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Week #1: Join Me On My Journey To Sell 1,000,000 Copies Of My New Book!

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Week 1 Calling Our Shot

Before we get started I gotta get something off my chest…

Blogging sucks!

Yes, it really, really sucks.

I’ve been trying to blog for over ten years now and it never goes past over one or two blog posts ever. And I realized the other day the reason why…

You see, most blogs are just random posts about a random topics. People come and read but then they leave and often never come back.

That’s always bothered me.

I couldn’t see any purpose to the blog other than hopefully capturing a few random people.

Because of that, I was never inspired to post more than twice.

But the other day, I saw a company called Groove HQ that actually documented their SaaS company’s journey from zero to over $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

I thought that was super cool.

After I read one of their posts, I was hooked.

I started reading one post after another…

…and eventually I scrolled to the very bottom of the timeline and started the journey from the beginning and worked my way all the way up to the present.

The lessons I learned as I watched their journey along the way were amazing!

I thought this was a better way to do blogging. Not just random articles at different times… but an actual timeline that documents a journey.

So I’m doing this for three reasons:

1) I think that I will actually be consistent with it because it will be fun for me to tell the journey…

2) I think it will be more beneficial for you as a reader

3) I’m hoping that if this is more beneficial you’ll actually share these posts… which will get more people reading… which will get me more excited… which means I’ll share even more

Does that sound more than fair?

Cool.

What Does This Have to Do with You?

On this blog I’m going to take you on my journey for the new book that I’m about to launch…

I’m going to document how I go from zero to a million books sold.

This goal may take a month, it may take a year, it may take five years…

I’m not quite sure yet… but I’m excited to find out!

You might be thinking, “Well Russell, this is great for the authors out there, but what about me? I’m not an author. I sell e-commerce products” or “I’m a coach” or “I have a retail store…”

"How will this work for me?"

The good news is, even if you’re not an author, the things I’m going to be doing to sell my books are the exact same things I’d be doing if I was selling physical products, coaching, or retail services…

The concepts are the same. I just happen to be applying these to a book.

Now, those of you who know my business well know that I don’t make money on my books…

We launched and sold a whole bunch of my first book…

But the money I actually made was on the backend from people who read my book and started using our software called ClickFunnels (by the way, that’s the goal of this book as well.)

So it doesn’t matter what you’re selling or if you even have something to sell yet. The lessons I will be using for my book will apply to literally any type of business out there.

My First Book and How I Got Screwed by the New York Times

My first book launched about two years ago. It’s called “DotComSecrets.”

DotComSecrets

Some of you have probably read it… (if not you should get a free copy of it at DotComSecretsBook.com)

I had never launched a book before, but I had sold a lot of other products. I used some of the skills and talents that I had learned from those online sales funnels to build a book funnel…

I also set a goal to get on the New York Times bestselling list…

I have a lot of friends who are New York Times bestselling authors and I found out what it takes to actually get on the list…

For most people it takes somewhere between 8,000 – 10,000 books sold during a seven day period of time to be able to qualify for the list.

No problem. I knew that would be something really easy for us to achieve.

But then I heard the caveat:

The book sales can’t all come from the same spot. They can’t all come from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or all from online. They have to come from a variety of places.

Okay… this makes it a little bit harder.

So I found a couple people who actually specialize in helping people get on the New York Times bestseller list.

So how does it work?

You have to go out there and sell as many books as possible…

And they knew (secret algorithm) when they placed the book orders where to buy them.

“Cool,” I thought. “Let’s try it!”

So we launched.

When we launched the book, we ended up selling just shy of 30,000 copies during that launch week. About three times what we needed to hit the New York Times bestsellers list.

Yay for me 😀

We had our book buyer order those through different channels so the sales would actually show up on the reporting for the New York Times…

And we waited for that excited day when we were actually going to hit the list.

Guess what happened?

The list went out and… you guessed it… I got screwed.

For some reason, the New York Times decided they didn’t like me, or didn’t like my book or my topic, or they thought I was trying to game the system… or whatever they thought…

but they did NOT list me as a New York Times bestselling author.

I did hit the Amazon and USA Today bestselling lists and a bunch of others as well…

But the big cahuna we really wanted to go for was the New York Times… and we never got that

In fact, we tried two weeks in a row and both weeks missed the list.

It was very frustrating, but at the same time I realized afterwards that the only reason I wanted to be on the New York Times list was for vanity…

I don’t think it would help me sell that many more books. And it wouldn’t help any of my back end strategy either.

So I put it on the shelf and didn’t worry too much about it.

Now, before I go on with the main story, here’s an important note:

During that book launch, my customers were asking me about the metrics and details behind that book funnel and how it worked…

So I made this video that I recorded a couple days into the book launch that I want to share with you here.

If you watch this video, you’ll see how the book launch process works, what our upsells were, our conversions, and everything there…

Now, we optimized the campaign and everything got better throughout, but this gives you a pretty quick picture of what my book funnel looked like:

Why a Book #2? Are you crazy, Russell?!

After I wrote my first book I swore I would never write a book again. Ever.

First off, writing any book is really really hard.

I know some people that spend anywhere from 90 minutes to a weekend writing a book and they get it out there and sell a bunch…

But, for me, I didn’t want to write a good book… I wanted to write a GREAT book.

So I spent over a year on the DotComSecrets book to make sure that it was amazing.

Because of how much pain I went through to birth that book I promised myself I would never write a book again.

But that first book actually became the fuel that helped ClickFunnels grow as quickly as it did.

People read the book and started understanding the strategy behind funnels. Once they understood the strategy, they knew they needed our software tool to implement most of the cool ninja stuff they were learning.

It was a big catylist in us going from a few hundred members to almost 30,000 members in our first two years.

The benefits were huge.

One thing I knew about the DotComSecrets book was that it was for a little bit more of an advanced person. It was for somebody who already had a basic business and they wanted to use sales funnels to scale and grow those companies.

While people at startups benefited a lot from it… and larger companies anywhere from $3-$100 million and beyond had success with it… a lot of times the beginners didn’t have much success.

So one night about a year ago, I was at a dinner with some of the top direct response marketers in the world…

Across from me was sitting Dean Graziosi…

If you watch late night infomercials you’d probably recognize his face:

dean graziosi

Will Dean help me promote my new book?

Fingers crossed…

I was sitting there talking to Dean about something completely unrelated when all of the sudden this thought popped into my head…

I say “thought”–but it was more like a revelation…

At that moment I knew I was going to write a second book…

I knew the name of the book was going to be “ExpertSecrets“…

I knew that the book was going to help brand-new beginners get started…

It was also going to help more advanced businesses learn the right way to sell online…

And, for some reason, I felt that Dean Graziosi was going to help me to actually build an infomercial. (Which may or may not happen… more on that in future posts…)

But I did know for sure that night that I was going to write a second book.

I went back to the hotel room. I got everything lined up and started writing the book.

I spent the next eight months writing the book to the point where it was almost done and ready to go to publishing…

As I was editing and proofreading one night while on family vacation in Bear Lake in northern Utah… I realized that this book was really good…

BUT…

I didn’t want to write a good book.

I wanted to write a GREAT book.

So on Snapchat, in front of the entire world, I highlighted over 200 pages of the book and I clicked “Delete.”

Don’t believe me?

Watch the Snapchat video right here:

I’ll share more about my writing process in future blog posts….

But I spent the next six months rewriting the book from the ground up.

This time the book is not a good book.

This time it is a great book.

One that I’m proud of.

One that I know will help beginners to get started…

But, more importantly, will help advanced people sell correctly and do it in a cool and ethical way that people will love and build huge followings of people and get those people to buy from them over and over again.

I wish I could tell you more, but you gotta wait for the book to actually launch.

So Why 1,000,000 Copies?

A million copies, depending on who you are, may seem like a big stretch or it may seem small.

For me, it’s going to be a stretch.

My first book has almost reached 100,000 books sold… which has been amazing for us

But as I mentioned before, the mass appeal of my DotComSecrets book is not nearly mass appeal of the Expert Secrets book.

I believe that me and my team have the ability to sell a million copies of the book and I think that for us to do that we’re going to be very strategic and come up with a lot of new unique ideas, tactics and techniques…

I think it will be fun to show you behind the scenes of what we’re trying… what works and doesn’t work…

Plus, it gives us something to shoot towards that won’t be solved in a week or a month but hopefully a year or two…

That way, I’ll keep documenting this journey and show you how we’re not only how we’re selling the books on the front-end but also how we’re using this as a process to build our backend software company, ClickFunnels, as well.

In fact, this year ClickFunnels 3x’d our growth! We went from 10,000 members to almost 30,000… and we more than tripled our revenue 😀

We have a goal this year to 3x our revenue again… for the next two years in a row.

This book is a huge piece to that pie.

Through this blog, you’ll see how we sell the book and how we turn these book buyers into actual software continuity members.

So my plan is to do an initial launch to my own list and my affiliate lists when the book is done…

I’m sure we’ll get a big surge of traffic from that…

From there, we’ll start transitioning from our hot markets to our warm markets…

We’ll target Facebook and the other social networks…

From there, we will start venturing offline…

We’re going to be doing radio campaigns, TV campaigns…

From there, we’ll go after even colder markets…

You’ll see us doing mass media buys…

You’ll see how we have to tweak the funnels to work with native ads vs. Facebook ads vs. YouTube vs. Twitter vs. email…

And, hopefully, you’ll see dozens of other creative ways that we go about to sell these books.

I have a lot of friends online who share and document their income reports each month…

I always thought that was kind of cool because they show the top line revenue and then where all that revenue came from each month.

For me, it’s always kinda fun to look behind the scenes and see what they’re doing…

If I can see what things are actually making them money, it helps give me a game plan of what I should be implementing in my business.

For whatever reason, whenever I’ve shared my income numbers, instead of people getting excited like they do for my friends, people seem to think I’m bragging or showing off…

Because of that, I’ve always shyed away from sharing my income goals…

But make no mistake:

I’ll go head-to-head with any other marketer online by showing our tax returns (because we are doing very very well)…

But I didn’t want to show off my income because that doesn’t really matter for you.

What does matter for you is results

So I thought it’d be more fun to tie this to actual book sales. So what you’ll see is each week you’ll see a blog post from me showing what we did and where each of those book sales came from.

For example, I might say we sold 32 books from Amazon, 150 from YouTube, 197 from Twitter, 222 from this…

You’ll see a weekly breakdown of where all of our book sales are coming from.

So when is this starting?

The blog starts today.

The actual book launch is not until April 18.

Some of my friends were asking “Why don’t you start this blog on April 18 when the book actually launches?”

I said, “Because there’s a whole bunch of foundational stuff I’m doing to get our book to the spot where it can launch.”

I want to share those stories and processes as well with you.

In fact, later this week we have our Dream 100 meeting with our entire staff. We’re going to be working on the Dream 100 strategy, which is the first step in our execution plan…

I want to make sure I document that and show that to you as well.

So the blog starts today. The book launches April 18.

What You’re Gonna Learn…

Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn if you follow me on this journey…

  • ​The strategy that goes into successfully launching a new product. (Although ours is a book it’s the exact same launch strategies that we use for selling a course, a physical product, or anything else you might sell online.)
  • Behind the scenes sneak peak of different traffic sources that we are testing and the actual results of how many book sales each of those sources generate.
  • See the huge wins and you’re gonna see the big losses.
  • How we turn book buyers into customers who spend $97 a month for software, $297/m for software, $10,000 for a bootcamp, $25,000 for a mastermind group, and $100,000 or more for private coaching.
  • The sales funnels we use to launch this book
  • The Funnel Catcher (Funnel Catcher funnels, a.k.a. “Frontend Funnels” bring people in and convert freezing cold traffic into customers)
  • Survey Quiz Funnels, the Email Funnels, the Opt-In Funnels, the Giveaway Funnels, and a whole bunch more that we use to get us to sell our goal of a million books
  • And a whole bunch more…

So What Should You Do Next?

A few things…

First off, if nobody reads these, I’m not going to keep publishing them…

So this is what I’m asking you to do:

1. Subscribe to this blog by putting in your email below
2. Comment below with your thoughts
3. Share this post on your favorite social media sites

I’m 100% judging the success or failure of this blog project based on how many comments and shares we get…

If I don’t get you guys commenting and sharing then I’m not going to keep on writing…

I’ve got a lot of other things I can give my time to. But if this is valuable for you please comment. Let me know your thoughts. Ask questions…

And please share this on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever your favorite social sites are so we can share the love with other people.

That’s all I ask in return.

For that I’m literally going to be giving you behind the scenes access to my entire company. You’re going to see what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why we’re doing it.

I promise you there’s no other company on planet Earth that’s going to be this transparent with their marketing and sales processes.

I’m doing this for a couple reasons…

One, I really want you guys to understand these things so when you implement them in your business you’ll have huge success.

Two, my core company is ClickFunnels. I want you guys using sales funnels. The more I can demonstrate how my funnels work, the more you can rip them off and use them in your company.

Yes, I said it. You can actually rip me off

“Swipe and Deploy”… whatever you want to call it…

I just ask that you don’t copy my headlines, images, and things like that…

But you SHOULD model my process

Model the stuff that works. Don’t model the stuff that doesn’t.

I’m going to be giving you guys detailed instruction on everything we’re doing and I want to make sure you’re actually using it.

Sound more than fair?

Cool.

Leave a comment down below. Let me know if you’re excited.

Subscribe to the blog. Please share this.

Let’s get started on this journey together to go from zero to a million books sold.

I’m excited to have you on this journey! Hopefully you’ll learn a thing or two along the way.

Thanks so much!

Russell Brunson

P.S. If you don’t have a ClickFunnels account yet, now is the time to get started!

With almost 30,000 active entrepreneurs who are using our software (these aren’t free users like other SaaS companies brag about, but actual monthly paying customers) it’s a not a matter of IF you’re going to be using ClickFunnels, it’s a matter of WHEN.

There’s no better time than now.

So let’s get you started by setting up a free two week trial.

Start immersing yourself in the software. This blog will serve as a blueprint.

Thanks,

Russell Brunson

P.P.S. I also recommend getting the DotComSecrets book. It’ll help you understand the strategy behind your funnels and get you prepared for Book #2 Expert Secrets that’s coming out April 18.

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