FunnelXpert 5 Figure Sales Funnel Case Study

This post is a log of all the actions I take on FunnelXpert to get it to 5 figures.

This thread starts 2 months after it went live. You can go back to the old thread here.

FunnelXpert Update 25 Jan 2018

My guest post went live on Mostly Blogging. It was successful, but I haven’t received any subscribers out of it yet.

Today when I was looking at the page view stat, I found a strange link referring some traffic – edailynet.com, someone shared my guest post, and that is an extra backlink to FunnelXpert.

As you may know, I have another blog, YourExpiredDomains.com, that site is developing nicely.

The organic search for the last 4 weeks has just passed 300, and it is increasing rapidly.

Additionally, I put a NameSilo banner among with a $1 off promo code into the side bar, which means $7.99 .com domain including privacy.

I also posted the code on Quora. Suddenly my affiliate sales have started to roll in, 12 sales in January, 7 out of that in the last 3 days.

I have been answering a lot of questions on Quora and linking back to my content.

Also I was struggling to figure out how to monetize that site. I am also going to post a hosting offer, and additionally start an e-mail list for domain and hosting promo codes.

FunnelXpert Update 28 Jan 2018

Another guest blog post on Mostly Blogging came out today.

I have a few surprises… First, my Majestic rating of FunnelXpert. This was in November 2017:

And this is today:

As you can see, Trust Flow has increased nicely.

And I looked at my traffic sources for today, and this is what I found:

Referrer		Views
Facebook		4
mostlyblogging.com/mass-email-list/		4
Search Engines		3
pinterest.de		1
en.wikipedia.org		1
Total views referred by links to your blog		13

I built a Wikipedia backlink last week.

And my Mostly Blogging guest post from last week.

These are probably responsible for the increase in Trust Flow also.

FunnelXpert Update 1 Feb 2018

I made a major modification on my site. Thank God!

I increased the font size so that it is readable.

Small font size is the #1 complaint against blogs.

I read a bunch of stuff about design, what you should have on your blog and what you shouldn’t…

I already got rid of my sidebar a while ago, because it was cutting my screenshots short…

And now I found the datum that sidebars actually decrease conversions….

FunnelXpert Update 5 Feb 2018

I haven’t posted in a while…

I have been doing a lot of research.

I have the blog’s foundation more or less built.

Now it’s time to get to the next level.

I have uncovered the biggest blogging lie, which wastes you the most time:

It’s the myth that says that you need to post regularly.

I know this sounds shocking, but this is what Brian Dean says:

“I’ve only published 36 total blog posts on Backlinko.

“(And those 36 blog posts generate 140k unique visitors per month)”

Unfortunately it’s in an email, so I can’t link to it…

FunnelXpert Traffic

Everyone is talking about how Pinterest skyrocketed their traffic.

Therefore I am digging into Pinterest deeper.

I paid for Tailwind. ($5 for 1 month)

With this I also have another purpose.

It takes too much time to promote through Facebook groups.

I want to figure out more effective ways of promoting, where I don’t need to sit at the computer in all my free time promoting, because otherwise it just feels like I am doing two jobs instead of one, I have no free time, and I am not even getting paid much.

So the next target is 10,000 monthly visitors.

You will learn about my strategy very soon…

Part of the strategy will be to mention other bloggers in my posts.

I also want to figure out Instragram, which similarly to Pinterest could be a major source of traffic.

Subscribers

My other problem is engaging my email audience. There are about 20 people who have gotten to the end of my Welcome series.

If I don’t take care of them, I will lose them, obviously.

Therefore I will send email updates about my research, maybe once a week.

Also, I am planning to increase the number of my subscribers drastically.

I left a comment on the website of Matthew Woodward and asked him what it takes to get consistent sales.

His answer was to concentrate on increasing number of subscribers instead.

This is what I am going to do.

I do get people signing up regularly, so increasing traffic will take care of subscribers.

I am also going to upgrade my email series, as I still feel they are not engaging enough.

All my emails are going to have information like what you are reading here, because this real-life stuff is what keeps subscribers’ interest.

Therefore I will be re-writing my emails one by one.

Very important realization – each of your emails should be carefully crafted, just like a blog post, not just writing something, or taking a template from someone else, as they usually suck.

Income – Monetization

This is a project I will be undertaking.

I am getting regular sales from Quora.

Now I need regular sales from FunnelXpert.

One point is to make my affiliate offers more enticing with little stories, using offer boxes in addition in-text affiliate links.

Therefore I am going to be taking my existing posts one by one and upgrade them.

Epic is now not enough. They need to be the BEST.

FunnelXpert Update 6 Feb 2018

This was major. I completed my post, the web traffic guide for the clueless newbie...

It’s now an insane 6,500 words.

And I sent out my first broadcast email to all my subscribers.

Now I am onto Pinterest… Adding more pins.

FunnelXpert Update 8 Feb 2018

Look at my latest Majestic Trust Flow:

I attribute this to the Wikipedia backlink that I built, which by the way also got copied to two other Wiki sites.

The other factor is the Pinterest backlinks, which are dofollow and have a high trust rank.

I also have a backlink from the home page of my DA 35 domain.

Other than that, I am at 80 organic clicks in the past 30 days, increasing every day.

354 keywords listed in Search Console.

I have 31 subscribers, growing on autopilot.

FunnelXpert Pinterest strategy

I am going through a lot of stuff researching Pinterest.

What I am running into is that there are gazillion guides on it… However none of them is comprehensive.

Even the paid course that I bought…. It gives valuable data, but it’s not deep.

It doesn’t answer questions like how many boards, how many pins, etc.

I had an existing review post on Pinfinite growth, it is 1128 words.

It is not ranking in Google and has no external links pointing to it.

Therefore I am using my strategy on this post.

Pinterest Email Marketing – Get 30,000 Subscribers In 12 Months

First of all, I changed the URL to a short one, 3 words only.

Google loves short URLs.

The Keyword, “pinterest-email-marketing” has 10-100 searches per the Google Keyword Tool.

The next step is to cram every possible knowledge into this post so that it is the BEST on the entire internet.

Take note that I have no clue about how to drive traffic with Pinterest, I am starting from scratch, I am bookmarking everything and I will be an expert in 1 week.

FunnelXpert Update 14 Feb 2018

I have two sites ranking on page #1 for this keyword with zero links.

The term is “rapid deployment single product funnels”.

And this is another one on position #9, page #1. “sales funnel themes”

These are not high-traffic keywords, but they are very targeted and consistent and show you it CAN be done.

FunnelXpert Update 19 Feb 2018

I would like to post here more often…

But there is not much to report.

I am still analyzing Pinterest, it’s a lot of data to go through.

Pinterest is KEY to getting blog traffic on autopilot.

I have also been studying Blog Boss.

And also Derek Halpern’s Blog That Converts.

FunnelXpert Update 20 Feb 2018

I updated my email course once again, this time it is a minor update.

I also added some more time in between the emails.

The keywords from the Pinterest post have shown up in Search Console.

I got approved for Relationship Funnel of Wild Audience.

FunnelXpert Update 10 March 2018

I have been really neglecting this thread…

Which doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing a lot on my blog.

But it always feels it’s not enough.

But it’s true, I have been doing a lot of research and much less of other stuff.

I think I figured out Pinterest more or less, I have been adding more data to my Pinterest guide.

However implementation requires lots of work and lots of preparations on my blog.

My e-mail sequence needs to be updated again. It’s not totally wrong, however

1. With 20% click-through rate I need to engage my readers in the emails, rather than just taking them to a blog post.
2. Data on the Wild Audience affiliate program needs to be sprinkled through the emails.

My blog also needs to be updated –

1. Data on the Wild Audience affiliate program needs to be sprinkled through the posts
2. Sharable Pinterest images need to be added. I see high number of Pinterest shares on the posts, but what are they sharing?

Here’s another first page ranking:

Majestic:

Metrics in MOZ – DA=10, PA=21, 62 links (from DA=9, PA=17 at launch)

Despite adding over 60 affiliate programs, commissions came only from one of them:

Organic clicks: 132 in 28 days

Organic keywords: 540

FunnelXpert Update 21 March 2018

FunnelXpert now has its basic content.

The next step is to get more subscribers.

I have updated my email series once again.

When I say update, I made them more juicy, more engaging.

I started working on a new project, Blog Earnings Troubleshooter.

It’s based on the Skyscraper technique.

I reach out to other bloggers, include their content, then we will all share it and get more traffic.

FunnelXpert Update 1 April 2018

The Blog Earnings Troubleshooter launched!

Here’s the list of bloggers participating so far, they are all high caliber, experienced bloggers with high traffic:

• Janice Wald – MostlyBlogging.com
• Anastasia Blogger – AanastasiaBlogger.com
• Nadalie Bardo – ItsAllYouBoo.com
• Lucrezia – TinyLovebug.com
• Meera Kothand – MeeraKothand.com
• Matt Ackerson – Autogrow.co
• Chelsea – HerPaperroute.com

It was a massive project and I also made several pins.

It was featured at the blog link party of MostlyBlogging.

FunnelXpert Update 4 April 2018

The first person shared the Blog Earnings Troubleshooter – a traffic spike of 157 page views!

However no answer from other participants yet.

I tried to use slide-in opt-in form instead of the pop-up.

The sign-up percent went down to 1.3 percent from 4 percent, therefore I went back to pop-up.

I looked at my blog on mobile and what I also realized was that the opt-in form was covering the entire screen.

Always test for mobile.

I am concentrating on traffic and increasing opt-in rates.

I also added a question to my welcome email to increase engagement, two people answered so far.

I got featured on ItsAllYouBoo as a motivational expert – backlink to my blog!

FunnelXpert Update 17 April 2018

Blog Earnings Troubleshooter is good, but it’s not a sudden magic thing.

Several of the participants that provided the materials they wanted to include are not answering their emails any more and I don’t know what they did to share it.

I saw pins that were repinned by them, some shared with email lists, it was included in a link party, shared with Facebook groups.

There are a lot of things I could do to promote it more, like contacting more people to include their materials.

However right now I am not going to spend more time on it.

My main concentration is on Pinterest. This is supposed to be my main traffic source, however I am only getting a few clicks per day.

There was a problem with the rich pins, Pinterest wasn’t able to retrieve data from my URL. I spent about two days trying to fix it. Eventually somehow it fixed itself.

However the data from my blog posts wasn’t transferring to Pinterest and the blog post titles and descriptions weren’t showing up in the pins.

I participated in several Pinterest repin and click through threads in Blog Support group in Facebook. These are several day marathons and result in 20-30 repins and visits, therefore I feel that it’s worth it.

I am also doing AnastasiaBlogger’s Pinterest course, and I learned a lot of important stuff. The main takeaway is that all the basics you read in Pinterest threads are important, but additionally you need a strategy, especially for pinning.

I can see now that I messed up my initial Pinterest set-up, as I was uploading pins to Pinterest directly and not saving it from my blog. The titles and descriptions are not sowing up on those pins therefore.

Anastasia also created for me a new template that I will be using. I have about 21k reach, however the click-through rate is horrible, therefore I need to improve the click-worthiness of my pins. There are too many people creating posts with make money blogging and I need to stand out more with pins descriptions that create enough curiosity.

I am going through all my blog posts and creating new pins.

The other thing I need to fix is the group boards and BoardBooster tribes. The current repin rates of 0.1-0.2 is very low and is a waste of money.

FunnelXpert Update 17 May 2018

I received two requests, one from TinyLoveBug to participate in an expert interview.

The other one from AnastasiaBlogger to give a review on her Pinterest course.

Both will result in a backlink.

This is how networking works…

Moz has updated its site explorer and with their new system FunnelXpert blog DA is now 20.

I am still not a big fan of Moz DA, most of my links are no-follow and that aspect doesn’t seem to show in my Moz DA count.

FunnelXpert Update 19 May 2018

What I thought would never happen actually happened.

I lost interest and I didn’t even look at my blog for a few weeks.

You see, motivation is key, and the best motivation is results.

My blog is almost 6 months old.

I started to research other things like e-commerce and I actually started to build my dropshipping store in a foreign language.

What brought me back? A few things.

• First of all, I saw in my Search Console dashboard that my organic clicks have gotten to 310 for the last month and I actually got 21 organic clicks from Google yesterday.
• I have been getting email subscribers every day, and now I have over 50 subscribers
• I have watched a webinar from VideoFruit on getting 10k subscribers and I realized that my sales funnel is wrong and I learned how to build it correctly.

I am updating my strategy…

First of all, I started using Ahrefs for my keyword research.

If you read the post I linked to, you will see that Ahrefs gives you a lot more keywords than the Google tool.

Since many people use the Google tool, this can result in an advantage.

The fact that I am getting subscribers shows that my opt-in idea is correct.

However the lack of sales show that my email funnel is wrong.

I didn’t know how to sell through email, I have only been giving away value but not asking for sales in the right way.

I will be using Bryan’s VideoFruit email funnel, which is based on Problem>Agitation>Solution.

I will be creating my own tripwire product.

The other point I learned from Bryan is that I need to sell my products to other marketers’ lists…

FunnelXpert Update 13 September 2018

Okay, so I haven’t touched this blog in 4 months.

I started a few other projects in a foreign language.

FunnelXpert is now 9 months old and it is far from 5 figures. However it did make some progress:

And here is my weekly traffic that comes in on autopilot:

As you can see, the traffic comes from a few URLs only. The rest of the posts on the blog don’t really contribute. Therefore I will be updating these posts with keyword research.

The posts you see above are all keywords that are only searched for 30 times per month, but they also pick up related keywords.

Here is the Majestic data:

And the Moz DA:

FunnelXpert Update 18 October 2018

I made a lot of changes to FunnelXpert. It took a lot of research.

FunnelXpert Update 3 February 2019