You want to make (more) money.
The Internet is supposed to make that happen.
Systems are supposed to make it easier.
But with social media, it can feel like an endless grind of having to do more and more and more. Nobody wants that.
That’s not what you signed up for.
The last thing you want to do is create another job for yourself.
So what do you do?
Simple. You create a Money Flywheel.
If you know about funnels then you could consider an Infinite Funnel and it’s something not enough people utilize because they focus on one thing.
What’s a Money Flywheel?
Before I get to that it’s important to understand what a flywheel is in the first place.
What Is a Flywheel?
A flywheel is a mechanical device which uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed.
Wikipedia
Okay, this definition isn’t helpful if you can’t see the thing.
Alright, that’s still not the best thing but the premise is this.
The wheel is hard to get started and starts off slow. But over time it gets easier to move and moves faster until it gets to the point that you can get a ton of power with very little effort.
All because of the energy that is stored in it.
This is how you want your business to run.
It takes a lot of effort to get it going at the beginning, but over time it gets a lot easier to get equal or better results.
This is pretty much the opposite of what a lot of people experience. Instead, every single day for years is a grind.
That’s the equivalent of stopping the flywheel and starting over again each day.
Sounds dumb, right? That’s because it is.
Why does this happen?
The Social Media + Newsletter Problem
The popular way to run a business is to have a social media account (or 5), post a lot of stuff that sends people to your newsletter, and then send out a newsletter once a week.
It’s not a terrible model. Some people do extremely well with it.
But it’s not super efficient.
For example, if you have a Twitter account and you send people to a newsletter, then the only way for people to discover you and continue down your world is through Twitter.
If Twitter falls apart then you’re relying on your Newsletter until you spin up another social media account elsewhere.
But more importantly, Twitter doesn’t allow people to dive deeper when they want to and that’s the big problem.
When someone comes across you on social media, you have no idea where they are at on their journey. You can only hope that you’re writing a post that resonates with them.
If you do, then they might go sign up for your newsletter.
But then what?
Now they gotta wait for the newsletter.
Why not allow them to control their journey?
What do I mean?
Let’s use this site as an example.
A 3-Course Buffet
Chances are you found me on social media.
Twitter is a good example.
When you find me on Twitter maybe you liked a tweet and moved on. That’s how the flywheel gets started.
But there is a problem with tweets.
They don’t last long.
To have a tweet last more than a day you need to go crazy viral.
Otherwise, its shelf life is a couple of hours. That’s why you have to tweet consistently.
If you see another tweet of mine that you like, maybe you remember the previous one you enjoyed and decide to go to my profile.
You scan through some tweets and like them and then move on with your day.
Eventually, you catch another one of my tweets and decide to follow me (thanks).
You catch another tweet of mine that you enjoy, but this one has a link at the end of it. The tweet is talking about storytelling, but a tweet can only take you so far.
So at the end of the tweet, I share a link to my post on storytelling if you want to dive deeper.
And here is the key.
Most people aren’t going to dive deeper for one of two reasons:
- They don’t have time. You have no idea where people are consuming your content. They could be reading while waiting in line for coffee.
- They aren’t ready. They enjoyed the post, but they aren’t ready to explore further how to get better at storytelling.
These two scenarios are the majority of your audience.
But there is a very small subgroup within your audience that has been having trouble with storytelling. So much so that every day they wake up annoyed at the fact that storytelling is holding them back.
So it doesn’t matter if they are waiting in line for coffee, they are going to read your post because it could have the answer to their problems.
They hit up the post, read it (they love it), and then they have an option:
- Sign up for your mailing list (you have an opt-in at the end of the post)
- Go explore your site and see what else they can learn
Most people will do neither. They’ll thank you for the help and move on.
But let’s say this is the person’s 3rd time on your site and you’ve helped them again.
This time they are on their computer at home so they decide to explore your site a bit. They read a couple more posts and get lost in the world that you’ve built.
They finally see the bigger picture of what you’re about and how you can help them and because of this they either:
- Sign up for your mailing list (big win)
- Buy one of your offers (bigger win)
They take one of these actions because they are finally ready.
You didn’t have to know if they were or not because everything was in place for them.
You gave them the option to choose their adventure and you didn’t have to be around for it.
Building a Money Flywheel
Look at the wasted opportunity of the traditional social media funnel.
Some catches your social media posts (if the algorithm is being kind to you), they get some value and then they can keep on going or they can sign up for your newsletter.
Then what?
It’s usually a waiting game.
By having content on your website you’ve increased the inertia that can build up in the flywheel.
But it can sound pretty daunting to write content for a site and I agree, it can be if you use the wrong mindset.
The goal isn’t to load up as much content as quickly as possible.
You just need to get content up over time.
You can even go as far as putting your newsletters on your site to act as archives. That’s at least something.
Then instead of always pushing people toward your newsletter, you can link up one of your old newsletters to a social media post that will let people dive deeper.
You need to have something available so people aren’t waiting on your content.
Again, you never know when someone is ready.
If they’re ready to buy today but didn’t log onto Twitter and your newsletter doesn’t come out for 3 days, then what happen? You’re stuck.