Want to know what makes a Free Plus Shipping Funnel profitable and how to build one without major investment? I will share all the tiny details.
This ‘free plus shipping’ type approach has been empirically proven in a variety Psychology of Marketing studies and has been recently popularized by researchers.
Free Plus Shipping Funnel: Factors of Success
Market Saturation
A few years ago the market wasn’t saturated at all. People started making money in a couple of days after opening their store.
As more and more people enter the market, everyone selling the same products to the same people, saturation occurs and it becomes harder and harder to sell those products.
Therefore you need to find market pockets that are not saturated. One method is to sell in foreign countries/languages where saturation hasn’t happened yet.
Drop Shipping As Product Sourcing
Aliexpress drop shipping is a popular way to get started with product sourcing. Tens of thousands of drop shippers entered the market in the last few years. However drop shipping still works despite more competition, since there has also been an increase in the quality of information and new innovative drop shipping strategies appeared.
Unfortunately Aliexpress drop shipping has turned into a “get rich quick” business opportunity, therefore you should be careful not to walk into a scam.
Money can still to be made with Aliexpress drop shipping but you have to be on top of your marketing. You may have to test plenty of products and find untapped opportunities.
Even if you don’t make much money with it, drop shipping is still a great way to learn to fulfill orders and to start building successful businesses. In fact it’s a cost effective way to start your business so that later on you can transition to becoming a trustable brand and start selling your own private labeled products.
Selecting The Right Product
You can make a consistent income with just one or two products.
However not all products are home runs. I have tried selling on customer return electronics on eBay, on Facebook groups, affiliate products and I can say with confidence that one thing is the same on all platforms.
From randomly selecting products, 1 out of 50 will be successful.
If you pick out products with some appeal – a “sexy” hot product like a flashing pair of shoes or one that you can sell at an attractive price, this ratio can go down to 1 out of 5 or 10.
Therefore you will always need to do some product testing, which means additional costs if you use Facebook advertising.
It is important that you don’t try to know better than the market. As an example, I had a bunch of HD antennas, three different types. I would have never thought anyone would be interested. I put them up on eBay and one of them was generating 2-3 sales every single day without promotion.
I have heard of people who hit a massive goldmine and within two days making $100-$200 per day with 30-50% profit margins from Facebook ads. All sales were coming from a single product on their store.
The following are key points in picking your product:
- It’s something small. This is important because you’ll also be shouldering the shipping cost for the item.
- It is something widely known in the market.
- It has mass appeal to your market.
- It’s something that people are likely to buy more than one of.
- It’s cheap to acquire. This is something you should consider since you’ll be giving it away and you’ll have to acquire it in bulk.
- It’s something that costs more when bought in retail stores.
Structuring An Attractive Offer
It’s important to note that a product and an offer are not the same.
Sales are NOT generated by the product itself, but by your offer.
Think deals and bonuses. An offer is one or more products structured into a deal.
You need to make an irresistible, low-cost offer available that customers will want to take advantage of. This can be done by lowering the price of a product ridiculously low. But another way of doing it is to offer the product for free and only charge shipping and handling.
Free Plus Shipping offers and tripwires are very similar and are basically ways to generate offers.
Let’s say you took your best selling vitamin, make-up, jewellery, etc that normally sells for $19 (your cost is $5), changed the price to $0 and charged $12.99 shipping and handling.
If you have a product that is desirable and has a high-enough perceived value, you’ll easily turn even cold traffic into buyers.
Be creative. Even if you sell shoes around $100, find something that you can sell as a tripwire. Think about what people need related to it. You can probably sell them a shoe cleaning kit as a tripwire offer.
What’s In It For Me
There must be a reason as to
- why they would want to buy the product and
- why they would want to share it.
The concept is WIIFM (What’s In It For Me.) The reason can be funny, heart warming, spiritual, or a way to make or save money. But if it has no use to anyone, they won’t buy it and it will not spread.
The ‘Free’ Factor
FREE is a magic selling word. It gets people hooked.
It gets your visitor hooked into hearing your offer. Then it can be used to hook them into buying.
The goal of the offer is to get as many people as possible into your funnel.
With a high-ticket product maybe you get 2 sales. In order to get Sale #3, now you need to work on 1000 people that did not buy.
The table turns when free is used, because
- You get more sales and you are working to get Sale #25 and not #3
- You get a lot of social shares that will amplify your traffic source
What’s The Catch
This would be an irresistible offer for customers. In fact, it would be a bit too good to be true. Some customers would think it is fake or a scam, so you will have to do some additional explaining. That’s a reason why you should always give a “reason why” when doing a sale.
People need to be able to rationalize why something is on sale, or why something is free. You have to provide a “reason why” because otherwise they’ll make up their own or simply conclude it must be a scam. You can also add a video because video is always more trustworthy than just text.
Urgency
You want to have a clear deadline to create urgency and scarcity. There are different time frames that could work.
A 15 minute timer for an individual could be one way. A 4-7 day campaign could be another one. Any longer than that and the urgency starts diminishing.
Another way could be if there is only a limited quantity available or a marketing test that only lasts for a few days.
Guarantee
Spending money hurts. The function of guarantee is to reverse the risk/pain of ordering the product.
So how do you remove the pain?
You MUST create a bullet-proof guarantee…
…because the guarantee transfers the risk from the buyer to the seller.
Profitability = Upsells
Free plus shipping offers work great on their own, but they are way more powerful with one click upsells.
One of the first marketers who started using one click upsells was Mike Filsaime in his Butterfly Marketing Manual. Conversion rate is a lot higher after someone bought a product. Therefore if you present customers with a second offer immediately after their purchase, you can drastically increase conversion rates and make a lot more money.
One click upsell is a special example of this. When a customer is presented with the offer, he or she can click on a button or link which will immediately charge the customer’s credit card and complete the purchase automatically.
Another example is the added forced subscription that is used, e.g. with a free plus shipping nutritional health supplement trial bottle. You get one bottle of the supplement free, if you just pay shipping and in 30 days you’ll automatically get another bottle at full price and every month thereafter. (Those that stick around usually stay for about two or three months on average, before canceling.)
Can you scale a free plus shipping funnel with cold traffic?
Many e-commerce store owners give up on Facebook ads because they lose money. The problem is not that paid advertising doesn’t work.
The real problem is that your funnel is broken. And if you send cold traffic to a broken funnel then you lose a ton of money fast.
Example F+S Funnel #1
This is a funnel run by James Eustice.
– Facebook, etc Ad
The Facebook ad matches the landing page.
You need a nice quality picture that makes people stop scrolling.
– Landing Page
Here is a landing page. Some text on the top:
The page contains a short video that is on AliExpress, same video on the ad:
The page under the fold:
Clicking the button can take your visitors to an e-mail opt-in or directly to the order form.
– Checkout Page + One-Click Upsell
In ClickFunnels you can easily do this order bump (one-click upsell):
By checking the box, the chain gets added to their cart.
– Additional One-Time Offer (Optional)
The upsell here is an extra chain (in case it breaks):
The next upsell is the matching earrings:
– Order Confirmation” page
– Profitability
- Total landing page views:192
- Unique views: 142
- Total income: $390
- Product cost: $7 x 26 sales: $182
- Facebook ads: $200
Profit of the funnel is close to zero, but there are 73 email addresses captured of prospects and buyers that can be sold to later on.
Example F+S Funnel #2
– Order Form
This is the first part of the order form for the Chakra Healing Bracelet (shipping address):
This is the second part of the same order form (quantities):
…
How to Create Your Funnel
Method 1: Creating F+S Funnels with Clickfunnels
Once you’ve signed up for Clickfunnels, simply create a new funnel.
What you need is a custom funnel with an “Order Form” page, one or multiple “One Click Upsell” pages and an “Order Confirmation” page.
You can select the template you want to use for each step of the funnel.
Create A 2-Step Order From
The next thing you have to do is to start creating your funnel and optimizing your Order Page into a setup that has a high conversion rate. In this case, a 2 -step order form.
ClickFunnels lets you easily add a 2-step order form element to your order page! It’s as simple as logging in to your ClickFunnels account > Your Sales Funnel > Order Page > Add 2-Step Order element.
Then you just fill in the blanks:
One-Click Upsell
You can create one click upsells by setting up an Order Bump.
But you can also set up a “Yes” button or use regular links.
Method 2: WooCommerce
I did this research because I wanted to cut costs.
WooCommerce is free.
Thrive Architect costs $67 for a 1-site license, $97 for 5 sites and $218 for the entire suite.
Elementor has a free version with basic page builder features. The Pro version costs $49 for a 1-site license, $99 for 3 sites.
CartFlows is a WooCommerce funnel builder. CartFlows Pro costs $299/year, but you can get started with the free version.
CartFlows has ready-made templates for Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi.
For Thrive Architect you can only download them once you sign up for the Pro version.
Unfortunately the free version doesn’t have upsells.
Add your products
First of all, you need to add your the necessary product bundles to WooCommerce.
Example CartFlows/Elementor Funnel: Dog Food
Dog food Checkout page:
Dog food Upsell page:
Dog food Thank You page:
The above is a premium template. Here is another one that is available for everyone.
Landing Page:
Upsell Page:
Thank you page:
Adding A Product link
You can use the following link with any Buy Now button to take the selected product to the checkout without going through the Cart page:
yoursite.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=ID (where id is the WooCommerce ID of the product).
You then save your template and you can add it to a landing page of your choice.
