I Cracked The Creator Content Funnel To Sell My Products On Auto-Pilot

Ev Chapman
July 5, 2022
5 min read

I spent a ridiculous amount of time last year launching products

I think all up it was about 11 products from templates to courses to workshops to guides. I tried it all. And I made a fair amount of money doing it as a second income.

Launches are fun (when they work) and they provide a nice windfall of cash for that month that you are launching. But they are also exhausting work and when you are not launching… no one is buying.

This year I didn’t want to have to keep launching new products in order to make money. I wanted a more sustainable creator business that didn’t include me launching something new every month or constantly having to make up ‘sales’ to entice people to buy my products.

So I’ve been working on an evergreen funnel for my content products and so far the results are good. I’ve only done one small launch this year and the rest of my income comes via this funnel.

Step 1: Create Content

At the very top of the funnel, I show up every day and create content that makes people curious enough (hopefully) to head to my profile to find out more about what I do.

Profile clicks have become one of the top numbers I look at when I’m analysing my content. Sure likes & comments and shares are all good, but if I can get someone to my profile… the funnel goes into action.

Step 2: Optimise My Profile

Your profile is not just a pretty shop front, it should work for you in two ways. I spend my time optimising it for just two things: follows & email sign-ups.

If I can get someone to hit the follow button I know they will continue to see my content (if the algorithm gods allow it — blessed be their name).

Secondly, if I can get someone to sign up to my email newsletter I know that about 10% of those people will go on to buy one of my products (as opposed to less than 1% of my Twitter followers)— so building my email list is crucial for this to work.

I use every part of my profile to make these two objectives happen.

  • Profile Banner. I’m a fan of using the real estate in my banner to say more than I can in the short description. It’s also a great place to say follow me and point straight to the follow button.
  • Profile Description. I’ve played around with a lot of different ways to describe what I do. And I track each iteration and how that affects my follow rate (yes, I’m geeky like that). If you want to track your follow rate you can download my Free Twitter Growth Tracker Tool.

I track the iterations I make to my profile and track the follow rate

  • Link. Recently I’ve started using znap.link which is a link in bio service and it is better than any other I have used. It’s beautifully branded, I can display links to my website & products and it also has a newsletter sign-up form.
  • Revue Newsletter Sign Up. I don’t use Revue to send my newsletter, but I do use it on my profile to make it easy for people to sign up using their Twitter email and then I use Zapier to get those emails into my database in ActiveCampaign (where I do send my newsletters from).

Make your profile work for you. Not just

Step 3: Send A Weekly Email

When I first decided to start a newsletter I knew it needed to be simple. I already write a lot throughout the week, so I knew if I had to write something extra it would never work for me.

So instead I send. simple newsletter once a week with a wrap-up of my best content published that week. In a year I’ve grown that list to over 2500 subscribers, which is wild in itself.

At the end of the email, I include a quick promo of one of my products and an invitation to purchase. Rarely do I put anything on sale or try to manufacture any kind of urgency. I just show up in people’s inboxes with value and an invitation whenever they are ready.

And 10% of people who are on my email list go on to purchase a product (or more likely multiple products).

And that’s how the funnel works! Produce content that gets people's attention enough to go to my profile, hit follow, sign up to my newsletter and the funnel goes into action.

In the end, it’s a really simple funnel that amounts to a sale most days and an average of about $2k sales every month on existing evergreen products. Sure, I’m not quitting my job with it, but I’m also not busting my butt to launch a new product every month either.

Keep in mind I’m also a second-year creator, so it took some time to build all this up and find what worked. In my experience, your first year as a creator is full of action and a whole lot of work. But as you hit your stride in your second year you can really work at leveraging what you have to build an evergreen content funnel that continues to work for you all year round (as long as you keep showing up at the top).

The best part about all this is that I can focus on what I love to do, which is create content. And then I trust that the rest of the funnel will work its magic as a result of that.

If you liked this post here are 3 things you can do to support me:

  1. 👏 Give the article a clap
  2. 🤞Follow me for upcoming articles
  3. 💌 Sign up to my free email course to discover the 3 (PRO) Creator systems you need to go from a stressed-out hustle creator to an effortless leveraged creator.

Liked thIS? Then You Might Like My SPARK Newsletter...

The Spark Newsletter:
Join 1,500+ knowledge workers building smarter personal knowledge systems.

Every Sunday I drop into your inbox with a simple creative workflow to help you think clearer & create smarter.

Or Keep Browsing More Posts Like This...

The Shortcut to Finding Your First Digital Product Idea

The stuff you do every day could be exactly what someone else is willing to pay you for. Turn your go-to processes into digital products people love (and actually pay for).
Read post

How To Sell Digital Products On Auto-Pilot (Without Relying On Constant Launches)

You don't need a million-dollar launch to have a successful digital product.
Read post

I'm Back From Creative Sabbatical & I Have Thoughts 😁

I've been on a creative sabbatical for the last 4 weeks and it's been the best thing I've ever done as a creator.
Read post

How To Launch Your First Digital Product (& Survive 🫣)

So many creators I speak to are scared to launch their first product.I suspect there are a lot of reasons but the main one I hear is "Don't I have to have a big audience or following to launch a product?"I launched my first product with 500 followers, no email list & I made $3k in 4 weeks.
Read post

When To Say Yes (& No) To New Opportunities As A Creator

Over the last couple of years, I've said yes to a million things as a creator. New projects, platforms, launches, content, newsletters, communities and more.
Read post