The beauty of building an online business is that it can be built like a machine that runs on its own.
Or mostly on its own.
You’re allowed to build something that can generate money 24/7 without you being around. It’s amazing.
But what does this machine look like?
It entails The 3 Business Engines.
- Attention
- Acquisition
- Award
The Machine that you’re building doesn’t fully function until you have all 3 engines running together.
Let’s look more closely at each one by working backward.
Award
The Award Engine makes the money. Without money, you have no business. Money is the gas for the machine.
If you run out of gas, the machine stops working.
Award can come in many forms:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Dropshipping
- Coaching
- Memberships
- Sponsorships
- Brand Deals
- Ads
- Digital Products
The list goes on and on.
But for the Award Engine to work it needs people.
Acquisition
This is where you acquire people who will then spend money. Acquisition can happen through many different ways but most online marketers will tell you that it happens with an opt-in/lead magnet to get people onto a mailing list.
Attention
Surprisingly, this is the hardest engine to get running because it’s the first engine that people start with. The other two engines do not function without this one running which means that EVERYONE is trying to get theirs running.
Attention happens through many different ways online:
- Blogging/SEO
- TikTok
- Instagram/Threads
- YouTube
- Paid Ads
- Podcasting
The Engines Are Separate But Connected
The Engines together work as a system but are also viewed as separate and sometimes this can cause problems.
For example, let’s say you have all of the engines set up.
You’re using TikTok to drive people to your lead magnet which then sends people a series of email for one of your offers.
You’re getting people into your funnels (if you don’t know what this means don’t worry about it now) but nobody is buying. So does this mean your offer isn’t good enough?
Could be. But it could also mean you’re grabbing the attention of the wrong people.
That’s why when you’re analyzing your business you have to look at the system as well as the individual parts.
The End Goal
The End Goal is to build a machine where the 3 Engines function without you have to look over them every single day.
You should be able to walk away for long periods without your machine falling apart. If it does then you haven’t created the freedom that you want yet.
What Our Machine Looks Like
Our machine is a bit more complex than what most people will need only because we are multiple people that teach a lot of things. But here is a current breakdown of how our Machine works.
Attention
- TikTok: Marybeth, Scrivs, Stephen
- Threads: Scrivs
- Instagram: Scrivs
- YouTube: Odd Noodle, Stephen
- Blogging
Acquisition
- This course
- Newsletter
Award
- Shop
- Services
Your Simple Machine
Again, our machine is a bit more complex than many of you will need. A very simple machine would look like this:
- Attention: Instagram (as an example)
- Acquisition: Free checklist lead magnet
- Award: Book
You use Instagram to get the attention of people and send them to your free lead magnet. They sign up and you send them emails letting them know about your book (the emails are a bit deeper than that).
In theory, you get to a point where you don’t need to post on Instagram every single day or even if you do, you everything scheduled. Your emails go out automatically and your book is available 24/7.
A machine that never stops running.
How We Build Our Machines
In the past, we would tell you that there are a lot of different ways you can build your machine, and that still holds true, but throughout this course, we are going to focus on how we build ours.
To fully understand the logic behind it we first need to look at the two types of traffic:
- Active
- Passive
If you live on social media then it’s not surprising that most people harp on the fact that you have to do all of your business-building on social media. Instagram gurus will tell you to live on Instagram. TikTok people will tell you the same thing.
But there is a downside to social media and that’s the grind.
To stay with it you need to stay with it. You don’t get the luxury of taking long breaks from social media if you want to continue to grow. That’s why the big dogs have teams of people constantly putting out content for them.
It’s just how the algorithm works. It’s rarely going to show you something from 6 months ago. If that post you created today doesn’t hit the right metrics then there is a chance it won’t get seen by anyone tomorrow.
This makes it seem like a bad thing but it isn’t. Social media traffic is great because you can get it today without waiting.
But as mentioned it comes with a cost and so what is happening with a lot of Creators is that they get burned out trying to make the algorithm work for them. They don’t like having to show up every single day when the success of their business depends on how nice the algorithm is today.
Social media traffic is active traffic.
You have to be present for it.
The opposite of that is passive traffic which comes from the search engines.
We build our machines so that they utilize both forms of traffic. That way we aren’t dependent on just one and it allows more flexibility in how we handle our business.
It Starts With a Blog
We always start off with a blog because:
- Organic Traffic (traffic from search engines) takes time to build up.
- The content that we create sets the tone for what we’re going to create on social media and in our emails.
- We like to establish a home base for ourselves that nobody can take away from us.
This goes against the grain of what almost ALL other experts say because in the past, getting a blog set up could take a long time.
But that isn’t the case anymore.
With the help of AI, you could have a blog with a full Topic Cluster set up over the weekend.
Next Comes the Offer
Ready for the next surprising twist? The next thing we do is begin work on the book.
Books are our favorite digital products because anything can be put in them and depending on the problem you’re trying to solve, they can be created fairly quickly.
We’ve created them in less than 12 hours.
Again, this is something usually not advised by the other experts so why do we suggest you do it?
This whole business game is nothing but a series of experiments. If you can create a book over the weekend and then get it up to see if it works (if you can actually sell it) then why wouldn’t you do that?
This means that if we’re really pushing it we can have a blog with content and an offer all ready on Monday.
Wild.
Now, We Build the List and Sell the Offer
Your mailing list is going to be your most important asset to your business and yet so many people fail to build one.
Why is it so important? It’s your way to communicate one-on-one with your audience. It’s not controlled by an algorithm and you can say whatever you want.
If you think that social media is your friend when it comes to getting the right message to the right people then ask those with 100,000 followers and only 10% see their content.
So how do we build the list? With some type of free offer often referred to as an opt-in or lead magnet.
This can be anything from a checklist, an email course, or even a book. It depends on what we need to help people solve and what is the best way to deliver that solution.
But where does the selling come in? Often we will set up a Tripwire Funnel. This is pretty simple.
- Someone signs up to receive the lead magnet.
- On the next page, they are presented with a special offer for one of our products. This is an expiring offer and is only available on the Tripwire page.
This is one of the easiest ways to test if you’re bringing in the right people and if you’re using the right messaging to sell your offer.
That’s Two Engines Out of the Way
If you’re keeping track you can see that is two of our three engines out of the way. If you want to get technical you could say it’s all three.
- Attention: Blogging w/ SEO
- Acquisition: Opt-in
- Award: Tripwire Funnel
We could simply continue to work on the blog, make sure to use our Pinterest workflow to bring traffic, and leave it at that, but that won’t work as well as making sure that we have a presence on social media.
Remember, social media allows you the opportunity to get traffic starting today, but it also helps to get people to understand WHY they should care that you’re there.
Which means…
It’s Time to Hit Social Media
First, let’s get this out of the way. There is no best social media platform.
Every single person who has gotten good at one of them and built an audience will say that their platform is the best, but there is a reason every single one is filled with gurus.
Because they can all work for you as long as you do the right things.
Marybeth and Stephen are partial to video.
Scrivs loves text but he also enjoys doing video.
The main point is that you get out there so you give yourself the best opportunity to get in front of your people.
But what do you post? We’ll cover that and more later in the course.
This Is Our Engine, Yours May Differ
It’s important to remember that every business follows a simple formula
Audience x Offer = $$$$$Our machine helps us to build up an audience that includes both active and passive traffic while being able to show them offers without having to hard sell anything (a concept we will discuss later).
Your machine might start off differently. Maybe you simply do LinkedIn and a lead magnet page to begin and over time you integrate more things into your machine.
The only reason why we do so much early one is because we can do it quickly which helps immensely in the long run.
The Benefits to a Blogging Machine
We began to focus on content for Odd Noodle in October of 2023. The chart above shows the first 90 days.
As you can see the search impressions continue to climb over time. That means people are searching for things on Google and Odd Noodle is showing up in the results.
As we continue to work on the content for this site the search engine traffic (passive) continues to build. Why is this traffic so important to your business?
Because the people who use a search engine do so because they have intent. They are specifically looking for something and if you’re the person who can give it to them then they are more likely to subscribe and buy from you.
Plus, it means they come to your site.
One of the most challenging aspects of social media is getting people off the platform and onto yours. Social media platforms don’t want people leaving so they do everything in their power to keep their audience there.
Again, this doesn’t make social media bad. It means it takes a different approach to what you need to do.
Up Next…
What’s First: The Audience or the Offer?
