Having a book does not guarantee clients for your business but having an author funnel does guarantee that!
Let’s look at the 4-Step Author Funnel system that I teach my students in the Author Success Academy.
Most writers worry if their book can convert readers into their clients. This could mainly be because they might have missed one or two important steps from the Author Funnel.
Now, let me first explain what these steps are and how you can start building them one after the other.
Your Book
An Author Funnel is basically a funnel where, right on top of the funnel, is your book.
A lot of people who do not know you and who are not part of your community or list will find you through your book. They may be looking for a solution to their problem on Amazon and may discover your book! They love your book, they can relate to your words, and it helped them with their problem. That’s basically the first step of the funnel where a lot of people actually end up reading your book.
Free Value
The next step of the funnel is what I call “Free Value”.
In this step, you as the author should be providing some kind of value for free on a consistent basis. If you have the gift of gab, you could choose to offer a free podcast. If you’re great in front of a camera, then a Youtube channel could be a great idea to offer as a free value. If you love to write, you could maintain a blog for your readers. At least, have one content which can be provided to your audience for free and on a regular basis.
This way, people who read your book would be able to easily engage with you and learn more from you. Since you cannot put out a book every two months, the best way to continue providing value to your readers is the free value level of your author funnel.
Paid Value
The next step is the paid value level.
People love free stuff, who doesn’t?! People might have bought the kindle version of your book for $2.99 and with your free value added, they have the opportunity to enjoy all your content for free! Week after week! However, a small portion of your readers, who are action takers, would want to open their wallets and start working with you. Action takers want to see results. Yes, they are happy with the learnings they get from your free content and are inspired by what you teach but they also want to see results. These action takers will be your clients for the paid value level. They do not mind paying to get more actionable steps from you so they can get the results they’re looking for.
So what should you be offering at the paid value level?
You can offer something such as an online course or a membership. It can be something that’s not too expensive. Something in the range of $97 to say $497. That’s the sweet spot for the paid value level. It will not be too expensive for somebody who already knows, likes, and trusts you. Because they’ve read your book and they’ve been following you for a while on social media, they wouldn’t mind paying just to get the chance on whichever opportunity you’re offering.
Premium Value
Now, once these people get results from your paid value level, they would want bigger and better results, which is to be exactly like you!
Although not all, but a small portion of these people will be willing to pay more to get some more from you. This is what I call the Premium Value level.
This level is what’s at the bottom of your funnel. Right at the bottom of your funnel, you will find your action takers who are huge achievers and want that extra interaction with you. These people want that extra support from you to achieve bigger results. These are the types of people to whom you will be offering your premium value to.
Now, what can you sell at this premium value level, you ask? You can offer one-on-one coaching or group coaching. You could also create a done-for-you service for people who just don’t want to do it themselves. They trust you enough for them to subscribe to your service. You can also offer your speaking services as a keynote speaker for their company. These services can be priced anything above, let’s say around, $2,000 to $5,000 or even as high as $10,000 to 20,000! There is no limit to this because it’s a Premium Value!
Now, ask yourself this, what are the things that are already available in your author ecosystem?
You could already be a coach and may already be doing one-on-one coaching for certain people but your thinking of writing a book. Don’t worry about having a complete Author Funnel, just yet. You need to start building them one by one. If you also have a Youtube Channel and have started creating your online course, that’s even better! This just means your paid and free value levels are all set! However, you don’t have a book yet, as well as a premium value to offer! That’s okay! It’s good to just start with just one or two steps in the author funnel. Just always remember that very soon you’ll have to build all these different other levels so that you’ll have an entire ecosystem that can support you.
The importance of having an Author Funnel is to avoid losing a lot of money in the end, all because of not having all these different steps.
If you settle with only offering one-on-one coaching, you’re actually saying no to all the people who can afford your $10,000 one-on-one coaching. It’s very possible that there could be very interested action takers who may be able to reach that stage six months later.
However, if you’ve put out a book and people start reading it, soon they will start following you, and will also start to read your blogs, subscribe to your channel to watch your videos, and they may even sign up for a $47 monthly membership! Eventually, they will sign up for your premium value level, too!
Do not ignore the importance of having all these different steps in your Author Funnel. Start with the first step and slowly build each step one by one until you have a full Author Funnel.
Let me know in the comments as to what parts of this funnel are already fully functional in your case. Tell me what’s the next step you’re going to start with and the rest of the steps you’ll be building moving forward.
ALSO! Do not forget to join our community called Happy Authors’ Tribe on Facebook.
Our Happy Authors Tribe is a free community where there is a lot of action happening and where like-minded authors hang out. You can join my live training once there!
So to catch all the action, please join Happy Authors’ Tribe at www.happyselfpublishing.com/tribe.
See you inside our Facebook group!
Happy Authoring!
