You know the whole “money in your sleep” thing? 

“Build a funnel and watch the money roll in whilst you’re catching z’s”? 

The truth is, it’s real – but not in the same way it’s been taught, sold and done online for the past few years. 

The standard advice is that you set it up once, flick the switch to “on”, and watch the sales start rolling through the door. 

As much as I’d love to sell you that strategy, it doesn’t quite work that way. 

That’s the bad news. 

The good news?

Is that when done the right way, at the right time, using principles that work right now, and the right “full funnel” strategy, an evergreen funnel can become one of the most powerful automated workhorses for generating bonus profit in your business. 

In today’s piece, I am going to share with you how to build out an evergreen funnel system to sell your online course, program or membership the RIGHT way. 

(No BS or unrealistic promises included). 

Side note – We have just added a fresh new course soldier to the Lifestyle Business School lineup. It’s called Automate and Accelerate, and it’s a step–by-step, here’s-exactly-how-you-do-it system for building out an evergreen funnel system to sell your offer/s on autopilot. 

It includes the full strategy for creating a front end evergreen funnel to make sales immediately, and then the three to six month back end ecosystem to continue to cycle your leads through a series of offers to make profit.. without lifting a finger. 

You can check out Automate and Accelerate and join us in Lifestyle Business School here.

Listen On: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

What is an Evergreen Funnel?

An evergreen funnel is an automated selling system. 

It includes all of the same “essential elements” as a live launch: 

• A Product or Service: An evergreen funnel can be used to sell a high or low ticket online course, program, membership and any other leveraged offer.
  
• A Sales Offer: This is a special offer that incentivises someone to purchase. It could be a discount, special bonuses, a seasonal push or something else.
  
• Urgency and/or Scarcity: Thanks to who we are as humans, we generally need a little (or big) push in the right direction to take action. In a live launch, this occurs with a fixed deadline. In an evergreen funnel, it is usually achieved with a genuine automated deadline that is unique to the person who registers. 

The only difference? 

Is that it’s automated!

Someone will be invited to swap their email address for a free thing, and after they do they will receive a special sales offer and an automated deadline that gives them a defined decision making window to decide whether to take the offer up – or not. 

When is the Right Time to Create an Evergreen Funnel?

If I had a dollar for every time someone came to me and told me that they don’t want to launch their course, and instead wanted to go straight to the creation of an evergreen funnel to make “passive income”, I would have a lot of dollars right now. 

Oh, how I wish it worked like that.

But, here’s the truth. 

An evergreen funnel is an automated selling system. 

That means that it DOESN’T include the energy, excitement and additional “magic” of a live launch. 

For that reason, usually an evergreen funnel will “convert” at a lower rate than a live launch. 

Usually, a live launch for an online course, program or membership will convert between 1% and 5% of registrants. 

That means that for every 100 people who register for a live launch (for example, a webinar launch), usually between 1 and 5 people will purchase. 

With an evergreen funnel, you could reasonably expect the conversion rate to be half of what it is in a live launch. 

Of course, that metric isn’t an exact science. 

But, it’s usually pretty accurate. 

For that reason, I would never (ever, ever) recommend creating an evergreen funnel without first live launching it. 

By live launching first, you are able to find out whether the funnel converts well. 

If it does, you can turn it evergreen and continue to optimise and improve it from there. 

If it doesn’t, it’s not magically going to start performing if you make it evergreen. 

It will perform even more poorly. 

Unless you have thousands and thousands dollars to spend on paid advertising to test an evergreen funnel that hasn’t been proven to convert in a live launch, you should NEVER create an evergreen funnel without live launching it first. 

And ideally? You launch it more than once, improving it each time before turning it evergreen. 

For that reason, evergreen funnels are a more advanced strategy for course creators, coaches and online business owners who already have an offer and a sales campaign that has proven to convert. 

I see beginners try and fail to build an evergreen funnel from scratch. 

They haven’t yet mastered messaging. 

Or sales funnel strategy. 

Or any of the things that make an offer sell. 

And it NEVER ends well. 

What is the Best, “What’s Working Now” Strategy for Building a Successful Evergreen Funnel? 

Here’s the truth. 

The wham-bam-’give me a sale mam’, direct response approach to building evergreen funnels doesn’t work the way it used to. 

And yet, it’s still the strategy most funnel builders teach. 

It used to go a little something like this: 

1. Drive traffic to an evergreen webinar; 
2. Push for 2% of that traffic to convert; 
3. Finish. 

These days, traffic is more expensive. 

And the truth is that evergreen funnels need a lot of it. 

Let’s do the math. 

Let’s say that you want to make $10,000 from your $1,000 course. 

To achieve that, you will need 10 sales. 

To get those 10 sales at a 2% conversion rate, you will need 500 leads. 

In 2018, that might have cost you $1.50 a lead. That would be $750 in ad spend, and you would make $10,000. VERY GOOD.

In 2024, its more likely that this will cost you $8 or $9. That would be $4,500, and you would make $10,000. STILL VERY GOOD. 

But, here’s the catch. 

Achieving 2% isn’t guaranteed, likely it will be lower to start. 

Lead costs will get more expensive as time goes on. 

And very quickly, that 2:1 return on investment can turn into simply breaking even or even turning a loss. 

The problem is that this is considered a bad thing… BECAUSE we are all still expecting 2018 results. 

In fact, this type of result is NORMAL these days even for a great funnel. 

But actually?

IT’S NOT BAD.. as long as you understand that a front end evergreen funnel is actually just the first step in your evergreen funnel ecosystem. 

The best strategy for building a successful evergreen funnel right now is this: 

Step #1: Create Front End Funnel 

This might be an evergreen webinar funnel. 

Or a limited time offer on the back of a lead magnet. 

Or an Self Liquidating Funnel where you offer a low cost offer. 

Eventually, you can have more than one front end funnel. 

The goal of that funnel is two fold: 

1. Email list growth: This funnel is FUELLING the growth of your email list.
   
2. Break even (or less): You will also aim to at least break even on this funnel, meaning that the money you spend on ads or paid media to fill the funnel is offset by any immediate sales you make in the funnel itself. The truth is that likely even this will take time and optimisation.
   

This is “direct response” marketing.

It is taking a cold lead that has never heard about you, and sending them through a funnel to buy. 

Let’s say 2% do. 

That means that there are 98% of people that aren’t ready to buy.. YET. 

The truth is that if I were to go through a funnel, I would likely be one of the 98% – MOST OF US WOULD. 

Especially in the current climate, building trust is more important than ever. 

We’ve all been burnt by bad offers. 

We want to know that the person we are investing in can do what they say they can on the box. 

And that takes time. 

So why is it that we expect (often, demand) that when we set up an evergreen funnel we can “pump” people through it and expect them to buy immediately? 

We shouldn’t. 

And that brings me to step two. 

Step #2: Set Up Authority Publishing System

As an expertise-based business, I strongly recommend that every course creator have three things: 

• A long form content channel; 
• A newsletter sequence; and
• A social channel. 

Here’s why. 

The first job of your evergreen funnel is to grow your list. 

Some might buy right away, most won’t. 

And so step two is to have an automated system that infuses them into your ecosystem straight after. 

This isn’t “hard sell” stuff. 

It’s nurture. 

Your automated authority publishing system will kick into action immediately after they exit your front end funnel. 

It will:

• Serve them a strategic 14-day email sequence of your “greatest hits” content via email, introduce them to your unique point of view and invite them to consume your long form content; and
  
• Serve them social media remarketing ads that are 100% “value only.
  

You will appear “everywhere” to them, but in the best possible way. 

Because you aren’t selling. 

You aren’t pushing. 

You are simply providing value. 

Note – we teach the Authority Publishing System in Traffic Playbook inside of Lifestyle Business School. It includes done for you funnel templates, email copy themes, email copy swipes, social media swipes and tech tutorials. 

Step #3: Set Up Back End Cascade

Step three is where the profit starts. 

The problem? 

Most people don’t ever set up this step, and most of your leads don’t ever get to it. 

A back end cascade is a further series of automated campaigns that cascade one after another. 

Your new contact will cycle through these automatically. 

It could be set up for two weeks, a month or three months (or longer!) 

You will make strategic sales offers. 

You will continue to send automated nurture emails. 

And over that period after breaking even on the front end, you will have the opportunity to make bigger and bigger profit on the back end. 

This is where the magic happens. 

The key? 

That every campaign that is added to your back end cascade has also been tested and proven to convert with a live launch. 

We hand you the full process for building out a back end cascade, including the tech, systems and swipes for setting up the cascade and for each of the individual campaigns we recommend adding into the cascade inside of Automate and Accelerate in Lifestyle Business School. 

Step #4: Live Launches. 

The final step is a live launch — which, you’ll remember, was also the FIRST step. 

The truth is, live launches and evergreen funnels work beautifully together. 

Live launching allows you to test your campaigns before adding them to your automated evergreen funnel system. 

But equally, live launching also allows you to maximise your profit by scooping up sales from the 98% of people that didn’t purchase immediately or in the back end funnel. 

It’s why I recommend a dual selling ecosystem. 

It’s not about having an evergreen funnel OR live launching. 

It’s both/and. 

——

And, so there you have it!

That’s how I recommend ACTUALLY making sales in your sleep with an evergreen funnel ecosystem that still works today to build automated profit into your business model.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. 

The secret? 

Knowing the RIGHT front end funnel to start with. 

Setting it up the right way for evergreen success. 

Knowing how to craft a strategic authority publishing system to build know/like/trust with those leads. 

Understanding the technical and strategic set up of your back end cascade. 

And then, of course, the art and science of optimising it all to success. 

The truth is that an evergreen funnel isn’t a one-and-done situation. 

It’s work in a different way to a live launch. 

Whereas a live launch is a big “push” of energy all at once, an evergreen funnel is a marathon of continual optimisation based on data. 

If you want to learn how to set up a FULL evergreen funnel ecosystem, Automate and Accelerate has just been added to Lifestyle Business School to show you how. 

If you’re just starting out as a course creator, Lifestyle Business School will show you how to build an irresistible offer and to launch it FIRST. 

If you’re already established, it will walk you through making your launches automated. 

It’s six courses for less than the price of one. 

Come and join us here.

Here’s to sales in your sleep – for real!

Come and join us in Lifestyle Business School.

Keep Listening!

Listen On: Apple Podcasts | Spotify