Case Study: $3,000 a month in residual income without a membership site
Mike has discovered a technique to create residual revenue that is right beneath our noses. In reality, it's an approach that's been taught for decades or more, but relatively few marketers use it.
I'm almost certain you're already aware of this strategy. But I'm also fairly certain that you're not employing this strategy, at least not to the amount that Mike is.
On the technical side, all you need is a squeeze page and an autoresponder to make this work.
Remember, residual income is what you get for work you do ONCE and then get compensated for again and again. If you write a hit song, you will receive royalties every time it is played. If you sell software as a service or a membership site, you will be paid every month until the customer cancels.
And if you're Mike, you do what may be the most obvious thing of all: You create custom autoresponder sequences that last YEARS, keep subscribers interested, and sell, sell, and sell some more.
Mike's entire business is based on autoresponders. It's not just a hobby for him; it's how he pays his bills, bought a second home, and sends his children to college.
Mike accomplishes the following:
He chooses a niche. His favorite topics are weight loss/health and making money online. But he also works in a couple of others.
He creates a series of follow-up sequences that last for years. YEARS. Naturally, he does not accomplish all of this at once. Once he has identified a niche, he writes follow-up emails for the first couple of weeks before going active. Then he continues to add to the sequence on a regular basis until it is roughly 3-5 years long (I'm not kidding!)
He sends out roughly one email each day on average, although he may send out 2 emails if he is marketing something difficult.
(If you're worried about writing all these emails, keep two things in mind: You just need to write enough emails to remain ahead of your earliest subscribers. You can also always outsource the work.)
Mike's emails are a mix of information, content, insights, comedy, jokes, quotes... pretty much whatever he feels like sending that he knows will be of interest to his audience not just today, but also in the future.
And every email accomplishes something else as well.
It's a success.
Sometimes the entire email is a sales pitch. Other times, the selling element of the email appears approximately halfway through. Every now and then, he doesn't sell until the P.S.
But the thing is, he offers stuff that his readers WANT, and he never stops marketing.
He selects evergreen things that are likely to be available in the future. His primary source for these is Clickbank.
He only sells one item per week. That is, he spends seven days talking about a single product, what it can do for the reader, anecdotal stories about what it has done for others, common questions answered, and so on.
And here's a neat trick he employs: Because each week concentrates on a single product, he makes it appear as if a new product is being launched. But he never SAYS it's a new product. He also does not state that the product would be discontinued when the week is up. But he gives that impression in order to create a sense of urgency in the reader.
To add to the urgency, he gives a bonus that is only valid for that week. His bonuses are typically constructed on PLR that he has repurposed specifically for this.
And here's where things get REALLY interesting: He offers a PACKAGE of his items 5 - 6 times per year. These are the same goods he's been giving away as bonuses, all with large price tags attached to make them appear valuable. He groups roughly seven of these together and sells them for a single 'cheap' price. Of course, when he does this, he gets to retain all of the proceeds.
Offering these PLR products as bonuses and then putting them together to sell is optional to the system, but it does increase sales and revenue, and sourcing decent PLR products and renaming them doesn't take long.
This all sounds fantastic, but you're probably wondering how he gets people to sign up for his lists so he can send them all these emails on autopilot.
And the solution is amazing lead magnets.
In fact, here is where he invests the most of his time and effort, because the better the lead magnet, the easier it is to obtain subscribers.
Often, he'll purchase the rights to a well-selling product and use it as a freebie for joining his list. When you can claim that a product sold 3,000 copies for $297 but the visitor can have it for free only by subscribing, your conversion rates can skyrocket. His non-IM niche conversion rate is above 70%, and his online marketing niche conversion rate is around 50%, which is still good.
He doesn't only raise the conversion rates on his squeeze pages by investing the time and money to make the lead magnet just perfect. He also creates a lot of trust and credibility with his new subscribers, which makes it simpler to get his emails read and links clicked.
Isn't this just fantastic? What about traffic, though?
That's an excellent question. Mike pays for all of his traffic because he enjoys having the ability to activate the traffic switch whenever he wants for as long as he wants. He already knows how much each subscriber on each list is worth for the first six months. Any sales that come in after six months are just icing on the cake.
His strategy is to spend up to half of what he will earn in the first six months on advertising. So, if the average subscriber earns him $3.00 in six months, he may spend up to $1.50 to acquire that customer. However, because the majority of his subscribers stay with him for years, he ultimately makes far more than $3.00 for each subscription.
He buys traffic through solo ads, Facebook ads, and Google ads. He also employs a number of less well-known techniques, two of which I was able to extract from him. One of these methods is to bribe Facebook Group leaders to promote his free offer to their members. Another strategy he does is to pay goods merchants to include his free product on their download page. Because everyone who visits the download page is a buyer, these are particularly good leads.
Mike, of course, uses a tracking tool to determine where his squeeze page traffic is coming from so he knows what is working.
When a new subscriber joins one of Mike's lists, that subscriber will automatically get emails from Mike for an extended period of time. However, the emails never appear dated because they are written in a style that makes them appear current.
Mike must check to ensure that the products promoted in his sequences are still available. If one of them is no longer available, he just finds a comparable product and replaces the URLs and product name.
Mike also performs a lot of cross-promotion. For example, if he has a list of people who use social media for online marketing, he will promote his free video marketing lead magnet to that list in order to get them on a second and even third list.
Yes, this means that a subscriber may be in three distinct autoresponder sequences at the same time, but the benefits greatly outweigh any unsubscribes.
As you can see, the most difficult part of this business plan is getting everything set up. But once you've done that, it's a piece of cake to keep things going smoothly. If you decide to take a month off, your income should not be affected.
The following is possibly the most intriguing aspect of this entire case study: Before creating his first squeeze page - autoresponder funnel, Mike had no prior marketing or writing skills. He was talented in technical areas but had never worked in sales or marketing.
And I'm wondering if this didn't help him succeed, because his writing is extremely basic and sounds like it came from the slightly strange "man next door." He simply writes about what piques his interest in each niche, assuming that the same topics will get the attention of his readers. His grammar isn't perfect, but he tells potential subscribers right away that he's no English professor; he's just a person like them who enjoys doing XYZ.
It is effective for him. And if you pick an evergreen niche that interests you, I believe you could easily develop a hands-free funnel like Mike's and begin making part of that residual money on autopilot.
You set it up, send a steady stream of new subscribers, and start making sales.
Most people overlook this since it is so basic, but it works.
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