Welcome to Part 3 of the Get Pumped Up For Success in 2025 series!
As a quick recap, here are the 4 core areas of making money:
- Generate Traffic
- Capture Traffic
- Follow Up
- Make Offers
This Part focuses on Generating Traffic, Capturing Traffic and Follow-ups.
All sales follow certain principles, no matter if you are selling online or offline or whatever niche you are in:
- You need something for sale, such as a product or service. If you don’t have your own product or service, you can promote other companies’ products as an affiliate marketer.
- You need people to buy the product or service.
How do we find people interested in buying a product or service?
In simple terms, finding people interested in buying means taking your products to where people hang out, congregate, or pass through regularly.
Think of Main Street in your town or city.
Why are there so many businesses on Main Street? Because tons of people walk and drive through it daily!
A store can open its doors for people to see what’s for sale. Some will be interested and walk into the store, and some of those people will buy something.
This traffic to the store is free.
With online selling, the concept is the same.
Where do people hang out? Where is there a lot of traffic?
In the past, businesses had to advertise on TV, radio, magazines, Google ads, and other platforms. They still do, but today, we have something unique that didn’t exist 15-20 years ago.
Social media apps!
Today, people hang out online on various social media apps, forums, and similar platforms.
With the proliferation of live feeds, people can endlessly scroll through posts on their phone and computer. Businesses can post content on these feeds that gets them tens, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of views!
It’s easier than ever before to get lots of free traffic.
In my opinion, social media feeds are the online version of what brick-and-mortar businesses do with a physical office or store on Main Street. Both can drive free traffic (aka people) to their business.
HOWEVER, there’s something REALLY different about using the internet and social media/forums:
Selling products and services online is largely connected to building a relationship with a target audience.
A physical store has products on shelves. You look around and buy what you need.
However, online, we can share information, ideas, tips, strategies, how-to guides, e-books, and other helpful content that customers value.
Social media allows us to post content regularly with information that can help our customers and target audience in ways that a physical store can’t.
This allows us to create more value and be more valuable to others. This helps drive more traffic to our assets, whether a website/blog or a lead magnet opt-in page.
There are two objectives for connecting with people AND how to stand out in the crowd:
One is KLT—you want your audience to know, like, and trust you. If people know, like, and trust you, they are more likely to take your product offers seriously and feel comfortable making a purchase.
You do this by helping people get what they want, solve their problems, and fulfill a need or desire.
The more value you create, the more people will notice you. The more they notice you, the more information they consume, and they will get to like and trust you. If you then present product offers, some will take notice and want to buy them.
Small entrepreneurs (like me, and maybe you) might not have the deep pockets to create and pay for national advertisements like large corporations.
However, we can communicate using various mediums, such as social media, blog posts, our website, and emails.
Some examples could be writing a blog post about a topic in detail using your own knowledge or experiences.
It could be creating a video about something important that helps someone understand a product more, which you then post on a social media app or forum.
It could be providing instructions or an in-depth analysis of something and then emailing the information to your audience.
In a broader context, we can do more than what an advertisement does by sharing information that our audience can’t easily access elsewhere.
It takes creativity and time to produce this value, but many marketing and sales resources repeatedly emphasize this key goal in building a relationship.
PLUS: It is how we can differentiate ourselves and stand out in the crowd.
The second objective is to make money, which is most people’s objective at the end of the day.
However, making money still needs to be underscored by the principle of giving value.
Have you ever heard the expression “Givers gain”?
This is the concept of giving value: those who give the most gain the most.
It’s the circle of life (business life)!
When you give, you are rewarded with reciprocity. You receive something back, and it can be monetary rewards.
Giving value in a business context means helping people solve their problems, meet their needs, and fulfill their desires.
Here’s a key concept to remember:
If you are motivated by building a relationship and giving value, this comes much more naturally and effortlessly than when solely focused on making money.
Detach yourself from the desired outcome.
This can be tough, but hear me out.
On one hand, if my desired outcome is to make money, then it’s hard to detach myself from it.
However, I will eventually see my desired outcome if I focus on doing my job correctly and building a relationship with my audience.
Putting this all together:
I want to attempt to make sense of all of this. It might seem a bit complex, but bear with me; it’s not so bad.
In the context of using the Internet to build a business or make money, the main ways to communicate with an audience are:
- Social media apps and forums
- Online advertisements
- Emails
- Website/blog
All four can contain product offers. However, the content in all four should focus on sharing information, ideas, tips, lessons, instructions, etc. to help people get what they want, solve a problem, or fulfill a desire. In other words, it should focus on creating value.
Sharing this valuable content is how you Generate Traffic. As more people like your content, they return to you again and again.
When people return to you for more information, you are Capturing Traffic.
This is taken a step further when you offer traffic a free product (guide, e-book, video, etc.) in exchange for their email address. This is the true essence of Capturing Traffic for an online business since you know have a new medium to communicate with the audience: via email.
Email can be very valuable to continue building the relationship and for promoting products.
Now, as you post content on social media, send emails, and create blog posts, you build KLT.
Then, the product offers can be tied in with the content. When appropriate, you offer products or services that can help your audience with their journey of solving a problem or fulfilling a desire. Some of your audience will end up buying.
All four ways of communication can work together. You might write a social media post with a link to a blog post you wrote that might help complement the social post. You might also write an email to your audience with a link to a social media post. An online advertisement could have a link to a free offer, like a guide, video, or report, that allows people to opt in and get on your email list. You then follow up with emails with more helpful information and links to social media or blog posts.
You can periodically offer a product within all of these posts and sharing of content, allowing people to purchase something.
Are you noticing that all of these things are tied together in a fantastic web?!?
When selling products, many people need to see an offer multiple times before buying.
So, by having multiple lines of communication focused on building relationships and creating value, your audience will inevitably see numerous product offers.
This helps fulfill the Follow-Up component of making money whereby you are following up constantly connecting with people.
What do you need to get started?
Here’s a list of what you need to do all of these things:
- Website building software for your website or blog, and to create sales funnels to capture traffic with opt-ins.
- Domain name for your website/blog and WordPress if doing blog posts.
- Email marketing software (to send emails)
- Email address connected to your website domain
- Social media accounts
- Product or service to sell
From my experience, Capturing Traffic and Following Up follow a specific strategy but require a lot of personal customization.
There tend to be a lot of questions about how to approach specific situations best.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment! I will answer as best I can and hopefully provide some solid guidance.
thanks for sharing a holistic view of how money making happens on the internet. the basics is knowing the traffic by employing the four communication ways like social media apps websites paid online advertisement emails. they are in unison to function for generating and capturing traffic.
capturing traffic through emails by sharing valuable contents to help the traffic understand their problems and lead them to a solution they find to their ultimate satisfaction.
how it would look like a soloprenour business offering services in capturing traffic through emails marketing.
I would love to get started having your expert guidance for offering my services in sales letters.
Hey! Thanks for sharing and leaving a comment.
You got it right. Social media apps are great for generating free traffic to get people to your assets, whether a lead magnet opt-in page, website/blog, or other social media accounts. Generating traffic on social media requires constantly creating posts. The nice part is the posts don’t need to be super long. Videos, for example, are supposed to be very short- 30 to 60 seconds long. Some of my written social media posts are shorter, and some are longer (but I try not to make it too long).
Online advertising is great for promoting your products and services (and adding people to an email list) because you can get clicks on your offers immediately. However, it costs money, so there’s a threshold of how much you want to spend. Also, it might take time (and money) to structure the ad so it’s getting you the results you need. If you have the money you are ok spending, this can be a faster way to build an email list and/or drive traffic to a product offer than through social media posts.
With blogs, I didn’t really understand the value of a blog at first, but I did it because that is what I was told to do in my current coaching and mentorship program with Dean Holland. Now that I have over 100 blog posts, I realize it is a long-form way of sharing information and documenting my journey to making money online more closely than I do on social media. I now see how it can be a great source of information for others because I go into more detail with ideas, tips, and strategies.
Email is another interesting concept. The purpose is to send a message more directly to people. Text messaging is a newer, similar way to communicate with an audience, which I’ve seen increasingly in the last few years. Either way, it’s another great way to share content. I know entrepreneurs who focus solely on building an email list and only offer products and services to those on the email list- and make a lot of money. Once people are on your email list, sending future emails is free. So, there’s a cost-benefit to it.
Everyone has a preferred method of consuming information—some like social media, some like emails, and others like reading a blog. So, if you are using all of these methods, it can be productive to communicate with everyone in your audience.
You mention providing your services in sales letters. Are you starting your journey to become a master at creating sales letters, or are you already doing this and looking for strategies to promote your services?
Either way, you can promote your services using social media, online ads, emails, and a website!
– Derek