CRAZY! They Will Pay You To Drive Traffic To Your Own Funnels...
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Welcome to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. My name is Russell Brunson, and I'm what you call a serial entrepreneur, but with a twist. You see, 50% of my time, I'm the CEO of ClickFunnels, helping over 100,000 brands to grow their companies with funnels. And the other 50% of my time, I'm actually in the trenches using ClickFunnels to grow the startups I believe in. During this podcast, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you how we are bootstrapping ClickFunnels and my other businesses from startup to nine figures and beyond. Welcome to the show.

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I am messaging you from inside of a cruise ship. My family and I just went on a... We're still on the cruise, actually, so don't forget. We've had three days on shore, and today's a boat day, and we're all just kind of sunburned and tired and hanging out, so I thought I would jump on and say what's up to you guys. Also, it's kind of fun when you're on vacation and you're not

in the middle of the day-to-day grind, your mind starts wondering about other things and I feel like your subconscious mind is able to give you more ideas and more insights. And so it's been a fun trip. A lot of cool things in my head. I also had a chance to read both of Jesse Itzler's books. One is called Living with the Seals. For 30 days he lived with David Goggins. That book is amazing. It's one of my favorite books of all time. And then part two is Living with a Monk. The Monk one was good, but

The one with David Goggins was insane. It was such a good book. If you're looking for a fun one, yeah, check out that book. Anyway, I just want to talk to you today about something that I have fought for 20 years and I'm finally repenting of my ways and changing my mind, mostly because I think we're in a situation where we kind of have to now. Let me explain. So,

obviously you guys know that I am a big fan of paid ads. We spend, you know, multiple millions of dollars a month on paid ads. And forever, that was great. Like, we spend a million dollars and make five million or whatever. You know, like, it was awesome. But over the last few years, ads have gotten more and more expensive. At a point where it's like, even our business, and I have a deep funnel. I've got a lot of back ends. We've got continuity. We've got high ticket. We've got all these things, like, getting harder and harder and harder to make the numbers all work.

And it's fascinating that people I know that are winning right now are people who are really good at the content game. In fact, in April, I'm flying out to go see two of them. Both of these guys are killing it. One of them

One was doing eight figures a year, doesn't pay any ads. One was doing nine figures a year, doesn't pay for single ad. All through just organic content. I fought it for a long time. It's like, you know, not that I'm fighting organic content. I'm all for that. But to really focus on it, I didn't understand it. In fact, it all started with a conversation I had with Rachel Hollis. And, you know, Rachel, when she wrote her book, Girl, Wash Your Face, she blew up and she was the biggest celebrity on the internet for a couple of years.

And it was crazy. She was doing, you know, like the Russell Brunson stuff. She was doing events and speaking and, and, you know, on the world tour anymore, but like just crazy busy. And she even, you know, if you listen to her podcast or talk to her, she was, there's a lot, it was a lot to handle. And, um, anyway, um,

a couple years ago things had slowed down for her and she was changing things around and she told me she's like I've looked at all the stuff I was doing and she's like the thing I spent the least amount of time on was my podcast but things make me the most money was also my podcast and so she's like I decided just to double down on that and so

And I'm not going to lie. I didn't really understand that. Like, okay, like how are you making money off your podcast or how much, like how, anyway, I didn't really click on my head. Cause for me, a podcast is a way to generate traffic to my funnels. Right. Like everything for me, all content I put out there, the goal of it is to generate traffic to funnels. Right. And so she wasn't, she's focusing on that. I'm like, okay, it doesn't make sense. Like she doesn't really, she doesn't have a lot of offers out there. She wasn't doing events anymore. I'm like, this doesn't make sense, but that's kind of all it was. Then fast forward to, um,

A couple months later, we had Mastermind of Paradise in Mexico with all the two CCXers and Inner Circle members. And that was awesome. And I had Kathy Yoder speak. And Kathy, she's someone who had a YouTube channel focusing on air fryers, how to cook with air fryers. And initially, I saw her doing that. And I knew she had some air fryer recipe books. And I was like, oh, she's driving travel from YouTube channel to Facebook.

And I was like, do you want me to speak at Mastermind Paradise showing how you're doing that? She's like, sure, I'd love to. So she came to Paradise and she showed the thing. What I wasn't expecting is not only was she showing how much traffic she was getting through funnels from these YouTube videos, she was showing the revenue that YouTube was paying her. At the time, you have to understand, like, I had turned off revenue on all my YouTube videos because I'm like, no. And in fact, I always tell people this. I'm like, this is Russell now humbling himself. I'm like, if they could make more money off my...

or my audience than i can then i don't deserve to be a marketer in fact i remember people trying to buy ads my podcast back in the day i'd say the same thing like if they can make more money off of my listeners than i can then i don't deserve to be a marketer and so i would never let people buy ads um which is anyway probably dumb definitely dumb but at the time it seemed seemed right right so watching kathy yoder she's showing the scene she's making these videos in her kitchen and that she's

you know do you use your air fryer and she showed like month one i mean like 50 bucks one two made 300 bucks but four made a thousand you know like i got up and then got a point where like every video she's posting she's making like 30 to 50 grand for every video she's posting and also it's like holy cow she posts a video instead of buying ads to get people watching she posts the video for free it gets you know a million views or five you know 200 000 views whatever it is

I'm like, she got paid 20, 30 grand for that video. Plus the video still drove traffic to her funnel. And I was like, that's so fascinating. Like right now, everything I'm gonna do is I spend money and I get people to my funnel. She's producing free content. She gets paid for that content. And then it sends people to her funnel. Right. It seems like a better way to do business. Right. This again, I hear her say that and I'm like, that's cool. But I don't really, I don't really, I don't, I don't really do much. Right.

So back at Photo Hacking Live, she comes back and she speaks and does the same presentation. And once again, I'm like, gosh, I need to start my YouTube channel. So I decided to go all over YouTube. I actually hired Daryl Eves. He flew out for a day and traded me on some YouTube stuff, which was awesome, and worked with his team. And we started doing our YouTube channel. And if you follow me on YouTube, in fact, if you don't, go to YouTube.com, it's SirTrestleBrunson, and go watch a bunch of my videos. But we started consistently producing videos. And so we went and spent...

a whole bunch of time filming them and we got like, I don't know, 15, 20 videos in the queue and then we launched the channel. And so we launched it and, um,

January, we launched four videos, February. Anyway, it's funny because January, I only made, I think I made $1,000. Like, ooh. But we got a bunch of traffic to our funnels, which is good. So I got paid, got traffic to our funnels. February, it doubled to $2,000, right? $2,000 of ad revenue, bunch of people to funnels. Like, okay, this is working. And now we're in March right now and it's gone up even more. And this is similar to Kathy's. She watched hers. It was like little bits and all of a sudden, like within five or six months, it was like, it was,

crazy money right you got a point where i should post more videos you should post two videos a day two videos a week then three videos what's up everybody really quick i want to jump in because i am excited for our next sponsor of the show uh the next sponsor is mint mobile i found out about mint originally when ryan reynolds bought in the company and ryan's not only one of the greatest actors of all time uh he's one of the best marketers i've ever seen if you've watched

the funny viral ads he's created something that all of us marketers should be studying and watching and I remember watching the ads from Mint Mobile and they were amazing number one and number two when I started seeing what they were doing I got really excited and so I'm pumped to have them as a sponsor for the show and what I didn't realize until I got my own Mint Mobile account was that typically with most cell phone companies as you probably know you gotta pay anywhere from 70, 80, 100 dollars a month or more for premium wireless service and the reason for that is

is because you gotta deal with TV commercials, and then on top of that, you got the retail stores and the sales people, and there's all these costs along the way. What Mint Mobile does is they sell their wireless services online, cutting out the costs of all of these retail stores and sales people, saving you a ton of money. So instead of paying 50, 70, $100 a month, you only pay $15 per month

as part of this premium phone plan. And so because I decided to check it out on my phone, and so far I love it, they've been really, really good. Since I've been loving it so much, I was pumped when they asked if we could partner up to help people who are listening to this episode of the podcast actually save money, and they said yes. So here is a special offer we created for you guys. You can now save a ton of money by switching to Mint Mobile for just $15 a month.

Literally, you can say goodbye to all of your overpriced wireless plans, get high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network without having to change your phone number or your existing contacts. So to get this new customer offer and get your new three-month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month, all you got to do is go to mintmobile.com slash funnels. That's M-I-N-T-M-O-B-I-L-E dot com slash F-U-N-N-E-L-S. Cut your wireless bill to just $15 a month and get premium phone service at mintmobile.com slash funnels.

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You know, I'm making money to get traffic as opposed to paying money to get traffic. And so anyway, so we're doing a YouTube strategy and focusing on it. And then I look at, I talked to one of my friends. I can't mention their name because I talk about their stats, but they have a really good podcast. And one of their sponsors alone was paying them $80,000 a month for this person. I'm going to be careful that I don't get in trouble disclosing them or their income, but $80,000 a month to mention them on YouTube.

their podcasts once a week. I was like, what? How is that even possible? So I asked this person and they said, oh, well, here's an agency. You know, there's a lot of them out there but you hire this agency and they will sell ads for you. I'm like, okay. So I hired this agency or I talked to this agency and I'm still kind of fighting it a little bit. You know, I got my podcast which is, you know, most of the episodes went 20 minutes long and there's no ads ever and

And they made this proposal for me and they looked down like, I didn't really get it. And then the owner of the company, very wisely, made a video. It's like, Russell, let me explain to you how this works. You obviously have a thick head. Let me explain this whole process. And so it showed me, it said, look, right now, and they basically would be like, the person whose podcast I'm not going to mention the name of, they were getting, I think like 800,000 downloads a month, right? Which is awesome.

And I was like, mine gets, I don't even know, 100 and something thousand downloads a month, right? So one eighth of each other person. They said, well, a couple problems. Number one is your podcast is only 20 minutes long. And so we can't sell many ads in there. So you have to increase it to at least 30 minutes because then we could have like a pre-roll ad, a mid-roll ad, and a post-roll ad if you're at 30 minutes. And they said, based on your numbers right now, if you increase anything, you'd make, I can't remember what it was, like, I don't even know, 15,000.

20 or 30 grand somebody that 20 30 grand a month or something like oh yeah i'm like that's not um you know it's not horrible but something like get all excited about but then um and she said no look um right now you're once a week now if you would go and do twice a week all of a sudden you go from 100 000 downloads a month 200 000 downloads a month and you just doubled your income by doing two podcasts and said now it's your podcast 30 minutes means we only have you know those three ad spots but if you were to increase it to 60 minutes per episode

If you increase 60 minutes per episode, also we can sell, you know, whatever, it's the six ad spots or five ad spots and now your income doubles again. So from going from one 20 minute show to two 60 minute shows, I go from, remember, 30 grand, I don't remember the number I had, but like $220,000 a month from the podcast. And that's like, if I don't grow it, and say, now let's say you focus on actually growing the podcast and buying ads too and doing all these different things. Then you go from

Because if you go from 100,000 to 100,000, you go twice a month, that's 200,000 or twice a week. Sorry, post, that's 200,000 downloads. You start buying ads, it's like 400,000 downloads. And then also it's like the revenue starts going crazy. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And also like the things start clicking in my head. I was like, that's what Rachel Hollis is doing. I'm like, she went from having a podcast once a week. It was like 30 minutes to now it's an hour. But she does hers five days a week now.

I was like five days a week. That means she's able to get five times the impressions and the people who are buying ads are buying based on impression. Then Rachel also launched a morning show. She has a 30 minute morning show and an hour long afternoon show. She has two shows a day happening, right? And, um, and all that's happening. She's getting paid on the CPM for all these ads. And I have no idea how many downloads she gets, but,

I'm doing the math and she's probably baking. Who knows? I have no idea. But my guess is seven figures a month or more just on ad revenue from the podcast that she records probably one day a week and she records all of them. And I was like, oh my gosh, I missed it. That makes so much sense. And then I started just thinking about that. And that's my podcast, right? Now if I was to focus on that, if I'm getting four or 500,000 downloads a month, it's all traffic now that can be pushing back

in my funnels and I'm getting paid for that, right? No longer am I paying for these ads. I'm getting paid to create stuff, right? Like how's that change? If all of a sudden instead of me going out and spending 30 grand this month on podcast ads, instead I get paid 30 grand to promote, you know, and then to do my podcast. How's that change the metrics for business? Like it changed them dramatically.

Like Hermosi, Hermosi spent two years building up his organic traffic. And then when he did his first virtual event or whatever, he had 500,000 people register for free. That's crazy. If I was to pay to get 500,000 people to register for an event, I mean, I'm looking at, you know, three to five bucks per opt-in, probably more than that times 500,000. Like it's a, it's a four or $5 million ad spent to do what he did for free because he'd spent two years doing this organic free content and focusing on it.

I started getting, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's the key. And so I'm looking at now where it's like YouTube, like I want to produce, you know, instead of one video a week, I provided two videos a week, but if I did five videos a week, um, like he, one of my friends, Andy LA, like he posts a video every single day, like consistently day after day after day. And you look at that, um, with the, you know, the CPM that's happening, it's, it's crazy.

All you got to do is look at the show notes or the episode description to get a link for how you can upgrade to premium.

Forrest Land's part, I didn't understand this part, but advertisers pay for CPM, right? So if you have a thousand listeners, that's an M, right? So cost per million or cost per thousand CPM. And so that was always the thing that I struggled with. I was like, well, who would pay to be on Marketing Secrets Podcast? Who would pay to be on whatever? It's like,

The brands that are on here, if you listen to them, it's Geico, it's Apple Pay, it's Lexus, it's Tesla. It's these big brands who aren't direct response advertisers. They're just looking for CPM. And so if you've got the right demographic and the right numbers, they'll pay you for it. So to hear that, go and listen to Rachel Hollis' podcast. Go listen to Tom Bilyeu's. Go listen to this podcast. And then notice, like,

Tom Buech, he'll start with two minutes of the ad roll at the beginning of the podcast. In the middle of the podcast, there's ad roll at the very end. And listen to the companies who are buying it. They're all big companies who are buying on CPM. And if you get the CPM, they pay for the ads and it fills it all up. On YouTube, you get more targeting where people are buying based on different offers and funnels a lot of times. But still, at the same time, there's big brands that your ads are showing up on. And so that's kind of the...

that's kind of the, the key with it. So anyway, it's really fascinating. So for me, my whole focus now is like, how do I, how do I get paid? So even our email newsletters, companies that were finding that you can put a block inside your email newsletter and, um,

And then they'll literally just like place the ads in your newsletter for you. Same thing as CPM. So it's like based on how many impressions you get, that's how much you get paid for every, you know, for the ads in the newsletter. It gets crazy. So I'm looking at like flipping everything around from me buying ads on Facebook, Google, Instagram, you know, all this stuff we're doing to like how do I flip around? How do I get paid on the podcast? How do I get paid on YouTube? How do I get paid in email? How do I get paid in everything? So that I'm getting paid to produce these things versus me paying to place them out there. Does that make sense?

Anyway, so it's kind of a fascinating thing I want you guys to think through. It's a big mindset shift that I'm having on my side. Obviously, it takes more time. Like Facebook ads, you flip a switch and all of a sudden you get it. YouTube, you've got to build bodies. You've got to spend some time. You've got to keep putting things out there. But if you're consistent for...

you know six months a year two years like imagine what possible right again like hermosa spent two years he went from owning gyms like very small following just gym owners to two years of really hardcore content and now you look at his following all these things and it's it's it's crazy right so anyway that's just something i think about like getting paid to get to run ads versus paying to run ads um when i was in college i bought a domain name

I don't know if I still have it or not, but it's called sellingspace.com. I remember I was sitting in college thinking about like, I'm in this classroom and I had to pay to be in class. I had to pay for my books. I had to pay for everything. And I remember looking around the walls, all the walls, my classrooms were empty. There's like white walls. I was like, you could pay, like advertisers would pay, Taco Bell would pay to put a banner ad in here. So all the kids that are hungry and in lunch want to go Taco Bell. Like you could, you could sell space. And I started thinking like, you sell space anywhere. Like on your,

like you have a blog and there's this side spot of like sell that space. And so like I was going to do a course way back 10 years ago called selling space, but I never actually, never actually created that. But same concept, like you create eyeballs and they sell space inside that eyeballs. Like that's the, that's the big, the big, the big takeaway. So anyway, you're gonna notice that the marketing secrets podcast in the very near future will shift from a,

from a 20-minute show to probably a 30 or 60-minute show you'll notice i'll be going from once a week to at least twice a week and maybe eventually more depending how well it goes and these are the reasons why

because Geico wants to pay me to share some stuff with you. So I'm going to share some stuff with you. Right. And so both folks and more time and energy. Like Rachel said, like now, like the podcast becomes the main focus because of that. Like it's just fascinating. YouTube videos become the main focus. All these things become the core focus. And so I'm going to spend more time and energy and effort creating this content and really producing it so that

I can get more CPMs and get from where I've all shown and I get free traffic and get paid for that traffic. I think it's better than free traffic. You can pay to drive traffic to your funnels, which is insane. So anyway, I think this is the biggest, for me personally, biggest insight on traffic I've had in the last 10 years. Like it's just crazy. Um, you know, traffic secrets, I should write a bonus chapter part two or something. It's like how to get paid to get traffic. Like,

Like just going back in time, thinking about that, like, like what an important thing that I missed all these years. So anyway, thank you for all the people who are smarter than me, who've been doing this for a long time. And thank you, Russell, for finally paying attention to it. I'm really excited, especially for me. I don't know about you, but like I've got to be company, tons of staff. So when I do stuff, like I don't get paid that money directly goes into my company and then I get paid, you know, at the end of the day. But yeah,

But these things kind of shift around where it's like, I'm the content producer. I should get paid up from... So the revenue coming from the podcast, revenue coming from YouTube videos should come to me directly after paying the cost of the people who are producing all this stuff, right? It becomes me and that gives me incentive for me to focus on creating really good content, right? Like, we're going to get paid so we're going to focus your time. So I'm getting paid the money from...

creating courses, I'm going to create courses, I'm going to get paid to do webinars, I'm going to do webinars, I'm going to get paid to create content, like, it's no longer going to be an afterthought, it's going to be the thought, right, it's going to be the core thing, like, man, if I get paid 20 grand to make this video today, like, I'm going to go make a really good video, I'm going to make two videos, you know what I mean? So that's the thing to start focusing on and thinking about, so, anyway, there's a big insight, hopefully it helps you guys, that's where my mind's at right now, and I'm so excited, I can't even sleep, I'm so excited about this whole concept, and I realize for me it's going to be, you know, probably a year,

to really build it up to the spot where it's significant revenue. But in a year from now, that'll be coming to me because I'm creating content, because I'm driving traffic to my funnels. It's crazy. And so, yes, maybe it's going to take you two years. But man, think about two years ago, where were you at? If you would have started this two years ago, like right now, imagine getting paid all this money for producing the content that's driving traffic into your funnels anyway. Like, it's insane. It's exciting. Anyway, so selling space.

people call it that i don't even know i hope this helps you guys out and um yeah i'm excited to do a podcast episodes um i'm also launching a second podcast because you know might as well and um i recorded the first two episodes before we left on the cruise and they they are awesome i'm really excited for them ah anyway so much fun stuff coming up so all right appreciate you guys all thanks for uh listening in and um talk to you guys all soon bye everybody