The $100K Method #1: Breaking Down My Evergreen System
Did you know this blog is part of a series? The next blog is here.
You can also listen to the series as a podcast here!
When I started my online business, I was broke, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and my biggest goal was to create a consistent stream of passive income, but I had a really hard time figuring out how.
Now, it’s not that people weren’t talking about this topic. They were — but not in a helpful way.
What they shared was vague, theoretical, and frequently overhyped. But what I wanted and needed was practical, hands-on advice from someone who had successfully done what I wanted to do and could tell me what steps to take to start earning passive income.
After a lot of research, I determined that digital courses and membership sites were going to be the best way to reach my passive income goals. There are certainly other options out there, but most either require a lot of money — like investing in stocks or patenting a product — or simply don’t have a very high earning potential.
Online courses and memberships, on the other hand, could be put together with only a small budget and marketed strategically to turn into six- or even seven-figure streams of passive income. And that was exactly what I was looking for!
I’m going to reveal the basic strategy of using evergreen sales funnels to passively sell online courses. We’ll also take a look at one of my $100K Funnels in action, so you can see how this strategy works in the real world.
What is an Evergreen Funnel?
Okay, so what even is an “Evergreen Funnel” and how can it earn you passive income?
First: A “funnel” is simply a sales process.
It includes a series of steps that introduce people to your product, educate them about how it can help them, and ultimately guide them to purchase.
Literally every business that’s making any money at all has a sales funnel — or several, because it’s pretty typical to have a separate one for each product you sell!
Now, if your business isn’t making any money, then your funnel — or lack of funnel — is the first place you’ll want to look.
But, the topic of this series isn’t the basics of general funnels. We’re getting specific with evergreen funnels — because these are the special ones that enable us to hit our passive income goals.
Evergreen funnels are like evergreen trees — they keep growing all year round, not just in certain seasons. Most businesses run seasonal promotions, only selling a few months out of the year. Evergreen funnels are a different kind of sales system that keep running 24 hours/day, 365 days/year, continuously generating income.
To get even more specific, though, the $100K Method utilizes what we call “Automated Evergreen Funnels”. These are sales processes that not only run around the clock, they do so autonomously — without any hands-on effort from you or your team.
That means NO sales calls, NO following up with leads, OR even active lead generation!
It’s all automated with software and systems… and that’s what enables it to generate truly passive income.
Now, if this is a new idea to you, then you might be feeling a little overwhelmed. Software? Systems? It’s true that the terminology is a little different, but I promise that you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how simple these systems really are. You don’t need to be a marketing pro to make them work for you and you definitely don’t need to know how to code! I certainly don’t know how to myself.
Before we break down the details in this blog series about the $100K Method, how evergreen funnels work, and how you can set one up for yourself, we are going to look at a big-picture example. Let me show you the first $100K Funnel I ever built — the one that’s still earning me a great 6-figure income today.
Example of a $100K Funnel in Action
Allow me to lift the veil on the $100K Funnel that sells our YouTube strategy program, Creator Fast Track.
Every funnel starts with potential customers discovering your brand. And with Creator Fast Track’s $100K Funnel, that happens on YouTube. I know it’s a little meta, since the program is about YouTube, but that’s part of the beauty of it!
On YouTube, I’ve published several videos about YouTube strategy, how to start a channel, how to get subscribers, and so on. The YouTube algorithm recommends those videos to people who are interested in those topics, and in the videos, I mention an opportunity to sign up for a free YouTube strategy workshop.
This brings us to the second step of the funnel because it’s not enough to just introduce your product to people…
to make sales, you have to show people how your product will work to make their lives better, and then you have to ask them to buy.
How do we do this? By inviting them to a free workshop.
Potential customers can sign up to attend this free workshop and when they sign up, my business gets their contact info — which is key for being able to follow up and eventually close the sale.
After the prospect signs up, I send them four emails, hyping up the workshop and telling them what they’re going to learn. These emails are sent as an automated sequence that we call a Showup Sequence. Without these emails, less than 10% of the people who signed up for the workshop would actually show up. But these four short emails more than triple that rate, ensuring we have a healthy show-up rate of 30%+.
The third step of the funnel is the workshop itself, which is based on our Win/Win Webinar Framework.
Have you ever attended a webinar? I definitely have! Now, some people think webinars don’t work anymore, but that’s normally just because they’ve attended so many webinars themselves that they’ve gotten tired of them and aren’t interested any longer. But that’s not most people! In fact, if you asked your real-life friends how many webinars they’ve attended, you’d probably find that many haven’t attended any at all. I’m pretty sure that some of my friends don’t even know what webinars are!
The other reason that the Win/Win webinar works so well is that it’s built based on proven sales psychology. It seeks first to serve, which creates trust with your prospects and makes them want to purchase your product. It’s also highly persuasive, making the attendees an offer they can’t refuse.
Of course, not everyone who attends the webinar chooses to buy. Some of them aren’t the right fit for the product, others have questions, and still others just need a bit more time to think.
But, instead of ramping up the pressure on the webinar — which makes everyone uncomfortable, we meet people where they’re at and give them the time and answers they need to make an informed decision. Now, not only is this just the right, kind thing to do, it’s also effective from a sales standpoint, consistently converting 5-10% of the prospects, without any direct effort from me or my team.
The fourth step of this $100K Funnel is our webinar follow-up email sequence, called the Double Your Sales sequence.
I bet you can guess why we call it that! Most $100K students are able to double the total number of sales generated by their webinar by sending this 3-day email sequence. It’s short and sweet, so nobody gets annoyed, and the fast-pacing works in our favor, because it keeps the prospects engaged in the decision-making process.
The fifth and final step of the $100K Funnel is the Evergreen Newsletter.
This email sequence is sent to the prospects who haven’t bought after registering for the webinar and receiving the Double Your Sales sequence. It sends them one email per week to increase their trust, gradually persuade them that the product is what they need, and give them additional opportunities to purchase.
This sequence is the long-game, working to convert those prospects who initially said “no” but really meant “I’m not ready, yet.”
Altogether, this five-step $100K Funnel is incredibly effective at selling our Creator Fast Track program around the clock without the direct involvement of me or my team, generating truly passive income. Exactly what I was looking for from day 1 in my business!
What this Means for You
Now, you might think this system works for me because I have a large audience, but doubt that it can work for you — but I’m here to tell you that this funnel has been generating $100K+/year ever since we first set it up 4 years ago, before my audience had taken off.
And I’m not the only one who built a $100K Funnel without a large audience! Check out Sarah’s experience starting from zero clients:
"Since joining the $100K Mastermind, I've gone from not having any clients to picking up 18 new clients, and in my first launch I managed to earn $4,400 in revenue. So this is gonna happen. This's gonna be a real thing."
SARAH MAPES
The Bone Builder System
Read more student testimonials and watch Sarah’s video sharing her story here.
About this $100K Method series
Throughout the rest of this blog series, we’ll look at how YOU can take action and successfully implement a money-making system like this for yourself, including how you can easily generate leads — even without a big audience AND without social media, how you can strategically structure your funnel to passively convert 5-10% of your leads, and how you can scale this system to consistent ten thousand dollar months.
If you’re ready to build a $100K Funnel on your own, then now is the time to start taking action. Head to https://gillianperkins.com/100K to find out how you can build a $100K Funnel to start making you money in the next 3 months or less!
I know you are capable of this and I know it will change your life.
YOUR NEXT STEP
In the next blog in the $100K Method series, I share exactly how I launched my first $100K Funnel so you can see exactly what that process looked like, how I created it, and what turned it into a success.
