Welcome to this 9-part series on Mastering Sales Funnels. Not sure what a sales funnel is? Well, it's the marketing term for the journey potential customers go through on the way to purchase. There are several steps to a sales funnel, usually known as the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel, although these steps may vary depending on a company's sales model. In this series, you'll learn how to construct a sales funnel with freebies to paid offers, add an upsell/downsell, set up an auto-responder, test, and finally launch. If you're new to online marketing, you may want to pause here and
Sales funnels are used in some form or fashion by virtually every online business owner, affiliate marketer, basically anyone with something to sell online. And you’ve probably heard that if you really want to make serious money online, you need to have your own product. Honestly? That’s true — for a lot of good reasons.
One of the biggest is that when you own the product, you’re in full control of the sales funnel. You decide how it’s structured, how much you earn, and how much — if any — you share with affiliates. It’s your system, your profits, your rules.
Now if you’re only promoting someone else’s product, here’s the catch: you don’t control the funnel, and you miss out on any of the follow-up offers, upsells, or repeat sales happening in the background. That’s a huge piece of the pie — gone.
Here’s something most successful marketers will tell you: the real money isn’t made on the front end. It’s made after the first sale — in what we call the back-end of the funnel. That’s where higher-ticket offers live, where upsells happen, and where your profits can grow fast.
In fact, some marketers intentionally take a small loss on the front-end just to get people in the door — because they know they’ll make it up (and then some) on the back-end. They’re also happy to make sure affiliates get paid up front, so they keep promoting future offers.
When you’re the one who creates the funnel, you’re often making 50–100% of the revenue on those upsells. That’s where things get exciting. That’s where the real money is made.
So here’s the bottom line: if you want to build a long-term, scalable income online, owning your own product and having control over your sales funnel is essential. Without that control, you’re playing by someone else’s rules — and leaving a lot of profit on the table.
Not sure where to start? Don’t worry — this blog series will walk you through exactly what a sales funnel is, how to build one step by step, and how to make sure it’s designed to convert and profit at every stage.
Check back next week for Part 1: Be in Charge of the Buying Process.
