Maximize Your Online Income With a Creator Funnel

In order to make money as a creator or solopreneur, you need a well-constructed "creator funnel."

A creator funnel is a simple journey that your online audience goes through, increasing the chance that they become a customer with each step.

Back in 2019, I started my online business without a funnel and saw relatively mediocre results.

Fast forward 5 years and my business has generated more than $8.5M through an intentionally designed creator funnel.

I want to share mine with the hope that it helps you.

A great creator funnel begins with getting discovered

In order to build a successful creator funnel, you must first get discovered.

If nobody finds your thoughts or ideas, none of the other parts of the funnel matter. Learning to stand out online is part of modern marketing.

The easiest way to get discovered is to create value where people are already consuming.

There are four types of content that generally "add value" and therefore have positive results:

1. This person teaches me
2. This person entertains me
3. This person makes me think
4. This person understands me

If you're still struggling to understand what it means to "add value", here's a great explanation from Daniel Vassallo (from his private community, Small Bets).

Once you understand the skill of creating value, you should distribute it to places where people are already consuming: Twitter, LinkedIn (easiest), YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, IndieHackers, etc.

I choose to publish 2x daily on LinkedIn and Twitter, where I've done over 900M impressions.

After being discovered, building trust is critical

Once you've been discovered, it's important that you move your audience from thinking, "this person is familiar" to "this person is someone I trust".

When I use the word, "trust", I mean they trust in your expertise. They trust that you know what you're doing in your field of choice.

To deepen that trust, use longer-form content to show your expertise:

• Newsletter
• How-to guides
• Step-by-step videos

For my creator funnel, I move people from Twitter and LinkedIn to my weekly newsletter.

My goal is twofold:

1. Show people how I think at a deeper level (trust)
2. De-platform my closest followers to my email list and off of social media.

Remember - it's critical to "own" your audience (email list) vs. "rent" your audience (social media).

Deep relationships take trust to the next level

Once trust is built, you can begin establishing true relationships.

True relationships are about access. A "behind-the-scenes" glimpse at how someone thinks, acts, works, etc.

It's much easier to invite someone into this phase of the funnel once they fully trust your expertise and knowledge.

My relationship builder is my private community. 600+ motivated creators on Slack, sharing best practices, doing monthly AMA's with me, and even in-person meetups in cities like New York, San Francisco, London, and Lisbon.

They join to deepen their relationship with me and our other motivated members, all focused on the same goal: growing their business.

Relationships are much easier to monetize

Think about the journey someone takes to join a community. They:

• Discover you
• Build trust through high-quality content
• Invest in a long-term relationship through community

Once someone has come this far, they are highly likely to want more of what you create. This is where monetization is easiest.

Not only are these your closest followers, but they are also a captive audience. You can reach out directly via your community.

No algorithm to beat. No open rates to worry about. No competition.

Just a captive audience of likely buyers.

This is where you can get creative. Offer up courses, cohort-based coaching programs, SaaS platforms, etc.

Congratulations! You're ready to build your own creator funnel.

TL;DR

P.S. If you like tips like these, consider my flagship course, The Creator MBA. 14 Chapters and 111 Lessons of instructional video that will teach you how to build a lean, profitable internet business (even if you're just starting or don't have an idea).

Join 4,000+ internet entrepreneurs here.