SRF 4: Interview - Ben Willson Strategy For 50,000 Free Site Visitors In ONE MONTH...

steve larsen:
All right everybody, hey. I'm super excited for today. This is the first interview that I've actually done on, Sales Funnel Radio. It's actually one of the main reasons that I started this podcast. There's so many cool, silent, unspoken entrepreneurial heroes out there. I really, I just wanted to go expose a lot of those stories and share with you guys how possible it is to make a profitable sales funnel. Today, I have, actually one of my good friends, Ben Wilson, on the phone here recording. Ben and I actually have quite a history together. I'd say that I first got into sales funnels online with him, doing products with him. Anyway, I'm excited. We want to go through our story a little bit and share with you guys things you guys can do in your own business. Ben, how's it going?

ben wilson:
Absolutely good, man. Great to be here.

steve larsen:
Awesome, awesome. I was thinking back to the time when you and I first met. That was ... We were in college, that was back, what class was that?

ben wilson:
I think we were probably, Marketing 101, something wasting our time.

steve larsen:
Yeah.

ben wilson:
I remember leaning over and you were looking at Stripe, and I was like, "Most kids aren't looking at Stripe in class. Why is this kid looking at Stripe?" Then I leaned over and I was like, "Hey man, we should totally set up an API for you. We could get that going." You're like, "What do you know about Stripe?" I was like, "Yeah, man, I've set up Stripe." That was the start.

steve larsen:
That was the start right there. I remember I was making an e-book.

ben wilson:
Yeah.

steve larsen:
Yeah. That was my first attempt ever at making a landing page on WordPress, and I had spent two days trying to get this stupid theme to do what I wanted it to do. Yeah. That was funny. That project, I think I've sold two copies of that thing. It's on Amazon.

ben wilson:
That was a good book though.

steve larsen:
How did we get together after that though? What did we do? I actually can't remember. I just remember...

ben wilson:
I think we started bouncing ideas off as to what had done in the past. You started sharing to me about, I don't think you called it funnels at the time, you really started looking at affiliate marketing, and how to push products online without necessarily being attached. I think, I don't know if it was a clash, or some type of beautiful art piece. I always got attached, like, "Well, we have to brand it. We have to be attached to some level at what we're doing." You're like, "It doesn't matter what it is. Let's do it and we're moving forward." Just like a rubber band. Sometimes we'd have the snap, but the snap wasn't a bad thing. The snap was like, okay, I'll give up that I don't have to be that attached. You're like, "Okay, we can kind of brand it," and something would actually happen. Then we convinced our teachers.

steve larsen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ben wilson:
I was describing this to someone yesterday. We convinced our teachers that what we were doing was a lot more beneficial.

steve larsen:
Than in class.

ben wilson:
Yes!

steve larsen:
I remember that. That was our internet marketing class itself, man.

ben wilson:
We missed ... I mean, we convinced several teachers...

steve larsen:
To not go to class anymore.

ben wilson:
To [call up the class 00:03:52] the class, and they're ... Oh man. I can't believe we actually pulled that off.

steve larsen:
Me neither. I was thinking about it. We drew up that plan. We got in our internet marketing and they were doing that stupid, SEO old school stuff. We both wanted to shoot ourselves. I noticed you were the other kid in the class that was just pounding their head on the wall. Like, "Oh this crap is so old. It doesn't work."

ben wilson:
Yes. I remember they were trying to teach WordPress, and they were like, "How do you do such and such?" I was like, every answer, both of us just raising our hands.

steve larsen:
Yeah.

ben wilson:
I was like, "Do we really have to sit here the entire time and build you a website? Can't we go build ourselves a website?"

steve larsen:
Yeah. That's funny. Then we wrote up that plan. It was basically a flow chart for pages.

ben wilson:
Yes!

steve larsen:
He said, "Yeah, go for it. Just bring a deliverable." Then we started meeting every morning for two or three hours. Way more than the other kids in class were doing it. I remember we made that first affiliate product. I think it was, Click Bank. Right?

ben wilson:
[inaudible 00:05:00] was it? Was our first one the weight loss supplements?

steve larsen:
It was something like ... No, no, it was the social media producer thing. We put a landing page together using some guys weird generator and put 50 bucks on it and woke up the next morning, saw that 50 bucks had come back, and I was like, "Holy crap! We didn't lose money!" We got 17 people to opt in, and we sold it.

ben wilson:
I was so stoked the moment we didn't lose money. That was the first accomplishments of, like, no way!

steve larsen:
How did we get with Paul Mitchell after that though?

ben wilson:
I think he was assigned to our class, and I had to go over ...

steve larsen:
That's right, you closed him.

ben wilson:
He was trying to do something with Facebook, and I noticed he had a lot more other issues than trying to do Facebook advertising through our class. Then we had an assignment that was to get 10 people to fill out the survey. You and I looked at each other like, "We could get a lot more than 10 people, but I'm not calling anyone." Right? Let's think hard of a way to get a lot more people. I think there ended up being, was there 1100 people we got to take the survey?

steve larsen:
Yeah. Everyone else got 100 or something.

ben wilson:
Yeah. I think they called their 10 people.

steve larsen:
Yep.

ben wilson:
Yeah.

steve larsen:
That was hilarious. Then we started driving traffic for them. Which, I can't believe we did that. Oh, and then the [Arhenis 00:06:32] Project.

ben wilson:
Arhenis. You and I were out for what, 72 hours straight building a website, and then come to find out, the guy didn't even mention his website that we had built for him after being asked by him to build this website.

steve larsen:
Gosh, that whole thing was so weird.

ben wilson:
We were like, "There's a million people watching right now, and the only way you're going to further your career is by sending people to this website, and you got 2 hours to do it." We sat, I sat, we sat there and even Paul Mitchell watching. They're like, "Okay, any time now, any time now."

steve larsen:
Mention, just say the URL, just say, and he never did.

ben wilson:
We're like, "We do not have to run any type of funnels. If you just by chance mention this email address that you paid $1800 for, if you could just mention it once."

steve larsen:
It would be great. Those of you who are listening, Paul Mitchell asked us to come build out ... They basically said, "Hey, we're getting on tv in 2 days, we need a website people can go to, and we need a lead capture system and all this stuff." This was ... Just mapping the same time, this was when ClickFunnels was still in beta. It was a while ago. It was way longer than that ago. Man, how long ago was that? That was 2 or 3 years ago now wasn't it?

ben wilson:
We're coming up on ... I mean, it's been 18 months since I graduated, and that was before my last semester. Yeah, at least 2 years.

steve larsen:
Yeah, yeah....