define your dream customers.

Ideally, you want to go the B2B route and sell to businesses as opposed to going the B2C route and selling to individual people.

For example, you might choose to become an email copywriter for SaaS companies.

Start by Working for Free to Acquire Social Proof

Social proof is the evidence that you can do what you say you can do, such as client testimonials and case studies.

Here’s a conundrum that every freelancer has to solve: in order to get clients, you need to have social proof, but in order to get social proof, you need to have clients.

The easiest way to get around this is to work for free to get social proof and then use that social proof to land paid clients.

If you already have some experience using that same skill in a work context, you might be able to skip this step.

For example, if you have spent the last few years working as an in-house email copywriter for a SaaS startup and you have a good reference from your previous employer, that might be enough social proof to land your first paid freelance client.

However, if you have never done something like that before, you should focus exclusively on acquiring social proof for the first 6-12 months.

First, go to Fiverr, find a lead generation expert, and buy a list of 100 leads that meet your dream customer criteria.

Then, do some work for those dream customers, email it to them, and let them know that they can use it for free if they like it.

For example, you can start writing email welcome sequences for SaaS businesses and sending them to the founders of those companies. Tell them that if they like the sequence, they can use it for free.

Once someone takes you up on this, offer to do more work for free.

To continue with the previous example, you can offer to write a weekly newsletter for free for the next 6 months. If they like your welcome sequence, they will probably agree to this.

Once you complete the free work you promised, ask them if they could give you a testimonial!

See if You Can Convert Free Clients to Paid Clients

The easiest way to get paid clients is to pitch your services to your free clients once they give you a testimonial.

Offer them a price that is relatively low compared to what established freelancers and agencies are charging.

If you did a good job with your free work, they will probably be willing to pay you in order to retain you!

Use Cold Email to Get Paid Clients

You can use cold email to get paid clients:

1. Make sure that your subject line looks casual but piques curiosity. For example, “a quick question” seems to perform well.
2. Introduce yourself and mention something that shows that you have done your homework (e.g. congratulate them on their recent venture round).
3. Explain how your service is going to benefit them. What will they get out of it?
4. Present your most impressive piece of social proof. Ideally, you want to briefly describe the results you got for one of your previous clients and link to a detailed case study.
5. End the email with a clear call to action: ask them if they would be interested in discussing this on a Zoom call and provide a link to your appointment calendar.
6. Add a “P.S.” section and tell them that if they would prefer to not receive any more emails from you, they should let you know.

Once you have sent the initial cold email, you want to follow up once a week until you get a “yes” or “no” answer. Include that “P.S.” section in every message so that the recipient would know that they can opt out of these follow-ups anytime.

Keep in mind that cold email is a numbers game: if you send 100 cold emails, you might schedule 10 calls and close 1 sale.

Strategy #2: Make $3,000 a Month by Bootstrapping Software Products

Learn to Code + UI/UX Design

If you don’t know how to code, you will need to learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript in order to build web apps. 

Here are four web development courses that can help you do that:

• “The Complete 2024 Web Development Bootcamp” by Dr. Angela Yu.
• “The Web Developer Bootcamp 2025” by Colt Steele.
• “Build Responsive Real-World Websites with HTML and CSS” and “The Complete JavaScript Course 2025: From Zero to Expert!” by Jonas Schmedtmann.

You can learn web development with any of these three options because they cover more or less the same stuff.

We recommend waiting for a Udemy sale and buying all of them. See which instructor’s teaching style resonates the most with you, keep their course, and refund the rest. Just make sure to read the refund policy before you do this.

In addition to web development, you will also need to learn the basics of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. You can do that by going through “Complete Web & Mobile Designer: UI/UX, Figma, +more” by Andrei Neagoie and Daniel Schifano.

There are other UI/UX design courses on Udemy but this one is the most comprehensive (26 hours at the time of writing).

Choose a Proven Business Idea and Target a Specific Niche

The most straightforward way to build a successful SaaS business is to choose a proven business idea and build an amazing product for a specific niche.

For example, when Nathan Barry launched his email marketing app ConvertKit, he initially targeted bloggers.

Building a product designed for that specific use case allowed him to compete with dominant players like Aweber and Mailchimp and steal some of their market share!

Ship Your Minimum Viable Product as Quickly as You Can

We recommend reading Eric Ries’ classic book “The Lean Startup”, familiarizing yourself with the Build-Measure-Learn loop, and using this approach to ship your products fast.

As a solopreneur, you need to learn how to go from the initial product idea to launching a minimum viable version of that product in less than three months. Just get it out there as fast as you can and then start iterating based on market feedback!

Use Cold Email to Get Your First Customers

Another book that you should read is Gabriel Weinberg’s “Traction” which is all about growth.

Consider implementing his “50% Rule” where you dedicate 50% of your time to product development and 50% of your time to customer acquisition.

As for which customer acquisition channel you should start with, cold email is probably the most straightforward way to get your first users.

You might want to read “Cold Email Overview from the Founder of LeadFuze” where Justin McGill explains how he grew his business from zero to $30k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in just one year.

Strategy #3: Make $3,000 a Month by Self-Publishing Fiction on Amazon

Focus on a Popular Fiction Genre and Subgenre

Literary fiction doesn’t sell well so if you want to make money, you will need to choose a popular genre (e.g. thrillers) and then niche down to a popular subgenre (e.g. Scandinavian noir).

Write Series Instead of Standalone Novels

It’s much easier to sell someone the next installment of a series than a standalone novel.

After all, if the reader likes the first book in the series, they will probably buy the second book and if they like that one, they will probably buy the third book, and so on.

Price the First Book in Your Series as Low as You Can

Give away the Kindle version of the first book for free and price the paperback so that you would break even on it.

Have Visually Appealing Book Covers and Intriguing Book Descriptions

Make sure that your book covers:

1. Conform to genre and subgenre expectations
2. Are professionally designed and visually appealing

In addition to that, your book descriptions need to be intriguing: you want to give away just enough information to pique the reader’s curiosity.

Create a Kindle Box Set for Each Series

Once you complete a series, you want to not only sell all the books in it separately but also create a Kindle box set so that readers can buy the whole series at once.

What is the Best Way to Market a Book?

The saying “the best way to market a book is to write another book” is true: in all likelihood, the more books you write, the more money you will make.

Successful self-published fiction authors tend to write at least one novel a year, though writing 2–3 novels a year seems to be more common.

If this writing pace sounds completely unsustainable to you, check out “How to Write a Novel in 6 Months” by Thomas Emson. It’s a super practical book full of actionable advice.

We also recommend experimenting with Amazon ads, Facebook ads and sending free paperback copies to book influencers. Just don’t let all that distract you from writing more books!

So You are Making $3,000 a Month Online. What Should You do Next?

If you want to scale your business, you’ll need to build a sales funnel for it.

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading How To Earn Money Online which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Bring In Clients By Using Case Studies appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Struggling to get as many clients as you’d like?

Don’t worry – you’re not alone. This is a challenge every business owner faces at some point in their entrepreneurial journey.

But here’s the good news: if you’re reading this, you might be about to strike gold.

Case studies are one of the most powerful tools for attracting and closing clients. When deployed strategically, they can practically do the selling for you. Prospects come to you just to confirm some details and get the payment link.

Case studies are that effective.

In this post, we’ll cover 9 compelling reasons why case studies should be a cornerstone of your marketing strategy. We’ll draw insights from experts like Russell Brunson and Dan Kennedy, as well as proven split-test data, to show you exactly why and how case studies work to attract more clients.

Ready to discover actionable strategies, real-life examples, and tips to turn case studies into a lead-converting powerhouse? 

Let’s dive in – you won’t want to miss this!

9 Reasons to Use Case Studies to Attract Clients

1. Real Results are the Best Form of Persuasion

Real results are better than any clever slogan, sales message, or branding.

To illustrate this, let’s look at a story from Russell Brunson’s book Expert Secrets.

When Russell decided to launch his Inner Circle coaching program, he wanted to charge $25,000 per year. The challenge? He didn’t have a compelling track record of coaching high-level entrepreneurs.

But instead of pitching blindly… he decided to get some results.

Russell identified Drew Canole, founder of FitLife.tv, as a dream client and offered to work with him for free. He helped Drew’s team prepare their funnels to launch a new product, Organifi… and the results changed Drew’s business for good. 

The Organifi funnel generated $20,000 to $30,000 a day, eventually bringing in over $25 million in sales.

Drew created a video about the transformation, and Russell used it in his marketing. That case study filled his Inner Circle’s cap of 100 entrepreneurs and created a waiting list of even more clients willing to pay $25,000 a year.

Don’t get caught up in the numbers right now.

This story is a lesson showing how results create undeniable trust and demand for your services – and even seasoned pros need results before they can successfully launch any new product.

Top Tip:

Case studies are one of the most valuable assets a business owner can have.

If you don’t have great results yet, don’t hesitate to work for free or less – it’s a long-term investment in your success!

Get Expert Secrets for Free!

2. The Best Marketers Use Case Studies

Did you know the best marketers use case studies more than any other form of content?

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 12th Annual B2B Content Marketing Report, as many as 61% of content marketers incorporate case studies into their strategies. The most popular format was short articles and posts, used by 90% of marketers.

But hold on a second.

When the CMI filtered their data to focus on successful content marketers, the results were eye-opening: 73% of them used case studies, making it the #1 form of content. This demonstrates that the most effective marketers rely on case studies more than posts to build trust, establish authority, and generate leads.

So if the best in the business consistently use case studies… they work.

Stories of real results resonate deeply with prospects, offering proof that your solutions deliver tangible outcomes. That’s why they’re more effective than a generic post that could appear on any one of your or your competitors’ sites.

Top Tip:

Follow this advice from CMI: Make your client the star of the story, not your brand. By positioning your client as the hero, you create a relatable narrative that resonates with prospects and builds trust without sounding overly promotional.

3. Proof Builds Trust – and Boosts Sales

When it comes to converting skeptical prospects, nothing is more powerful than “stacking the proof.” 

This concept is brilliantly illustrated in Russell Brunson’s book, 108 Proven Split Test Winners. 

The book tells the story of a split test conducted by marketer James Francis. He added a series of videos below the sales video of a “make money online” course showing real results achieved by past customers. The results? The version with video “proof” doubled the conversion rate compared to the version without them.

Why did this work? 

• First, the videos addressed the “Is this a scam?” objection head-on, providing undeniable proof. 
• Second, prospects could relate to at least one of the stories in the videos, making their decision to buy much easier.

This strategy not only built trust but also highlighted the product’s real-world impact.

Top Tip:

Collect real results from your clients and prominently feature them on your landing pages and website.

Get 108 Proven Split Test Winners for Free!

4. Testimonials Radically Boost Conversions

Sometimes, the simplest changes can make the biggest impact. 

In Russell Brunson’s 108 Proven Split Test Winners, he shares another split test conducted by 37Signals.com that highlights the power of testimonials. 

Here’s how it worked.

Instead of a traditional headline, they used a smiling picture of a satisfied customer and placed their testimonial as the headline.

The results were staggering: a 102.5% increase in conversions. This shift didn’t just add credibility; it brought the customer experience to the forefront, making the product feel relatable and trustworthy.

This test showcases how aligning testimonials (as well as social proof) work to significantly influence a prospect’s decision-making.

Top Tip:

Don’t limit case studies to a single section on your website. 

Experiment with making them the headline or embedding them throughout your content. A well-placed case study can create immediate trust and pull prospects into your message.

5. Case Studies Position You as an Expert

It’s super common for entrepreneurs to feel anxious when they get a prospect on the phone. They’re worried they might not close the client, and get worked up about it.

But the truth is this. 

Many clients feel just the same way about their business: a little lost, unsure of how to solve their problems, and almost begging for someone to show them the way.

Russell Brunson, in Expert Secrets, explains that people look for others who have already completed the same journey they’re on. A case study allows you to demonstrate that you (and your clients) have walked the path your prospects are currently navigating – and achieved the results they want. 

By showcasing both the challenges your clients faced and the transformation they achieved through your help, you’re not just selling a product or service – you’re selling a compelling vision of success.

The power of a case study lies in its ability to show, not tell.

It bridges the gap between where your prospects are and where they want to be, inspiring confidence in your expertise. This trust is critical for converting prospects into loyal clients.

Top Tip:

Your prospects want to see both sides of the story: the struggle and the triumph. 

Use case studies to highlight how you’ve guided others through similar challenges. This proves that you can not just lead them to success, but empathise with their present situation.

6. Case Studies Overcome Objections (Before You Even Make Your Sales Pitch)

Prospects always come to you with doubts, hesitations, and objections. If they didn’t have these… they’d already be a client.

So what’s the best way to address objections? 

Case studies.

Russell Brunson illustrates this perfectly in his Perfect Webinar Secrets training. The training covers the exact structure that Russell used to break a world record and generate $3.2 million in sales after a 90-minute sales presentation. 

Russell explains how his success wasn’t just about a great pitch – it was about strategically weaving case studies into his presentation to overcome objections.

Here’s how he structured it: 

• He first tells a story of how he achieved a specific result.
• Then he explains the strategy behind achieving the results.
• Finally, he uses case studies to show that others have achieved similar results by following the same strategy.

These case studies do the heavy lifting, addressing unspoken doubts and objections while building trust and credibility. 

By the time prospects were ready to buy, most of their concerns had already been resolved.

Top Tip:

Every claim you make should be backed by a case study. Whether it’s about results, reliability, or transformation, case studies provide tangible proof that persuades and reassures your prospects.

Get Perfect Webinar Secrets for Just $7!

7. Case Studies Help Clients Envision the End Goal

One of the most powerful aspects of case studies is their ability to help prospects see what’s possible. They paint a vivid picture of the “end goal” your clients can achieve. 

ClickFunnels does this brilliantly with its Two Comma Club award.

The Two Comma Club recognizes individuals who generate over $1 million in revenue through a sales funnel built on the ClickFunnels platform. This award gives ClickFunnels users a clear, aspirational goal: to hit $1 million and join the club. 

But it also serves another purpose: every awardee’s journey becomes a case study, showcasing how ClickFunnels empowers users to reach their objectives.

These stories inspire others, showing not just the potential of the platform, but how people in similar situations have already achieved success. For prospects, these case studies create the belief: “If they can do it, so can I.”

Top Tip:

Define the end result your clients get from working with you. Can you give them a vision of what they might achieve? 

Case studies can help you show – not just tell – what’s possible.

8. Case Studies Help You Stand Out From the Competition

In No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent, Dan Kennedy explains that niching down doesn’t limit you – it positions you to attract better and higher-paying clients.

Case studies are a powerful tool to reinforce this strategy.

By showcasing the specific results you’ve achieved for a well-defined niche, you differentiate yourself from competitors who might serve a broader audience. This specificity builds trust and makes it easier for prospects to see themselves in your success stories.

Rather than trying to appeal to everyone, case studies help set you apart as the go-to expert in your field.

Top Tip:

You’ll make more money and attract more clients by being extremely specific with your niche. Build your case studies around one ideal client profile to amplify your authority and appeal.

9. Case Studies Justify Premium Pricing

In No B.S. Price Strategy, Dan Kennedy emphasizes that higher prices attract better clients and yield greater profits. However, commanding premium pricing requires substantiating the value you offer.

This is where case studies become invaluable.

By showcasing detailed accounts of how your product or service has delivered exceptional results, case studies provide tangible evidence of your value. When potential clients see documented success stories, their confidence in your offering increases, and they become more willing to pay a premium for anticipated similar results.

In essence: case studies bridge the gap between price and perceived value.

This lets you set and maintain higher prices confidently.

Top Tip:

To support premium pricing, develop comprehensive case studies that highlight significant successes and quantifiable benefits your clients have experienced. 

How Will You Implement Case Studies to Attract More Clients?

Case studies are a proven way to build trust, overcome objections, and attract high-paying clients. 

But the real question is: how will you deploy them strategically? 

Enter ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels offers a suite of tools designed to help you use case studies effectively, turning them into a client-attracting powerhouse.

Here are some practical ways to implement case studies with ClickFunnels:

• Add case study boxes and pullouts: Showcase testimonials and success stories on key sections of your sales pages.
• Create landing pages with case studies as a free download: Use case studies as lead magnets to capture emails and nurture prospects.
• Drip-feed case studies using an email sequence: Gradually share case studies with your audience to build trust and keep them engaged.
• Sell your in-depth case study as an eBook: Position your case studies as premium content that adds value.
• Write in-depth blog posts quickly and easily: Publish case-study-driven blog content to drive organic traffic and build authority.

ClickFunnels makes all of this simple with its intuitive platform, helping you design pages, funnels, and email campaigns effortlessly.

Because here’s the truth.

Case studies are more than stories – they’re assets. 

Use them strategically, and you’ll attract better clients, charge higher price,s and scale your business with ease. 

Ready to get started? 

Try ClickFunnels today with their 14-day free trial. Your next client is waiting.

Try ClickFunnels for 14 Days for Free!

Thanks for reading Bring In Clients By Using Case Studies which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Unlock Financial Freedom appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Looking for ways to improve your financial situation?

Today we are going to discuss how you can stabilize your finances, maximize your earning potential, and build wealth!

Stabilize Your Financial Situation First

Drop the Entitlement

This may be controversial but we believe that entitlement is the primary reason why people in developed countries struggle financially.

Obviously, there are exceptions to this. There’s no denying that some individuals have been dealt a bad hand in life through no fault of their own. Meanwhile, others have lucked out largely due to favorable conditions.

That being said, we would argue that being born in a developed country could be seen as winning the genetic lottery in and of itself because the opportunities available right now are truly unprecedented.

However, entitlement can prevent you from taking advantage of those opportunities so we recommend examining the idea that you “deserve” a certain standard of living.

This is not avocado toast moralizing, it’s pragmatic advice that can help you get ahead in life: if you can drop your sense of entitlement, you will have a much easier time living below your means, which is the first step towards building wealth!

Reject Temporal Parochialism

Historians often speak of “temporal parochialism” where our perspective is limited to our own era. This concept can come in handy for getting your finances in order. How so?

Despite all the gloom and doom in the media, the societal standard of living is continuously increasing: what was once seen as a luxury becomes normalized and then comes to be regarded as a necessity. 

Some examples of this phenomenon include:

• Living by yourself as opposed to either with your family or roommates.
• Regularly ordering food and eating out as opposed to making most of your meals at home and packing lunch to work.
• Vacationing abroad as opposed to choosing affordable locations in your own country.
• Upgrading tech devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones when a new model comes out as opposed to when the device stops working.
• Buying a new car instead of a used one. Obviously, safety is something that you need to take into consideration here. Never drive used vehicles that are unsafe!

…etc. 

However, if you step out of the 2025 bubble and start rewinding the clock, it will become obvious that these are not necessities at all.

In fact, in just a few decades, most of the stuff on this list was something that only the upper middle class and the rich could afford.

Once you realize that, it becomes clear that the connection between subjective well-being and standard of living is not linear. 

Yes, you need a safe place to live, enough nutritious food, warm clothes, etc. But the further you go beyond that, the more the relationship between spending and happiness disintegrates.

This perspective can make it easier for you to step off the hedonic treadmill, reduce your expenses, and resist lifestyle inflation as you increase your income. 

Start Living Below Your Means

If you are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck, your first priority should be to cut your expenses as much as possible and start living below your means.

In fact, our friend Alex Hormozi advises ambitious people to live like they are broke, which he himself did as he was building his wealth.

As a young man, he lived on $1,500/month despite making $20,000/month because:

1. He was incredibly risk-averse
2. He wanted to have money so that he could go on the offensive later

He took it to the extreme but this kind of stuff is pretty common if you look at the come-up stories of self-made millionaires. 

It’s also a good example of how valuable dropping your sense of entitlement can be: very few people who are making $240,000/year are willing to live on just $18,000/year but the ones that are have a massive advantage over the ones that aren’t.

If you want to get some practical advice on how to live below your means, consider watching the video below in which Alex explains how he did it. You don’t have to be as extreme as he was but it can give you some perspective!

Build an Emergency Fund

Once you are living below your means, you want to start building an emergency fund.

Ideally, you should save up at least one year’s worth of expenses before you even think of doing anything else with your money.

Yes, that’s a conservative approach and it could be argued that a few month’s worth of expenses should be enough for the average person living in a developed country. 

However, contrary to popular belief, self-made millionaires tend to be more risk-averse than the average person when it comes to money, not less.

It’s easy to focus on them making “high risk, high reward” plays but the only reason they can do that is because they have a stable foundation.

So if you want to be able to take big risks in the future, build that stable foundation for yourself first in the form of an emergency fund!

Maximize Your Earning Potential Within Your Career

We live in a culture where regular employment is often seen as undesirable while being an entrepreneur has become a high-status occupation.

The problem is that the glamor surrounding entrepreneurship can blind you to the reality of it. Want to hear something that business gurus won’t tell you?

The most reliable way to financial stability is:

1. Choosing a high-paying career
2. Maximizing your earning potential
3. Investing your money in something like the S&P 500

Of course, this assumes that the stock market will continue performing as it has historically, which is a big assumption. Some crazy black swan event might wipe out your investments.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in life but this is arguably the safest way to make your money work for you. It has much higher odds of success than launching your own business!

Get a Job if You Don’t Have One

We see way too many people put themselves in precarious financial situations by pursuing entrepreneurship when they don’t have a stable source of income. 

That’s a terrible idea because you can’t think strategically when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from.

So get a job if you don’t have one at the moment. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just something that allows you to pay the bills.

In fact, if you have followed the advice in the previous section and reduced your expenses to the bare minimum, even flipping burgers at McDonald’s might be enough to have some stability. 

Of course, if you already have marketable skills, you might be able to find something better but don’t scoff at minimum-wage jobs and gig economy work if you don’t have higher-paying options. 

Consider Switching to a Higher-Paying Career

If you already have a job but it’s a low-paying one and there are no career advancement opportunities, you should probably switch to a higher-paying career.

In that case, assuming that you are working 40 hours per week at your current job, you want to start spending 20 hours a week on top of that on your career transition.

For example, if you are currently working full-time at McDonald’s making a minimum wage but want to transition into software development, start spending 20 hours a week on:

• Learning how to code
• Building projects for your portfolio
• Applying to jobs
• Prepping for job interviews
• Going to job interviews

…etc.

That’s a much more reliable path to increasing your income than attempting to build a business on the side.

Focus on Maximizing Your Earning Potential Within Your Career

Once you are in a high-paying career, maximize your earning potential within it. 

For example, if you have successfully transitioned from a minimum-wage job at McDonald’s to working as a junior developer, focus on working your way up to getting a job at Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix or Google (FAANG).

FAANG companies are well-known for their willingness to pay big bucks for top talent, so if you can become that top talent, you can make those big bucks. We are talking low-to-mid six-figures per year in total compensation.

If you continue living like you’re broke while making six figures and divert all your discretionary income into saving for retirement, paying off your mortgage and investing in something like S&P 500, you might be able to reach a seven-figure net worth in 10-20 years, depending on how the market performs in that time.

Sure, that may not be as glamorous as making it big as an entrepreneur, but this approach has much higher odds of success – and is arguably much less stressful – than running a business!

Start a Side Hustle and Grow it Until You Can Go Full-Time on it

Okay, but what if you are not content with maximizing your earning potential within your career and accumulating a low-seven-figure net worth over a decade or two?

Forget “Get-Rich-Quick”, Embrace “Get-Rich-or-Die-Trying”

Building a sustainable business that can be sold for a life-changing amount of money will require consistent hard work over an extended period of time. It will probably take you at least a decade.

That’s why you can’t afford to have a get-rich-quick mindset: if you go into it hoping to make a ton of money in just a few short years, you won’t have the mental fortitude to stick with it for long enough to succeed.

In fact, considering that successful entrepreneurs often fail several times before they hit it big, we would argue that you should only pursue entrepreneurship if you are committed to seeing it through and won’t stop until you succeed, regardless of how long it takes. 

Also, success is not guaranteed. You can do everything right and still fail. That’s a real possibility that you need to accept. It can help you put things in perspective: is this something that you really want to do with your life?

Play it Safe With a Low-Risk Business Model

First of all, you want to choose a low-risk business model that doesn’t require significant startup capital. That way, even if you fail, it won’t wreck your finances, which means that you will be able to try again.

Here are three paths that you might want to consider:

• Launching an online service business where you start as a freelancer and then transition into an agency model. It probably won’t make you rich but it can be a great way to learn fundamental business skills.
• Launching an e-commerce business where you start by dropshipping, then transition into white label, and finally into private label.
• Creating software products by yourself and either continuing as a solopreneur indefinitely or hiring people and building a company. This is known as “indie hacking”. Pieter Levels’ book “Make” is a great introduction to it.

Next, look at your schedule and rearrange it so that you can consistently put in 20 hours a week into your side hustle on top of your full-time job.

Finally, start working on your business. You’ll probably find that getting it off the ground to be more challenging than you expected.

In fact, if you don’t have any previous entrepreneurial experience, it will probably take you a few years to get to the point where you are making the equivalent of the minimum wage from it. 

Don’t be disheartened by this because it’s completely normal. Growth is always slow initially but it will start accelerating eventually as you get better at running a business. You just need to stick with it.

Study Online Marketing if You Want to Get Your Side Hustle Off the Ground Faster

Beginner entrepreneurs often make the mistake of underestimating the importance of fundamental business skills.

This is especially common among people who are attempting to build a business around something that they are already good at.

For example, if you are a software developer who wants to build a software business, the chances are that you are overestimating the importance of writing good code and underestimating the importance of marketing, copywriting, and sales.

That’s why you need to study online marketing if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur.

We recommend starting with our co-founder Russell Brunson’s “Secrets Trilogy”:

• “DotCom Secrets” will teach you how to build a sales funnel
• “Traffic Secrets” will teach you how to drive traffic to your sales funnel
• “Expert Secrets” will teach you how to use storytelling to turn online visitors into lifelong customers

In addition to that, we recommend reading our friend Jim Edwards’ “Copywriting Secrets” which was written specifically with busy entrepreneurs in mind.

All four books are available on Amazon but you can also get them directly from us for free. All we ask is that you cover the shipping!

Only Go Full-Time Once Your Side Hustle Has Been Making You More Money Than Your Job for at Least a Year Straight

Beginner entrepreneurs often quit their jobs after their businesses have a few good months. It does work out sometimes but it’s extremely risky. Why?

Because revenue can fluctuate drastically due to various factors outside of your control. For example, you might make a ton of money one month due to going viral and then go to zero the next month because your ad account got suspended. This kind of stuff happens all the time. 

That’s why it’s best to wait until your side hustle income has been exceeding your salary for at least a year before you even consider quitting your job.

In fact, it’s ideal to prepare for it by dumping all your business income into savings for a few years so that you will have a massive runway by the time you hand in your resignation letter!

Build to Sell if Your Ultimate Goal is Generational Wealth

We would argue that selling a business is the most viable path to creating generational wealth.

However, in order to accomplish that, you need to build a company that can run without you. Otherwise, it’s not really a business, it’s just a job where you are your own boss.

Of course, if you are just starting out, you will need to do everything yourself, but as your business grows, you want to start working on it as opposed to in it. 

Meaning, that you should systematize various business processes and gradually extricate yourself from them so that eventually your company could run without you. 

We recommend reading “Built to Sell” by John Warrillow. It’s a great book that provides practical advice on how to create a business that can stand on its own.

Make Sure That You Are Prepared for Success!

Do you know how lottery winners tend to go broke because they mismanage their newfound wealth?

Well, the same thing can happen to entrepreneurs, which is why you need to prepare not just for failure but also for success.

Here’s a thought experiment: what would you do if you made $1M in profit next year? What about $5M? What about $10M?’

Would you pay off your mortgage? Put it into savings? Dump it all into the S&P 500? Buy rental properties? Reinvest it into your business? 

It might feel silly to be thinking about this stuff when your business isn’t making any money yet but it’s important to create a financial strategy in advance.

That way, should you ever experience “overnight success”, you’ll be able to make the most out of it!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free… 

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Unlock Financial Freedom which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Guide To Having Extra Money appeared first on ClickFunnels.

In a time of increasing economic uncertainty, having a side hustle is becoming a necessity: you need something to fall back on in case you lose your job through no fault of your own. 

Moreover, having an additional stream of income can help you build an emergency fund, pay off your mortgage and prepare for retirement without having to compromise your current lifestyle.

That’s why today we want to discuss three ways to make spare money online that don’t require a significant amount of startup capital. Keep your job, work on your side hustle in your spare time and watch your financial situation improve!

Let’s Start With Some Reality Checks…

Reality Check #1: You Probably Won’t Get Rich Overnight

There are a lot of influencers out there who are straight-up lying to their followers about how much money they are making.

When you see someone flaunting their luxurious lifestyle on Instagram, you can probably safely assume that it’s all fake, especially if this “successful” person is still in their 20s, which means that they didn’t have much time to accumulate their supposed wealth.

And when you see people who have legitimately made a ton of money in a short period of time, you will usually find that they have spent at least a decade grinding before becoming an “overnight” success.

This often explains how some people manage to make it big in their 20s: if someone launched their first business at age 14 and has been pursuing entrepreneurship ever since, it means that by age 29 they have been at it for 15 years. 

Finally, luck plays a significant role in entrepreneurial outcomes, though of course the more shots you take, the more likely you are to succeed!

Reality Check #2: You Will Need to Make Sacrifices

If you want to get your side hustle off the ground, you will need to spend at least 20 hours a week on it.

If you work 40 hours a week at your job to pay the bills and then put in another 20 hours in your side hustle, the total workload will be 60 hours a week. 

There are 168 hours in a week. If you are getting 8 hours of sleep, you are left with 112 hours. If you work for 60 hours, you are left with 52 hours.

52 hours might seem like a lot but it really isn’t once you account for all the “life stuff” like commute, shopping for groceries, preparing food, cleaning your apartment, running random errands, etc.

Realistically speaking, you probably won’t have much time left to pursue your interests, engage in hobbies, or enjoy entertainment, especially if you have a spouse, children, and familial responsibilities.

Reality Check #3: It’s Going to Take Longer Than You Think

Even people who reject the “get rich quick” mindset tend to severely underestimate how difficult it is to build a profitable side hustle.

You will have to get good not only at whatever it is that you want to do but also at copywriting, marketing, and sales.

In all likelihood, it will probably take you a few years to get to the point where you are making the equivalent of the minimum wage. This is especially true if you don’t have any previous entrepreneurial experience and need to learn everything from scratch!

Can You Endure Hardship Long Enough to Succeed?

We recommend asking yourself this when you are considering various side hustle ideas: can you see yourself working 20 hours per week on this for at least half a decade on top of your full-time job?

If you aren’t, you probably shouldn’t pursue it to begin with because you will almost certainly give up too early and won’t be able to reap the rewards of your hard work. So why even bother?

Look, the truth is that you can do everything right and still fail. However, if you are willing to put in the time, make sacrifices, and stick with it through all the ups and downs, you’ll give yourself a real shot at success.

Remember, as our friend Alex Hormozi put it, entrepreneurship is not a game of “best man wins”, it’s more of a game of “last man standing”!

Side Hustle Idea #1: Launch an Online Service Business

The most straightforward way to make money online is to start selling a service that can be provided remotely.

Online Service Business Ideas

Here are some ideas:

• Writing – You can write content, landing page copy, sales page copy, email copy, social media copy, and even books and eBooks as a ghostwriter.
• Video editing – You can edit videos for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
• Social media marketing – You can create content schedules, produce and publish content, reply to comments and messages, run promotional campaigns, and drive traffic from social media platforms to your client’s sales funnel.
• Search engine optimization – You can create SEO strategies, do keyword research, produce SEO content, build backlinks, and rank for your target keywords.
• Paid advertising – You can run paid ads on social media, Google Search or Amazon.
• Web development – You can build and maintain web apps for your clients.

You can simply learn the skill that you are the most interested in. There are plenty of resources for that out there!

Start by Working for Free to Get Social Proof

If you are starting from scratch, it’s going to be extremely difficult to land clients without social proof.

Think about it: would you hire someone who has never done the thing that you are hiring them to do before? Probably not.

This introduces a catch-22 problem where in order to get experience, you need to get clients, but in order to get clients, you need to have experience.

Fortunately, this conundrum has an easy solution:

1. Find someone who could benefit from your service but may not be able to afford it (e.g. a small YouTuber).
2. Do the work, send it to them, and let them know that they can use it for free if they want to (e.g. take their most popular long-form video, create a bunch of shorts, and email those shorts to them).
3. If they decide to use your work, ask them for a testimonial. They will probably be happy to give it to you. 

We recommend starting at the bottom of the hierarchy because it’s easier to reach people who don’t have big audiences yet.

For example, a YouTuber with less than 1k subscribers will be much more likely to read your email than a YouTuber with 1M+ subscribers.

The fastest way to get an online service business off the ground is to work for free for 6-12 months to acquire social proof and then use that social proof to get paid clients. 

Also, if you build a roster of “clients” that you do free work for, once you start transitioning into paid work, some of them might end up hiring you!

Use Cold Email to Get Paid Clients

Once you have social proof, the best way to get paid clients is cold email.

Go on Fiverr, find a lead generation expert, and pay them to compile a list of leads that meet your dream customer criteria.

For example, if you are offering video editing services, you can ask the lead generation expert to create a list of YouTubers within your desired subscriber range. Once you have your list, start cold emailing them!

If you want to learn more about getting clients via cold email, we highly recommend reading “The Cold Email Manifesto” by Robert Indries and Alex Berman.

Should You Keep Freelancing or Start an Agency?

You can get to $100,000/year as a freelancer but if you want to make significantly more than that you’ll need to transition to the agency business model.

If you enjoy providing the service and see the business stuff as something that you don’t like but have to do in order to keep the lights on, then it probably makes sense to remain a freelancer.

However, if you would rather delegate the work required to provide the service and focus exclusively on the business stuff, then starting an agency might be a great idea. Just keep in mind that you will have to learn how to hire, train, and manage people.

Going the agency route can enable you to get to the mid-six-figure income range. Also, a successful agency is an asset that can be sold, typically for a 2-5x multiple of its annual net profit!

Side Hustle Idea #2: Start a Dropshipping Business

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is an e-commerce fulfillment method where you don’t hold any inventory yourself.

Here’s how it works:

1. Customers place orders on your website
2. Those orders get forwarded to your supplier
3. Your supplier processes them and ships the products to the customers 

Dropshipping Pros and Cons

There’s a lot of get-rich-quick nonsense floating around regarding dropshipping.

In fact, if you look it up on YouTube, the algorithm will start bombarding you with videos that have Lamborghinis in their thumbnails.

So let’s start by taking a sober look at the pros and cons of dropshipping:

Dropshipping Pros

You can use this fulfillment method to launch an e-commerce business with a low amount of startup capital. It can be a great way to learn the ropes of e-commerce while minimizing financial risk.

Dropshipping Cons

Dropshipping is extremely competitive because the barrier to entry is so low. There might be hundreds of online stores selling the exact same products as you.

Not only that makes it difficult to stand out but it also leads to a race-to-the-bottom dynamic where everyone is trying to offer the lowest possible price.

E-commerce as a business model is already notorious for its low profit margins but with dropshipping the margins tend to be abysmal. We are talking lower than 10% in most cases.

Finally, if you are using dropshipping as your fulfillment method, you don’t have any control over your supply chain but the customers will blame you if something goes wrong.

This can make it difficult to build a trusted e-commerce brand because the risk of reputational damage is so high.

Is Dropshipping Dead?

Various people have been proclaiming dropshipping to be dead for nearly a decade now but we can assure you that it’s still alive and well.

In fact, the whole idea of it being dead doesn’t make sense considering that it’s one of the most popular e-commerce fulfillment methods and the e-commerce industry as a whole continues to grow with no signs of stopping anytime soon.

However, dropshipping is just that: a fulfillment method. If you want to make money with it, you’ll need to build a legitimate e-commerce business, which is going to take a ton of work!

How to Start a Dropshipping Business

Dropshipping gurus will tell you to use product research software, see which products are already selling well, and then start selling them yourself. 

However, we recommend taking a completely different approach:

1. Choose a niche that you can see yourself sticking with for at least half a decade, ideally one that you are already familiar with.
2. Create an online store store and add products to it. You can easily do this with ClickFunnels + Zendrop.
3. Build a cart funnel for the product that you believe is going to sell the best. In addition to that core product, we recommend creating at least one digital cross sell. That will help you increase your average order value (AOV), your customer lifetime value (CLV), and your overall profit margin. 
4. Create a paid advertising campaign designed to promote your core product and start driving traffic to your cart funnel with paid ads.
5. Use A/B testing – also known as split testing – to optimize your sales funnel for conversions. Your first priority should be to get to profitability.

For example, if you are an outdoors enthusiast, you can launch an outdoors gear store, build a cart funnel for a day hiking backpack, and cross sell a day hiking essentials bundle, and a day hiking ebook guide for newbie hikers. 

How to Build a Sustainable Ecommerce Business

If you want to build a sustainable e-commerce business, we recommend following this strategy:

1. Start by dropshipping and get your business off the ground with a cart funnel. 
2. Transition from dropshipping to white label e-commerce where you order generic products directly from the manufacturer, put your own branding on them and handle fulfillment through a third-party logistics (3PL) service. 
3. Transition from white label ecommerce to private label ecommerce where you design your own products instead of selling generic white label ones. 

How to Create a Trusted Ecommerce Brand

Your ultimate goal should be to create a recognizable e-commerce brand that is trusted by your dream customers.

You can do that via social media marketing, video marketing, and email marketing. In fact, one of the best ways to build brand recognition is to launch a weekly niche newsletter designed to provide free value to your target audience.

Of course, you also need to deliver a great customer experience, which can be challenging with dropshipping but will become easier as you gain more control over your supply chain. Do everything you can to maximize customer retention. 

Once you have a private label e-commerce business with a recognizable brand, you can either continue growing it or sell it for 2–5x of its annual net profit!

Side Hustle Idea #3: Build Software Products

What is “Indie Hacking”?

Software businesses have extremely high profit margins, are relatively easy to scale, and can be sold for a life-changing amount of money.

However, the traditional Silicon Valley path of coming up with a product idea, raising venture capital, and then working like a maniac for years on end in hopes of having a lucrative exit isn’t realistic for most people.

Fortunately, you don’t need to do any of that in order to succeed as a software entrepreneur: you can simply start building software products in your free time without taking any outside investments. This is known as “indie hacking”.

While the indie hacker scene hasn’t produced any “unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) and is unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future, you can certainly make six or even seven figures a year that way.

For example, the most famous indie hacker is the Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Levels, whose annual revenue across all of his software products is around $2.3M at the time of writing with an overall profit margin of 90%+!

Do You Need to Know How to Code in Order to Become an Indie Hacker?

There have been some indie hacker success stories where people who didn’t know how to code managed to build software products using no-code tools.

However, we recommend taking a few months to learn the basics of web development: HTML, CSS, and Javascript. 

Wait until the next Udemy sale, buy a few reputable web development courses, and check out the first module of each of them to see which teacher’s style resonates the most with you. Then keep that course and refund the rest.

Just be careful not to get stuck in the “tutorial hell” where you keep consuming coding tutorials instead of working on your own projects. Once you complete your Udemy course, start building software products immediately!

How to Find a Winning Product Idea

There’s this common belief that you need to come up with an innovative product idea in order to make money with software.

We would argue that this is misguided: you are much more likely to make money by taking something that has proven demand and then doing it better than the competition.

Look at the popular B2B SaaS apps to see what kind of software companies are already paying for and then create a product like that designed to serve a specific niche.

For example, when Nathan Barry launched his email marketing app ConvertKit more than a decade ago, the email marketing space was dominated by Aweber and MailChimp, which were and still are generic email marketing apps.

Instead of trying to compete with these behemoths directly by creating another generic email marketing app, Barry decided to focus on serving bloggers and then content creators in general.

At the time of writing, ConvertKit is generating more than $42 million in annual recurring revenue, so this approach has worked really well!

Build and Launch 100 Software Products

Successful indie hackers are known for their insane product development speed: they aim to go from the idea to the first sale as quickly as possible, typically taking less than a month to launch (“ship”) their software products.

In case you are wondering how they manage to do that, they are taking the Lean Startup concept of a minimum viable product (MVP) to its absolute extreme.

For example, Nico Jeannen once built an MVP for an AI photo editing app in less than six hours!

The reasoning behind this is that the best way to find a product-market fit as a solopreneur is to keep building products until one of them takes off. 

For example, Pieter Levels built 70+ products in the last decade, Marc Louvion built 23 products in the last few years and Nico Jeannen built 17 products in just one year. 

Of course, there’s survivorship bias here, but there might also be a correlation between how many products someone ships and how likely they are to succeed as an indie hacker. 

If you want to give this a serious shot, consider setting the goal of shipping 100 software products. Sounds crazy but if you ship one product per month that’s going to take less than 9 years. 

You can abandon this goal if one of your products takes off. However, there’s also something to be said for emulating Levels who continued shipping new products even after RemoteOK and NomadList became popular.

If you want to learn more about bootstrapping software products as a solopreneur, we highly recommend reading Levels’ book “Make”!

Follow Gabriel Weinberg’s “50% Rule” to Unlock Explosive Growth

Of course, it’s not enough to just build products, you also need to promote them if you want to get paying customers.

We recommend following the “50% Rule” that was proposed by the DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg in his book “Traction”: spend 50% of your time on product development and the other 50% of your time on customer acquisition.

If that seems excessive, at least commit to doing marketing for one hour per day like Jack Friks, who went from not knowing how to code to build a mobile app with a $4k MRR and a SaaS with 2k MRR in less than a year!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert. 

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free… 

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Guide To Having Extra Money which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Build And Scale Your Business From Scratch appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If you know right from the get-go that you want to “scale to the moon” so to speak, you need to do everything with that in mind, ideally from day one.

Think about it: if you lay a foundation for a garden shed, you won’t be able to build a skyscraper on top of it.

In fact, if you attempt to do that, the building will end up collapsing and you will need to start from scratch.

We would argue that the same is true for businesses. You need to have a solid foundation in order to scale your company successfully.

That’s why today we are going to discuss how to build a business from the ground up with scalability in mind!

Caution: Scaling Too Early Can Ruin Your Business!

Entrepreneurs tend to see scaling as an unequivocally good thing. However, it’s important to understand that it can also be a terrible thing and ruin your business. Simply put, scaling is going to amplify everything – the good and the bad!

10X More Sales Means 10x More Unhappy Customers

If your refund rate is above the industry average, your customer retention metrics are abysmal and the feedback that you are getting from your customers is overwhelmingly negative, scaling is only going to make the situation worse.

Of course, you will always have some unhappy customers – that’s just part and parcel of running a business.

However, if the overall customer sentiment is negative, remember that scaling is going to amplify it. You might end up having to deal with tons of negative customer reviews, complaints on social media, and negative press coverage. This can lead to irreparable brand damage.

That’s why it’s better to wait until the overall customer sentiment is positive!

Scaling Reveals Systemic Weaknesses

You can get away with a lot when you’re just getting started, which can blind you to systemic weaknesses in your company’s infrastructure, workflow, and culture.

However, the more pressure you put on a system, the more obvious its weaknesses are going to become. And if you put too much pressure too fast, the system might break down entirely.

Think about it: a drastic increase in traffic, leads, and sales can cause all kinds of problems, from supply chain issues to poor quality service to a massive customer support backlog.

Keep in mind that even if the overall customer sentiment is positive, it can quickly turn negative if you start scaling before making sure that your business can handle it!

When is the Right Time to Scale?

We would argue that you should wait until you are reasonably sure that your business has positive word-of-mouth.

Obviously, it’s not possible to observe word-of-mouth directly, but here are the three things that you want to keep an eye on:

1. Customer retention metrics – If your customers continue doing business with you, it’s likely that they are happy with your product or service. However, you also need to account for the fact that people are lazy. Sometimes, customers stick around not because they love your product or service but because they simply can’t be bothered to look for an alternative!
2. Customer feedback – If your customers are giving you unsolicited positive feedback in the form of reviews, emails, and social media shout-outs, it’s quite likely that they are also recommending your product or service to other people.
3. “Unexplained” sales – If you can observe consistent, month-over-month sales growth that cannot be attributed to an increase in marketing spend, the most likely explanation for it is positive word-of-mouth.

Once you start seeing all three indicators, you can begin scaling your business!

Start by Targeting a Small Niche

One of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs who want to build large companies make is going wide right from the start.

This approach is doomed to fail because if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one.

That’s why it makes much more sense to target a small niche, dominate it, and then gradually expand to adjacent niches.

A classic example of this is Facebook. It started out as a social network for Harvard students, then expanded to other Ivy League universities, then to all universities in the United States. Finally, three years after its launch, it opened to the general public.

Dominating a small niche and then expanding from there allowed this social media platform to grow to 3.06 billion monthly active users worldwide, which accounts for more than 38% of the global population. Talk about scaling!

Create an Amazing Product or Service

Another common mistake that ambitious entrepreneurs make is trying to scale their companies when their product or service is mediocre at best.

Frankly, we believe that this comes from a place of laziness: creating an amazing product or service requires a ton of work and most people simply aren’t willing to do it. However, if you put in the effort to make something truly great, you will have a much easier time scaling your business later on.

For example, our friend Alex Hormozi once shared a story about his friend who decided that he wanted to sell premium cookies.

He started by going around the country visiting the top bakeries and asking the bakers if he could learn from them.

Then, once he got the hang of baking cookies, he baked a different batch for 365 days straight and gave those cookies away to potential customers in his local area in exchange for their feedback.

This enabled him to figure out what kind of cookies people liked the best and build a pre-launch lead list. When he finally launched his business, it was a smashing success!

Package Your Product or Service Into an Irresistible Offer

If you want to successfully scale a business, it’s not enough to have an amazing product or service, you also need to package it into an irresistible offer. But how can you do that?

Here are three ways to make your offer more appealing to your dream customers:

1. Increase its value
2. Reduce its price
3. Remove financial risk

Ideally, you want to do all three for the best results. In fact, we recommend following this formula:

High Value + Low Price – Financial Risk = Irresistible Offer

Here’s how our co-founder Russell Brunson explains the power of an irresistible offer:

If you have both a product or service that’s better than what your competitors are selling and an irresistible offer that’s more appealing than their offers, your company will be unstoppable!

Do Things That Don’t Scale to Get Your First Customers

This might seem counterintuitive but if you want to build a scalable company, you need to be willing to do things that don’t scale in order to get it off the ground.

This is the premise of Paul Graham’s famous essay, “Do Things That Don’t Scale”. According to him:

“A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don’t. You build something, make it available, and if you’ve made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don’t, in which case the market must not exist. Actually, startups take off because the founders make them take off.”

One of the best examples of this is Airbnb, which is valued at $87 billion at the time of writing.

In the early days, instead of worrying about what was scalable and what wasn’t, Airbnb founders focused on getting users by any means necessary. They would go door-to-door to recruit hosts for their platform, take photos of their properties, and then help them make their listings more appealing to potential guests. And it worked!

Also, as Alex Hormozi has pointed out, just because you can’t see how something is going to scale in the beginning, it doesn’t necessarily mean that is impossible to scale it.

Alex used his friend as an example. This friend would send a handwritten thank you card to every customer when he was just starting out. Then, as his business grew he continued sending thank you cards but would only handwrite his signature instead of the entire card. Eventually, when he reached a point where he couldn’t continue doing it himself due to time constraints, he hired other people to do it.

Had this entrepreneur decided that it was not worth bothering with handwritten thank you cards because sending one to every customer wasn’t scalable, he would have missed out on gains in customer retention, customer lifetime value, and positive word-of-mouth. And it turned out to be scalable after all!

Build a Sales Funnel for Your Business

Once you have a great product or service, an irresistible offer, and a growing customer base, it’s time to build a sales funnel for your business.

In other words, you need to create a system for converting visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

There are several popular sales funnel models out there but we believe that the Value Ladder is the most effective one.

It was designed by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to grow our company to nine figures.

Here’s how he explains it:

And here’s a quick overview of the Value Ladder sales funnel structure:

If you want to learn how to build a Value Ladder sales funnel for your business, we recommend reading Russell’s best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” in which he explains it in great detail.

This book is available on Amazon but you can also get it for free directly from us. All we ask is that you cover the shipping!

Optimize Your Sales Funnel With A/B Testing

The initial version of your sales funnel is just the first draft.

Once you have it, you need to make sure that it’s working, which you can do by driving traffic to it. Are visitors converting into leads and then into customers?

Then, you want to optimize each page for maximum conversion with A/B testing.

You can do that by creating two versions of the same page that are identical except for the element that you are testing and then splitting the traffic into two and driving half of it to each version.

Once you know which version converted better, keep the winning one and use it to either A/B test a different variation of the same element or a different element altogether.

For example, you can A/B test two landing page headlines, then A/B test the winner against a new headline. Alternatively, you can take the winning variation and test something else entirely, such as your call-to-action button color.

Optimizing your sales funnel will require a lot of work because the vast majority of A/B tests won’t lead to meaningful changes in the conversion rate and out of the ones that do, most will only produce small increases.

However, if you continue running A/B tests, over time it can help you 2x, 5x, or even 10x your sales funnel profits!

Here’s how our co-founder Russell explains it:

You will need some traffic to optimize your sales funnel but don’t put the pedal to the metal until you are sure that it converts well. Otherwise, it’s going to be wasteful, like pouring water into a leaky bucket. Fix the leaks first!

Identify Your Most Effective Marketing Channel

We recommend experimenting with various marketing channels: social media marketing, video marketing, paid advertising, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.

Analyze the data to see how well traffic from each channel converts into leads, customers, and repeat customers. Which channel is the most effective way to promote your product or service?

You want to identify the marketing channel with the highest ROI. That is the channel that you are going to focus on once you are ready to start scaling.

Streamline Your Business Processes

Write down all your business processes: everything from marketing to sales to delivering the product or service to customer support to refunds.

Then, go down that list and automate everything that can be automated, no matter how small the task may seem.

After that, create standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the remaining tasks so that you can give the employees responsible for them checklists to follow.

Finally, create a customer support knowledge base and add it to your website so that your customers can find the solutions to their problems themselves. Of course, you’ll still need a customer support team, but this can help you reduce its workload.

Note: don’t use AI chatbots to automate customer support because they are too unreliable and can get you in serious trouble. You can learn more about that in our article about AI marketing automation.

Use Historical Data to Model Scaling So That You Could Prepare for it

It will probably take you a few years to get to the point where you are ready to scale your business, which means that you should have plenty of historical data by then. You can use it to model scaling.

For example, the most straightforward way to 10x your sales is to simply drive 10x more traffic to your sales funnel, assuming that your conversion rates are going to remain the same.

However, you also need to consider what the downstream effects of that are going to be, which you can model based on the historical data.

For example, you can use that data to see whether you will need to hire more people to handle the increased sales volume.

Say, if you know what the relationship between your sales volume and your customer support workload is, you can predict how the increase in the former will affect the latter. Will 10x more sales lead to 10x more customer support tickets?

Remember that hiring is a resource-intensive endeavor: it takes time to find great candidates, interview them, onboard them, etc. You can’t just drop a random person into a job role and expect them to do well with no training.

That’s why it’s so important to anticipate the increased demand for labor and make sure that you have the people you need before you actually need them. Don’t wait until your team is overwhelmed to start hiring!

In addition to that, as you are preparing to scale, you should also make sure that your IT infrastructure can handle the increased traffic, that your supply chain can support the increased order volume, that your payment processor won’t ban you due to increased transaction volume, and so on.

Start Slowly Scaling Your Business by Driving More and More Traffic to Your Sales Funnel

You want to play it safe and scale slowly even if you believe that your company is prepared to scale rapidly. Why?

While you should be able to predict most problems related to scaling, you won’t be able to foresee all of them, which means that you will inevitably run into some challenges regardless of how well-prepared you are.

So, for example, if your most effective marketing channel is Facebook ads, don’t just 10x your ad spend overnight in an attempt to 10x your sales. Start by doubling it, then tripling it, then quadrupling it, and so forth.

Also, if you run into some issue as you are scaling, address it immediately. Remember, something that seems minor at 2x might break the system at 10x, so you can’t afford to let problems pile up. At each stage, make sure that you have everything under control before you move on to the next stage.

Yes, scaling your business that way will take longer, but as the Navy Seal saying goes, “slow is smooth and smooth is fast”!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Build And Scale Your Business From Scratch which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Money-Making Ideas You Can Start Today appeared first on ClickFunnels.

With the rising cost of living, it’s becoming harder for many people to cover bills, upkeep, and the small luxuries that make life enjoyable on a regular salary.

If you’re feeling the pinch and wishing for a change, you’re not alone.

The good news is we live in a time where the 9-to-5 job isn’t the only way to make money anymore.

Thanks to the Internet, you can earn money at any time of day – after work, before work, or even while you sleep (once you have something set up!).

In this post, you’ll discover 24 practical ways to make money on a daily basis.

Some of these ideas are short-term side hustles, others are gig economy jobs, and a few are strategies to build consistent income over time.

Whatever your goals, you’re sure to find something that fits your schedule and lifestyle.

Let’s dive in – you’ve got this!

1. Sell Physical Products

Selling physical products is often called eCommerce. It involves offering physical items to consumers, sometimes through platforms like Amazon, and other times through your own website. You’ll then need to ship the products to the customer at their address.

Can you make good money?

Absolutely. Trey Lewellen’s story is proof of how profitable this can be. Using ClickFunnels, he scaled his flashlight business to almost $30 million in just two and a half months. Trey set a record for creating the fastest funnel to hit $1 million in sales, earning him a Two Comma Club award. His success shows the power of leveraging ClickFunnels to streamline sales and boost conversions. Since his flashlight success, he’s scaled multiple physical product funnels to over $1 million.

Who is this for?

If you’re creative, enjoy product development, or want to explore sourcing items to sell, this side hustle could be a perfect fit. It’s especially great if you’re willing to learn about eCommerce and marketing.

How do you start?

Start by identifying a niche or product in high demand. Then, use ClickFunnels to create a streamlined sales funnel that drives traffic, converts visitors, and maximizes revenue with upsells and automation.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

2. Ride Share Driver

Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft allow individuals to earn money by offering rides to passengers. These platforms match drivers with riders in real-time, making it a flexible way to earn extra cash.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for people who enjoy driving and live in areas with high demand, such as cities, near airports, or around event venues. It’s a great side hustle for those who want to work evenings, weekends, or during peak times without committing to a full-time schedule.

How do you start?

Ensure you meet the basic requirements: a valid driver’s license, active insurance, and a vehicle that meets the platform’s standards. Once you sign up and submit your documents, approval can take as little as 3–5 business days, after which you can start accepting rides and earning immediately.

3. Food Delivery Rider

Food delivery services like UberEats, DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart allow individuals to earn money by picking up and delivering food orders to customers. It’s a flexible side hustle where you can work as much or as little as you want (depending on the company).

Who is this for?

This is ideal for people living in busy areas where food delivery is in high demand. It’s especially great for those who enjoy cycling or driving short distances and want a side hustle that fits into evenings or weekends. Platforms like Instacart offer flexibility, allowing you to set your own hours and choose how much you want to work.

How do you start?

To get started, sign up on a platform like UberEats or DoorDash or InstaCart. You’ll need to provide basic information, such as your name and personal details, and perhaps your driver’s license and vehicle details. Once approved (usually within a few days) you can start accepting delivery orders and earning money quickly.

4. Offer Freelance Services

Platforms like Upwork and Fiverr let individuals offer one-off freelance services, ranging from graphic design to copywriting, coding, or video editing. Clients post job opportunities or search for freelancers, and projects are paid on a per-task basis.

Who is this for?

Freelancing is a great fit for people with niche skills who want to monetize their expertise. Popular niches include logo design, website development, voiceovers, and even virtual assistance. Specializing in a specific area can help you stand out on these competitive platforms.

How do you start?

Create a profile on a platform like Upwork or Fiverr, highlighting your skills and past work. The registration process typically takes under an hour. Once your profile is live, you can bid on projects or attract clients who search for services in your niche.

5. Start a Social Media Channel

Building a social media following around a shared hobby or interest is a powerful way to engage an audience and monetize your passion. By creating viral and engaging content, you can turn followers into customers.

Can you make good money?

Paul Woolley’s I Love Grilling Meat is an inspiring example. He built a Facebook community of over 761,000 barbecue and grilling enthusiasts by sharing memes, tips, and engaging content related to his niche. Using ClickFunnels, he sold T-shirts, headgear, and BBQ accessories, turning his following into a $1 million business and earning him a ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club award.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for creative individuals with a strong passion or expertise in a specific area – whether it’s cooking, fitness, fashion, or travel – who enjoy producing engaging content and interacting with an online community.

How do you start?

Choose a niche you’re passionate about and create a profile on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. Post high-quality, consistent, and engaging content tailored to your target audience. Once you build a following, use ClickFunnels to create a sales funnel that promotes products, services, or merchandise to your audience, turning your channel into a revenue-generating business.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

6. Sell Gift Cards

Many companies run contests and giveaways where the prize is a gift card. These competitions often require simple actions like answering a question, submitting a creative entry, or signing up for newsletters. Once you win a gift card, platforms like CardCash allow you to sell them for up to 92% of their value.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for people with spare time who enjoy entering contests or participating in online giveaways. It’s also a good fit for anyone with unused gift cards they’d like to turn into cash.

How do you start?

Search Google for terms like “gift card giveaway,” “raffle,” or “prize draw,” and start participating. Alternatively, use dedicated websites like Sweepstake.com or Contestgirl.com to find active competitions. Once you win a gift card, list it on CardCash or similar platforms for quick sales.

7. Launch a Podcast

A podcast is an audio show, often distributed in episodes, that can be monetized through sponsorships, affiliate marketing, merchandise, and courses.

Can you make good money?

John Lee Dumas is a shining example of podcast success. His show, Entrepreneur on Fire, has grossed over $27 million. Using ClickFunnels to monetize his audience, John generated significant revenue from sponsorships, online courses, and affiliate programs. For example, in October 2024, he earned $140.5k with 75% from sponsorships and the rest from courses, affiliate marketing, and book sales.

Who is this for?

If you’re a good communicator, enjoy storytelling, or have valuable knowledge to share, podcasting is a great fit. It’s especially suitable for individuals looking to build a loyal audience and multiple income streams.

How do you start?

Create your first few episodes using tools like Audacity or GarageBand. Use ClickFunnels to build a landing page where you can promote sponsorships, sell courses, or offer premium content to listeners.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

8. Rent Your Parking Spot

Platforms like Spacer.com, SpotHero, Neighbour, or ClicknPark allow you to rent out your parking space on a daily or monthly basis. These services are ideal for people with unused off-street parking in high-demand areas.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for anyone living in a metro or touristic area where parking is scarce and has a convenient, accessible parking space to offer.

How do you start?

Sign up on a platform like Spacer.com. Provide information and photos of your space, set your rates and submit your listing for approval. Once approved, you can start earning money by renting out your space.

9. Send App Referrals

Many apps, especially financial ones like CashApp, Ibotta, and Revolut, offer referral bonuses when you bring in new users. Simply invite friends or family to join, and you’ll earn cash, credits, or other rewards for each signup.

Who is this for?

This is a good fit for anyone already using apps that have referral programs or cashback incentives. It’s especially ideal for those with a large social circle they can reach out to.

How do you start?

Check the apps you currently use for referral offers. Copy your unique referral code or link, then share it with friends and family. Track your rewards as new users sign up through your link.

10. Start a YouTube Channel

A YouTube channel involves creating and sharing videos on a specific topic to build an audience, keep them engaged, and encourage subscriptions. Consistency and valuable content are key to growing a successful channel.

Can you make good money?

Cathy Yoder, creator of Empowered Cooks, is a standout example. Her channel focuses on using air fryers and easy-to-follow recipes. Not only does Cathy sell thousands of cookbooks monthly through a funnel on ClickFunnels, but she also sometimes earns up to $50,000 and $80,000 in advertising revenue from YouTube advertisers, making her a ClickFunnels success story.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for creative individuals passionate about teaching, entertaining, or sharing knowledge through video content. Whether your niche is cooking, fitness, gaming, or DIY, a YouTube channel is a great platform to monetize your expertise.

How do you start?

Choose a niche and create a YouTube account. Invest in basic equipment, like a decent camera and microphone, and the most consistent, high-quality videos. Use ClickFunnels to create a landing page to promote related products, courses, or digital content, driving traffic from your videos to grow your income.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

11. Sell Your Unused Clothes

Platforms like Depop, Poshmark, and Grailed allow you to sell secondhand clothing directly to buyers. Designer or branded clothes in good condition tend to fetch the highest prices.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for anyone with a wardrobe of lightly worn clothing or designer pieces. It’s also great for thrifters who want to find and resell valuable items online.

How do you start?

Download a platform like Depop or Poshmark, create an account, and start listing your clothes with clear photos and detailed descriptions. Sales can happen quickly, but it depends on demand. Payment is typically released once the buyer receives and approves the item.

12. Sell Unused Items

Just like clothes, you can sell furniture, appliances, artwork, and other unused items on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and eBay. These platforms connect sellers with local or global buyers.

Who is this for?

Anyone with unused items collecting dust that are still valuable or in demand. It’s a great way to declutter while earning extra cash.

How do you start?

On Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, create a listing by uploading photos, providing a detailed description, and setting a price. Respond promptly to inquiries, and arrange for local pickup or delivery to complete the sale.

13. Sell Digital Products

Selling digital products means creating and offering items like eBooks, audio files, templates, or guides that can be delivered electronically.

Can you make good money?

Yes. For example, ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson built his first $1 million funnel by selling the audio version of an interview he conducted with Vince James, the author of The 12-Month Millionaire. He used promotional videos to attract buyers and added an upsell – offering physical copies of the interviews for an additional charge.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for individuals with a niche skill, methodology, or knowledge that can help others achieve a specific result. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel – you can creatively repurpose interviews, guides, or research into valuable digital products.

How do you start?

Sign up for ClickFunnels and create a sales funnel to promote your digital product. Use tools to design an engaging landing page, set up upsells, and automate the entire sales process.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

14. Walk Dogs

Apps like Rover and Wag! connect dog owners with people who have time during the day to walk dogs for payment. Rates typically range from $15 to $18 per hour, making it a flexible way to earn money while spending time with pets.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for dog lovers, especially those in urban or suburban areas with many homeowners who commute to work and need help caring for their pets.

How do you start?

Download an app like Rover or Wag!, create a profile, and list your availability. Alternatively, check community boards at local vet offices or pet supply stores to find clients nearby.

15. Sell Online Courses

Selling online courses is a proven way to monetize your expertise. It works by creating a series of videos that follows a framework, and teaches the customer niche knowledge or skills.

Can you make good money?

For sure. For example, Dan Henry started with $0 after working odd jobs like delivering pizzas and owing $250,000 to the IRS. He went on to generate over $32 million in sales through Get Clients University, a program that teaches people how to create sales presentations, write copy, develop offers and host webinars. His success earned him a ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club X award.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for individuals who are experts in a specific field and enjoy teaching others. Whether you have a skill in marketing, fitness, design, or a niche topic, online courses are an effective way to generate passive income.

How do you start?

Use ClickFunnels to design a funnel for your course. Start by building a landing page, outlining your course modules, and including testimonials or proof of results to attract buyers.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

16. Complete Online Surveys

Online survey platforms allow users to earn money by sharing their opinions on products and services. Some popular options include:

• Survey Junkie: Earn points by completing surveys; points can be exchanged for PayPal cashouts or e-gift cards.
• Swagbucks: Get paid to answer surveys, watch videos, or browse the web.
• Opinion Outpost: A straightforward platform for earning rewards through survey participation.
• Pinecone Research: A premium survey site offering higher payouts but with limited openings and stricter requirements.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for individuals with spare time who enjoy answering questions and earning small, consistent rewards.

How do you start?

Sign up on one or more survey sites. Most operate on a point-based system, where accumulated points can be cashed out. Platforms like Pinecone Research may require you to meet specific demographic criteria for approval.

17. Test AI Tools

Platforms like Neevo.ai pay users to test AI tools by completing tasks such as data labeling, voice recording, or other human-AI interaction assignments. As AI continues to grow, more platforms like this are likely to emerge, creating opportunities for earning.

Who is this for?

This is a good fit for individuals who are tech-savvy, detail-oriented, and comfortable using new tools and platforms.

How do you start?

Sign up on Neevo.ai, create a profile, and verify your identity. Once approved, you can start participating in tasks and earning payments for completed assignments. Keep an eye on new AI platforms as this space evolves.

18. Start a Membership Site

A membership site provides exclusive content or resources to paying members, often through subscription tiers. The membership is usually built around teaching members specific skills or granting access to high-value knowledge and experience.

Can you make good money?

Caitlin Pyle’s Proofread Anywhere is a prime example of success. She uses ClickFunnels to sell multiple different courses teaching people how to become a proofreader and generate income. She also uses webinars to catch interested viewers and convert them into paying members. In 2023 she sold the business for 7 figures.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for anyone with valuable content, a specific skill set, or resources they can offer on a subscription basis. Coaches, educators, and content creators often benefit from this model.

How do you start?

Sign up for ClickFunnels to build a sales funnel that attracts and converts visitors into members. Create a landing page showcasing your membership benefits, set up subscription tiers, and use automation tools to manage your site seamlessly.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

19. Flip Items From Garage Sales

Flipping involves buying items at a low cost and reselling them for profit. Gary Vaynerchuk’s famous series Trash Talk was a great example showing how to visit garage sales, buy undervalued items, and flip them on platforms like eBay for significant returns. Gary’s approach proves that flipping can be a lucrative and accessible side hustle.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for bargain hunters, creative individuals who enjoy the thrill of finding hidden gems, and anyone looking for a flexible income source.

How do you start?

Search for local garage sales using apps like Yard Sale Treasure Map or websites like Craigslist. Once you’ve acquired items, clean them up, take high-quality photos, and list them on resale platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

20. Teach Online

Teaching online offers flexible income opportunities by connecting educators with students through platforms like VIPKid, Udemy, and Preply. These platforms make it easy to teach anything from languages to academic subjects or even vocational skills.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for teachers, subject experts, or skilled professionals. The most profitable niches include teaching languages, helping students prepare for exams, or offering in-demand skills like coding or graphic design.

How do you start?

Sign up on platforms like VIPKid or Preply, and create a teacher profile and outline your specialties. You’ll need a stable internet connection, a quiet teaching space, and a way to deliver lessons online (via Zoom or integrated platform tools).

21. Coach People Online

Online coaching is a growing industry offering significant earning potential. So long as you have experience in a particular skill, you can help others achieve their goals.

Can you make good money?

Richmond Dinh, a ClickFunnels Two Comma Club winner, pioneered “Tiny Challenges” – short, five-day coaching programs that are easy to market and sell. His innovative approach demonstrates how coaching funnels can drive success, even for new coaches. Richmond has won two Two Comma Club awards for generating $1 million twice through two separate coaching funnels.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for individuals with proven experience and niche skills, such as fitness trainers, business consultants, or personal development experts.

How do you start?

Create a coaching funnel using ClickFunnels. Start with a landing page promoting your challenge or coaching program, integrate payment options, and offer email automation to follow up with clients. Add testimonials or case studies to build trust and credibility.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

22. Work as a Virtual Assistant (VA)

A virtual assistant (VA) helps businesses and individuals with tasks like email management, scheduling, social media, or data entry. This side hustle has grown as remote work becomes more prevalent, offering flexible and scalable opportunities for earning.

Who is this for?

This is great for organized, tech-savvy individuals who enjoy assisting others with day-to-day administrative or creative tasks.

How do you start?

Look for opportunities on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr or Virtual Assistant job boards. Alternatively, reach out to your network or small business owners who might benefit from your support. Highlight your skills, experience, and availability when applying.

23. Start Streaming

Streaming involves broadcasting live video content on platforms like Twitch, where users can share their gameplay, and creative projects, or even chat with their audience. Popular streamers monetize through subscriptions, viewer donations, brand sponsorships, and ad revenue. Gamers are a dominant category, but other niches like cooking, fitness, and art have also gained traction.

Who is this for?

Streaming is perfect for individuals who enjoy engaging with others and have a passion for their niche. Whether you’re a gamer, artist, or hobbyist, it’s a great side hustle for extroverted, creative people who want to share their skills or interests.

How do you start?

Create an account on Twitch or a similar platform. Invest in basic streaming equipment, like a webcam and microphone, and choose streaming software like OBS Studio. Start with consistent, high-quality content to build your audience, and engage with viewers to grow your community and monetization opportunities.

24. Create a SaaS

A SaaS (Software as a Service) product is a cloud-based tool that solves a problem for its users.

Can you make good money?

Paul Clifford’s Designrr is a great example of SaaS success. Designrr helps marketers repurpose blog posts or AI-generated content into eBooks and lead magnets, essential for building email lists in content marketing. With subscription plans ranging from $29 to $99 per month, Paul used ClickFunnels to create high-converting landing pages to market Designrr on paid ad channels, earning him a ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club award. He now makes over $3.5 million a year from his SaaS tool.

Who is this for?

This is ideal for tech-savvy individuals or problem-solvers who can identify a market need and develop a tool to address it. It’s especially suited for those willing to invest in developing a scalable, subscription-based product.

How do you start?

Use ClickFunnels to build a sales funnel that markets your SaaS product. Create a landing page highlighting your software’s benefits, integrate a subscription model, and drive traffic through paid ads or organic marketing channels. Start small with a beta version to gather feedback and improve your offering.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

25. Start an Agency

An agency is a business that provides specialized services to clients, often in areas like marketing, design, or consulting.

Can you make good money?

Agencies can be highly profitable when offering in-demand services. Maxwell Finn, founder of Quantum Media, is a great example of agency success. His digital marketing agency focused on helping businesses generate sales through Facebook advertising. By using ClickFunnels to create landing pages and funnels, Maxwell scaled his agency to over $1 million in sales, earning him a ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club award.

Who is this for?

This is perfect for individuals with expertise in a specific field – like marketing, web design, or social media management – who want to monetize their skills by helping other businesses achieve results.

How do you start?

Use ClickFunnels to create a professional landing page showcasing your agency’s services. Include testimonials, case studies, and clear calls to action to attract leads. Offer a free consultation or an introductory service to build trust and grow your client base. Once you’ve established credibility, scale your agency by hiring additional talent and refining your service offerings.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Final Thoughts: Side-Hustles, Part-Time Jobs & Online Businesses to Make Money Every Day

We’ve covered 25 practical ways to make money daily, ranging from side hustles to gig economy jobs and even long-term opportunities that can grow into full-fledged businesses.

Some of these ideas could help you earn a few extra bucks this week.

Others might become a reliable stream of monthly income – or even a business that generates more than your current salary.

Throughout this post, we’ve also shared inspiring stories of ClickFunnels users who started just like you and ended up generating over $1 million through their funnels.

Of course, not everyone who starts a funnel will achieve that level of success.

But if you’re serious about making good money online, ClickFunnels is the key to quickly turning your idea into sales.

With our drag-and-drop landing page builder and tools for safely and efficiently collecting revenue, you can create and launch your funnel in no time.

Even better, you can get started with ClickFunnels for free, thanks to our 14-day trial.

So, what’s stopping you? 

It’s time to take that first step toward creating the income and freedom you deserve.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Thanks for reading Money-Making Ideas You Can Start Today which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Why Leadership Matters For Startups appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Every startup dreams of making it big, breaking through the noise, and finding life-changing success in a competitive landscape.

But founders are always aware of the odds stacked against them.

Around 90% of startups fail, many within just a few years. 

If you’re reading this, then you’re determined not to become another statistic. You want to do everything in your power to make your startup a success.

So how important is leadership?

If you’re interested in the impact that leadership has on startup outcomes, you’re on the right track. Leadership is one of the most critical factors in a startup’s success as it helps to shape both individual and collective performance. 

In this blog post, we’re diving into 7 proven ways that strong leadership can influence and elevate your startup’s trajectory.

A Cautionary Tale – How Bad Leadership Brought a $10 Billion Company to Ruin

If you’re looking for motivation to be a good leader… here’s a story for you.

An extreme one.

But it is an important cautionary tale for any startup looking to implement good leadership in their teams and work culture.

It’s the story of Theranos.

Theranos once held the promise of revolutionizing the medical industry with technology that could run hundreds of blood tests from just a single drop. Elizabeth Holmes founded the company in 2003, and by 2013-2014 it had a valuation of $10 billion. 

Investors who flocked to Theranos included high-profile backers like: 

• Rupert Murdoch (Australian-American investor and owner of Fox News) 
• The Walton family (founder of Walmart)
• Betsy DeVos (Former United States Secretary of Education)

But by 2016, the company’s valuation had plummeted to $0 and Holmes faced criminal charges for fraud.

Three aspects of Holmes’ leadership contributed to this spectacular downfall:

• Dishonesty – Holmes repeatedly claimed that Theranos’ proprietary device, the Edison, could accurately test for numerous conditions from a minimal blood sample. But it couldn’t. Holmes ignored serious technological flaws and battled with her own skeptical internal staff.
• Culture of fear – Employees faced intimidation, legal threats, and even surveillance to keep them from questioning the technology’s validity or discussing the truth outside the company. This environment discouraged transparency and innovation, as employees feared retribution for raising critical concerns.
• Failure – With leaders more focused on maintaining appearances and avoiding scrutiny, the company couldn’t produce technology capable of delivering on its promises. Internal resources were drained, talent was wasted, and the company lost the trust it needed to move forward.

7 Reasons Leadership is Essential in Startups

1. Movements are More Powerful With a Leader

In Expert Secrets, Russell Brunson reveals that every mass movement – whether political, religious, or business-oriented – has a powerful leader at its core. 

Leaders are the focal point that helps rally people around a common vision. 

The more charismatic, transformational, and inspiring a leader is then the stronger the movement becomes. 

Russell explains that the leader’s ability to tell compelling stories plays a huge role in this process. 

In his book, he helps entrepreneurs tap into their unique experiences to craft powerful narratives that resonate with audiences, transforming personal insights into sales scripts that elevate their businesses. 

In fact, Russell applied these very principles to build a movement around ClickFunnels, which helped the company reach $100 million in sales within just three years. 

Get Your Copy Of Expert Secrets For Free!

2. People Look to Leaders for Guidance

In Expert Secrets, Russell Brunson dives deeper into why leaders hold such influence: people look for guidance from those who are living the life they want to lead.

When a person embodies the values and success that others desire, they become a magnet for people seeking direction. 

This is why having a person at the helm of a business is so powerful.

A person or leader is more powerful than any motto, logo, or branding could offer. 

Followers connect emotionally with real people, not just ideas, and this connection drives loyalty, engagement, and growth. 

Expert Secrets how to turn elements of your backstory into an ‘Attractive Character’ which can increase the potency of your sales messages.

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3. Transformational Leadership Has a Direct Impact on Startup Performance

A 2017 study published in the Journal Researching Entrepreneurship found that leadership style has a direct impact on startup performance. 

Analyzing 102 startups and gathering feedback from 372 employees, the study revealed that “transformational leaders” positively influence performance.

Meanwhile “transactional” or “laissez-faire” (non-intervention) leadership styles had a negative effect in early-stage startups.

What is “transformational leadership”? 

Transformational leadership involves leaders who inspire and motivate their teams, showing genuine care for employees’ and customers’ well-being, personal growth, and development. 

This type of leader fosters trust and engagement, which in turn drives productivity and morale. 

4. Leadership is Crucial to Navigate the Challenges of Early-Stage Startups

A study from the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden highlights how crucial strong leadership is in early-stage startups.

Researchers interviewed successful founders and discovered that motivational, capable leaders play a central role in holding a startup together through the early-stage challenges of:

• financial constraints
• talent acquisition
• scaling demands

These founders reported that good leadership provides the necessary stability and focus, helping teams stay resilient and cohesive even when resources are tight or goals feel daunting. 

5. Leaders Who Don’t Communicate Well Lose the Trust of Their Team

The State Of Workplace Communication In 2024 report from Forbes reveals powerful insights on how poor communication from leaders can erode trust within teams.

For over 40% of workers, inadequate communication led to reduced confidence in their leaders-

The number rose to 52% among remote workers. 

This breakdown in trust often stems from actions that increase stress and disrupt work-life balance, such as leaders calling employees after hours or scheduling last-minute video calls. 

By working on building clear rules of communication and being respectful of those rules, you can contribute to building trust in the workplace culture.

6. Well-Trained Leaders are Proven to be More Productive

A 2017 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that managers who received executive coaching and leadership training saw an 88% boost in their productivity. 

This productivity surge was linked to specific, impactful elements of leadership training programs. 

7. Leaders Increase Motivation in Their Teams

More than just generally boosting productivity, leaders can also increase the motivation their team members feel.

This was proved in a 2022 review from Frontiers in Psychology, after analyzing data from 50 independent samples and over 21,000 participants.

The review found that leadership styles like transformational, ethical, leader-member exchange (LMX), servant, and empowering leadership all positively influence motivation. 

Specifically, this kind of positive leadership style helped employees feel valued, autonomous, and committed to their work. 

In contrast, abusive supervision had a detrimental effect on decreasing motivation and morale. 

The findings suggest that leaders who prioritize ethical values, team empowerment, and strong relationships cultivate a motivated workforce which can lead to greater chances of success.

Final Thoughts: The Role of Leadership in a Startup

Strong leadership is a game-changer for startups. 

From building a motivated team to navigating early-stage challenges, leaders set the direction and tone for success.

As we’ve seen in this article, effective leaders inspire loyalty, foster trust through clear communication, and create environments where teams can thrive. 

Studies consistently show that “transformational” leadership styles positively impact team performance, motivation, and even the overall productivity of the organization.

On the flip side, poor communication and toxic leadership erodes trust and damages growth.

For founders and leaders looking to refine their approach, Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets offers a powerful framework. Russell teaches how to create an “attractive character” – a relatable and inspiring persona that becomes the face of a brand or movement. 

This concept helps founders build authentic connections with their teams and audiences. 

With the “attractive character” cheat sheet from Expert Secrets, you’ll also learn to craft compelling sales pitches and scripts that resonate deeply with your target audience.

Click below to get your copy free!

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Thanks for reading Why Leadership Matters For Startups which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Goals To Launch Your Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Founders of new businesses always have too much on their plates.

And when your to-do list is seemingly endless, it’s easy to get lost in the busywork and lose sight what actually drives your business forward.

Goal setting can help you escape this tactical hell. It encourages you to think strategically, focus on the most important tasks, and measure your progress against objective benchmarks.

That’s why today we want to share a proven 4-step goal-setting framework and discuss seven goals that you might want to set for your new business!

Proven 4-Step Framework for Setting Business Goals

There’s a lot of fluff out there related to goal setting that might sound good but isn’t really actionable.

That’s why we want to share this 4-step goal-setting framework that was developed by our friend Alex Hormozi, a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of the private equity firm acquisition.com:

Step #1: What Problem are You Solving?

Any goal that you set for your business should be tied to one of the following three objectives:

1. It should help you get more customers
2. It should help you make the customers worth more
3. It should increase the enterprise value of the company

If you want to improve something but cannot articulate how that will result in more customers, higher customer lifetime value, or higher enterprise value, the chances are that you have fallen into the trap of chasing vanity metrics. 

In that case, you need to take a step back, look at what you are doing, and reorient yourself towards those three key objectives.

Remember, as the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker has put it, there’s nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all!

Step #2: What is Your Hypothesis?

When business owners set goals, they have implicit hypotheses: they hope that doing something will lead to an outcome that they want.

You should make your hypothesis explicit by breaking it down into two parts:

1. The input – What change do you want to make?
2. The output – What do you hope will happen as a result of that change?

For example, here’s a simple hypothesis:

“If I bring in twice as many leads, I’ll make twice as many sales”.

In this case, doubling the number of leads is the input, and doubling the number of sales is the output.

The input should be the goal because you can’t control the output!

Step #3: What are You Going to do?

Now you need to figure out what actions you will have to take in order to create the input of your hypothesis.

For example, if your primary lead generation method is cold email, the simplest way to generate twice as many leads would probably be to send twice as many cold emails. 

Once you are clear on what actions you need to take, you want to break them down into daily, weekly, and monthly targets so that you could measure your progress against objective benchmarks. 

This is especially important for annual goals because without these benchmarks, it can be difficult to stay on track!

Step #4: Was Your Hypothesis Correct?

Once you have achieved your goal in terms of input, you can look at the output to see if your hypothesis is correct.

For example, if you brought in twice as many leads, did it result in twice as many sales? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t.

Entrepreneurship is so unpredictable that you might feel that something is a sure bet and then it just doesn’t go the way you expected for whatever reason. 

That’s why it’s so important to think in terms of hypotheses, put them to the test, and then use what you learn to calibrate your business strategy.

Now let’s discuss seven goals that you might want to consider setting for your new business…

Goal #1: Spend More Time Working on Your Business

If you want to make more money, the easiest way to do that is to simply work more!

We recommend installing time tracking software on your computer and using it for three months to see how much time you are actually spending on various business tasks on an average day, an average week, and an average month.

It will probably turn out to be significantly less than you think. Often, what we categorize as “work time” in our minds is actually riddled with distractions like YouTube, social media, going down random Internet rabbit holes, etc.

If you simply increase the amount of time you spend working on your business and don’t change anything else, the chances are that you will see a corresponding increase in sales, revenue, and profit. 

Goal #2: Spend 50% of Your Time on Customer Acquisition

As Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, put it: almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don’t have are enough customers.

This applies not just to startups but to businesses in general: if you can’t get enough customers, your company won’t survive. 

One potential solution to this problem that Weinberg proposes in his book “Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth” is what he calls the 50% Rule.

Simply put, you should spend half of your time on product development and the other half of your time on customer acquisition. 

This is excellent advice for startup founders who have a tendency to endlessly tinker with their products while their businesses wither due to lack of traction. 

Following the 50% rule can also make sense for e-commerce businesses and info product businesses.

It may be more tricky for service businesses that need to balance client work and client acquisition, but you can always modify it in a way that works for you!

Goal #3: Take 100 Primary Actions Every Day for 100 Days Straight

One of the most common reasons why new businesses fail is simply a lack of consistency: getting them off the ground is difficult and takes time so people often give up too early. 

This is especially true when it comes to businesses that don’t require a large upfront investment: providing online services, selling info products, bootstrapping software, etc. In those cases, failure may not be that big of a deal financially so it’s more tempting to quit when the going gets tough.

A concept that can be helpful here is the “Law of 100” where you commit to doing something 100 times or for 100 days and focus on that goal to stay consistent no matter what.

Here’s how Noah Kagan, the founder of AppSumo and Sumo, explains it:

Our aforementioned friend Alex Hormozi takes it to the next level with something he calls the “Rule of 100” where you commit to taking 100 primary actions for 100 days straight. 

A primary action is something that is directly tied to the three key business objectives that we discussed earlier: getting more customers, increasing customer value and increasing enterprise value.

For example, if your main lead generation method is cold email, you can commit to sending 100 cold emails per day for 100 days straight.

That’s going to add up to 10,000 emails in total in a little bit more than 3 months. It’s probably safe to say that this much outreach in such a short period of time should be enough to jump-start the vast majority of new businesses. 

It’s also worth noting that following the Rule of 100 has the additional benefit of accelerating your speed of learning. If you send 10,000 cold emails in three months, you’ll probably see a drastic improvement in your cold outreach, follow-up, and sales skills.

This applies to anything: the higher the repetition volume, the faster you will learn. You just need to figure out how to make it sustainable so that you won’t burn out!

Goal #4: Drive More Traffic to Your Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is a system designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

For example, we used the Value Ladder sales funnel created by our co-founder Russell Brunson to grow our software company to nine-figures. 

Here’s what the Value Ladder sales funnel looks like:

(If you want to learn more about sales funnels, consider reading Russell’s best-selling book “DotCom Secrets”!)

Generally speaking, if you have a sales funnel that converts, the more traffic you drive to it, the more sales you are going to make. So you might want to set a goal of increasing your sales funnel traffic. 

Of course, it’s important to remember that traffic quality matters: you want to direct your dream customers to your sales funnel, not random people who have no use for your product or service!

Goal #5: Increase Your Sales Funnel Conversion Rates

You can also make more sales with the same amount of traffic by increasing conversion rates across your entire sales funnel:

1. Visitor-to-lead conversion rate
2. Lead-to-customer conversion rate
3. Customer-to-repeat-customer conversion rate

This will require experimenting with design, copy, and offers. 

Sometimes, small tweaks like changing the headlines or adding more social proof can drastically increase the conversion rates of your landing pages and sales pages.

Of course, it’s important to A/B test everything by creating two variations of the same page, driving an equal amount of traffic to them, and then comparing them in terms of conversion rates. 

If you don’t know where to start, we recommend watching this video where Russell shares seven simple hacks that you can implement in your funnel:

Goal #6: Improve Your CLV:CAC Ratio

First-time entrepreneurs often don’t pay enough attention to the math behind their businesses, perhaps because it can be kind of boring or even intimidating if you are not a numbers person.

However, as the best-selling author Dan Kennedy put it, math is the gravity of the direct marketing business. Nothing overcomes bad economics. 

Arguably, the single most important business metric is the ratio between customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC). It shows how much money you get out for every 1$ you put in and is the main indicator of the health of your business. 

(Note that sometimes, customer lifetime value is referred to as simply “lifetime value” and abbreviated as “LTV” instead of “CLV”). 

For example, if your CLV is $2 and your CAC is $1, your CLV:CAC ratio is 2, meaning that you get out $2 for every $1 that you put into customer acquisition. Sounds pretty good!

However, if your CLV is $0.50 and your CAC is $1, your CLV:CAC ratio is 0.5, which means that you only get out $0.50 for every $1 that you put into customer acquisition. You need to fix that math ASAP because you are losing money!

One look at this number can immediately tell you whether your business is sustainable. That’s why you want to calculate it and then always keep track of it.

You can improve your CLV:CAC ratio in two ways:

1. By increasing your CLV
2. By reducing your CAC

We recommend reading our complete guide to customer acquisition if you want to learn more about these metrics and the relationship between them, as well as how to maximize your CLV. 

Also, Alex Hormozi explains the CLV:CAC ratio in detail in this video:

Goal #7: Do 10X More of What’s Already Working

Entrepreneurs are notorious for their susceptibility to the Shiny Object Syndrome where they keep chasing new opportunities instead of maximizing what they already have.

New business owners often do this by adding more customer acquisition channels when they haven’t squeezed everything out of their first one yet. Sure, there’s a lot to be said for diversification, but that stuff is further down the line.

If you have been in business for less than a year, the fastest way to grow your company is probably doing more of what’s already working.

Alex Hormozi encourages entrepreneurs to ask themselves: what’s stopping you from doing 10x more of what’s already working? It often turns out that nothing is stopping them!

Of course, doing 10x more may not always be possible, but in that case, you can probably do at least 2x more, right?

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT? 

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Goals To Launch Your Business which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Startup Team On A Budget appeared first on ClickFunnels.

You can only go so far by yourself as a startup founder.

Eventually, you are going to reach the point where you will need to start bringing in other people in order to grow your company further.

That’s why today we want to share our guide to building a startup team with limited resources!

Do You Want to Build a Lifestyle Business or a Unicorn Startup?

Lifestyle Businesses vs. Unicorn Startups

The word “startup” can be used to refer to both:

• Profit-oriented businesses – where the goal of the founder is to create an income stream that brings in enough money to finance their desired lifestyle. These types of companies are sometimes called “lifestyle businesses”.
• Growth-oriented businesses – where the goal of the founder(s) is to eventually reach a billion-dollar valuation. Companies that succeed at this are known as “unicorns”.

We want to encourage you to think about which path you want to take because building a lifestyle business and building a unicorn startup requires completely different mindsets that are often at odds with each other. 

This also ties into the main topic of our article because you can do the former as a solopreneur but you will definitely need a team for the latter.

Can You Make Seven Figures a Year as a Solopreneur?

You might want to explore the so-called “indie hacker” scene of software entrepreneurs who are building their startups without raising any capital. 

They typically start out as solopreneurs and then either continue growing their businesses by themselves or build a small team over time. 

The most prominent person in that space is Pieter Levels, whose software startups are bringing in more than $230k in monthly revenue at the time of writing, which adds up to more than $2.7M in annual revenue. You can read his book “Make” if you want to get a basic understanding of how indie hackers approach entrepreneurship.

Of course, Levels is an extreme outlier. However, looking into his story and the stories of other successful indie hackers can help you open your mind to new possibilities that you may not have considered before.

It’s possible to make six or even seven figures as a solopreneur without raising capital, building a team, or going through the Silicon Valley startup grind. So if you are not into all that and just want to have a lucrative lifestyle business, it might make sense to go the indie hacker route!

You Will Need a Team of A-Players to Build a Unicorn Startup!

However, if you want to shoot for the moon and attempt to build a billion-dollar company, you will need a team of A-players to stand a chance. That’s what we are going to focus on for the rest of this article.

Y-Combinator is one of the best-known startup accelerators in the world which has invested in more than 4,000 companies. It’s unclear what the exact number of unicorns among them is but some industry insiders estimate it to be over 100. 

Having helped so many companies achieve the coveted unicorn status, Y-Combinator is uniquely qualified to advise startup founders on how to get there.

Today, Sam Altman is best known as the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

However, he began his entrepreneurial journey back in 2005, when he co-founded a startup called Loopt at the age of 19. He went on to raise $30M from several prominent investors, including Y-Combinator.

He eventually ended up joining Y-Combinator as a partner in 2011 and later became the president of this famous startup accelerator, until eventually leaving it to focus on OpenAI in 2020.

We would argue that one of the best resources out there when it comes to building a startup team is Sam Altman’s Stanford lecture called “Team and Execution”, which was a part of Y-Combinator’s “How to Start a Startup” course.

Our article is going to be primarily based on this lecture. We are going to link to it at the end in case you want to watch it!

How to Find a Good Co-Founder

Do You Even Need a Co-Founder?

Sam Altman believes that it’s better to have no co-founder than a bad co-founder.

However, only around 1 in 10 startups that Y-Combinator funds has a solo founder, presumably because they have discovered that companies that have 2-3 co-founders tend to perform the best. 

What Kind of Co-Founder Do You Need?

This isn’t addressed in Altman’s lecture, but generally speaking, co-founders tend to fall into one of these two categories:

1. Business co-founders that can handle marketing and sales – They tend to take on the role of the CEO.
2. Technical co-founders that can handle the engineering – They tend to take on the role of the CTO.

If you don’t have either skillset then it might be worth considering that maybe you are not ready to launch a startup yet. Perhaps it would make more sense to focus on acquiring either technical or business skills instead. 

Also, if you are a business person and think that you don’t need a technical co-founder because you can simply hire engineers instead, you might want to watch this video:

In it, Y-Combinator partners Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell explain why you need a technical co-founder and share advice on how to find one.

In his Stanford lecture, Altman touches on this as well: in his opinion, the approach of hiring engineers without having a technical co-founder doesn’t work well. 

What Qualities Should You Look for in a Co-Founder?

Sam Altman argues that you want a co-founder that is smart, tough, and calm, in addition to being “relentlessly resourceful”.

He also believes that you should know your co-founder well, ideally for years prior to launching your startup. 

Altman disapproves of teaming up with someone you barely know, which is apparently common among college students interested in entrepreneurship. 

According to him, co-founder relationships are among the most important in the entire company. In fact, in the case of Y-Combinator, the number one cause of early startup deaths is co-founder blow-ups.

Being a solo founder is not ideal but it’s much better than co-founding a startup with some random person that you don’t know well!

Where Can You Find a Co-Founder for Your Startup?

Again, you want it to be someone you know, so you should look in your social circle.

If you don’t know anyone who would make a great co-founder, either become a solo founder or focus on expanding your personal network.

Altman suggests working for tech companies where you might meet intelligent people who are interested in entrepreneurship. 

How Should You Negotiate Equity Split With Your Co-Founder?

Altman advises negotiating the equity split between co-founders as early as possible.

However, it’s not enough to split the equity, there should also be a vesting schedule so that it would be clear what will happen if one of you decides to leave. 

At the time he gave his lecture, the default practice in Silicon Valley was a four-year vesting schedule where it takes four years for the founders to earn all their equity, but the clock only starts one year in so that’s five years in total.

For example, if two co-founders agree to split equity 50/50, it will take them five years to earn all of it. However, if they leave in less than a year, they get nothing.

This is designed to prevent situations where one co-founder leaves early with half the company, handicapping the remaining co-founder’s ability to raise capital due to this dead weight on the equity table.

How to Hire Your First Employees

Stay Small for as Long as Possible

Altman cautions against overhiring because the more employees you have, the higher your burn rate.

According to him, in the early days, the goal should be not to hire. You want to have as few employees as possible.

One of the reasons for that is that the cost of a bad early hire is so high: it can kill the entire company!

What Qualities Should You Look for in Early Startup Employees?

Here are the three key questions that Altman would ask himself when evaluating potential candidates:

1. Are they smart?
2. Do they get things done?
3. Do I want to spend a lot of time around them?

In addition to that, Altman would also look for people who had good communication skills, were manically determined, and loved a little bit of risk.

As for experience, he found that its relevance was highly role-dependent. For most early hires in a startup, experience doesn’t matter much, what’s important is aptitude.

Where to Find Good Candidates When Hiring Early Startup Employees

It’s best if your early hires are people that you already know and ideally have worked with before in some capacity.

You can also ask your employees if they know someone who would be a good fit for an open position.

According to Altman, most great companies in tech have been built by personal referrals for the first 100 employees!

Spend Either 0% or 25% of Your Time on Hiring

There’s a lot of debate in the startup world on how much time founders should spend on hiring.

Altman argues that it should be either 0% of your time or 25% of your time. Meaning, you are either not hiring at all or it’s your single biggest block of time.

At first glance, this might seem excessive, but consider that it takes a lot of time to source suitable candidates, review their applications, and interview them. 

In addition to that, Altman advises calling all their references and really grilling them to learn more about that person.

He also recommends giving potential hires trial projects so that you can see what it’s like to work with them.

How Much Equity Should You Give Your Early Employees?

Altman says that as a rough guideline, you should aim to give a total of 10% of your company to your first 10 employees, with a vesting schedule where they have to earn it over four years.

Learn Some Management Skills So That You Could Retain Your Employees

Altman points out that once you hire people, you then need to retain them.

This can prove to be more challenging than you initially expected. He warns that as a first-time founder, you will likely be a bad manager.

So invest some time in learning basic management skills. You need to know how to make your employees feel valued if you want to keep them happy.

Otherwise, you might end up with a high employee turnover, which can be a big problem considering how resource-intensive the hiring process is!

Fire Bad Matches FAST

It’s a terrible feeling to have to fire someone, which is why first-time founders always wait too long to do it. However, once you realize that it’s just not working, you need to let that person go. 

In addition to firing employees who are bad at their jobs, you also want to fire people who create office drama, as well as those who are persistently negative. 

Altman points out that keeping employees like that around creates a drag on the entire company. In fact, it can kill a startup!

Of course, we all make mistakes, we all have bad days and we all get on each other’s nerves sometimes. You shouldn’t fire someone just because they messed up once because everyone will mess up sooner or later, including you.

The “fire fast” principle is about firing people who are consistently causing problems for the company!

Watch: Sam Altman’s “Team and Execution” Stanford Lecture

Here’s the lecture:

We also highly recommend watching the entire “How to Start a Startup” lecture series on Y-Combinator’s YouTube channel!

Do This Before You Start Building Your Startup Team!

Here’s something that you might want to do before you start hiring:

1. Write down all tasks in your business workflow
2. Automate everything that can be automated
3. See if there’s still a need to hire someone

Obviously, if you want to build a unicorn, you will need to start hiring eventually, but as Sam Altman said, in the early days, you should try not to. Automation can help you with that.

Example: Build a Sales Funnel Before You Start Hiring Salespeople

Sales funnels are systems designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

Before you start hiring salespeople, build a sales funnel for your product and see if you can automate it entirely. You might find that you don’t need a sales team after all!

And if complete automation is not possible, you should still automate your sales funnel as much as you can.

That way, once you start bringing in salespeople, they will be able to focus on closing sales instead of wasting time on busy work that doesn’t directly contribute to your company’s bottom line.

Keep in mind that the more streamlined your sales process, the fewer salespeople you will need to make the same amount of sales, which is important when you have limited resources!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert. 

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating. 

But you can also get it directly from us for free… 

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Startup Team On A Budget which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Lessons From Top Entrepreneurs appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Building a business is one of the hardest challenges in life.

But the good news is this: every successful entrepreneur out there has faced obstacles just like the ones you’re going through right now.

By studying their journey, you will find all the clues to success.

Let’s face it.

Trying to build a business without any outside help can be overwhelming. It’s totally normal to feel alone and isolated like you’re stuck in a cycle of mistakes.

But you’re not alone, and you won’t stay stuck.

In this blog post, we’ve gathered the single most important lessons from 10 of the most successful entrepreneurs in history.

Keep reading to skim through these lessons and find the one you need to take your business to the next level.

The Quickest Path to Business Success

Entrepreneurs face incredible challenges when trying to sustain their businesses.

In the United States, statistics show that:

• 20% of new businesses fail within their first year
• 50% of all businesses won’t make it to their fifth anniversary
• 70% of businesses will have closed their doors by the tenth year

The odds are stacked against entrepreneurs.

But there are ways to improve your chances of beating those odds.

Research from National Mentoring Day reveals that 70% of entrepreneurs who receive mentoring survive for five years or more – double the survival rate of those without guidance.

Mentorship can provide insights, strategies, and the kind of know-how that allows entrepreneurs to weather challenges and thrive.

“If I Have Seen Further, it is by Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”

The phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” was popularized by Sir Isaac Newton in 1675.

He used it to acknowledge how his groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics built on the ideas of those who came before him.

Whether by study or mentorship, learning from others increases your chances of success.

This phrase has become a timeless reminder of the power of learning from others. You can’t figure everything out by yourself. Progress often comes not from starting from scratch but by building upon the wisdom and achievements of those who have already paved the way.

For entrepreneurs, this idea is just as relevant today as it was in Newton’s time.

Tony Robbins & “Modeling Success”

The concept of modeling success comes from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).

It teaches that you can replicate someone else’s achievements by understanding and imitating their behaviors, strategies, and thought patterns. Literally so.

Tony Robbins was an early teacher of NLP, and he continues to advise people to “find someone who has achieved the results you want and model what they do.”

This idea has helped countless individuals bypass trial and error by following proven paths to success.

For entrepreneurs, the concept of modeling success is another reminder that learning from others is a shortcut to achieving your goals.

10 Important Lessons You Must Know From Successful Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneurs below have achieved extraordinary success.

In each section below, we’ve identified the core idea the entrepreneur repeated most often or the lesson they are most famously associated with.

In other words…

These are the #1 insights from 10 of history’s most successful entrepreneurs, distilled to help you on your journey.

1. Elon Musk: Solve the Big Problems

The Lesson

Elon Musk’s companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, were all founded with the mission of solving humanity’s biggest problems.

Tesla addresses climate change by accelerating the transition to sustainable energy with electric vehicles and renewable energy products.

SpaceX tackles the long-term survival of humanity by developing technologies to colonize Mars, ensuring life can exist beyond Earth.

Neuralink aims to merge human intelligence with AI to prepare for a future where artificial intelligence plays a dominant role.

Musk’s vision is always centered on addressing challenges that impact present and future generations.

The Backstory

At age 14, Musk faced an existential crisis, searching for purpose in life.

He read philosophers like Schopenhauer but found no answers.

But he revealed during a 2013 interview at the Computer History Museum that it was the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that sparked a revelation.

The story of Arthur Dent, a man who hitches a ride into space after Earth’s impending destruction, resonated deeply with Musk. He realized the importance of working on problems that affect humanity on a grand scale – both now and in the future.

This philosophy of “longtermism” has shaped all of his ventures.

The Quote

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

2. Jeff Bezos: Start With the Customer

The Lesson

Jeff Bezos built Amazon on a single guiding principle: the customer experience is everything.

He believes that offering low prices, a wide selection, ease of use, and great customer service creates the foundation for a successful business.

Everything Amazon does – its logistics, technology, and innovations – is designed to deliver an exceptional experience for the customer.

The Backstory

In a 1999 interview, Jeff Bezos laid out Amazon’s core philosophy.

When the interviewer suggested Amazon was more than an “internet company” because of its warehouses and growing team of employees, Bezos dismissed the label entirely.

“Internet schminternet,” he said.

What truly matters is how those warehouses and employees contribute to improving the customer experience – i.e. getting products to them faster and cheaper.

Bezos knew that no matter the platform, obsessing over the customer’s needs would lead to long-term success both for shareholders and the business itself.

The Quote

“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.”

3. Oprah Winfrey: Find Your Calling

The Lesson

Your business should align with what truly energizes and inspires you.

Oprah believes that if you’re dedicating your time and future to building something, it should be something you’re deeply passionate about.

That passion will fuel your work and connect with others in meaningful ways.

The Backstory

In the late 1970s, Oprah landed a reporter role at Baltimore’s WJZ station – a major career break.

But she soon discovered that she disliked the sensationalism of news reporting, which prioritized attention-grabbing over genuine storytelling.

She was eventually demoted to hosting a talk show, a move that felt like a failure at first.

However, during her first interview with Tom Carvel, the inventor of soft-serve ice cream, she realized something profound.

In her book The Path Made Clear, Oprah reflects: “That day my job ended and my calling began.”

In 1984, she relocated to Chicago to host a low-rated morning talk show.

Within months, her authentic approach turned it into the city’s highest-rated talk show and eventually led to the launch of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the #1 daytime talk show in America.

The Quote

“I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”

4. Richard Branson: Be a People Person

The Lesson

Richard Branson believes the cornerstone of successful entrepreneurship is being a people person.

He believes that genuinely caring for your team, inspiring them, and fostering a collaborative environment are essential from the very beginning. 

Avoid self-centered leadership, and you’ll be well-equipped for business challenges.

The Backstory

Richard Branson’s leadership style is deeply rooted in his belief in the power of people. 

From the inception of Virgin Records in 1972, he prioritized creating a company culture where employees felt valued and empowered. This approach extended across the Virgin Group’s diverse ventures, from airlines to space travel. 

Branson’s commitment to his team was evident during crises, such as the early financial struggles of Virgin Atlantic, where he worked alongside his employees to keep the airline afloat. 

He told the ILoveMarketing podcast in 2011 that being good with people is the “key to becoming an entrepreneur”.

He said that, when you’re a great leader, your team will work “day and night” to keep whatever it is you’re creating alive.

The Quote

“The absolute key to becoming an entrepreneur…is how good you are with people. If you genuinely care about people, if you can draw out the best in people, and not criticise people…They’ll work day and night to try to keep whatever it is that you’re creating alive, and make sure it survives.”

5. Warren Buffet: Invest in Yourself

The Lesson

Warren Buffett, the world’s most famous investor, believes the best investment you can make is in yourself.

By developing your skills, talents, and knowledge, you’re creating an asset that pays dividends for the rest of your life.

More specifically, Buffet advocates investing in your communication skills.

The Backstory

In a 2019 interview with Yahoo Finance, Buffett shared that achieving success comes down to three words: “Invest in yourself.”

He explained that growing your abilities and addressing your weaknesses is the surest way to increase your value.

Buffett himself took this advice early in life.

In a separate Forbes article, Buffer wrote that he was terrified of public speaking as a young man.

But he invested $100 in a Dale Carnegie course. It transformed his life.

The impact was immediate – he even proposed to his wife during the course, encouraged by his new skills.

That confidence helped him thrive in his career, selling stocks in Omaha at just 21 years old, despite looking even younger.

Buffett stresses that everyone has untapped potential and that the effort you put into improving yourself offers lifelong rewards.

The Quote

“The best investment you can make is in yourself.”

6. Reid Hoffman: Infinite Learning Curves

The Lesson

One of Reid Hoffman’s core beliefs is that entrepreneurship is about learning through iteration.

Instead of being paralyzed by inexperience, Hoffman encourages entrepreneurs to approach challenges with fresh perspectives and use every mistake as an opportunity to improve.

Success comes not from perfection but from an infinite learning curve that allows you to adapt, pivot, and scale quickly.

The Backstory

Hoffman’s entrepreneurial journey began when he was just 12 years old, advising the CEO of a gaming company on improving their product.

This early experience sparked his passion for entrepreneurship, but it wasn’t without failures.

He told Forbes that his first company, SocialNet, didn’t succeed due to a lack of understanding about how to grow a business in the emerging internet space.

Hoffman learned from these mistakes and applied his insights at LinkedIn, which he built by focusing on professional networking, a contrarian idea at the time.

Through these experiences, he developed the philosophy of learning and adapting quickly, a principle he also shared in his book Blitzscaling.

Hoffman believes that experimentation, even when it involves failure, is key to being successful.

The Quote

“You have to have a high willingness to make and survive mistakes, learn from them quickly, change your mind, and have an infinite learning curve.”

7. Sara Blakely: Understand Your Customer 

The Lesson

Sara Blakely’s success with Spanx began with a deep understanding of her customers’ needs.

She identified a problem that many women faced – uncomfortable and unflattering hosiery – and developed a solution that resonated with her target audience.

Blakely went on to become the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.

The Backstory

Before founding Spanx, Sara Blakely sold fax machines door-to-door in Florida.

She was required to wear pantyhose in the hot climate.

But she told Forbes that she hated the look of the seamed feet with open-toed shoes while appreciating how control-top pantyhose smoothed her figure.

This personal frustration inspired her to cut the feet off her pantyhose and experiment with creating a better product.

Determined to turn her idea into reality, she spent two years researching and developing her concept while working her day job.

When she pitched her idea to hosiery manufacturers in North Carolina, she faced repeated rejection.

That is, until one manufacturer’s daughters encouraged him to take her seriously.

Blakely’s unwavering belief in her idea and her customers’ needs ultimately turned her concept into a billion-dollar brand.

The Quote

“Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?”

8. Mark Cuban: Learn to Sell

The Lesson

Mark Cuban believes that learning to sell is one of the most essential skills for any entrepreneur.

No matter how great your product or service is, if you can’t sell it, you won’t succeed.

The Backstory

Mark Cuban shared his philosophy on selling in a video interview with GQ Sports.

After buying the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million, Cuban knew that improving sales was crucial to turning the struggling team around.

So the first thing he did was put his desk in the middle of the sales department.

He grabbed a phone, printed out a list of past customers, and began cold-calling people to sell $8 tickets to Mavericks games.

Cuban demonstrated that no task is beneath a leader and that learning to sell is a skill that can make or break a business.

By diving into the trenches and fixing the problem at its source, he transformed the Mavericks into one of the most valuable franchises in sports.

The Quote

“You have to be able to sell, because you don’t want to be in a position where you’re dependent on other people.”

9. Tim Ferriss: Automate and Delegate

The Lesson

Tim Ferriss revolutionized the way entrepreneurs approach time management.

To achieve success while maintaining freedom, entrepreneurs must master the art of automating and delegating tasks.

The Backstory

In 2007, Tim Ferriss published The 4-Hour Workweek, a groundbreaking book that changed how entrepreneurs think about work and success.

Ferriss talks about how he ran a successful supplements business – but burned himself out in the process. 

The book became a manual for designing a lifestyle where work serves life, not the other way around. Ferriss outlined strategies to automate repetitive tasks, eliminate inefficiencies, and delegate effectively to maximize productivity and reduce working hours.

The book’s philosophy resonated with entrepreneurs worldwide, inspiring countless readers to rethink how they approach their businesses and lives.

The Quote

“Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How’s that for incentive to be effective and efficient?”

10. Gary Vaynerchuk: Depth Matters More Than Width

The Lesson

Gary Vaynerchuk believes in the power of depth over width.

It’s a concept he introduced in his book #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media & Self-Awareness.

The concept is based on the idea that meaningful connections with customers – even if it’s just one person – are the key to creating lasting impact and success.

The Backstory

Gary Vaynerchuk started late in entrepreneurship, initially running his father’s liquor store.

He transformed the small family business into an empire by launching Wine Library, a YouTube channel where he passionately helped viewers understand wine.

The show became a massive hit – not because of high-budget production or Gary’s encyclopedic wine knowledge, but because he focused on providing real value and connecting with his audience.

This philosophy carried over to his later ventures, including VaynerMedia, where Gary emphasized authentic, meaningful engagement with customers.

He believes that depth – genuine attention, effort, and care – is far more important than chasing numbers or popularity.

The Quote

“Depth matters more than width. The smallest meaningful, intentional act will mean much more than a huge one that lacks intent or substance.”

Building an Online Business? Here’s 1 More Crucial Lesson

The entrepreneurs we’ve explored offer timeless lessons for building and growing a business.

But in today’s world, making sales online is its own unique challenge.

If your goal is to sell effectively online, there’s one more lesson you need to know – from ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson.

The Lesson

Russell Brunson discovered that sales funnels are the ultimate tool for converting readers into leads and leads into sales.

Unlike traditional websites, which overwhelm visitors and lead to low conversions, funnels guide customers step-by-step toward a purchase.

This is the core idea of ClickFunnels.

It’s the very same concept, that Russell applied to grow ClickFunnels as a business, which brought in $100 million in sales in the company’s first three years of existence.

The Backstory

Before founding ClickFunnels, Russell made his first serious money online selling DVDs teaching people how to make Potato Guns. 

Initially, he relied on a traditional website to sell a $37 DVD.

But when Google Ads prices rose, his business became unprofitable overnight.

A friend suggested he use upsells – what we now call sales funnels – to increase revenue from each customer.

Russell added a $200 potato gun kit as an upsell. It made him profitable again.

This simple funnel allowed him to turn every $50 in ad spend into $102 in revenue.

That revelation became the foundation of ClickFunnels, helping entrepreneurs worldwide scale their businesses.

The Quote

“Funnels make me money. Websites make me broke.”

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Final Thoughts: 10 Lessons From Successful Entrepreneurs

In this article, we looked at how the world’s most successful entrepreneurs – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, and others – have each picked up important business lessons that every entrepreneur should study.

But while their insights lay the foundation for success, making sales in today’s digital world requires a new level of strategy.

Russell Brunson’s approach to using sales funnels provides the missing piece of the puzzle.

Funnels streamline your customer journey, maximizing conversions and revenue in ways traditional websites can’t.

Whether you’re launching a new product, growing your audience, or scaling your business, ClickFunnels can help you turn visitors into leads and leads into loyal customers.

Success leaves clues, and now you have the blueprint.

Combined with the power of ClickFunnels, your business is ready to reach its full potential.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Thanks for reading Lessons From Top Entrepreneurs which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Metrics To Drive Your Startup’s Growth appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If you’re a startup founder – or just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey – then this article could be the most important thing you read all year.

Metrics are critical to the success of your startup.

They act as powerful milestones that validate your business’s status, growth, and potential.

More than just numbers on a dashboard, metrics are the first thing investors scrutinize when evaluating a potential opportunity, and any funding will rely on good selection and tracking of metrics.

But with so many possibilities, which metrics should you focus on?

In this post, we’ve drawn insights from Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z), one of the world’s leading venture capital firms, managing $44 billion in committed capital.

These are the 11 key metrics they rely on when deciding where to invest.

Keep reading to discover the metrics that could guide your startup to success!

11 Essential Metrics You Need for Success With Your Startup Success

1. Revenue

Revenue is the total amount of money generated by your business through the sale of goods or services before any expenses are deducted.

Why it’s Important:

Revenue is the foundation of your startup’s financial health and scalability. High revenue growth often signals strong demand, it validates your business model and is usually the first metric that investors look for.

Here are some of the main ways that startups track their revenue:

1. Deferred Revenue

Deferred revenue refers to income received by a company for goods or services that have not yet been delivered. For example, a SaaS company might collect payment upfront for a subscription or service that spans several months, but the revenue is recognized incrementally as the service is provided.

2. Recurring Revenue

Recurring revenue refers to predictable, stable income generated on a regular basis. This includes Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) or the total subscription revenue generated in a month; and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) which is the annualized version of recurring revenue.

2. Bookings

Bookings represent the total value of a contractual agreement between your company and a customer.

Why it’s Important:

Bookings are a key metric for startups as they provide insight into the demand for your product or service and future cash flow potential. For early-stage businesses, they demonstrate traction and validate product-market fit.

3. Gross Merchandise Value (GMV)

Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) represents the total sales dollar volume of all goods or services transacted through a marketplace within a specific period.

For example, if an e-commerce marketplace sells 1,000 items priced at $50 each, the GMV for that period is $50,000. Importantly, GMV is not the same as revenue, as it includes the total transaction value without deducting marketplace fees or other costs.

Why it’s Important:

GMV is a critical metric for marketplace startups as it serves as a barometer of marketplace size and growth.

4. Gross Profit

Gross Profit is the total revenue your business generates minus the direct costs associated with producing and delivering your product or service.

These costs typically include manufacturing expenses, delivery costs, and support services.

Why it’s Important:

Gross Profit is a critical metric for startups because it offers insight into the profitability and efficiency of your revenue streams. While top-line growth (like bookings) shows demand, gross profit reveals how efficiently the business generates profit from that demand.

5. Total Contract Value (TCV)

Total Contract Value (TCV) is the total monetary value of a single contract between your startup and a customer.

Why it’s Important:

TCV is a crucial metric for startups as it gives investors a clearer picture of deal sizes and the revenue potential of each customer. Investors can assess whether you’re closing high-value deals, which may indicate product-market fit in higher-value market segments.

Additionally, understanding TCV enables better forecasting of long-term revenue and helps align sales strategies with company goals.

Here are two different ways to look at the TCV:

1. Total Contract Value (TCV):

As mentioned above, TCV includes all revenue components within the contract, such as recurring charges (e.g., subscriptions), one-time charges (e.g., setup fees), and professional service fees. The TCV demonstrates the average deal size, providing a comprehensive understanding of the total monetary value generated per customer.

2. Annual Contract Value (ACV):

ACV measures the value of the contract over a 12-month period. Offers insight into how much revenue you can expect from a customer annually, helping to standardize comparisons across contracts with different timeframes.

6. Lifetime Value (LTV)

Lifetime Value (LTV) is the present value of the future net profit generated from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship with your business.

Why it’s Important:

LTV is a critical metric for startups because it determines the long-term value of each customer. By understanding LTV, you can assess how much net profit your business generates per customer after accounting for acquisition and retention costs.

This insight helps shape marketing budgets, pricing strategies, and customer experience initiatives.

Here are two ways to look at it:

1. Lifetime Value (LTV):

A common mistake is to calculate LTV as the present value of revenue or gross margin of the customer rather than as the net profit generated over the relationship’s duration. Properly calculating LTV requires considering all costs, including customer support, product delivery, and retention strategies.

2. Contribution Margin Per Customer (Per Month):

The profit is generated from a customer each month after accounting for variable costs, such as selling, administrative, and operational expenses. This provides a clearer picture of profitability by showing the true value of a customer after subtracting costs directly tied to serving them.

3. Average Lifespan of a Customer (In Months):

The expected duration a customer will stay with your business. Knowing how long customers typically stay helps in projecting long-term revenue and profitability.

4. LTV to CAC Ratio:

The LTV to CAC ratio measures how efficiently your business turns customer acquisition costs (CAC) into long-term value. It is calculated by dividing the LTV by CAC. For example, if your LTV is $3,000 and your CAC is $1,000, your LTV to CAC ratio is 3:1.

7. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) measures the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including expenses like marketing, sales, referral fees, and other related efforts.

Why it’s Important:

CAC is a vital metric for understanding how much your business spends to gain new customers. It helps evaluate the efficiency of your marketing and sales efforts and ensures your customer acquisition strategies are sustainable and profitable.

There are different ways to calculate CAC:

1. Blended CAC:

Blended CAC is calculated by dividing the total acquisition cost by the total number of new customers acquired across all channels. Many businesses default to calculating CAC as a blended cost because it provides a comprehensive view of overall acquisition efficiency.

2. Paid, Organic, and Inorganic CAC:

Breaking down CAC by acquisition channel involves calculating the cost of acquiring customers through paid efforts (e.g., ads), organic methods (e.g., SEO, referrals), or inorganic means (e.g., partnerships).

Analyzing CAC by channel helps determine if scaling specific channels, such as paid acquisition, is profitable. For instance, a high-paid CAC might indicate diminishing returns, whereas a low organic CAC might highlight opportunities to invest further in content or referral strategies.

8. Active Users

Active Users refers to the number of unique users engaging with your platform, app, or SaaS product within a specific period.

Why it’s Important:

Tracking active users helps measure the success of your product in attracting and retaining users over time. It provides valuable insights into user behavior, product stickiness, and overall platform health, which are essential for driving growth and improving customer experience.

There are different ways to measure active users depending on your product:

1. Weekly or Monthly Active Users (WAU/MAU):

WAU and MAU measure the number of unique users who interact with your product within a week or month, respectively.

2. Other kinds of engagement:

Depending on your business model, you can track more granular user activities, such as how often users log in, send messages, or use specific features within a given time frame.

9. Month-On-Month Growth (MoM Growth)

Month-On-Month (MoM) Growth measures the percentage change in a specific metric – such as revenue, users, or transactions – from one month to the next.

It is commonly used by platforms, apps, and SaaS businesses to track their growth trajectory over time.

Why it’s Important:

MoM Growth is crucial for assessing short-term progress and identifying growth trends in rapidly evolving markets. It helps businesses evaluate the effectiveness of recent strategies, make data-driven decisions, and forecast future performance.

MoM Growth is usually tied to a specific metric and sometimes, depending on your product, there are different ways to measure it such as:

• Compounded Monthly Growth Rate (CMGR):

• CMGR calculates the average growth rate over multiple months, providing a smoother and more reliable view of growth compared to fluctuating single-month metrics. CMGR is especially relevant for marketplaces and other businesses with volatile month-to-month activity.

10. Churn Rate

Churn Rate measures the percentage of customers, revenue, or units lost over a specific period, indicating how effectively a business retains its users or revenue streams.

Why it’s Important:

Churn Rate is a vital metric for SaaS businesses, subscription models, and platforms where retention drives growth. High churn signals problems with customer satisfaction, product-market fit, or competition, while low churn indicates a loyal and stable customer base.

There’s a huge variety of ways to measure churn:

1. Dollar Churn:

The percentage of recurring revenue lost in a specific period due to customer cancellations or downgrades. Particularly relevant for subscription-based businesses, as it directly impacts Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and provides insights into revenue retention rather than customer numbers.

2. Customer Churn:

The percentage of customers lost during a given period. Valuable for businesses with high customer volumes, such as e-commerce or marketplaces, as it helps track overall customer satisfaction and retention rates.

3. Net Dollar Churn:

The percentage of MRR lost, adjusted for upsells or expansions. Commonly used in SaaS, this metric provides a net view of revenue retention, combining churn with the impact of customer growth through upgrades or cross-sales.

4. Monthly Unit Churn:

The percentage of customers lost in a given month, is calculated as lost customers divided by the prior month’s total customers. Ideal for high-volume businesses that want a granular view of customer attrition trends over time.

5. Retention by Cohort:

Tracks customer retention within a specific group (cohort) over time, calculated as the percentage of the original customer base still active in subsequent months.

Helps businesses identify trends in customer behavior by segment, making it valuable for subscription businesses or platforms with diverse customer types.

6. Gross Churn:

The percentage of MRR lost due to cancellations or downgrades in a given month. Shows the total revenue lost from churn, helping businesses understand the downside risk without factoring in upsells.

7. Net Churn:

The percentage of MRR lost after accounting for upsells and expansions. Reflects the net impact of churn, upsells, and expansions, making it a crucial metric for SaaS businesses focused on maximizing net revenue retention.

11. Burn Rate

Burn Rate is the rate at which a company uses up its cash reserves to cover operating expenses and other outflows.

It reflects how quickly a startup is “burning” through its available cash.

Why it’s Important:

Especially in early-stage startups, monitoring the burn rate is critical because companies fail when they run out of cash without sufficient time to secure additional funding or reduce expenses.

Burn rate helps founders and investors assess how much runway remains and whether financial strategies are sustainable.

There are a few common metrics used to measure the burn rate:

1. Monthly Cash Burn:

Monthly cash burn measures the average cash outflow per month.  This metric is crucial for tracking how quickly a business is spending its cash reserves.

It’s particularly relevant for startups that are pre-revenue or in the early growth stages, as it provides a straightforward indicator of sustainability.

2. Net Burn:

Net burn calculates the true amount of cash a company is losing each month, factoring in revenues. This measure accounts for both expenses and revenue, making it a more accurate representation of financial health.

It’s especially relevant for startups generating some revenue but not yet profitable, as it shows the gap between income and expenditures.

3. Gross Burn:

Gross burn focuses solely on cash outflows, including operating expenses and other cash outlays, without factoring in revenue. Gross burn is useful for understanding the total cash requirements of a business.

It’s particularly relevant for pre-revenue startups or during periods of rapid scaling, where expenses are high, and revenue has not yet caught up.

BONUS: 7 More Popular Startup Metrics

1. Cash Runway

Cash runway is the amount of time a business can continue operating before running out of cash, based on its current burn rate.

2. Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA)

EBITDA measures a company’s profitability by calculating earnings before subtracting interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

3. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS gauges customer satisfaction and loyalty by measuring how likely customers are to recommend a product or service to others.

4. North Star Metric (NSM)

The North Star Metric is a single key metric that reflects the core value your product delivers to customers, guiding growth and strategy.

5. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

CPA measures the average cost of acquiring a new customer through marketing and sales efforts.

6. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as signing up, purchasing, or completing a specific task.

7. Average Order Size (AOS)

AOS is the average dollar amount spent per transaction, calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of orders.

The #1 Mistake Startups Make When Tracking Metrics

Many startup founders focus on metrics primarily to attract investors.

In many cases, they emphasize figures that paint the most favorable picture.

But this approach doesn’t end well.

Metrics should serve to assess and improve the financial health of your own business – i.e. metrics are most important for you, the founder, and your goal of creating a profitable business.

If you’re not selling, no metric can obscure this reality.

How to Ensure Your Startup is Cash Positive (Even Without Funding)

ClickFunnels is designed to enhance your business’s financial health by improving lead generation, sales, and average order value through high-converting sales funnels.

In fact, it’s specifically designed to help startups who don’t even have funding.

ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson took the business to $14 million in its first year and to $100 million in annual sales by year 5 without any outside capital – only using the ClickFunnels software.

Its features include built-in upsells, cross sells, and tools like email automation to generate and nurture leads.

And its not just ClickFunnels themselves.

Many successful startups and businesses utilize ClickFunnels to drive growth.

Here are a few examples from our friends at Starter Story:

• Writing Income Accelerator: An online course that teaches intermediate-level writers how to command $1,000 – $3,000 per article, generating $10,000 in monthly revenue.
• Entrepreneurs on Fire: A podcast offering online courses, coaching, and a mastermind program, with a monthly revenue of $202,000.
• Modern Producers: An e-commerce platform selling software and tools for modern music producers, earning $120,000 per month.
• Pawstruck: A dog treat business providing all-natural, reasonably-priced pet supplies, with a monthly revenue of $1.75 million.
• Lost Empire Herbs: A supplements company specializing in high-quality, phyto-androgenic herbs, achieving $320,000 in monthly revenue.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Final Thoughts: Key Metrics for Startup Success

In this article, we covered 11 essential metrics and 7 bonus metrics for startups.

But, metrics are not only to attract investors.

Metrics should be used to assess and improve operations, ensuring profitability and sustainable growth – key factors investors ultimately seek.

ClickFunnels helps businesses achieve this by optimizing lead generation, sales, and average order value with high-converting sales funnels, built-in upsells, cross sells, and email automation tools.

 Successful startups like Entrepreneurs on Fire and Pawstruck use ClickFunnels to scale.

Start your journey with a 14-day free trial today!

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Thanks for reading Metrics To Drive Your Startup’s Growth which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Smart Strategies To Boost Startup Marketing With Video appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Video is becoming the dominant medium of digital content consumption.

Not only are YouTube and TikTok continuing to grow, but other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are increasingly prioritizing video content as well.

Entrepreneurs need to adapt to this trend because it’s unlikely to stop anytime soon. But how can you incorporate video content into your marketing strategy?

That’s exactly what we are going to discuss today!

What Equipment do You Need for Video Marketing?

Video Camera

Video quality doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Your smartphone camera is probably good enough to get started with video marketing. You can always get a better camera later!

Good Microphone

This might sound counterintuitive but audio quality is much more important than video quality when it comes to video marketing. Why?

Because it’s the content that matters: if your video quality is meh but the audio is crisp, the viewers can still get value out of it. However, if they have to struggle to make out what you are saying, they will probably just leave after a few seconds.

Also, consider that the default mode of consuming long-form video content is playing it in the background. If people can’t put your video on while doing chores because its audio quality is too low, they probably won’t bother watching it at all.

Unlike your smartphone camera, your smartphone mic probably isn’t good enough for video marketing, which is why we recommend investing in a professional-grade microphone!

Set Lighting

If you intend to shoot “talking head” style videos where you just talk into the camera, having a basic lighting setup can really elevate the production quality. It doesn’t have to be fancy – even a simple ring light can make a big difference!

Follow These Video Marketing Best Practices

Target Your Dream Customers

Your videos should be designed to attract your dream customers so that you can then drive traffic from that platform to your sales funnel.

However, that is easier said than done because video marketing vanity metrics such as views can easily lead you astray. How so?

By definition, the broader the content, the more people it will appeal to and the easier it will be to get views, so it might be tempting to go as broad as possible.

However, from the business perspective, it doesn’t really matter how many people watch your video, what matters is how many viewers convert into leads and eventually into paying customers.

Check out the video below in which our friend Alex Hormozi shares a story of someone who only had around 5,800 Instagram followers and was making nearly $1M per year by creating niche content for her dream customers and then selling them her products:

Focus On the Content Quality

Once again, it’s the content that matters: viewers probably won’t mind low production quality as long as the content quality is high.

A great example of this is Tina Huang’s video on how to choose between software engineering and data science.

It’s just her talking into a camera with some random Amazon boxes in the background but the comment section is full of people thanking her for helping them decide which path to take.

What’s most important is giving the viewer what they want, whatever that might mean for that particular video.

That’s what’s going to make people watch it in its entirety, subscribe to your channel and come back for more!

Use the “Hook, Story, Offer” Copywriting Framework

We recommend using the “Hook, Story, Offer” copywriting framework for your video scripts:

• Hook the viewer in the first few seconds of your video – You need to pique their curiosity so that they would feel inclined to continue watching.
• Tell the viewer a compelling story related to the main subject of the video – Ideally, you want to share how you struggled with the same problem that they are struggling with and incorporate the solution into the narrative, but if that’s not possible, at least preface the information with a relevant story.
• End the video by pitching your free offer to the viewer. We’ll talk about lead magnets later in the article.

How exactly implementing this framework is going to look will depend on the video in question. However, your YouTube videos, TikTok shorts and video ads should all follow the same “Hook, Story, Offer” structure!

Best Ways to Market Your Startup With Videos

#1: Build a YouTube Channel

YouTube is the largest video platform in the world. At the time of writing, it has over 2.7 billion monthly active users.

We believe that a YouTube channel is the best foundation for a startup video marketing strategy. Why?

Because YouTube still revolves primarily around long-form videos unlike other platforms that are completely dominated by short-form content that is much more ephemeral. 

Comprehensive videos that target specific keywords are more likely to attract people who are looking for a solution to a problem that your product addresses.

We recommend watching this video by Vanessa Lau if you want to learn how to build a successful YouTube channel:

#2: Build a TikTok Channel

You also want to repurpose your long-form videos into short-form videos and publish them both as YouTube shorts and TikTok shorts. Why?

Shorts are more likely to go viral and therefore can help you expand your reach, increase your brand recognition, and build trust with potential customers.

It’s probably safe to say that most people watch shorts for entertainment as opposed to seeking a solution to a specific problem.

However, if one of your shorts pops up in their feed and they like it, they might check out your channel, subscribe to it and start watching your long-form stuff.

Fortunately, AI tools like Descript make it super easy to repurpose content. Check out this video where Vanessa Lau explains how she edits her YouTube videos and repurposes them into shorts:

#3: Regularly do Q&A Livestreams

We believe that livestreams are an underutilized video marketing tactic.

Consider giving potential customers an opportunity to ask you questions by regularly hosting Q&A livestreams on YouTube.

You can start with a monthly Q&A livestream and then potentially increase the frequency to weekly as your audience grows.

Doing this can help you build trust with your audience, gain a better understanding of what’s important to your dream customers, and learn to communicate the value of your product more effectively.

Make sure to promote these livestreams to your email list, on your social media, and in your YouTube video descriptions!

#4: Post Videos On Social Media

Traditionally, the term “video marketing” has been associated with video hosting platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

However, we also recommend sharing your short-form videos on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as they are becoming increasingly dominated by video content.

Ideally, you want to start posting one short clip a day in addition to your regular social media content. Each video should be accompanied by text designed to give people a reason to stop scrolling, click on the video, and watch it.

Video content has the most viral potential so it can help you grow your social media following faster!

#5: Run Video Ads

Let’s be real:

Everyone hates ads.

Especially the ads that start playing before the video that you want to watch and the ads that interrupt the video that you are already watching!

That’s why if you want to use video ads to promote your product, you need to make sure that they hook the viewer immediately and are genuinely entertaining to watch.

Keep in mind that if your ad is boring, people will either skip it if they can or leave it to play while they go make themselves a cup of coffee. So how can you create something that your dream customers would want to watch?

The best way to learn how to do that is to study video ads that have gone viral in the past. Here are some examples:

Example #1: Tai Lopez’ “Here In My Garage (Official): Lamborghini, Knowledge, And Books With Tai Lopez”

This is probably the single most successful video ad in history. It has 71M views at the time of writing.

Example #2: “DollarShaveClub.com – Our Blades Are F***ing Great”

This video ad, which has 28M views at the time of writing, was extremely successful and helped Dollar Shave Club founders get their company off the ground:

Example #3: “This Gold Digger Got Rich Painting Nude Squirrels 🐿 – ClickFunnels”

This is our most successful video ad which has 925k views at the time of writing:

Use Sales Funnels to Convert Viewers Into Leads and Customers

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a system designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a freebie that you give to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.

We recommend considering Eugene Schwartz’s five stages of customer awareness that he outlined in his classic book “Breakthrough Advertising”:

1. Unaware
2. Problem-aware
3. Solution-aware
4. Product-aware
5. Most aware

Educational lead magnets such as free Ebooks, video classes, and online courses can work well if you are targeting people who are problem-aware.

For example, some entrepreneurs who know that they want to grow their businesses (problem) may not be aware of the fact that sales funnels are the best way to do it (solution).

In that case, we use educational lead magnets such as our co-founder Russell Brunson’s book “DotCom Secrets” to show them the value of sales funnels and then pitch them our funnel builder software.

Meanwhile, if you are targeting potential customers who are solution-aware, you can pitch them your product directly and use your free trial as a lead magnet.

For example, if someone already knows that they need a sales funnel to grow their business and is looking for a funnel builder, we pitch them our software and encourage them to check it out with our free trial.

Ideally, you want to have both educational lead magnets and a free trial in your arsenal!

How to Build a Lead Magnet Funnel for Your Startup

There are many different sales funnel templates that can work well for startups but we recommend starting with the lead magnet funnel because it’s the simplest one.

It consists of just two pages:

1. Lead magnet landing page where you present your lead magnet and ask for the potential customer’s email address in exchange for it.
2. Thank you page where you thank the potential customer, explain how they can get access to your lead magnet, and tell them what they should expect from you in the future.

Note that if your lead magnet is a free trial, you can use your homepage as your landing page. That’s what we do on our website.

Once you have your lead magnet funnel, you can start driving traffic to it by promoting your lead magnet at the end of your videos. In addition to that, you can also promote your it on social media as well as with paid ads!

How to Convert Leads Into Customers With Email Marketing

Once the potential customer gives you their email address, you want to send them this welcome sequence:

• Email #1: Introduce yourself to the new subscriber.
• Email #2: Share your origin story. How did your startup come about?
• Email #3: Explain what problem you are trying to solve with your product.
• Email #4: Explain what makes you qualified to solve that problem. Share relevant experience, credentials, and accomplishments.
• Email #5: Explain who are your dream customers and share a case study on how your product helped someone like that get the results that they wanted. 

Then, if you used an educational lead magnet, send them a sixth email immediately after the case study, pitch your product, and invite them to start their free trial. 

Meanwhile, if you used a free trial lead magnet, continue sending them case studies until it ends and then pitch them your product with a special, one-time discount.

In addition to that, you want to also send free trial users updates on how they are doing. Draw their attention to the results that your product has helped them achieve and celebrate their wins.

Finally, you should launch a weekly newsletter so that you would have an excuse to email your subscribers on a regular basis. This will help you stay top of mind with both potential and existing customers.

We recommend watching this video by Brian Dean, the founder of Exploding Topics, where he explains how he runs his startup newsletter:

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT? 

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Smart Strategies To Boost Startup Marketing With Video which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Creative Ways To Earn Income At Home appeared first on ClickFunnels.

The dream of working from home is no longer just a fantasy – it’s a reality for millions of people worldwide.

Whether you’re looking to replace a 9-to-5 job, supplement your current income, or explore new opportunities, there are countless ways to earn money without leaving your house.

And you know what’s even better?

Below, you’ll see examples of people who not just made a decent living but made millions of dollars while working for themselves and their own businesses.

In this blog post, we’ll explore 42 proven ways to make money from home.

For each, we’ll provide actionable insights, highlight inspiring success stories, and break down exactly how to get started.

Whether you’re just beginning your journey or looking to level up your side hustle, this guide is packed with ideas to help you achieve your goals.

Let’s get into it!

42 Ways to Make Money From Home

1. Sell Digital Products

Dan Lok, a Canadian immigrant who once struggled to get approved for a credit card, has become one of the highest-earning users on the ClickFunnels platform. Using his expertise in copywriting and marketing, Lok built and scaled a business selling digital products like online courses and mentorship programs. Through ClickFunnels, he has earned multiple Two Comma Club awards, including one for generating over $10 million in a single funnel. His story proves that selling digital products – from eBooks to courses – can be a game-changer for financial freedom.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

2. Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants (VAs) have become one of the most in-demand services in today’s gig economy. Companies and entrepreneurs alike are outsourcing tasks to VAs to save time and money, creating countless opportunities to work remotely from home.

Main Types of Virtual Assistants

• Administrative VAs: Handle emails, schedules, and general admin tasks.
• Social Media VAs: Manage social accounts, schedule posts, and track engagement.
• Customer Service VAs: Respond to customer inquiries, resolve complaints, and process orders.

3. Pet Sitting at Home

Pet sitting at home is a great way to earn money if you love animals and have the space to care for them. Pet owners often need sitters for vacations, long workdays, or emergencies. As a sitter, you provide food, exercise, and companionship for pets in your home.

4. Flipping Items on Marketplaces

Flipping items on marketplaces like eBay or Facebook Marketplace is a lucrative side hustle. Gary Vaynerchuk, in his series “Trash Talk,” demonstrates how anyone can make money by buying undervalued items at garage sales and reselling them for profit. For inspiration, watch Gary’s journey in flipping goods (Trash Talk). Start small with items you already own, then reinvest profits into more inventory.

5. Online Teacher

Teaching online is an accessible way to make money while sharing your expertise. Whether you teach languages, help students prepare for exams, or teach coding skills, the demand for online education continues to grow. Platforms like VIPKid, Udemy, or Preply make it easy to connect with students globally. Identify your niche and start creating a flexible income stream today.

6. Start a Blog

Blogging can be a profitable venture if you choose the right niche and stay consistent. Write about topics you’re passionate about, such as travel, fitness, or personal finance, and monetize through ads, sponsored posts, or affiliate marketing.

7. Sell Online Services

Selling online services is one of the fastest ways to generate income remotely. Popular services include:

• Copywriting: Craft compelling content for businesses.
• Graphic Design: Create logos, branding, or digital art.
• Web Development: Build and maintain websites for clients.
• Translation Services: Translate documents or media for businesses expanding globally. Identify your strengths, create a portfolio, and use platforms like Fiverr or Upwork to connect with clients.

8. Start an Ecommerce Business/Online Store

How Trey Lewellyn Turned ClickFunnels into a Multi-Million-Dollar Business Trey Lewellyn used ClickFunnels to build a thriving eCommerce business, selling niche products directly to consumers. He holds the record for building a funnel that was the fastest to hit $1 million and eventually made $30 million in just two and a half months selling flashlights. By leveraging funnels to streamline sales and maximize conversions, he earned a Two Comma Club award. Whether it’s dropshipping or selling your own products, eCommerce offers scalable opportunities for financial success.

9. Sell Consulting Services

Consulting allows you to turn your knowledge into income. Popular consulting niches include:

• Business Strategy: Help companies streamline operations or scale effectively.
• Financial Consulting: Offer budgeting, investment, or tax strategies.
• Technology Consulting: Assist businesses in adopting and optimizing tech solutions. Start by identifying your area of expertise and building trust with your audience through testimonials or case studies.

10. Start a Social Media Marketing Agency (SMMA)

With businesses needing to stand out online, social media marketing agencies are in high demand. As an SMMA owner, you manage ad campaigns, create content, and develop strategies to grow brands’ online presence. Platforms like ClickFunnels can help you onboard clients and showcase your services, making it easier to scale your agency and increase revenue.

11. Sell Online Courses

Dan Henry is a three-time ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award winner who leveraged online courses to scale his business. From teaching Facebook ads to freelancing strategies, his courses generated over $10 million. He started small but used ClickFunnels to build funnels that convert. Online courses allow experts to package their knowledge and sell it repeatedly, creating a scalable income stream.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

12. Become an Affiliate Marketer

Spencer Mecham, a ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award winner, earned over $1 million promoting affiliate products. He focused on high-ticket affiliate offers, creating educational content to drive conversions. Platforms like ClickBank and Amazon Associates provide affiliate opportunities, but leveraging funnels through tools like ClickFunnels can maximize earnings by building targeted email lists and upselling related products.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

13. Launch a Podcast

Entrepreneur On Fire by John Lee Dumas exemplifies podcasting success. He grew his daily business podcast into a seven-figure venture by monetizing sponsorships, affiliate products, and his own courses all using ClickFunnels. Podcasts help build authority and trust, drawing in loyal audiences who are more likely to invest in additional offerings.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

14. Get a Remote-Working Job

Remote work offers flexibility and stability, making it an attractive option for professionals seeking home-based careers. Popular remote-working roles include:

• Software Developer/Engineer: Build and maintain software for businesses across industries.
• Customer Support Representative: Provide assistance and resolve issues for customers via email, chat, or phone.
• Data Analyst: Analyze data trends and create actionable insights for decision-making.

15. Become a Freelance Writer

Freelance writing is a flexible and profitable way to earn from home. Writers can specialize in blog posts, sales copy, technical documentation, or eBooks. Platforms like Upwork and Fiverr provide opportunities for beginners, while experienced writers can secure clients through direct outreach or LinkedIn.

16. Become a Coach

Richmond Dinh, a ClickFunnels Two Comma Club winner, scaled his coaching business to seven figures by leveraging funnels. He offers mindset and business coaching, showing how personal transformation translates into financial success. Coaching allows you to directly impact others while generating premium income, especially with a targeted niche and proven results.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

17. Take Part in Paid Online Surveys

Paid online surveys allow you to share your opinions and earn extra cash during your free time. Surveys are quick, usually taking 5-20 minutes, and while the earnings are modest, consistent participation can add up.

Here are three platforms to try:

• Swagbucks: Earn points (SB) for surveys, which you can redeem for gift cards or PayPal cash.
• Opinion Outpost: Focuses on surveys that reward users with cash or Amazon gift cards.
• Pinecone Research: Offers higher payouts per survey, often testing products in addition to answering questions.

18. Become a Micro-Influencer

Micro-influencers (those with 1,000–50,000 followers) can monetize their audience through sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, or selling their own products. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube provide opportunities to grow a niche audience. Success requires authenticity and consistent content.

19. Become an Online Travel Agent

Online travel agents help clients book flights, accommodations, and experiences. With tools like Sabre or Amadeus, you can create customized travel itineraries. Partnering with airlines and hotels can bring commissions, while niche expertise (e.g., luxury or eco-tourism) can set you apart.

20. Start an Online Agency

Starting an online agency is a profitable way to help businesses while scaling your income. Agencies typically specialize in services that deliver measurable results. Here are some examples of what agencies might offer:

• Digital Marketing: Manage ad campaigns, SEO, and email marketing to drive business growth.
• eCommerce Development: Set up and optimize Shopify stores or create custom eCommerce solutions.
• Recruitment: Source and screen top talent for companies in need of skilled employees.
• Social Media Management: Create, schedule, and analyze social media content to increase brand engagement.
• Web Design: Design user-friendly websites to improve customer experience and drive conversions.
• Branding Services: Develop logos, brand strategies, and identity kits to establish strong visual branding.

Here’s the revised version of entries 21 to 30 with the lines between entries removed:

21. Sell Home-Baked Goods

Turn your love for baking into a profitable business. Home bakers can sell cookies, bread, or cakes to local customers or take custom orders for events like birthdays and weddings. Promote your goods on social media or marketplaces like Facebook to reach local buyers and build a loyal customer base.

22. Rent Your Parking Space

If you own an unused parking space, rent it out to generate passive income. Platforms like Spacer and JustPark connect you with drivers looking for affordable, convenient parking.

23. Sell Unused Items in Your Home

Declutter your home and make money by selling items you no longer need. Use platforms like eBay for collectible goods, Facebook Marketplace for local sales, and Poshmark for clothing. Take clear photos, write accurate descriptions, and price competitively to attract buyers quickly.

24. Sell Photography on Stock Photo Sites

If you have a passion for photography, monetize your talent by selling images on stock photo platforms. Popular sites include:

• Shutterstock: Pays royalties when your photos are downloaded
• Adobe Stock: Offers high visibility for photographers’ portfolios
• Getty Images: Targets premium clients willing to pay more for quality photos

25. Start a Dog-Walking Business

Pet owners need reliable dog walkers, making this a simple way to earn money while staying active. Promote your services locally using apps like Rover or flyers in your neighborhood.

26. Sell Your Art Online

Whether you create paintings, digital art, or crafts, online platforms make it easy to reach art lovers. Here are three popular platforms to sell your work:

• Etsy: Ideal for handmade and unique art pieces, giving you direct access to buyers.
• Redbubble: Upload your designs and let the platform handle printing and shipping on products like t-shirts and mugs.
• Printful: Integrate with your online store to create print-on-demand merchandise with no upfront inventory costs.

Social media is key for promoting your work and connecting with potential buyers.

27. Buy Broken Items, Fix Them, and Sell Them Online

Flipping broken or used items is a lucrative side hustle. Search for deals on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, fix them up, and sell for a profit. Popular categories include electronics, furniture, and bicycles. Highlight the improvements you’ve made to justify higher resale prices.

28. Start a Meal-Prep Business

Busy professionals and families value ready-to-eat or easy-to-cook meals. Start a meal-prep business offering healthy, home-cooked options. Create weekly menus, use fresh ingredients, and deliver directly to your customers. (Please check relevant food hygiene and business regulations in your area first.)

29. License Your Know-How and Sell it

Alex Hormozi, a ClickFunnels Two Comma Club winner, turned his gym expertise into millions with Gym Launch. He licensed his proven gym growth strategies to struggling owners, offering them resources and training for a fee. Consider how you can package your specialized knowledge into a sellable format to generate recurring revenue.

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

30. Buy and Sell Domain Names

Flipping domain names can lead to massive profits. For example, Voice.com sold for a record $30 million. Look for undervalued domain names that align with trends or popular industries, purchase them cheaply, and resell them at a higher price to businesses or investors seeking premium names.

31. Invest in the Stock Market

Investing in stocks is a proven way to grow wealth over time. Start by learning the basics of market trends and choosing a reliable platform like Robinhood or E*TRADE. Focus on building a diversified portfolio of stocks, ETFs, or mutual funds to minimize risk while maximizing potential returns.

32. Sell a Service via an Online Freelancing Marketplace

Freelancing platforms like Fiverr and Upwork connect you with clients who need your expertise. Popular services to offer include:

• Graphic Design: Create logos, branding kits, and promotional graphics
• Video Editing: Edit YouTube videos, promotional ads, or short films
• Copywriting: Write sales pages, blog posts, or ad copy that converts
• Programming: Build websites, apps, or custom software
• Translation: Translate documents, audio, or subtitles between languages

33. Test Websites and Apps

Companies pay for feedback to improve their websites and apps. Here are four platforms to get started:

• UserTesting: Pays $10 for a 20-minute test where you review websites or apps.
• TryMyUI: Offers usability tests that pay $10 each.
• BetaTesting: Provides opportunities to test new products for $10–$20 per session.
• BugFinder: Focuses on identifying bugs in websites or software, with pay based on severity.

34. Test AI Tools

AI tools are reshaping industries, and many companies need feedback to refine their models. Platforms like OpenAI or Stability AI often seek testers for new technologies. You could help identify bugs, refine functionality, or contribute to user-friendly improvements – all while getting paid for your insights.

35. Rent Out a Room in Your Home

Turn unused space in your home into extra income by renting it out. Platforms like Airbnb or Vrbo connect you with travelers seeking short-term accommodations. Focus on creating a clean, welcoming space, and consider adding amenities like Wi-Fi or breakfast to earn better reviews and more bookings.

36. Rent Out Your Car

If you own a car you don’t use regularly, platforms like Turo or Getaround let you rent it out for extra cash. Car rentals are especially profitable in tourist-heavy areas or cities where owning a car is expensive. Keep your vehicle well-maintained and insured for peace of mind.

37. Become a Direct Seller

Direct selling lets you earn by promoting popular products through your network. Here are three major companies:

• Tupperware: Famous for its durable, airtight food containers
• Amway: Offers a wide range of health, beauty, and home care products
• Avon: Specializes in affordable makeup, skincare, and personal care items

38. Get a Part-Time Remote Job

If you prefer consistent income, part-time remote jobs are an excellent choice. Roles like virtual assistant, customer support, or data entry are in demand. Check platforms like FlexJobs or Remote.co to find opportunities suited to your skills and availability.

39. Sell E-Books

E-books are a low-cost way to share your knowledge and earn passive income. Write about topics you’re passionate about or have expertise in, and publish on platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Focus on niche topics with less competition to stand out and attract readers.

40. Become a Graphic Designer

Graphic design combines creativity with technical skill, making it a profitable way to work from home. Use platforms like Canva or Adobe Illustrator to design logos, social media graphics, and print materials. Start by creating a portfolio and offering your services on freelancing platforms or directly to small businesses.

41. Join Online Focus Groups

Online focus groups pay for your opinions on products, services, or concepts. Here are two platforms to explore:

• Respondent: Connects you with research studies, often paying $50–$250 per session.
• User Interviews: Offers a variety of surveys and focus groups, with payments ranging from $20–$200.

42. Sell Free-Range Eggs

If you have space for chickens, selling free-range eggs can be a sustainable side hustle. Local farmers’ markets or social media can help you find customers. Focus on quality care for your hens and emphasize the benefits of fresh, organic eggs to build a loyal customer base.

Ready to Start Your Journey to Remote Income?

You’ve just explored 42 ways to make money remotely. 

Some of these opportunities may already align with your skills or interests. Others could be the perfect side hustle.

And for many, these ideas might represent the chance to break free from the 9-to-5 grind,

Not just to survive, but to create life-changing wealth.

Throughout this list, you’ve seen how ordinary people, just like you, turned simple ideas into million-dollar success stories.

Many of them used ClickFunnels to get there.

ClickFunnels is the ultimate tool for building sales funnels that generate results quickly and effectively. With ClickFunnels, you’re not only leveraging the best sales platform on the internet, but also gaining access to a proven system of inspiration and guidance from those who’ve walked the path before you.

Don’t wait to start building your remote business.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial of ClickFunnels today and get instant access to exclusive training designed to help you succeed faster than you ever imagined.

Your journey to remote income starts now!

Try ClickFunnels Free For 14 Days!

Thanks for reading Creative Ways To Earn Income At Home which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Powerful Strategies For Long-Term Business Growth appeared first on ClickFunnels.

According to the research that covers the timespan between 1994 and 2020:

• More than 30% of new small businesses in the United States fail within the first two years.
• More than 50% fail within the first five years.
• More than 65% fail within the first ten years.

Meanwhile, for startups, the situation is even more grim: their failure rate is 90%. On the flipside, around 1.5% of them go on to have a $50M+ exit.

If you don’t want your company to end up in the graveyard of failed businesses, you should ask yourself: how can you build something that lasts?

Today we are going to share ten strategies for sustainable business growth that can help you with that!

#1: Create an Amazing Product or Service

Your core product or service is the foundation of your business.

Attempting to grow your company with a low-quality core product or service is like building a house on shaky ground. It might work for a while but it will inevitably collapse, rendering all your effort wasted.

That’s why your first priority should be creating an amazing product or service. In theory, this may seem obvious, but in practice, very few entrepreneurs do that.

If you take time to focus on quality before you start pursuing growth, you’ll almost certainly have an advantage over your competitors who went straight for the latter. But how can you tell if your product or service is good enough?

You’ll know once you start getting overwhelmingly positive customer feedback. Otherwise, even though it may be hard to admit, the chances are that your product or service is simply mediocre. And if that’s the case, your business is not ready for growth yet!

#2: Package Your Product or Service Into an Irresistible Offer

If you want to make sales, it’s not enough to have an amazing product or service, you also need to package it into an irresistible offer. But how can you do that?

Here’s our irresistible offer formula:

Low Price + High Value – Financial Risk = Irresistible Offer

This means that you can make your offer more appealing by:

• Reducing its price – Ideally, you should charge less than your competitors. However, if your price is super low, potential customers might assume that it indicates low quality and choose to go with a more expensive option instead. So don’t go overboard with it!
• Increasing its value – You can do that by throwing in bonuses that don’t cost much to you but provide value to the customer. Digital goods such as cheat sheets, eBooks, videos, etc. work best for this because they have insanely high profit margins.
• Removing financial risk – Either offer a 30-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee or find a way to tie your pricing to measurable results.

Ideally, you want to do all three, which will make your offer stand out from the competition!

#3: Use Cold Outreach to Get Your First Customers

We would argue that if you are just starting out, the best way to get your first customers is cold outreach:

• Cold calling
• Cold email
• Cold DMs

Ultimately, this low-cost, time-consuming customer acquisition strategy is a numbers game: if you make 100 cold calls, send 100 cold emails, or reach out to 100 people via social media DMs every day, sooner or later you’ll start making sales.

(Obviously, it’s not enough to just contact someone and let them know about your product or service, you should also continue following up with them until you get a clear yes or no answer.)

There’s something that our friend Alex Hormozi calls the “Rule of 100” that can be helpful here: do 100 primary actions per day for 100 days straight.

In this case, do 100 cold reachouts per day for 100 days straight, which should take you around 4 hours every day.

This will add up to a total of 10,000 reachouts, which should be enough to get things going!

#4: Acquire as Much Social Proof as You Possibly Can

Once you start making some sales, you want to proactively solicit customer feedback and then ask happy customers for testimonials.

Ideally, these testimonials should include that person’s photo, their full name, and a quote from them that mentions a specific result that your product or service has helped them achieve.

Also, consider taking your most impressive testimonials and turning them into full-blown case studies if those customers are down for it.

Your goal should be to acquire as many testimonials and case studies as you possibly can so that you can then leverage that social proof to increase your conversion rates across your entire sales funnel.

There’s no need to wait until you have a ton of it, though: the moment you get a decent testimonial, you should leverage it by featuring it on your website, sharing it on your social media, and including it in your cold emails.

The power of social proof cannot be overstated so don’t hesitate to use whatever you have, even if it isn’t something particularly impressive!

#5: Allocate Time for Building Traffic-Generating Assets

Once you establish a steady stream of revenue with cold outreach, you want to take a look at your schedule and allocate some time every week for:

• Social media marketing
• Email marketing (newsletter)
• Video marketing (YouTube and TikTok)

We recommend focusing on building a social media following first, then leveraging it to grow an email newsletter and then finally leveraging them both to grow YouTube and TikTok channels.

Building these digital assets will take time but if you stick with it, it’s going to be worth it because eventually, you’ll be able to use them to generate free traffic for your business!

#6: Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Business

A sales funnel is a system designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers and customers into repeat customers.

We believe that the best way to sell anything online is to create a Value Ladder sales funnel and drive traffic to it. That’s how we grew our software company to nine figures!

Here’s how it works:

1. You offer the potential customer a freebie known as a lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
2. You then pitch them increasingly more valuable and expensive offers via email.
3. You also set up some sort of continuity program that enables you to generate recurring revenue.

Whatever it is that you sell – services, physical products, digital products, software, memberships, you name it – the Value Ladder sales funnel can help you sell more of it!

#7: Maximize Customer Lifetime Value With Downsells, Upsells and Cross Sells

Bait, Frontend, Middle, and Backend offers are the core offers that you should create first.

Then, if you want to maximize customer lifetime value (CLV), you should add three types of additional offers to them:

1. Downsells – This is something that you pitch to the potential customer after they have rejected your initial offer. It should be a downgrade on it.
2. Upsells – This is something that you pitch to the potential customer after they have accepted your initial offer. It should be an upgrade on it.
3. Cross sells – This is also something that you pitch to the potential customer after they have accepted your initial offer, but instead of being an upgrade on it, it should be complementary to it.

For example, McDonald’s used to have its infamous “Would you like to supersize that?” upsell and is still using its equally well-known “Would you like fries with that?” cross sell. 

Think about it: if the potential customer is at the counter about to buy food, they are probably hungry. So it’s the perfect time to pitch them more food!

You want to do the same thing in your sales funnel. The best time to sell someone more stuff is when they have already decided to buy something from you and are about to proceed to the checkout. 

As for the downsells, if the potential customer has made it to the sales page of your initial offer, it means that they were at least somewhat interested in it, even if they ended up rejecting it. So why not pitch them something similar but cheaper? You have nothing to lose at that point anyway!

Adding downsells, upsells and cross sells to your sales funnel can help you increase your customer lifetime value (CLV).

That will enable you to afford higher customer acquisition cost (CAC), which can give you a competitive edge.

Remember: as Dan Kennedy put it, whoever can spend the most to acquire a customer, wins!

@russellbrunson

Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins #entrepreneur #entrepreneur101 #businessmotivation #entrepreneurjourney #russellbrunson

♬ original sound – Russell Brunson

#8: Learn How to Run Paid Ads and Start Driving Paid Traffic to Your Value Ladder Sales Funnel

We recommend waiting until your business is consistently generating profit and then reinvesting that money into learning how to run paid ads.

Which platform you should advertise on is going to depend on your business model but if you can’t decide, Facebook ads can work well for the vast majority of businesses.

Find a reputable Udemy course that focuses on your platform of choice and then go through the entire thing. You can wait for the next sale if you want a discount.

Then, start playing with small ad campaigns just to get the hang of how it all works, with a daily budget of maybe $5-10. This approach should help you learn the basics of paid advertising without losing a ton of money.

Once you have mastered the basics and built up some confidence, create an ad campaign for your lead magnet and start optimizing it.

Finally, once you get to the point where your lead magnet ad campaign is consistently profitable, start gradually scaling it by reinvesting some of its profits back into it!

#9: Prioritize Customer Retention Over Customer Acquisition

We have noticed that entrepreneurs often make the mistake of prioritizing customer acquisition over customer retention because the former is exciting and the latter can be kind of boring.

However, this can create a leaky bucket situation where your business stagnates despite you pouring a ton of resources into customer acquisition because you can’t keep the customers you already have. So what can you do to avoid that?

• Proactively solicit customer feedback – Make sure to talk to not just happy but also neutral and even unhappy customers. That will help you get different perspectives, identify what needs to be improved, and calibrate your ad targeting.
• Prioritize what’s important to your customers – If customers keep asking for a specific feature, that’s what you should add to your product next, not something that you think would be cool that no one actually wants.
• Provide excellent customer support – Let your customers know how to contact you if they need help, explain when they should expect a response and make sure to respond within that timeframe.

You can also increase customer retention by using a weekly newsletter to stay top of mind with them. If you want to learn more about this, read our article “How to Grow an Email List from Scratch”.

#10: Scale Strategically Instead of Chasing Growth at All Costs!

It’s important to understand that scaling too early can cripple your business. So how can you know if your company is ready?

First of all, you want to wait until you start seeing a steady increase in sales that cannot be attributed to an increased marketing spend.

For example, if you have been spending $1,000 per month on marketing for the last six months and your sales have been steadily increasing during that time, that’s a good sign.

This pattern indicates that your business has positive word-of-mouth, meaning that your customers are so happy with your product or service that they are recommending it to other people. That’s the most likely source of these unexplained sales.

Meanwhile, the reverse pattern where you are spending more and more money on marketing but your sales are declining indicates negative word-of-mouth. Not only are your customers not happy with your product or service but they are also warning other people not to buy it. If you start scaling in that situation, you might end up completely ruining your brand!

Next, before you start scaling, you want to streamline your business workflow by automating everything that can be automated and developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for everything else. This can help you save a lot of money because you’ll be able to achieve the same results with fewer employees.

Then, you want to use historical data to create sales projections and model various scenarios. This will help you get a better idea of what’s possible. We recommend reading our article “Sales Forecasting Methods – The Complete Beginner’s Guide”

Finally, you should set a realistic sales target, create a plan for achieving it, and then start scaling your business by gradually increasing your marketing spend, which should result in a corresponding increase in sales.

Just make sure that your company is prepared to handle the new sales volume!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade. Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”

Thanks for reading Powerful Strategies For Long-Term Business Growth which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post How To Launch Your First E-Commerce Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If you’re interested in starting as an entrepreneur, e-commerce provides one of the easiest access points today.

What’s more, e-commerce is both a low point of entry to get started and accessible for anyone with an Internet connection and a device like a phone, tablet, or computer.

Launching an e-commerce business as a new entrepreneur provides great flexibility and independence, as well as the opportunity to reach a global audience from the comfort of your home.

Like all businesses, though, to be successful in e-commerce, you’ll need a plan, effort, and a strategy to stand out and above the competition.

You’ll want to identify areas where you can create products that solve your target audience’s pain points, help nurture them with a sales funnel (more on that), and refine your strategy with data and analytics for the best performance.

This guide will share invaluable tips and outline the essential steps to creating a strategy for success in a crowded marketplace.

How to Start an E-Commerce Business

When you set out to create your e-commerce business, you must first research what type of business you want to start.

Your research should focus on a few factors, such as your potential target audience and the potential market. It should also study what types of businesses are successful, where potential holes exist in those businesses, and how you can fill those gaps.

When you’re researching your business, you’ll want to use the following checklist:

• Define your market
• Analyze competitors
• Identify the potential demand
• Research the ideal price points
• Evaluate any potential challenges to your e-commerce business

For example, if your competitors sell info products for small businesses, consider the type of audience that may need to be addressed.

If there is a gap in your competitors’ solutions, can you include something specific to help a different group or audience in your info product? 

The key here is to research what is already being offered, identify your potential target market, and determine who could benefit from your products.

You’ll gain insights into what your competitors are doing well, validate your ideas with your competitors’ successes, and possibly discover what gaps in the market exist that you could offer solutions.

With the data and insights you gain, you are better positioned to develop a comprehensive business plan based on your competitors’ successes, price points, and market dynamics.

These insights will allow you to position yourself and your products more effectively and develop a competitive edge when starting.

After validating a concept and developing a business plan, the next step is to begin thinking about your target customers and where best to find them.

Conduct Market Research

As a new entrepreneur, you may have ideas about what to sell, but what you don’t understand about the validity of your ideas could end up becoming a costly mistake.

Conducting market research is crucial to determining what type of offerings you may bring to market and also understanding whether they’re valid ideas in the first place.

To better understand the market, examine competitors and consider who may benefit from your product offerings.

Is there a demand for such products? Are they in high demand and in a highly competitive marketplace? If so, you may want to reconsider what you’re thinking about offering.

One way to examine the market is to explore different e-commerce businesses already in existence. What are they doing to drum up business?

You’ll want to look at marketing strategies, price points, and who they’re trying to serve (ideal customer) to understand whether your idea is sellable.

Once you see proof that the idea can be sold, dive into SEO page results and social media platforms to gather more evidence of success and how people reach their audience.

This research will help you position your product and find an audience interested in purchasing from you. It can also help you avoid spending a lot of money without getting a good return on your investment.

Define Your Target Audience and Potential Customer

To be successful as an entrepreneur, you need to understand the market landscape.

Most importantly, you need to know who your target audience is and where to find your potential customers.

Otherwise, it won’t matter if you have the best business strategy ever – it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. You need to be able to find people who want your offerings and convert them into sales.

As a new entrepreneur, you need to define your target audience and their niche, which will help you identify your potential customers.

The best approach to finding your target audience and potential customers is to identify a specific aspect of the market and drill down as far as possible to find a niche that is parallel to your offerings.

Analyze trends, pain points, and competitors’ e-commerce products to understand what is performing well and how you can provide a different solution.

Another factor in finding your target is pinpointing the ideal customer type.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• What are their interests, behaviors, and preferences?
• What are their demographics, location, age, gender, and buying patterns?
• How do they consume content and find products to purchase? Do they watch long – or short-form videos, read blogs, or engage on social channels?

By asking these questions, you’ll want to utilize tools like search engines and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help you find and analyze the data points to give you a complete picture of your potential audience and customers.

Finally, you should incorporate all these data points into your content and e-commerce platform to appeal to your ideal audience.

Social media, content marketing, and email marketing are phenomenal ways to communicate directly to your audience and provide them with the solution (your product) they need for whatever pain points you’re addressing.

You’ll want content personalized for your ideal customer at every stage of their buying decision, known as a sales funnel.

Sales funnels help direct an individual from learning about a product to wanting it and finally acting to purchase it. ClickFunnels provides all-in-one sales funnels that you can easily plug and play for e-commerce businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Defining your target audience, identifying what motivates them to act, and creating your marketing around them is a great way to boost your conversions, which is key for any new entrepreneur.

Create a Business Plan for Success

One of the all-time greatest coaches in sports, John Wooden, led his UCLA basketball program to dizzying heights of greatness.

One of his renowned statements about success was, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”

That simple statement is crucial to understand – that success comes from preparation and planning, much more than simple luck.

As an entrepreneur trying to build a successful e-commerce business, your approach to planning and crafting a solid business plan will be the key difference between building something sustainable or not.

As the foundation for your success, your business plan should outline your goals and identify your market while providing ways you plan to serve that target market.

Research into potential audiences and their behaviors, as well as what competitors are doing, will help you outline the steps you need to take to achieve your short-term and long-term goals.

You will want to outline your business model, such as whether you are trying to sell digital products, grow a blog for advertising revenue, or sell physical goods and products.

Also, include the platforms from which you plan to grow your business and sell, such as email marketing, SEO, or other means.

Think of your business plan as your outline for success. It should include how you’ll handle logistical issues, financial funding, how you’ll identify, market, and sell to your target audience, and any other component that impacts your expenses and revenue.

The more comprehensive your business plan, the easier it will be to stay on task.

However, one thing to keep in mind as a new entrepreneur is that things will come up unexpectedly, so build some flexibility and wiggle room into your strategy.

Build Your Online Store

When you decide to start a business, one essential thing to consider is what platform you want to use to build your online store.

You want to find a reliable and, most of all, scalable platform so that as you grow, you aren’t required to switch platforms or make any significant changes that can stall your hard-earned success.

The platform you select and build your online store on should have SEO at the forefront of the platform, be designed for the best conversion rates, and be simple enough to set up and install so that you aren’t required to have a ton of coding knowledge to operate.

Once you set up your online store, you want to organize your product listings so that it’s easy for your customers to find and buy your offers.

To do this, you’ll want to group similar items together, write sharp product descriptions that describe the product’s benefits, use high-resolution images that showcase the product in use, and include customer reviews about the quality of your products.

Why include customer reviews?

People like to buy what they know, and from brands they trust.

For online businesses, customer reviews help create and nurture trust in their brand, helping them close more sales. One way to do this effectively is to utilize customer reviews and foster a community space for FAQs and user interaction.

Since you’re in the digital e-commerce space, you have the advantage of eliminating shipping costs.

One thing to consider is having add-ons that can upsell another product that supplements or enhances the one they are already purchasing.

You can set up your store to have pop-ups before the shopping cart or after purchase, using email marketing as a follow-up opportunity.

Finally, installing a simple checkout and payment processing system is the key to closing your sales.

The reasons for shopping cart abandonment are a variety of reasons, but some of the most common include:

• Hidden fees
• Complex check-out process
• Limited payment options
• Slow processing
• Impulse buying

To avoid this from happening to you, build your online store to provide fast, secure payment processing options and keep it simple.

The platform you choose should support e-commerce businesses. While many options are available, only ClickFunnels provides a wealth of tools to build and optimize your online store for total success.

With ClickFunnels, you can easily set up, optimize, and iterate your online store for maximum impact.

The all-in-one platform includes some key features including:

• Website Builder
• Landing pages
• Sales funnels
• Store funnels
• Third-party integrations
• Email marketing
• and so much more!

SEO is Key to Success

Finding, attracting, and converting customers is the lifeblood of success with an online store. One of the more critical aspects of achieving this is implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies throughout your website, funnels, and content.

To create a successful SEO strategy for your online business, you’ll want to begin with identifying relevant keywords that your audience and potential customers use to conduct searches.

You can create a list of keywords that you find through various means, including Google’s free keyword planner, but one way to find relevant keywords (on a budget) is to conduct some online searches and find out what results you come up with.

Even more, when you conduct keyword research using your search terms, Google will provide you with a list of terms others have used.

These insights will give you a wealth of terms and words to incorporate into website content, product descriptions, and blog posts to improve your potential ranking.

Creating user-friendly content and a mobile-responsive website is an effective way to boost your potential rankings since Google prioritizes content and user experience in its ranking results.

Finally, you need to establish a routine of creating and publishing content regularly. The type of content you create should be useful and relevant to the terms you used in your SEO strategy to get the user to your page.

Make your content shareable and incorporate user reviews when possible. User reviews are good social proof and can boost trust and credibility in search engine results.

Of course, implementing a good SEO strategy is much easier with ClickFunnels’ inclusive sales funnels, which can optimize your content, blog posts, and pages to provide maximum impact.

Develop a Marketing Strategy

For you to succeed in your e-commerce business as a new entrepreneur, your potential customers need to be aware and learn to trust your brand so that they’ll be willing to buy from you.

To do this well, you need a robust marketing strategy that identifies your ideal customers, where they hang out, and what interests them.

Once you understand their interests, you can, therefore, focus on understanding your potential customer’s pain points, needs, and wants.

After understanding these insights, you can begin segmenting your target market effectively, crafting your content, and offering solutions that align with their demands.

Tools like SEO implementation, social media, and email marketing are good ways to personalize your reach to your target audience and help tailor your product offerings to their needs.

SEO provides exposure for your brand, while social media and email marketing create opportunities for engagement.

This three-pronged approach of SEO, social media, and email marketing makes it easier for your potential audience to find and interact with your brand, leading to an opportunity to generate sales.

Another possibility is to utilize and leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence in your marketing strategies.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is an algorithm that can instantly incorporate hundreds and thousands of data points to create personalized content based on every user’s interaction with your brand and similar products.

Using AI in your strategy will allow you to predict what your target audience may be interested in, helping you refine your pitch and offers.

Last, to create a successful marketing strategy, you’ll want to continually monitor it for success and iterate your strategy based on what’s productive and what’s not.

Using advanced analytics tools, you can see what your audience is engaged with, incorporate customer feedback into an even more engaging strategy, and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Social Media Strategy

As mentioned, using your social media channels is a huge opportunity to engage with potential customers in a space where they’re already active. Social media is a powerful tool to find potential customers while being able to promote your e-commerce business.

To implement social media successfully into your marketing and achieve the best results, consider what platform your ideal customer likes to utilize so that you can interact with them where they already are.

Think about your social media strategy as you fish. As an angler, you could try to drive your boat out and cast a line, hoping to find a school of fish. Or you could use the tools available to find fish and cast your lines where they’re already swimming.

One strategy is casting about in the dark, hoping for results; the other is using readily available tools to cast a line where it’s most likely to be successful.

So don’t overthink it; interact on the social media platforms where your potential customers are already engaging with others and create content that resonates with them in ways that you can showcase your products.

Emphasize Customer Service

When starting an e-commerce business, one thing that’s often overlooked is implementing an emphasis on customer service.

Putting a premium on customer satisfaction from the first touchpoint with your brand to following up after a sale can go a long way toward building brand loyalty and repeat opportunities.

To start, build your website and content around identifying common issues your audience struggles with and providing solutions for them.

Engage on social channels and respond quickly to questions and inquiries. This can build trust in your brand by demonstrating that you value your customers’ time.

Email marketing is a great way to connect with your potential customers, and having a dedicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is a great way to stay connected and make personal connections.

With a CRM, you can collect important information like birth dates and other significant personal information to tailor unique and personal messages to your targets.

By creating personalized messaging through a CRM, you can better provide solutions for their concerns and foster loyalty to your brand.

This personalization approach is one of the best sources of customer service. Other suggestions to implement a customer-centric approach that enhances your customer’s experience with your brand include:

• Have a user-friendly e-commerce platform.
• Have multiple payment options.
• Create a comprehensive FAQ section that addresses common issues and queries.
• Utilize SEO to rank helpful information.

By focusing on your potential customers and putting their needs in front of your e-commerce business, you can easily and quickly stand out in a crowded market, create loyal customers, and drive more sales.

Using Sales Funnels to Drive More Conversions

Finally, creating an e-commerce business can be chaotic and even more challenging without the right structure.

Finding, nurturing, and closing your leads can be a heavy task, which is why utilizing a tool like ClickFunnels, which is simple to install and use sales funnels, can take your efforts and drive them into the stratosphere.

With ClickFunnel’s new AI Smart Funnels tool, you can leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence into your sales funnels, personalizing your optimized interactions to drive even more sales.

Start Your 14-Day Free Trial Now!

Thanks for reading How To Launch Your First E-Commerce Business which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post How To Start A Blog And Earn Money appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Thinking about starting a blog?

Maybe you have a passion for writing. Or maybe you’ve seen the thousands of bloggers who turn their websites into side hustles and full-time incomes.

These bloggers are living the dream: working remotely, traveling the world, and answering only to themselves.

But as you can imagine, a small percentage of people who start blogging actually succeed in making a living from it.

We’re here to make sure you fulfill your dream.

Below, we’ll walk you through seven steps to create a blog and start making money – literally within hours.

Let’s get into it!

How to Make a Blog That Actually Earns Money

The majority of websites and blogs never see much success. 

Most are abandoned, fail to attract meaningful traffic, or don’t make enough to justify the time and effort. 

Here are some eye-opening statistics:

• Only 8% of bloggers make enough income to support their family
• About 81% of bloggers never make more than $100 from their blogs

If you’re reading this, it’s likely you want to make more than $100 from this.

You’re here to make a blog that works for you – one that grows in both audience and income over time.

Why Most Blogs Don’t Make Money

There are many reasons why most blogs fail to earn anything substantial.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest pitfalls:

• Not considering monetization from the beginning: Many bloggers jump in without a strategy, which can make it harder to introduce paid products later.
• Not picking the right niche: Broad, unfocused blogs are harder to monetize. A well-defined niche helps attract a specific audience willing to pay for targeted products or services.
• Not picking a topic they enjoy: Blogging requires persistence, and if you don’t enjoy the topic, it’s easy to lose interest before you see results.
• Choosing a complex website builder: Difficult-to-use platforms can create unnecessary barriers, eating up time and energy.
• No ongoing training in how to monetize blogs: Blogging requires continual learning, especially as trends and strategies change.
• Not having easy monetization features: Without tools that make it simple to introduce sales funnels, memberships, or lead captures, many blogs struggle to convert visitors into income.

While these factors are important, there’s one more core issue.

And it’s this:

Most website builders are designed to make blogging or website creation easy, but they aren’t built to make monetization easy.

If You Want to Monetize Your Blog, Read This

ClickFunnels was launched in 2014 by Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson to solve a specific problem.

They needed an easier way to create web pages that could convert visitors into customers. 

Every time they wanted to promote a new product or service, they had to rebuild the whole website from scratch.

It wasn’t sustainable.

So they created ClickFunnels to serve as a powerful monetization platform they could use themselves.

Since its launch, ClickFunnels has attracted over 100,000 active users. 

Today, more than 2,000 of those users have generated over $1 million each using ClickFunnels websites – they’re members of the “2 Comma Club”.

And here’s how they did it. 

The platform introduced the concept of “sales funnels” which allow users to guide potential customers step-by-step toward a purchase. 

Funnels are particularly useful for bloggers who want to monetize because they offer clear pathways to sales without the need for advanced tech skills.

ClickFunnels might not be your traditional blogging platform.

But that’s its strength. 

Unlike standard website builders, ClickFunnels is a dedicated monetization platform that you can also use to create and manage your blog content. 

Below, we’ll go through seven easy steps to build a profitable blog using ClickFunnels.

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

How to Start a Blog and Make Money in 7 Steps

Below we’ll go over the 7 main steps to help you start a blog that generates income.

There’s a lot to cover so consider bookmarking this article or saving a link somewhere so you can revisit it.

Ready?

Let’s go!

1. Choose a Niche for Your Blog

Starting a blog and monetizing it involves time and dedication.

But it becomes much easier – and rewarding – when you’re writing about something you enjoy.

This is why picking your blog’s niche first is crucial.

• Choose the wrong niche and you’ll start making excuses and eventually give up the idea altogether.
• Choose the right niche and you’ll have an endless source of motivation.

The “1,000 True Fans” Concept

Your blog’s success, however, relies on more than just your preferences: it’s about what matters to your readers.

• What can you bring to the table that readers would value?
• What would keep them coming back for more?
• What would they pay you for?

In his book Expert Secrets, ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson introduced a powerful concept called the “1,000 True Fans”.

The concept is simple:

You don’t need millions of followers to make a successful blog – you need only about 1,000 dedicated true fans to make good money.

A “True Fan” is someone who consumes everything you produce.

They don’t just passively read your blog: they engage with your content, buy your products, and share your message.

But here’s the thing.

A lot of new bloggers make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone.

Instead, be an expert on a subject that a small group of people care about, and you’ll find your blog ends up being highly profitable.

The “Two Years Ahead” Concept

What do you know that others would find valuable?

Here’s another useful concept:

You don’t need to be a world-renowned expert in your field to create life-changing content; you just need to be about two years ahead of where your audience is.

Ask yourself:

• What do you know now that you were desperate to know two years ago?
• If you were struggling with something, what content would you have loved to read about?
• Are there others experiencing the same challenges you also experienced?

This concept of teaching someone who’s only a couple of years behind you is powerful because it makes the idea of being an “expert” more accessible.

You don’t have to be the world’s best.

Being just a few steps ahead of someone is enough to make your content engaging, authentic, and valuable.

For further inspiration on selecting your niche click below to grab a free copy of Expert Secrets.

Otherwise, let’s move on!

Click Here To Read Expert Secrets For Free!

2. Consider How You’ll Monetize Your Blog

Many bloggers dive into creating content without a clear monetization plan.

They focus on getting traffic.

While it’s not a bad approach, if your goal is to make money then you’ll save time thinking about monetization from the beginning.

Why?

Because the niche and audience you choose will impact how easily you can introduce paid products, services, or other monetization strategies.

So, how do you start thinking about monetization right from the start?

The Three Markets

In Expert Secrets, Russell Brunson explains a powerful way to approach monetization by focusing on the “Three Core Markets.”

These are the overarching themes that nearly every successful blog or business falls into:

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships

Start by asking yourself which of these markets best fits your expertise.

Identifying this core market will give you a solid foundation for building a blog that can make money – because everyone wants better health, increased wealth, or stronger relationships.

Next, dig deeper to find your submarket.

For instance, if you choose the health market, possible submarkets could include diet, fitness, mental health, or skin care. For wealth, it could be investing, real estate, or online business. And in relationships, you could focus on dating advice, marriage counseling, or parenting.

Then go out and look for other successful bloggers in that same submarket.

This approach can benefit you in three ways:

• Focus on Core Desires: By tying your blog to one of the big three – health, wealth, or relationships – you’re aligning with things that people universally value.
• Discover What Sells: Checking out successful bloggers in your niche will give you insights into what kinds of products or services actually make money.
• Create a Unique Selling Point: By finding a fresh angle or unique offering within your submarket, you can carve out a new space, making it easier to monetize.

This might seem like overkill when you’re just starting.

However, researching other blogs in your niche is a real-world lesson in monetization.

Subscribe to their newsletters, explore their products, and even make a few purchases if you can.

Notice what happens after you buy: are there upsells to coaching, communities, or premium products?

Could you offer something similar?

Could you offer something better?

Taking these steps will provide insight into how other bloggers turn their audiences into income and give you ideas for crafting a monetization strategy that works.

For further inspiration on monetizing your niche, you can click below to grab a free copy of Expert Secrets.

Otherwise, let’s move on!

Click Here To Read Expert Secrets For Free!

3. Choose Hosting and Website Builder

Once you’ve chosen your niche and thought through your monetization strategy, the next logical step is choosing a platform to actually build your blog.

Most people who start blogging aren’t web designers or tech experts.

To launch a blog you’ll need to:

• Get a domain name
• Purchase hosting
• Find a website builder
• Choose a template
• Add basic design elements
• Review for a professional look
• Hit launch!

The sheer number of steps can feel intimidating and, honestly, can even prevent people from getting started.

So why not make it easy for yourself?

Building Your Blog the Easy Way: With ClickFunnels

With ClickFunnels, creating a blog is simple. 

The platform is designed to support both beginners and experienced marketers and allows you to build beautiful, high-converting blogs without needing any coding knowledge or third-party plugins.

It’s literally “drag-and-drop”.

All you need to do is pick a theme, customize the layout, and add your content and you’re ready to go live. 

Plus, ClickFunnels is much more than a blogging tool.

It’s an entire business platform that ties together your blog, website, products, CRM, email marketing, and more. 

Here’s a breakdown of what makes blogging on ClickFunnels so easy:

• Establish Authority: Build credibility and establish yourself as an expert with valuable, engaging blog content.
• SEO Optimization: ClickFunnels blogs are optimized to rank well on Google, helping you attract long-term organic traffic.
• Content Repurposing: Easily turn blog posts into social media content, giving you omnipresence across platforms.
• Convert Visitors to Leads: Use exit popups, lead magnets, and sales funnels directly from your blog to capture leads and drive sales.
• Integrated Business Growth Tools: Instead of patching together multiple tools, ClickFunnels offers an all-in-one solution for building and growing your business, including email marketing to nurture readers into customers.

Using ClickFunnels for your blog means you’re not just building a blog; you’re building a fully integrated business platform.

Here’s what the back end of ClickFunnels looks like when creating your blogs:

And here’s how easy it is to later monetize your blogs with products or service offerings:

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

4. Brainstorm Blog Topics

Your blog topics will depend on how you’re planning to promote your blog. 

If you already have an audience to tap into, then focus on creating compelling, transformative content.

To help you tell these stories in a powerful way, check out the Epiphany Bridge script in Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets. 

This script walks readers through your journey so they become invested in both your story and your products.

But what if you don’t have any audience at all?

Google Hacks to Find Blog Topics

If you’re starting out with no audience, don’t worry.

Many bloggers build their first audience through search engines, bringing in traffic (and sales) directly from Google.

The advantage of this approach?

It’s free.

By creating blog posts targeting specific search keywords, you can attract readers who are actively searching for information so they’re already primed to engage with your content.

But of course, you need to choose keywords relevant to your niche.

And… that won’t take you years and years to rank for.

So how can you find the right keywords?

In the book Traffic Secrets, Russell Brunson explains a practical, actionable method to uncover high-impact keywords through the “Dream 100” exercise.

Here’s a quick overview:

1. Start with Your “Dream Keywords”: Think about the phrases your dream audience would type into Google to find the kind of solution your blog offers. Russell’s “Dream 100” keywords for ClickFunnels included terms like “sales funnels,” “digital marketing,” and “growth hacking.” Make a list of 10-20 phrases that match the products, services, or solutions your blog is about.
2. Find Long-Tail Variations: Instead of focusing solely on these popular keywords (which can be competitive) look for longer, more specific versions that are easier to rank for. To do this, type one of your dream keywords into Google, and note the autocomplete suggestions that pop up – these are highly relevant, frequently searched terms related to your topic.
3. Explore Related Searches: After searching, scroll to the bottom of Google’s page to see “related searches.” This list gives more ideas for closely related, long-tail keywords.

For example, if your dream keyword is “sales funnels,” you might find suggestions like:

• “Sales funnels for Shopify”
• “Sales funnels explained”
• “Sales funnels for real estate”
• “Sales funnels templates”

Following this approach, you can build a keyword list that includes specific terms your target audience is actively searching for.

And if you expand each dream keyword into 10 long-tail keywords, you’ll have a solid list of blog topics – just like Russell’s examples above – giving you a roadmap for targeted content that can attract organic traffic.

For even more depth, you can explore software tools (Russell shares a list at TrafficSecrets.com/resources) to assess monthly search volume, competition, and other metrics for each keyword, helping you further refine your list for maximum impact.

Click Here To Read Traffic Secrets For Free!

5. Setup Your Blog

In this section, we’ll walk you through setting up your ClickFunnels account, customizing the look and feel of your blog section, and getting everything ready to write your first post.

And all this in just a few minutes!

No other platform makes it this quick and easy to get your blog up and running.

Follow along with the screenshots below as we guide you step-by-step through the setup process.

Sign Up for Your Free 14-Day Trial

The first step is to sign up for your free trial of the ClickFunnels platform.

You can do this by visiting clickfunnels.com.

Then enter your email address and you’ll be taken to the page below, where you need to introduce your personal details and a card – don’t forget you won’t be charged!

Navigate to Your New Blog Section

Within seconds you’ll receive a welcome email with a link to sign in to your new ClickFunnels account.

If you click it, you’ll be taken to the ClickFunnels dashboard.

From here, find the “Site” in the menu and then click “Blog”.

Click “Open in New Window”

Your account comes preloaded with two blog posts.

By clicking on the button that reads “Open in new window” you’ll be taken to your actual website and one of the pre-loaded blogs.

Edit Your Blog Design

The default blog template looks like the screenshot above.

But… customizing it to suit your preferences takes minutes!

Go back to the dashboard and under “Site” click the button reading “Overview”.

From here, you’ll see a button reading “Edit Site”.

Click it.

Welcome to the ClickFunnels Drag-and-Drop Editor

Now you’re inside the famous ClickFunnels drag-and-drop editor!

Later on, you can come back here to edit the homepage of your website and other elements like the header, logo, menu, products, funnels, and more.

But for now, we’re looking at the blog design.

Find the page called “Blog post” under “Blog home” in the left-hand menu and click it.

Starting Editing Elements

You’re now looking at your blog post template.

You can hover over any element to start editing it.

Just click the cog icon that appears in a colored box around the element, and you’ll find an editing window appears.

Welcome to the Editor

This new window will let you edit elements such as spacing, styling, sizing, colors, fonts, formatting, layout, and more.

For example, let’s look at editing fonts.

Just click the button reading “Edit Style”.

Editing Font Styles

You’ll now get a pop-up in the center of your screen.

This pop-up is called your “Style Guide”. You can edit the fonts for your headlines, subheadlines, and content here to any you like.

The changes will be reflected instantly across your website.

Editing Colors

To edit color schemes, simply hover over a colored element and click the cog icon.

You’ll find the side menu popping up again.

This time, click on “Edit style colors”.

Change the Color Scheme

Here you can change the colors of major elements in your site such as backgrounds, headings, content, icons, and more.

The changes will be reflected instantly across your site.

The theme colors will always come in handy when making quick changes in the future that you want to reflect the overall design and branding of your website.

A Peek at Monetizing Your Blog

The ClickFunnels blog template comes pre-loaded with a CTA to sell a product.

You can quickly edit the text and styling of this CTA box.

But here’s where the magic happens.

If you hover over the button element and click the cog icon, you’ll see the option to change the button actions.

To start selling your own product or services, all you’d need to do is create a product in the ClickFunnels dashboard and link to it here – and you’re done!

That’s the beauty of ClickFunnels.

You get a blog, drag-and-drop website builder, sales funnel, online store, payment processor, CRM, customer center, email marketing platform, and more all in one place.

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

6. Write Your First Blog

At this stage, you’ve already laid a solid foundation by defining your niche, understanding your audience, planning your monetization strategies, and brainstorming topics.

Now, it’s time to create your first compelling blog post.

So, how do you do it?

How to Create an “Instructional” Blog Post

Most people search on Google with the goal of solving a specific problem, answering a question, or learning something new.

BuzzSumo, after analyzing over 100 million article titles online, found that “instructional” headlines generated the highest engagement and shares on Facebook.

In other words, these are headlines that suggest action or provide essential information.

BuzzSumo found that:

• Instructional phrases like “how to” “you need to” and “why you should” were among the top-performing headlines.
• These types of headlines communicate urgency and clarity, offering readers a direct “need to know” approach that implies important or exclusive information.

For example, popular articles included headlines like:

• “What You Need to Know About Toxic Plants”
• “What You Need to Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine”
• “Why You Should Stop Using Plastic Bags Immediately”

The key? 

These headlines use “you” to speak directly to the reader, emphasizing the essential nature of the information. 

They also tap into FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), implying that readers could miss out if they don’t read the article.

An Instructional Blog Post Headline

BuzzSumo also discovered that some of the most popular blog headlines use numbers.

These headlines promise specific, actionable information, which makes them highly clickable.

Out of the top-performing headlines, six out of the first twenty started with a number, with phrases like “X things to,” “everything you need,” or “X reasons why” also ranking high.

Here’s why numbers work:

• Clarity and specificity: Numbers in headlines tell readers exactly what to expect, and a “listicle” format makes information easy to digest.
• Curiosity and FOMO: Headlines with phrases like “X reasons why” or “everything you need” spark curiosity by promising useful or exclusive insights.

The type of blog post that includes a number in the headline is often called a “listicle”.

Listicles are perfect for creating actionable steps – like “7 Steps to Start a Blog” – and also happens to be easy to follow and retain.

For inspiration, check out popular blogs in your niche and see how they structure their posts.

Find examples you enjoy or that are already engaging readers and consider recreating their style to fit your own topic.

Finally, remember that blogging is all about practice.

Your first posts may not be perfect, and that’s okay – the goal is to keep writing, publishing, and improving.

And with ClickFunnels, it’s easy to edit your posts anytime, so you can update your content as you learn more and grow your blog.

7. Promote Your Products or Services

The strategy we covered above is all about writing content that ranks on Google.

Many successful bloggers generate six-figure incomes relying solely on Google traffic, making it an excellent starting point.

Of course, there are many other ways to promote your blog posts (social media, paid ads, email marketing, influencer partnerships, video marketing, and more).

But we’re not going to get into that here.

Instead, we’ll focus on how to use your blog as a tool to promote the products or services you’re monetizing.

By strategically placing promotions within your content, you can drive conversions and revenue directly from your blog.

Here are a few ideas that you can set up within minutes using ClickFunnels.

5 Ways to Monetize Your Blog

ClickFunnels is the ideal platform for monetizing your blog thanks to its features for turning readers into leads and sales. 

Below, we explore five ways to leverage ClickFunnels’ tools to monetize your content.

Each of these features is included in your 14-day free trial.

They are:

1. Selling a digital product with a sales funnel: ClickFunnels makes it simple to create a sales funnel tailored to a digital product, such as an eBook, templates, or downloadable guides. Relevant calls-to-action in your blog can guide readers seamlessly into your sales funnel for conversions.
2. Selling an online course: If you’re an expert in your niche, consider creating a course. With ClickFunnels, you can direct readers from blog posts into an online course funnel. Offering a free introductory lesson or mini-course as a lead magnet can be especially effective.
3. Selling a membership: For ongoing value, a membership or subscription service can be a great choice. ClickFunnels enables you to set up a members-only area with exclusive content. Just ensure the membership content aligns with the topics you’re already blogging about to attract the right subscribers.
4. Using landing pages to generate leads: Not every reader will be ready to purchase immediately. Capture leads by directing traffic from your blog to a targeted landing page with a lead magnet, such as a checklist or mini-guide related to your post’s topic.
5. Generating leads and selling through email marketing: With ClickFunnels’ email marketing features, you can collect email addresses from blog readers and nurture them with relevant offers. Create an email series that builds trust and highlights the benefits of your products or services.

Final Thoughts: Make Money Blogging With ClickFunnels

Starting a blog requires strategy, dedication, and the right tools.

In this guide, we’ve covered essential steps – from selecting a niche and monetization strategies to setting up and promoting your blog.

But one factor stands out:

To turn a blog into a source of income, you need a platform built for monetization.

ClickFunnels is uniquely designed to help bloggers not only create compelling content but also seamlessly monetize it through funnels, lead capture, and more.

With its 14-day free trial, you can start building your blog with powerful tools that drive real results – without needing a tech background.

Ready to start a blog that works for you?

Try ClickFunnels today and take the first step toward a profitable blogging journey.

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

Thanks for reading How To Start A Blog And Earn Money which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

• Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
• Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
• Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
• Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
• Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post Easy For Making Money From Home appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Want to build a side hustle but aren’t sure where to start?

Today we are going to share seven ways to make extra money from home!

#1: Pick Up Work on Microtask Platforms

Businesses, academic institutions, and independent labs use microtask platforms to gather data for product research, market research, and scientific research purposes.

You can make some money on these platforms by doing simple, low-paid work like answering quizzes, filling out surveys, and tagging AI training data.

The vast majority of these tasks only take a few minutes to an hour to complete. If you have random chunks of downtime in your schedule that you’d otherwise spend doomscrolling, this might be a good way to put that time to better use.

However, if you are looking to establish a source of income equivalent to a part-time or a full-time job, the viability of making that much money on microtask platforms will depend on where you live.

Realistically, if you work across several platforms and put in eight hours a day, five days per week, you might be able to make $15-20 per day, which works out to $300 to $400 per month.

If you are based in a low-cost-of-living country, that might equal or surpass the national minimum wage, in which case doing microtasks full-time might be a pretty sweet gig considering that you get to work from home.

However, if you are living in a medium or a high cost of living country, you’d likely make more money working a minimum-wage job at McDonald’s, so it may not be worth it.

The most popular microtask platform is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk – MTurk for short – so it’s probably best to start there.

However, there seems to be a consensus among MTurk veterans that it has been going downhill for at least half a decade now and that a newcomer working full-time on it is unlikely to make more than $5-10 per day.

That’s why you should also register on Prolific and CloudResearch, which can help you reach the aforementioned $15-$20 per day.

Just keep in mind that the approval process might take a while and that once you get approved, your access to gigs will be limited so you won’t be able to reach those numbers immediately.

Also, the pay for completing microtasks will likely continue trending downward. It’s best to see this work as something temporary. Don’t get too comfortable and keep looking for better opportunities!

#2: Start Freelancing

Freelancing can be a great way to make money from home if you have a marketable skill that allows you to work remotely.

Such skills include:

• Writing
• Coding
• Design
• Marketing
• Sales

The process of building a freelance business is going to be more or less the same regardless of the service that you decide to offer:

Niche Down

Start by niching down in terms of:

1. Your Service – For example, instead of being a “freelance writer” who writes about everything under the sun, you might niche down to “email copywriter” and specialize in that.
2. Your Target Audience – For example, instead of writing email copy for anyone and everyone, you might niche down to writing email copy for B2B SaaS businesses.

This may seem limiting at first glance but it will actually make everything else much easier!

Acquire Social Proof

Your next step should be working for free to acquire social proof.

For example, if you decide to become an email copywriter and target B2B SaaS businesses, start writing copy for companies like that for free so that you can get some testimonials. 

In fact, you don’t even need anyone’s permission to do that, you can simply identify B2B SaaS businesses with subpar email marketing, write welcome sequences for them, put them into Google Docs, and share them with the founders. 

Tell them that they are free to use these welcome sequences if they like them, all you ask for in exchange is a testimonial.

This approach to getting social proof can work well for any kind of freelance business!

Use Cold Outreach to Get Clients

Once you have a few solid testimonials, create a business website to display them.

Then, go on Fiverr, find a lead generation expert who has good reviews, and order a spreadsheet with 100 leads.

(You can order 1,000 leads straight away but it’s better to start with just 100 to check the lead quality).

Then, start reaching out to these leads. In your cold emails, you want to:

1. Offer them a free, clearly defined service (e.g. a free welcome sequence).
2. Back up your pitch with your strongest testimonial (e.g. here’s a testimonial from a founder of a B2B SaaS company).
3. Provide a link to your website if they want to see more social proof (e.g. here are three more testimonials from B2B Saas founders).

End the email by asking them if they are interested and invite them to schedule a Zoom call. Provide a link to your appointment calendar.

Follow up one week later and continue following up until you get a clear yes or no answer from them.

In your follow-up emails, include a “P.S.” section like the one below. Hopefully, this will dissuade people from flagging them as spam.

Whenever someone takes you up on your free offer, do a good job and then pitch them a productized service package.

For example, if someone took you up on your free welcome sequence offer, you can pitch them a weekly email newsletter package for a fixed monthly price. 

Also, make sure to ask every happy client for a testimonial so that you can continue building your stack of social proof.

The more social proof you have and the more impressive it is, the easier it will be for you to land new clients!

Streamline Your Business Processes

Create a list of everything that you are currently doing to run your business. Ideally, it should be based on time-tracking data as opposed to your memory. Then, go through that list item-by-item and automate everything that can be automated.

You can probably eliminate a lot of busy work by integrating the apps into your workflow, setting up a solid customer relationship management system, and using good invoicing software.

Scale Your Business With a Sales Funnel

For an online service business like yours, a webinar funnel is probably the best bet.

Create a 45-minute presentation designed to teach your dream customers how to do what you do step-by-step so that they can do it themselves. Don’t worry, if they can afford it, they’ll probably want to hire you instead!

Then, create a 15-minute pitch for your service where you explain what it’s all about, present a ton of social proof, and encourage the attendees to book a free call with you.

These 60 minutes are your webinar script. But how can you get people to show up for the event?

Build a webinar funnel that consists of these three pages:

1. Registration page where you encourage people to register for your webinar.
2. Registration confirmation page where you confirm that they have successfully registered for the event.
3. Event page where they can attend your webinar live or watch the replay.

(You can easily set this up with our software, ClickFunnels. Check out our free 14-day trial!)

Then, use paid advertising to promote your webinar and drive traffic to its registration page.

We recommend hosting at least one webinar per week, every week, live for at least a year. That will help you get good at it, optimize your script, and maximize your conversion rates.

After that, you can consider automating this funnel by replacing the live event with a pre-recorded webinar!

#3: Make Money on Twitter

Twitter has a creator revenue sharing program that has been dubbed “elonbuxx” by the platform’s users.

At the time of writing, if you want to monetize your account, you need to:

1. Have an active Premium or Verified Organization subscription
2. Have at least 5M organic impressions within the last 3 months
3. Have at least 500 Premium followers
4. Be in a supported country
5. Be compliant with the X User Agreement

It’s worth noting that you only get paid for premium user engagement on your tweets. The payouts are processed every two weeks and made via Stripe. The minimum payout amount is $10.

So how can you build and monetize a Twitter following? Here are the two most viable options:

Option #1: Become a “Poaster”

It’s possible to build a following and generate a decent income from it by simply sharing your thoughts with the world.

If you are intellectually inclined and good at expressing yourself in writing, this is probably the best way to go.

See if you can make a name for yourself in what’s known as “tpot”, which is a loosely defined Twitter community that revolves around discussing various intellectual topics.

If getting into online arguments about the existential risk of artificial intelligence sounds like fun to you, the chances are that you will fit right in!

Note that you can either post under your real name or under a pseudonym. There are plenty of “anons” who are making money on Twitter!

Option #2: Create a Themed Account

That theme can be anything, from aesthetics to popular culture to niche hobbies.

For example, if you are a history buff with a special interest in the Middle Ages, you can create an account that is exclusively focused on that period and start posting book excerpts, interesting articles, photos and paintings, etc.

Generally speaking, the more high-brow the theme of your account, the easier it will be for you to build a following where premium users are over-represented. However, the content itself will have less viral potential.

You can also make money with a gimmick account focused on low-brow content such as Reddit screenshots, memes, or cute animal videos. Premium users will likely be under-represented among your followers but the content itself will have more viral potential.

Ultimately, both the high-brow and the low-brow approaches can work, so it boils down to what resonates more with you. It’s probably best to choose a theme that you have a personal interest in because that will make it more enjoyable!

Warning: Twitter is a Crazy Place!

Did you know that Twitter users often refer to the platform as “hell app” and “hellsite”?

That shouldn’t be surprising considering that:

• It’s designed to be addictive – If you know that you are predisposed to addiction, it’s probably best to stay away from it.
• It can wreck your attention span – If you already have problems with managing your attention, becoming a regular user will likely make them worse.
• People will say horrible things to you and you’ll be tempted to say horrible things to them – You might end up doing so and regretting it later!
• There’s a lot of interpersonal drama that revolves around conflicts with “mutuals” (people whom you follow and who follow you back) – If you are a sensitive person, getting blocked by a mutual might hurt!
• It’s pretty much impossible to escape negativity related to various controversies, politics, current events, etc – It’s gonna make it to your timeline somehow!

To summarize, while the negative effects that Twitter usage has on people’s mental health vary from person to person, the consensus seems to be that some damage is unavoidable.

It’s also worth noting that popular Twitter users, especially the ones posting under their real names, often end up attracting stalkers. That’s why it’s important to learn how to protect your privacy.

Ultimately, if you want to make extra money from home, we only recommend going the Twitter route if:

1. It sounds like something that you would enjoy.
2. You are confident that you can manage the potential downsides.
3. You are prepared to pull the plug if you realize that you cannot manage those downsides after all.

Don’t sacrifice your mental health for “elonbuxx”!

#4: Launch a Paid Newsletter

It has become common for Twitter “poasters” who have sizable followings to launch paid email newsletters.

Typically, they use Substack for this, add a sign-up link to their bios, and then promote their newsletters to their Twitter followers.

For example, an anonymous writer known as CartoonsHateHer has been “poasting” on Twitter since 2018 and has amassed 35k+ followers with her humorous takes and funny cartoons.

In early 2024, she launched her newsletter, which she then grew to more than 12,000 subscribers in less than a year. This helped her realize her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. Now she’s working on a book!

This approach can work really well because if people like reading your short-form content on Twitter, they might be interested in your long-form content as well. The transition from the former to the latter is pretty seamless!

That being said, you don’t need a Twitter following to grow a newsletter, you can also do it with paid advertising.

Also, your newsletter doesn’t need to revolve around personal essays. In fact, if you want to build something that you can sell later on, it’s probably best not to tie it to your personal brand.

For example, the Milk Road newsletter, which is rumored to have been acquired for eight figures, provides daily crypto news. This format seems to be really popular.

If you want to learn more about selling newsletters, you can check out the Duuce marketplace to see the current prices.

#5: Self-Publish a Non-Fiction eBook Independently

If you have a marketable skill that people are paying you for, you can package your knowledge into an eBook and create an extra source of income that way.

It’s probably best to publish it independently on your website because that will enable you to maximize its revenue.

For example, today Nathan Barry is best known as the founder of ConvertKit, but he used to be a designer and some of his early entrepreneurial projects were ebooks about design.

In fact, “Designing Web Applications” is still available on his website, with pricing tiers ranging from $39 (just the book) to $249 (the book + tutorials, interviews, and resources).

So how did Nathan make money with his eBooks? He would use a free chapter as a lead magnet, create a landing page for it, and then promote it to build a pre-launch email list, to which he would eventually launch the eBook.

His launches were wildly successful. For example, “Designing Web Applications” brought in $26,679 in just 24 hours!

Some of this success was due to his clever approach to pricing, in particular having several pricing tiers and arranging them from the most expensive to the least expensive.

This same methodology proved to work well for other people as well. For example, UX designer Samuel Hulick, who learned it from Nathan, used it to make $37,000 with his eBook about user onboarding.

It can probably work well for you, too!

#6: Self-Publish Fiction Books via Amazon KDP

You can also make extra money from home writing fiction and self-publishing it on Amazon via its Kindle Direct Publishing service.

However, if you want to succeed at it, you need to understand that it’s not about writing Nobel-prize-worthy literature, it’s about providing high-quality niche entertainment to an existing audience.

This means that you need to choose one of the popular genres, niche down to a popular subgenre, and then start churning out novels that give the readers what they want.

Popular genres include science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and romance, with the latter probably having the most demand.

Subgenres are things like “Amish romance”, “military science fiction”, “Scandinavian noir”, etc. You can browse Amazon’s best-seller lists for each genre to see which subgenres are dominating them.

If you want your books to sell well, they should conform to the genre and subgenre expectations, from the covers to the characters to the plotlines. Straying too far from those expectations will annoy readers, lead to bad reviews, and tank your sales!

Writing entertaining genre fiction is difficult so it’s probably best to limit yourself to one genre until you master it. But if you insist on writing across several genres, do it under different pen names, with one genre per pen name. Otherwise, you risk confusing and alienating your readers!

Also, in order to make decent money with this, you’ll need to put out at least 1 full-length novel a year, though once you go full-time you should start publishing 2-3 novels per year instead. Sounds like an insane pace?

Well, that’s the pace you will need to maintain if you want to make it as a self-published fiction author. There’s no way around it unless you write a mega best-seller like “Twilight”, which you shouldn’t bet on.

Maybe “How To Write A Novel In 6 Months: A published author’s guide to writing a 50,000-word book in 24 weeks” by Thomas Emson can provide some guidance here!

#7: Become an Indie Hacker

If you either know how to code already or are interested in learning it, you might want to consider becoming a software solopreneur (an “indie hacker”).

There’s a survivorship bias in the indie hacker scene where you constantly see people who have succeeded but rarely hear from those who failed.

We can’t know for sure but we believe that “Ask HN: Starting a business is way harder than Twitter-bros claim. Any advice?” is probably representative of the average aspiring indie hacker experience.

After all, 90% of startups fail, a statistic that can be helpful when it comes to managing your expectations.

However, having a full-time job that pays the bills and building software products in your spare time can enable you to limit the downside of entrepreneurship while retaining access to the upside.

Skills, experience, and luck all play a role in entrepreneurial success, with the latter being the most tricky component.

Indie hackers use a methodology that allows them to essentially roll the dice an unlimited number of times provided that they don’t burn out and give up on it.

They take the Lean Startup concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to its absolute extreme by building MVPs in a matter of weeks, days, or, in some crazy cases, hours.

The reasoning behind it is that you cannot predict which product will take off so it’s best to just keep building them until you stumble on one that does.

For example, the indie hacking superstar Pieter Levels has shared that more than 95% of all his projects have failed.

His <5% success rate may not seem particularly impressive until you realize that it has enabled him to become wealthy. At the time of writing, Levels’ apps are generating more than $4.2M per year!

Marc Louvion is another notable indie hacker who used this approach. He built 23 products in the last few years and made over $1M with the one that took off, ShipFast.

Meanwhile, Nico Jeannen built 17 products in just one year and sold two of them for $265,000.

There are no guarantees in entrepreneurship. However, the “ship more” advice does seem to work. After all, in theory at least, if 90% of startups fail, then if you launch 100 products, you’ll have a decent chance at success!

If you genuinely enjoy creating software and can see yourself doing that indefinitely in your free time, the indie hacker path might be the right choice for you. Read Pieter Levels’ book “Make” and start building!

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