This YouTube conversation (TJ Walker with another speaker) focuses on why many funnels fail and how to build successful funnels by owning incoming traffic. The guest advises hosting videos and funnel pages on your own domain (yourname.com/guest) rather than relying on third-party platforms, recommends WordPress + Elementor or an in-house developer, and cautions about spending on high-visibility media (e.g., Times Square) which mainly adds credibility rather than direct sales. The discussion also touches on platform choice (YouTube, Amazon Fire TV) and the changing media landscape.
Chapters
Appreciate you, dj.
Great. Now let's not bury really the sort of, the most important thing, a funnel that's working. Most people try funnels and never really succeed. I have failed numerous, I mean every, every five years or so I'll get all excited. I'll hire some marketing expert who, who focuses exclusively on online course creators and I'll, I'll end up spending six figures every time. It ends up being an unmitigated disaster. I have been very successful on existing platforms where they do the marketing places like Udemy, but obviously there are people who sell on their own platforms and sell courses for, you know, a thousand, 25,000. They've, they've figured it out. Do you, Are you able to help someone who, let's say has a really successful consulting practice, maybe a speaking business and are venturing into products the first time, whether it's a course, whether it's a book or something else, and build their funnel to get it working and successful?
I do not build funnels. I've got a developer on staff that's been working for me since 2006 or 7. Really sharp guy. The one recommendation that I'd have, I mean you can, there's a lot of stuff you can learn by yourself. You know, build a WordPress site, install Elementor, some basic stuff to make a really great looking site. But you mentioned something that's completely different from what, what I typically focus on. I'll teach, I'll teach people to focus on owning your traffic. So maybe you're sending them to YouTube, you know, say hey, go watch this video on YouTube. But if you send them to your site.com guest name, you know, forward slash guest name with the YouTube video on there, they still see the YouTube video, but now you own the traffic that's coming to your website. So if you're trying to build a funnel, there's all kinds of great funnel building software out there. But again, I would recommend doing that on your own website. You can install software, make sure that you're sending people to your name, dot com or your URL rather than whatever the course creator dot com forward slash, some random URL. Make sure you. On the, make sure you own the incoming traffic.
Media landscape is changing every day, sometimes every minute. What worked, you know, 20 years ago, doesn't work, didn't work. 15 years ago, didn't, doesn't work. Last. It's constantly changing. I mean there was certain, you and I are old enough to remember early 2000s, you know, blogging was a big thing. Then things switched to social media. YouTube is still very successful for a lot of people, but it's, but it seems to be much harder to break in anytime you get an early on a platform. What platform are you most excited about? You mentioned Amazon, excuse me, Fire tv. And I've certainly heard of it. I've gotten pitched on it before. I've never actually watched it to my knowledge, Amazon Fire, nor have I heard of anyone saying they sold a lot. How do you, how do you get the mix right between trying new media? Because you never know what could be the next Twitter. And if you get in early, it's a gold mine versus things that can be time wasters and frankly can just be, you know, stroking someone's vanity. And I would ask you like, related to that, what's the value of getting a, you know, an ad in Times Square that maybe people see for half a second and forget? It's nice for my ego to say, hey, I've been in Times Square. How do you actually quantify the value of that as well as doing something like, like Fire Amazon Fire tv.
That's a great. And I love that you call out your guests like when there's, when there's something where if I'm a guy that's selling, going, hey, I get you on Amazon Fire TV and it's going to generate all these leads. I mean not Amazon Fire TV. I mean I can get you on the 96 foot billboard and times Square and it's going to generate these leads. The. I don't know that anybody has ever sold anything off that. You'll see Reese's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups advertises in between our ads real often. That's something where they're, they're making money because you can walk right into the, into the convenience store across the road there, grab a Reese's that you just saw on the screen. Somebody is typically not spending thousands of dollars because they just happen to see something one time on the screen. What that does is the credibility. So yes, it makes you feel good. I've had guys, you know, people fly out and stand in front of the billboard and have their family and friends all stand there, somebody taking pictures of them so it looks cool. That is for generating the credibility. So again, do not spend money on something like that if you don't already have the website that's generating the traffic, generating the route for that's making money. Now you put up that YouTube video. We do this with every person that advertises too. We'll give you a video clip of you and, you know, all these different videos running along you can embed in your site.
