The Russell Brunson Show - CRAZY! They Will Pay You To Drive Traffic To Your Own Funnels...

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

I'm checking in from the high seas on a cruise ship with my family. But I've just had a realization. See, for years I've been all about paid ads, but they're getting pricier by the day. That's why I've had a change of heart. Inspired by folks like Rachel Hollis and Cathy Yoder, I'm shifting my focus to content. And my plan is a game-changer! So expect some big shifts on the Marketing Secrets Podcast and everywhere else! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing Secrets of Success Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. 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 constantly 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 Isler'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 him living 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. Um, I actually want to talk to you today about something that I have fought for 20 years and I'm finally repenting in my ways and changing my mind mostly because, uh, I think we're in a situation where we kind of have to now. Um, let me explain. So obviously you guys know that I am a big fan of paid ads. We spend, you know, multiple million 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. All these things, like, getting harder and harder and harder to make the numbers all work.

And what's fascinating is the 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 is doing eight figures a year, doesn't pay any ads. 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 i think you know not that i'm fighting organic content i'm all for that but to really um 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 years and it's crazy she was doing you know like the russell brunson stuff she was doing events and speaking and and you know on 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 there's a lot to handle and um anyway uh 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 i think i spent the least amount of time on my podcast but things make me the most money with also my podcast and so she's like i decided just to double down on that and so and i'm not gonna, 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. Because 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 a couple months later, we had Mastermind of Paradise in Mexico with all the two CCXers and Inner Circle members. And, um, that was awesome.

And I had Kathy Yoder speak. And Kathy, um, she's someone who had a YouTube channel focusing on air fryers how to cook with air fryers and um 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 to speak it in Mastermind Paradise showing how you're doing that she's like sure I'd love to 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, I had turned off revenue on all my YouTube videos because I'm like, no. In fact, I always tell people this. This is Russell now humbling himself. I'm like, if they can make more money off my audience than I can, then I don't deserve to be a marketer. In fact, I remember people trying to buy ads on 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. Which is, anyway, probably dumb. Definitely dumb. But at the time, it seemed right, right? So I'm watching Kathy Yoder.

She's showing a scene. She's making these videos in her kitchen and that she's, you know, do you use an air fryer? And she showed like month one, I mean like 50 bucks on two, made 300 bucks, but four made a thousand,

you know, like I've got up and then got up. We're 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 I was like, that's so fascinating. Like right now, everything I'm going to 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? But 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 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. Go watch a bunch of my videos but we started you know consistently producing videos and so we um 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 in um january we launched four videos february anyway it's funny because January, I only made, I think I made $1,000. I was 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's funnels. I'm 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? Got to the point where I, you should post more videos. You should post two videos a day,

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I'm making money to get traffic. This goes 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 talk to one of my friends, I can't mention their names 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, I don't want to get in trouble,

disclosing them or their income. But $8,000 a month to mention them on 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 where you hire this agency and they will sell ads for you.

I'm like, okay, so I hired this agency or I talked to the agency and I'm still kind of fighting it a little bit. I got my podcast, which is most of the episodes are about 20 minutes long and there's no ads ever. And they made this proposal for me and I looked down and I'm like, I didn't really get it. And then the owner of the company, very wisely, made a video.

He'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 he showed me. He said, look, right now, and they basically will 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, 20 grand, 30 grand, something like that, 20, 30 grand a month or something. I'm like, oh, yeah, Mike, that's not, you know, it's not horrible. It's nothing to, like, get all excited about.

But then she said, no, look, right now you're doing 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 to 200,000 downloads a month, and you just doubled your income by doing two podcasts. And so now each of your podcasts is 30 minutes, which means we only have those three ad spots. But if you were to increase it to 60 minutes per episode, if you increase 60 minutes per episode, now also we can sell, you know, whatever,

so six ad spots or five ad spots, and now your income doubles again. So if I'm 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 $120,000 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 a month to twice a month, that's 200,000,

or twice a week, sorry, post, that's 200,000 downloads. You start buying ads and you get to like 100,000 a month to twice a month, that's 200,000, or twice a week, sorry, post, that's 200,000 downloads. We start buying ads, so we get to 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, that 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 on 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 yeah i have no idea um 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 just records all of them you know and i was like oh my gosh i missed it like that makes so much sense And then I started just thinking about that.

I'm like, and that's my podcast, right? Like, now if I start focusing on that, if I'm getting, you know, four or 500,000 downloads a month, it's all traffic now. They 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 on podcast ads instead i get paid 30 grand to promote you know and then 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's 500 000 people registered for free like 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 per option

probably more than that times 500 000 like it it's a it's a four or five million dollar 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 oh my gosh, that's the key. And so I'm looking at it 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 I did five videos a week. Looking at one of my friends, Andy Elliott, like he posts a video every single day, like consistently day after day after day. And you look at that with the, you know, the CPM that's happening.

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Go to rocketmoney.com slash russell today. That's rocketmoney.com slash r-u-s-s-e-l-l. That's rocketmoney.com slash russell. Forrest Lane's part, I didn't understand this part, but advertisers pay for CPM, right? So if you have a thousand listeners that's a that's an m right so cost per million or cost per thousand cpm um and so um 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 the brands that are that are on here if you listen

to them it's it's geico it's apple pay it's lexus is tesla like 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 like they'll pay you for it so to hear that have a sports like go and listen to rachel hollis's podcast go listen to tom billy's go listen to this podcast and then notice like tom billyies he'll start with like two minutes of the ad roll at the beginning of the podcast and the middle podcast there's ad roll and the very end and listen to companies who are buying it like they're all big companies who are buying on cpm and if you know you get the cpm they pay for the ads and it fills it all up right you look at

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 are um your ads are showing up on um 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 to do i see so even our email news companies now we're finding that you can put a block inside your email newsletter and um and then um they'll literally just like place the ads in your newsletter for you the same thing in 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 for the ads in the newsletter i guess crazy so i'm looking at like flipping everything around for me buying ads

on facebook google instagram you know all the stuff we're doing to like how do i film around how do i get paid on the podcast how do i get paid on youtube how do i get paid in the email how do i get paid and everything so that i'm getting paid to produce these things versus me paying to place them out there does that make sense um anyway so it's kind of a fascinating thing i want you guys to to think through it's a big mindset shift that i'm at at my side and obviously it takes more time like facebook ads you flip a switch and i'll see you you get it. YouTube, you've got to build an audience. You've got to spend some time. You've got to keep putting things out there.

But if you're consistent for six months, a year, two years, imagine what could be possible, right? Again, like Hermos, he spent two years. He went from owning gyms, like a very small following of just gym owners, to two years of really hardcore content. And now you have these followings and 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 up but it's called sellingspace.com i remember i would sit in college thinking about like i'm in this classroom and i had to pay to be in class i'd pay for my books i'd pay for everything and i'm literally looking around the walls all the walls my classrooms were empty there's like white walls it's like you could pay out like advertisers pay a taco bell pay to put a banner ad in here so all the kids are hungry and lunch you want to go talk about like you could you could sell space and like and i started thinking like you sell space anywhere like on your website like you have a blog and there's this side spot like sell that space and so like i was gonna 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 um eyeballs and you sell space inside that eyeballs like that's the that's the big aha the big the big takeaway so anyway you're gonna notice the marketing secrets podcast in the very near future will shift from a for a 20 minute show to probably a 30 or 60minute 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 um 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 focus more time and energy rachel said like now like the podcast becomes the main focus because of that like it's just fascinating youtube podcast becomes the main focus because of that. 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 more I've all shown. And I get free traffic and get paid for that traffic. It's better 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'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.

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. It goes into my company and then I get paid, you know, at the end of the day.

But with these things, I 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 costs of the people who are producing all this stuff. Right. It becomes me and that like gives me incentive for me to focus on creating really good content.

Right. Like wherever you 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. We get paid for webinars, webinars. I'm getting 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? Um, 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 period 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 yeah, I'm excited to do more podcast episodes. I'm also launching a second podcast because, you know, might as well. And I recorded the first two episodes before we left on the cruise. And they are awesome. I'm really excited for them. Anyway, so much fun stuff coming up.

So, all right. Appreciate you guys all. Thanks for listening in and talk to you guys all soon. Bye everybody.