Sales Funnel Strategy To Build A Huge List At Zero Cost

A sales funnel is vital for an Information business if you’re going to use paid traffic. 

Once you set up your sales funnel it will be your automated “machine” that brings you fresh new leads every day!

Every Infobusiness needs to acquire new leads consistently and then cultivate a relationship with those people through helpful content.

Over time you’ll become their trusted advisor. People buy from people they trust! 

You’ll be able to recommend your own products, or someone’s else through an affiliate program and that’s how you’ll make money.

But it all starts with a sales funnel. In this guide you’ll discover a free sales funnel template, that’s super simple yet highly effective. It’s a proven template. 

It has been used to generate thousands of leads in just a single month and build 5 figures a month business!

This guide covers in great detail the funnel building process and the products that you’ll need for the funnel. 

It’s important that you keep things as simple as possible until you’re confident and experienced enough to try more advanced techniques. 

If not you’ll become frustrated and confused very easily! 

That’s why you want to use this basic sales funnel and the process I outline in this guide!

There are a lot of other more complicated sales funnels, but the one in this guide can be used by anyone in any niche. 

Furthermore, you won’t have to pay expensive monthly fees for sales funnel builder software or expensive shopping carts.

Below you’ll find a useful table of contents, so let’s get straight to it…Table of Contents

What Is A Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is just a series of webpages designed to collect the name and email of your prospects to build your list!

Sales funnels can be simple or very complex, but it’s recommended to stick with a basic funnel at first. 

Or else you can easily get confused and frustrated when you analyze the conversion data and optimize your funnel. All that will be explained in this guide.

Follow the K.I.S.S. principle for anything you do in your business, keep it simple, stupid. 

Building a sales funnel isn’t an overly complicated task!

The most basic sales funnel, and the one you should consider using consists of only 3 pages. All 3 pages should be on the same domain name. 

You’ll see examples of each page, and the actual process to build them further below.

• Optin Page

The first page of the funnel is the optin page. This page will ask your visitors for their name and email address in exchange for a free Info product. 

That free Info product is also known as a lead magnet. It has to be valuable and something your prospects want so that you get a lot of leads. More about lead magnets below…

After they optin they’ll be redirected automatically to the second page of the sales funnel. The lead magnet will be delivered to them via email.

• One Time Offer Page

The second page is a sales letter that sells a product you have. You should reduce the price of the product by about 30% and give that special reduced price nowhere else. 

That’s why it’s called a one time only offer –  the can only get that discount on this page.

If they buy it, they see the third page…

• Thank You Page

The thank-you page contains the download links for the product they bought on the one-time offer page.

Benefits Of A Sales Funnel

A sales funnel will get you leads constantly, every day at practically no cost to you, even if you use paid traffic.

Your goal is to create a break-even sales funnel (but if you manage to make it profitable that’s even better). 

A break-even funnel means you’re earning from the sales funnel (from the one-time offer sales) as much or more than you’re spending on paid traffic.

For example, if you spend $300 on paid traffic (e.g. Facebook Ads) within a month to send 500 visitors to the funnel, you’ll make $300 in one-time offer sales in the exact same month. 

The benefit is that you’ll get hundreds or thousands of new leads from the first page of the funnel. So, in essence, you’re building your list for free.

You can nurture a relationship with those leads by constantly communicating with them via email. Give them valuable tips, promote products, tell them to read your articles, or watch your videos and so on…

Now let’s see how those 3 pages in this sales funnel strategy work together to build your list!

Sales Funnel Strategy

You’ll drive traffic (ideally paid traffic) to the first page, the optin page. Whoever subscribes will see the second page, the one-time offer page. 

They don’t have to buy the one time offer, but if they do they’ll see the third page, the thank you page.

It’s as simple as that and once you set it up it works completely automatic.

It’s an automated sales funnel to get a consistent supply of new leads.

The order form is automatically generated by the order processing service you use, for example, JVZoo. You don’t have to design or build it yourself.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Sales Funnel

Ideally, you want to use paid traffic to drive traffic to your sales funnel. You’ll send all the traffic to the first page, the optin page.

After they optin they see the second page, the one-time offer page. The reason we use a one time offer is to recuperate (liquidate) some or preferable all the cost we spent on paid traffic.

If you do that you’ll be getting leads and build your list for zero cost! 

You’ll be spending, for example, $300 every month on paid traffic and make $300 in one-time offer sales every month. 

And of course, at the same time, you’ll be getting thousands of new leads added to your list, which is the objective of a sales funnel!

Currently, Facebook Ads are highly recommended as a paid traffic method. Because whichever niche you choose for your business you’ll probably find your audience on Facebook! 

Their advertising system is also very effective, containing lots of tools to help you succeed. And there’s a lot of guides online to help you use Facebook Ads.

I recommend Miles Beckler, he can show you how to use Facebook Ads to build your list with a sales funnel, for just $5 a day!

How To Make Money With
Your InfoBusiness

It’s important to realize that a sales funnel isn’t designed to make you money or profit. That’s not how you make money with your Infobusiness.

The money is made promoting products via email to your list and on your web site (a content site).

Email Marketing

Your sales funnel is building you a large list. You have to communicate with them regularly, preferably daily.

Send them helpful information. You don’t have to send them long articles in your emails.An email is just a friendly message from one person to another. 

Whatever you think they’ll find valuable and useful just share it with them.

If it’s a long article just share a summary of it’s most important points and then link to it so they can read the full article.

You can share an important lesson you’ve learned, resources or tools they should know about, etc.

Just keep the email short and to the point and link out to any videos or articles you think they should really see.

You can read my full email marketing strategy in my other guide.

Once again follow the K.I.S.S. principle.

You don’t need to set up overly complicated email marketing strategies.

Just put everyone who optins on the same list.

Create a new campaign and setup 5-7 follow up emails with valuable information, and once they get all follow-up emails send them regular broadcasts (preferable every day)!

That’s easily done with so-called campaign tagging in your autoresponder service.

Aweber is the recommended autoresponder service because it’s still has the highest deliverability rate, and it’s extremely easy to use.

Content

You should also have a content site, where you put helpful content regularly. You can write articles or create videos, whichever you prefer.

As you keep providing helpful content and advice to your list over time they will begin to like and trust you.

That’s when they’ll buy the products or services you recommend, and that’s how you make money.

Of course on your content site, you can also recommend your products or services (or affiliate products) within your articles or videos.

You can refer to my free content creation course for a complete strategy to create good content for your website.

Now let’s see how to build your sales funnel. 

First, we’ll see how to create both products for the sales funnel… the lead magnet and the one-time offer product.

The Lead Magnet

On the optin page, you’ll give away a free Info product. This is also known as a lead magnet.

Fast To ConsumeThese are the most common and best-performing lead magnets formats: 

• Template
• Swipe File
• Mind Map
• Checklist
• Short Video
• Short Audio
• Info graphic
• Worksheet

Or any other easy to consume format… Ideally, it should be consumed in 10 mins or less! Therefore it cannot be a 50-page ebook or a 1-hour long video.

 There are two reasons why it should be consumed quickly.

Reason #1:

They’re going to see the one time offer after they optin. And they’ll receive a link to download the lead magnet via email. Some of them will check their email to download the lead magnet. 

You want them to consume it quickly so that they can look at your one-time offer sales page and ideally buy it!

If the lead magnet is, for example, a 1-hour long video they will totally forget about the one time offer by the time the video ends. People can get distracted easily on the Internet…

Reason #2:

If your prospects already know, like and trust you then they’ll probably won’t mind investing a good portion of their time to consume a large ebook, long case study or a big course.

Because they know you’re going to deliver something great like you always do!

But your optin page is going to be seen by people who don’t yet know or trust you (cold audience), so they’re not going to risk wasting their time. 

Furthermore, they’re too busy with other things, e.g. Facebook newsfeed, messenger, email, and so on.

Therefore your lead magnet has to promise a great result or benefit that they can get in a little amount of time! 

If you use any one of the above lead magnet formats (or any other quick to consume format), they instantly realize they can quickly download and read, listen or watch it…

But if your lead magnet is a 1-hour case study or a course you’ll be asking them for a huge time commitment, something they’re not yet willing to do!

Specificity

The lead magnet should offer a specific solution to a specific problem, issue, challenge or need that your prospects have.

It cannot be general or vague like for example “A crash course about cars”.

Instead, it has to be specific, for example, one or more short videos specifically about car tire maintenance. Just about that specific topic:

How to check tire pressure
How to properly check and fill tires
How to measure tread depth
How to change a tire

And so on…

You can explain more about what they’ll actually learn (in particular the benefits) in the bullet points of the optin page. More about how to build the optin page further down…

The solution you offer has to be something that pretty much everyone in your niche wants or needs to know… so that it will be of interest to almost everyone!

Because your goal is to put as many prospects as you can on your list.

An analogy is with fishing, throw a large enough net so you capture as many fish as you can!

However, you cannot offer a solution that they can easily find with a quick search on Youtube, like for example one simple video on how to change a tire. 

There are probably hundreds of videos about that. They’re not going to give you their name and email to watch a video they can easily find on Youtube in 12 seconds or less.

Naming Your Lead Magnet

Use the words “checklist, swipe file, cheat sheet, recipe” or whatever it happens to be in the name of the lead magnet.  In this way, it becomes an actual thing. In the example below, it’s a video series. 

Example:

“The Complete Car Tire Maintenance”
10 min Video Series!
by Your Name

Here are some more good lead magnet examples. You can hire an ecover designer to create a nice looking ecover, so they look professional like these:

Lead Magnet Example #1

This lead magnet is a cheat sheet, called “The Vegan Diet Cheat Sheet”.

Lead Magnet Example #2

This lead magnet is a checklist, called “The Ultimate Wedding  Planning Checklist”. It solves a specific problem quickly and easily – that’s how a lead magnet should be.

Lead Magnet Example #3

This is a very short ebook, just 28 pages. It contains several recipes that can help with pain relief… It’s called “The 7-Day Meal Plan for Ultimate Pain Relief”.

If you want to use an ebook as the lead magnet try to keep it between 10-30 pages, so it’s quick to consume.

Once they optin to get the lead magnet they’ll see the next page in the sales funnel. On this page, we’ll sell the one-time offer product. Let’s discover more about this product.

The ‘One Time Offer’ Product​

The lead magnet and the one-time offer (OTO) product have to be relevant to one another. The one time offer would be a product they would love to have after consuming the lead magnet. 

It has to be something related to it. Think of what they would need to know or have after they consume the lead magnet. That would be a great OTO product.

The one time offer is like an upgrade of the lead magnet. The lead magnet on “steroids”.

The “Complete Car Tire Maintenance To Make Them Last Longer!” lead magnet is about car tire maintenance.

After they consume those quick 5 minute videos they might be interested to learn about other car maintenance topics, for example:

How to check oil levels
How to check drive belts
How to check engine coolant level
How to replace the engine air filter
How to replace spark plugs
How to check battery terminals and clean the contacts
how to replace broken indicator bulbs
How to store your car for winter

and more…

Since they downloaded a lead magnet about car tire maintenance, they’ll probably be very interested in other maintenance guides. It makes sense.

So the one-time offer product could be a much larger video course that shows them how to do other maintenance work on their car.

I’ve made another guide about Information products. Take a look it can help you generate new ideas for Info products and actually create them!

You can price the one-time offer product from about $27 up to $97. 

You can sell this product from another regular sales letter, but in the sales funnel you have to reduce the price by about 30% of what you normally charge. 

Don’t give this price reduction discount anywhere else (so it’s a one time only offer).

For example, if you regularly sell this product from another sales letter at $67, reduce it’s price by 30%, therefore about $47 for the OTO page.

Now let’s discover how to create the actual pages, the optin page and the one-time offer page for your internet marketing sales funnel.

Keep in mind that it is very important that you become a good copywriter so that you’ll write really good copy for both pages.

I’ve made an entire guide about copywriting, plus another guide specifically about sales letters (you’ll need a sales letter for the one-time offer page).

Let’s start with the first page of the sales funnel…

The Optin Page

The optin page is a very simple page. You don’t need to put anything fancy on it, in fact, the most basic and simple looking optin pages perform the best.

This particular optin page can reach a conversion rate of 45% after you optimize it with split testing. So it’s incredible effective! Split testing is explained further below…

It consists of 4 main components:

• Headline
• 3 Bullet Points
• Lead Magnet eCover
• Download Button (2-step)

I made a separate guide showing you exactly how to build the optin page.

Here’s an example of my own optin page containing all those 4 elements:

Put the Headline at the top, 3 bullet points on the left side, ecover on the right side and the download button at the bottom.

All four components, including the button at the bottom of the page, should be visible without the need to scroll down!

You only have maybe 7-12 seconds to make a good impression, and forcing them to scroll down to see the download button on such a short page is unprofessional.

You want them to see everything on the page as soon as it loads… so they can read the headline, the bullet points and click the download button!

Now let’s discover how to create each of those 4 components. The first one is the most important, it’s the headline.

The Headline

Use the tips below and those in my other copywriting guide, specifically the part about writing catchy headlines in order to write really good headlines. 

With practice, your ability to write really great headlines will improve!

Keep in mind your prospects want to know ‘What’s In It For Me’. 

That’s a fundamental copywriting principle. That’s why you should not talk about yourself in the headline. If you use the word “I” or “We” try to rewrite it to use the word “You”.

The job of the headline is to tell the visitors a great benefit they’ll receive from the page.

Remember the lead magnet has to offer a specific solution to solve a specific problem. 

And the headline has to promise a specific benefit or solution as well.

You want the headline to be interesting enough so they read the rest of the copy, in this case, the 3 bullet points.

Wrap your headline in quotation marks, it’s proven to attract more attention.

Instant Gratification

If possible, your headline should promise them they’ll learn to do something right now, in the next 35 minutes. 

That’s a great benefit, people love instant gratification so it will appeal to almost everyone.For example, you can tell them something like: 

“Free Video Reveals The Exact
 Steps To Perform A Complete
 Tire Inspection & Maintenance
In 35 Minutes Or Less!”

The Best ResultDon’t try to tell them everything the lead magnet will do for them in the headline. 

Your headline should be focused around the single best benefit, solution or result they’ll get after they consume the lead magnet. 

Headline Templates

To make it easier to write your headlines you use the following templates and formulas. These are proven to produce attention-grabbing headlines, which is what you want. 

Pick and use the one that will work best for you.

Template  No.1

Free Course/Video Reveals The Secret To [desired end result/outcome]!

Example:

“FREE 3-PART VIDEO SERIES Reveals
the Secrets to Achieving Your
MAXIMUM Potential as a Singer, 
Performer, or Recording Artist!”

Template  No.2

Problem – Solution. First, mention the problem and then the solution.

Are You Tired of Your [biggest problem]? Well My New Free Report Will Teach You How To _____

Example:

“Are You Struggling To Drive Traffic
With Facebook Ads? My Free Video
 Will Show You The Exact Ad
That I Used To Generate
14,000 Leads Online!”

Template No.3

Specific Desired Result in a Specific Amount of Time. People love specifics.

Example no. 1:

“How To Lose 14 Pounds In 10 Days”

Example no. 2:

“Grow Enough Food To Feed A Family
of 4 In Just 4 Square Feet Of Space –
Even If You Don’t Have A Yard!”

Template No.4

Get a specific result while avoiding doing the thing you don’t want to do.

[Lead magnet] gives you [desired result] without [thing you don’t want to deal with].

Example no.1:

“How To Lose Weight Without Exercise!”

Example no.2:

“InfusionX™ Give You EVERYTHING You
Need To Market, Sell, And Deliver Your
Products And Services Online!”
(Without Having To Hire Or Rely
On A Tech Team!)

Template No.5

This is similar to the previous one.

Get a specific result while still being about to do that thing which you think you have to give up.

Example:

“How To Lose Weight Without
Giving Up Pizza!”

I have 57 more headline templates to generate really great headlines in my other guide about swipe files.

Now let’s see how you can complete the next component of the optin page.

3 Bullet Points

3 great bullet points are enough!

Some marketers spend 30 minutes to write a single bullet point. Take your time, they have to be short but they must pack a punch!

Keep in mind that sometimes you write a bullet point that’s so good it can be used as the headline of the optin page!

How To Write Great Bullet Points

The 3 bullet points on the optin page are like the trailer of a movie. They reveal the best benefits or things about the lead magnet!

Keep in mind the ‘What’s In It For Me’ copywriting principle applies also when you’re writing bullet points.

So avoid talking about yourself in the bullet points. If you use the word “I” or “We” try to rewrite the sentence to use the word “You”.

Below you’ll find some templates and ideas to write your bullet points. I don’t recommend you spend days to write some bullet points.

You can always get back to them later on and improve them…

“So you can… [benefit]” or “so that… [benefit]”

This bullet point template mentions a feature and how it can benefit the prospect.

Example:

Discover how to supercharge and restore your immune system, so you can FIGHT any illness like a SUPERHERO!”

Give It A Name

If your lead magnet reveals any strategies or techniques, give them a name so they stand out.

For example, in the tennis niche, you can name one of your techniques “The forehand crusher”.

Rather than just saying “discover a technique to improve your forehand power and speed”, you can give that technique a name and you make it stand out and increase its perceived value.

Example no.1:

Discover the forehand crusher technique that will increase your forehand power and speed!

Example no.2:

The “You Forgot” reminder trick that allows you to increase your productivity tenfold!

Specific Bullet Points

One of your bullet points can mention a very specific benefit they’ll will enjoy.

Specificity works well because the prospect can understand in greater detail what they’ll get.

Example:

How to use 3 little-known “positioning secrets” to completely cancel out the superior size or experience of your attacker!

Pluck Interesting Things

You can look carefully at the contents and information in your lead magnet to find the best benefits or things about it. Then feature them as a bullet point!

Answer Their Objections

Make a list of your prospects’ biggest questions, objections or problems they have, that your lead magnet answers, and then write bullet points about them.

You can put the objections on the left side of a piece of paper, and on the right side write the corresponding bullet point, the benefit, the thing that the lead magnet gives and does to solve that problem.

Example:

Problem: the prospect needs to know how to change a tire.

Bullet point: The exact step by step process to change a tire in 7 minutes or less!

Notice the bullet point is being specific, which is always a good thing to do when writing bullet points.

Lead Magnet eCover

Even though the lead magnet is free it should still look professional. You can hire an ecover designer to design a nice looking ecover for your lead magnet.

These are some options to purchase ecovers:

• DesignInca – I’ve hired them for ecovers. On their portfolio page they don’t have much examples of past work yet.
• Warrior Forum – In this forum they have an entire section where you can find and hire designers.
• Fiverr – Most of the freelancers on fiverr provide very low quality graphics. So look carefully at their portfolio before you pick someone. If you’re lucky you can find someone good, and they can be really cheap.
• eCover Expert – Decent ecovers.

If the lead magnet is a video you can put a video thumbnail with a play button, here’s an example:

video thumbnail example

Download Button (2-step)

The download button uses a 2 step optin form. This means when you click the button a “popup” loads, where user can enter their name and email. Here’s a screenshot:

2 Step Optin Box

A 2 step optin form has been proven (from various split tests) to work much better than if you had the optin box (name & email forms) directly on the same page! Pretty much everyone uses a 2 step optin form.

To create these “popups” in WordPress I use a plugin called Layered Popups.

The One Time Offer Page

The one-time offer page is a normal sales letter, with a few adjustments. You can read my other guide on how to write sales letters, in order to write a really good sales letter for the one-time offer page.

The length of the sales letter is usually affected by the price of your product. 

Because if you’re selling a $27 product you’ll probably need less copy to explain all its benefits, features and persuade the prospect to invest in it, than if it was a bigger or larger product, with a price tag of $69 or more.

At first, it’s recommended that you don’t use video to keep things as simple as possible.

And to avoid overwhelm and/or frustration. 

Much later on you can consider adding a video at the top of the sales letter, this is known as a video sales letter (VSL) and split test to see if it outperforms the regular sales letter.

Split testing is discussed further below…

The Confirmation Message

The only modifications you want to make is at the top of the sales letter. 

Above the first component of the sales letter, therefore the headline you should put a confirmation message. 

They have just opted in for your lead magnet, so you want to put a note to inform them that their lead magnet will arrive shortly in their email inbox.

Here are three examples of one-time offer pages. Click the thumbnail to see the full-size image (it’s a screenshot of the actual page).

Notice at the very top they both have that confirmation message…

Example 1, 2 and 3:

The One Time Only Headline / Message

Below the confirmation message, you can also put another message or headline to inform them the offer on this page is a one time only offer…

You can write something like this: “This Is A One Time Only Offer – You Won’t See This Every Again!”…

And below that, you can put your sales letter… which starts with a headline or a pre headline.

Here are some examples of this one time only offer message. These examples are a little bit fancier, you don’t necessarily have to use any arrows, or graphics like these examples…

The one-time offer page will contain the sales letter that will sell your product. And just like any other good sales letter, you’ll need to give them about 3 free bonuses as part of the offer.

I suggest you check out my other guide about Information products to discover how to create bonus products.

The last page is the simplest one, it’s the…

The Thank You Page

The thank-you page is the easiest page because all you have to do is thank them for purchasing the one time only product… and give them download links. 

Give all necessary instructions and tools they need, for example, ebook readers, video players or anything else they need to consume your product. 

Put your email address on the thank you page so they can contact you quickly in case they have trouble downloading their products.

Sales Funnel Design Tips

Congruency (or branding) is very important in a sales funnel. This means all 3 pages have to look very similar to one another in certain aspects. 

So that the visitor feels, learns and understands quickly that he’s still on the same website after they optin. 

They can easily become confused if each page of the sales funnel looks different… because you use different colors for example. 

They may think the one time offer is a “popup” or something crazy like that…

Keep the following components identical or very similar throughout the sales funnel, to give the visitor a consistent experience as they move from one page to another.

• Headlines – Use the same font family, size and color for all headlines, the one on the optin page and the other one on the one time offer page.
• Subheadlines – These too need to have the same font family, size and color. These are used on the oto page.
• Fonts – Use the same font family and size on all pages.
• Colors – Use one main color e.g. red on all pages. This color can be used in headlines and/or subheadlines, background colors, etc. You can also use that it in the product’s ecovers but this is optional. The body text should always be black.
• Download or Buy Buttons – Use the same button color, and font family for the button text for all the buttons in the sales funnel.
• Logo – You can put your logo at the very top or bottom of each page of the sales funnel.
• Favicon – You can use a favicon, this is the icon that appears in the browser’s tab. You can use your logo as the favicon.
• eCovers – You can order the ecovers for the lead magnet, the one time only product and its bonuses all from the same designer… so that they design them using similar colors and styles. This is optional, but it too can give that congruency (or branding) effect.

If you use anything else on more than one page you can make them identical or very similar to each other to give the visitor a consistent experience.

Below are the three pages of my own sales funnel, notice the similarity between the various elements from the list above, e.g. headline fonts and colors, button colors, favicon, logo, and so on…

Click the thumbnails to see the full screenshot.

Ad And Optin Page Congruency

There should also be congruency between the ad (e.g. Facebook Ad if you’re using Facebook Advertising), and the optin page as much as possible.

For example, you can use the same headline of the optin page for the ad title. In this way, after a visitor clicks on your ad they’ll see the exact same headline on the optin page. 

They’ll immediately know they landed on the exact and appropriate page they had to in order to get the lead magnet.

A confused visitor won’t think twice before abandoning your website, so it’s paramount that you do anything you can to make everything quick, simple and easy to understand.

Sales Funnel Tools

For this basic sales funnel you don’t need a lot of tools. The following are the tools you’ll need to set up this funnel.

• Autoresponder

After they optin they will be added to your list so that you can deliver the lead magnet and then email them regularly (preferable daily). Aweber is the recommended autoresponder software.

• Page Builder

To build your sales funnel pages you can use WordPress.org and a page building plugin for WordPress. The recommended plugins are Elementor or Thrive Architect.

This video shows you how to install WordPress:

To install Elementor’s free version of their plugin you can follow this guide on their website:

How to Install Elementor Page Builder

If the free version doesn’t contain all the necessary features consider upgrading to the pro version, and this guide shows you how to install the pro version:

Installing Elementor Pro

This video shows you how to install Thrive Architect:

You have to link to an order form from your one-time offer page, so your prospects can use it to purchase the OTO product.

You can use Jvzoo to accept credit cards and Paypal. It’s free. You want to accept credit cards, but ideally, also PayPal because it’s widely used.

If for whatever reason Jvzoo doesn’t work for you these are some other options:

CCbill (this is the one I used to use, not the easiest to set up but it’s still beginner-friendly. This doesn’t accept Paypal)

PayKickStart (there’s a monthly fee for this one)

…and there are more options.

I don’t recommend Clickbank, because they require that you put their Trust Bade (a kind of banner) on your pages, which can hurt your conversions.

Sales Funnel Benchmarks

Once you’ve finished creating your sales funnel, with all three pages and the various products… you can drive paid traffic to test it.

You should get about a 25% conversion rate on the optin page and between 1-2% conversion rate on the one-time offer page.

If you don’t get those conversion rates you have to improve your copywriting skill so that you write better copy for those pages.

How To Calculate Conversion Rate?

The 25% conversion rate on the optin page means out of every 100 visitors 25 become leads.

The 2% conversion rate means that out of every 100 people that see the one-time offer page 2 will buy it.

To calculate the conversion rate divide the number of actions that occurred in a given time frame, e.g. in the last 30 days, by the number of visitors the page got in the same time frame.

Then multiple by 100 to get a percentage value.

For example our optin page got 250 leads and 1000 visitors in the last 30 days.

250 / 1000 = 0.25 x 100 = 25%.

You can use this free tool to calculate the conversion rate.

How To Create A
Break Even Sales Funnel

A break-even funnel means if you spend e.g. $300 in a given time period, e.g. 1 month, you earn $300 or more from your sales funnel one time only sales, in the same time period. You’re losing no money… and you’re building your list.

If you increase the number of OTO sales you make you’ll obviously more likely to create a break-even funnel.

And to do that there are several things you can do, let’s discover them…

Increase Conversion Rates

If you increase the optin and OTO page until they have average conversion rates, you’re more likely to create a break-even funnel.

So the first thing you can do is reach the average conversion rates for both pages. Remember that means at least 20% on the optin page and 1-2% on the one-time offer page! 

There are two ways to do that…

Write Better Copy

You should improve your copywriting skills in order to write better copy and that will increase the conversion rates for your optin and OTO pages.

The result would be more leads and more sales, which both can result in a break-even funnel.

Test New Products

If you still cannot reach the average conversion rates (20% for optin and 1-2% for OTO page), even after drastically improving the copy of your pages, then you may need to try new products. 

Perhaps your prospects don’t like the lead magnet or OTO product. In which case you have to test new ones! 

Decrease Your Advertising Cost

Another thing you can do to create a break-even sales funnel is to lower your advertising cost.

How you do that depends on what paid traffic source you’re using. 

For example, if you’re using Facebook Ads you can decrease your advertising costs (cost per click or CPC) by increasing your ad relevancy score and increasing your ad click-through rate (CTR).

If you can spend less money to send the same amount of visitors to the sales funnel you’re obviously more likely to create a break-even funnel.

Split Test Your Sales Funnel Pages

Once you reach the average conversion rates, your sales funnel may still need more tweaking in order to reach break-even point. 

You can use split testing, but it’s a slightly more advanced technique. Don’t worry about it until you’ve built your sales funnel and it has the average conversion rates. 

The average conversion rates should be reached with the above methods. Split testing is used to go beyond the average conversion rates (not to reach the average).K.I.S.S Princinple The K.I.S.S. principle, keep it simple stupid, should be applied in anything you do in your business. If you feel things are getting a bit too complicated you have to simplify some things…

And then slowly add complexities bit by bit. Master the basics and test more advanced things later on.

You can split test your optin or OTO page. Always split test just one page or the other, not both at the same time, to keep things simple.

It will be easier to perform a split test on the optin page because it’s a very short page, so ideally start with that page. 

To split test means to duplicate the page, and change just one element from that page.

For example, you can create an exact duplicate of the optin page, but the second copy will have a totally new headline.

Then you’ll have 2 variations of the optin page. You send traffic to your normal optin page URL, but the split testing tool (e.g. Google Optimize) will rotate the pages. 

This means half the traffic you send will see variation A (the original page) and the other half will see variation B (the page with the new headline).

You have to wait until your optin page gets 500 conversions (leads) or 1,000 visitors in order to decide which variation is the best. (You may have to be patient at first if you’re only getting few visitors).

When split testing sales pages e.g. your one-time offer page wait until you get a total of 100 conversions (sales) at least.Important It’s important to wait until you get enough conversions. Technically speaking that will be known as a statistically significant test.

Here’s a good video about statistically significant tests, that comes directly from the owners of a split-testing tool called Thrive Optimize:

To decide which optin page is the best you simply take a look at which page got the most leads. 

If it was the new variation you created (with the new headline), then start using that optin page instead of the other one…

Once a split test ends you can start another one… and in that way, you keep improving your conversion rate slowly and steadily.

After you split test the headline you can split test another element on your page. Here are a few suggestions…

Split Tests To Consider

Not every element on your pages are worth split testing. For example, button color can be split tested – that will tell you which is the best button color to use between two different colors.

But you will only see a very minor improvement in your conversion rates, an insignificant improvement.

However, if you split test a headline and find a better one you can see big improvements in conversion rates. You can go from 20% to 25% just by changing the headline.

• The headline is the first element you should split test, because that’s the most important element on your optin or one time offer page.
• The offer format is the second element you should split test after the headline. This means test a free video versus a free checklist, or a free template versus a free special report.
  
  Take the information of your lead magnet and just put it in a new format, and test to see if people prefer that format versus the other.
• After the offer format perform a split test on your actual sales copy. This is much less important than the other two. For example test a new bullet point.
  
  Remember always make one simple change, don’t change all three bullet points, just change one only.

Once you finish the first split test on the headline, you can test the offer format, and then the copy. And then restart back from the headline.

Split testing is an ongoing process, you should always have a split test running. You’ll see small improvements in your conversion rates with each split test, but over time they accumulate into big improvements.

Split Testing Tools

When you do split testing all you have to do is duplicate a page (e.g. the optin page), and essentially have two copies of it… but one of them will have one variation, e.g. a different headline.

The reason you need a split-testing tool is that they’ll rotate both pages when you send traffic.

So some visitors see page 1, and others see page 2. Split testing tools also calculate conversion rates and provide a lot of useful data about the split test you’re conducting.

All you need is Google Optimize and Google Analytics. Both are free tools. You can read this rather long, but a well-detailed article on how to set up everything and run your first split test.

That tutorial works for any page building plugin you’re using, not just Elementor.

There’s also a new split testing plugin that works specifically with Elementor, called Split Test For Elementor.

Thrive Optimize is another good split testing tool, but it works only with Thrive Architect, and it’s not free.

Use A One Click Upsell (Advanced)

If you cannot make a break-even funnel with any of the other methods, the last resort is to use a one-click upsell (OCU). 

That will basically increase the amount of money you can potentially earn from the funnel.

The one-click upsell is just another sales page in your funnel that will sell an additional product. 

It will only be visible to those who purchase the OTO product.

Here’s how the sales funnel will look with this new page:

Funnel With One Click Upsell

If you price this OCU product, for example, $69 and the OTO product $37, now your sales funnel can earn you up to $106 from a single customer. 

This means it’s now more likely to recuperate (liquidate) the advertising cost and break even!

The one-click upsell can be a much shorter sales letter (and typically it’s a video sales letter, containing just a video instead of a sales letter) and you can offer the customer another related product to what they just purchased. 

Think of what other products or services your customers want after they buy the OTO product. What would they need next?

The one-click upsell page will have two buttons at the bottom of the page.

One button will allow your customers to buy the OCU product. Their card will be charged instantly, they won’t have to fill an order form again. 

The second button will allow them to reject the offer and it takes them to the thank you page for the OTO product they purchased.

Sales Funnel Tools To Create One-Click Upsells

You need a special shopping cart that has the one-click upsell feature. Here are just a few good ones:

SamCart

PayKickStart

Conclusion

This guide gave you a simple but proven sales funnel that you can use regardless of your niche. Remember this funnel can be used to generate thousands of leads every month and build 5 figures a month business.

This funnel consists of just 3 pages. And I’ve also shown you ways to improve the funnel until it breaks even so that you’re earning as much or more than you’re spending on paid traffic.

If you’re going to use paid traffic a sales funnel is the “machine” that supplies the business with fresh new leads every day. 

So you should build one.

Remember the K.I.S.S. principle because it’s truly important, keep it simple stupid! Use this basic sales funnel and avoid any complicated or advanced strategies until you master the basics. 

Keep things simple and easy so you accomplish a lot! Otherwise, you can get confused and frustrated… both can halt your progress and lower your motivation to take action.

So are there any questions about sales funnels you’d like to ask? Leave them in the comments below.