Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 64 - $10,000/Week On Ads…And Still Breaking Even
Synopsis:
What does it really take to build wildly successful content strategies for 7-, 8-, and even 9-figure businesses?
In this episode, content marketing expert Chris Von Wilpert pulls back the curtain on the content playbooks that drive millions in revenue.
Discover how Chris built his agency and grew his name by helping brands like Sumo, Shopify, and more. He reveals the real difference between content that just sits there—and content that converts.
Tune in for actionable insights, marketing strategies, and a behind-the-scenes look at the Peaceful Profits journey from one of the industry's top minds.
Transcript:
Peaceful Profits Review: $10,000/Week On Ads…And Still Breaking Even
[00:00:00] Chanelle: Hello, Peaceful Profits nation. Chanelle here with an exciting client spotlight episode for you today. Today, we're talking to our client, Chris Von Wilpert. Chris helps people scale blogs. And most people know him from helping Noah Kagan to scale the Sumo brand blog into a seven figure revenue channel early on in his business.
[00:00:18] Chanelle: So Chris, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:21] Chris: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. It's I'm really excited to be on. I'm like, what you guys have built with Peaceful Profits is really amazing. And yeah, I'm really happy to share like my results and what I've been able to do with the [00:00:30] funnels.
[00:00:30] Chanelle: We're excited to have you and to dive in.
[00:00:32] Chanelle: So you help people scale blogs. Talk to us a little about how you do that.
[00:00:39] Chris: Yeah. So usually when people come to us and they're looking to like, usually they're looking to get customers and it's usually like they're selling some sort of coaching program or it might be like some sort of done for you service.
[00:00:49] Chris: It might be a physical product, a digital product. It could be a software product where they might not even sell like their own products at all. They may be like selling affiliate products. So they might be building some sort of content site. [00:01:00] And so a blog can be used as like a mediator, like blog posts can be used like a media between when someone thinks of something and they search it inside Google and then Google will show like a blog post and then someone will go to a blog post and then from there they'll make a purchase from those blog posts.
[00:01:14] Chris: So that's how we help people like get customers from blogs. And it's really helping people figure out what people search for when they're looking to buy their particular product and then what content they need to create to get in front of people that have that sort of transactional buying, buying [00:01:30] intent.
[00:01:30] Chris: And the framework that we're usually like teaching when we're doing this, like through our, like our own book and things like that, that we made. Follow like we call like Bofu Tofu LA which is like Bofu stands for bottom of funnel. So if I like tie this back to Peaceful Profits because I don't think most people understand like what Peaceful Profits does and everything like that would be like a bottom of funnel piece of content might be something like best book funnel service.
[00:01:54] Chris: So when people do a search for something like that, we know that like they're looking right now to purchase some sort of [00:02:00] book funnel service. They're not like, they don't need any sort of nurturing, like they're probably going to make that purchase purchasing decision right now within like maybe the next seven days.
[00:02:08] Chris: So that's like what we consider like bottom of funnel. Top of funnel is something might be something like how to write a book. It's more like informational people just they're not looking to purchase right now, but they're looking for more like how to information and more nurturing is needed there.
[00:02:22] Chris: And then LA is like linkable assets. And that's maybe something like book writing statistics. And for a blog, this is important just because the domain authority side of [00:02:30] building up the main authority. So your other content, like your bottom of funnel content can rank easier on Google. It's a big factor.
[00:02:36] Chris: That's like a long winded answer to how we help people scale blogs. With an example that, yeah.
[00:02:41] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. So that's really, I want to back up here a little bit because blogs are not even something we hear about a lot these days. It's all podcasts and video and social media.
[00:02:52] Chanelle: And I feel like, I don't know, 10 years ago, maybe a little longer, it was all blogs. And now I know [00:03:00] they're still out there, but we don't hear as much about them.
[00:03:03] Chris: Yeah, I think it's just not it's not like the in thing to do anymore. And I guess we get that a lot of comments on our ads as well.
[00:03:09] Chris: It's just are you like living in the past or it's what are you doing? Let's like things like that. But if you just like any sort of search, like you're just searching on Google and you like, you make a search and you just observe, like what is Google showing on like those results? Like the top results, like most of the results are still blog posts.
[00:03:24] Chris: Like they also show videos there as well. But like for some of these things, like I'm talking about these [00:03:30] transactionally intense searches, where it's say you're selling, for example, tea, like some sort of green tea, someone makes a search, like best green tea. There's a whole list of blog posts that are coming up for a search like that.
[00:03:39] Chris: And then people are clicking into these searches and usually it's like the top one to three sort of options in those posts. They're like selecting one of those to go with and make a purchasing decision based on that. So it is still like a really, I guess the biggest thing with blog is like you have that search intent there.
[00:03:54] Chris: So you have like people have to actually think about think about it and actually type it in. Whereas I [00:04:00] guess with social media, you're getting in some with getting in front of someone with like your offer. And so a bit more interruption based. So you don't really have that search intent there.
[00:04:09] Chris: But you can still like like nurture people through that process. But yeah, you have that intent. And so that's what kind of why it's so powerful with the blog post. But yeah, it's definitely not as popular. Nowadays as it was, I guess in the past, it's more, yeah, about video and social media and channels like that.
[00:04:25] Chris: And so it's not as much as a popular channel yet.
[00:04:28] Chanelle: Okay. But it's [00:04:30] great to hear that it's still working. And I recently, just this past weekend, I wanted to find a new protein powder and I searched best tasting. That's what I was looking for. Best tasting vanilla protein powder. Take care. Bye.
[00:04:43] Chanelle: And found, that's what did come up is lists of, it was blogs, different blog posts, telling me which they recommended and why. And I'm sure all of us have had similar experiences where we do that and that's what comes up, but we're not thinking it's just [00:05:00] different blog is blogging is different than it used to be, so I'm curious with your frame, your framework of Bofu Tofu LA. I, if I go and search for that best tasting vanilla protein powder, where do I land in there?
[00:05:14] Chris: Oh, so that's definitely like a bottom of funnel piece of content. So that's if you're making a search like that, you're probably looking for Like you're looking for some sort of protein powder.
[00:05:22] Chris: That's like really good for tasting. And you're probably looking right now to make a purchase. Even if you don't purchase off that article, maybe you like, just saw like the [00:05:30] name of a brand and now you type the brand into Google or you clicked on the particular brand, maybe you didn't purchase it right away, but then you thought about it for a bit, maybe a few days later you purchased it.
[00:05:38] Chris: So that's definitely like a bottom of funnel search someone makes. They're like very close to making a purchase. And I think a lot of people. I think maybe this is only relevant for maybe physical products and e commerce, but it's also very relevant for also like services and things like that.
[00:05:53] Chris: It's just that like with services, like the amount of search volume and an amount of people searching is a lot [00:06:00] lower. So you get, have a lot less people searching. So in terms of the amount of traffic you're getting to say a blog, it may be like a lot less. It wouldn't be even close to 100, 000 visitors a month, but the, like the quality of the traffic and just like a handful of visitors because the ticket price is so high on something like that it can be really effective.
[00:06:17] Chris: So I think a lot of people just don't think of using it for things like that, like services and coaching, but it can also be used for that. But these are a lot more common with like physical products and digital products and things like that.
[00:06:27] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. So can you give us an example [00:06:30] then of where like a digital product that people would search at bottom of funnel or even top of funnel, what that would look like?
[00:06:38] Chris: Yeah. So if you think of a digital product, say for example, some of the sound like a Facebook ads training, it could be like best Facebook ads course, something like that. That's like a digital product, that's like a bottom of funnel search for a digital product. And if we're thinking like a some sort of service, if we take like the same sort of example, like someone's helping people with their like Facebook ads it might be like best Facebook ads marketing [00:07:00] service, something like that is like an example of a service based sort of bottom of funnel search where there aren't as many people like searching for something like that.
[00:07:08] Chris: But the people who do like that, they're actually, they're looking for someone like that right now. Otherwise they wouldn't really think to search that and type that in.
[00:07:15] Chanelle: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for just bringing it, making it make sense of what that actually looks like. And I'm sure that as people get into it, this is something that they really, they want their blogs to be successful and [00:07:30] having, an expert who knows how to do that would really help with the process.
[00:07:34] Chanelle: So as you have grown your own business, I know you've had a lot of success with running ads to bring people into your business. Can you tell us more about your recent big business win with running ads?
[00:07:48] Chris: Yeah, I'd say the biggest win from like the book funnel that we put together and cause we know for sure the person purchased the book because they actually replied to one of the emails afterwards from purchasing the book.
[00:07:58] Chris: It was a person [00:08:00] who reached out and they ended up signing on it was it was 12, 500 a month over 120 day sprint. So the way we structured the service was like. Doing 120 days worth of content and promotion and they paid up front. So they paid 45, 000 upfront and it was a 5, 000 painful discount, which is why it came to 45, 000.
[00:08:18] Chris: So I'd say that would be like the biggest win in terms of a monetary. And then other wins would just be like, at the moment we spend around 10, 000 a week on the ads at break even, and we have two funnels. So one's a 5 [00:08:30] book funnel and one's a 47 video funnel. And the book funnel is a 33 and 10 cents CPA and a 35 and 39 cent AOV.
[00:08:41] Chris: And then the video funnel is at 101. 88 CPA, and the AOV is 117. 23. But I would just say that that's like an example over a particular week, those numbers, it can fluctuate, like it's not always that consistent all the time, so I just want to like, give that [00:09:00] sort of caveat, but yeah, we have been able to get to that sort of level so far, yeah.
[00:09:04] Chanelle: That's awesome. And I'm sure that big payday of paying full. That's really exciting. I'm sure other people just like me, when they heard that we're like, wait, what people are making this much money from a blog and see that much potential that they're going to pay for that much help. So talk to me when you help people scale blogs.
[00:09:22] Chanelle: You can help them grow these really big to where it's worth it for them to invest this kind of money. Yeah. It's [00:09:30] really comes back to those when I was talking before about those bottom of funnel topics. So Tom, sometimes, yeah, we can say there's one particular post that we published on it's just like more like a content site.
[00:09:39] Chris: So like an affiliate site. And so there was just like, it was like a single blog post. And then it was just like, it was like a list post. I want to like with those best sort of list posts. And this particular post, like just from the one affiliate link from the one in the number one spot has been making like around 20, 000 a month, like revenue from like affiliate sales.
[00:09:57] Chris: So you can't fight these with these [00:10:00] bottom of funnel topics. They are like very lucrative. It's not always a case that you can always like, it really depends on your industry. So and how competitive it is. So you can be like in a very competitive market, say for example, like you sell CRM software.
[00:10:12] Chris: That's like a very competitive Sort of market and like ranking for something like these bottom of funnel sort of topics can be quite difficult But in other industries like it can be a lot easier like that tea example I said before that's quite an industry that's quite [00:10:30] easy to rank these sort of bottom of funnel content topics for.
[00:10:32] Chris: Sometimes you can just publish them and they may start ranking in say like a 30 to 120 day sort of period. It does really depend. There's so many different factors and nuances to it. And depending on like the competition of what other people rank on the first page and things like that. But yeah, it can be really profitable, especially these bottom of funnel sort of searches.
[00:10:49] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. That's so cool to hear. So I loved hearing your, I love hearing that your clients are having so much success first of all, and then [00:11:00] also about your success, just this really big client that paid up front and then you broke it down for us on, 10 K a week on ads across two funnels that you're breaking even, and then you've got your book funnel and your video funnel.
[00:11:13] Chanelle: so much. All of these recent wins, I'm really curious how they impact you personally. Like what does that change for you and what does it change for your business?
[00:11:25] Chris: Yeah. So I guess like the biggest impact for me, just like at the moment, my wife's gone [00:11:30] over to China for six weeks and I have a one year old daughter.
[00:11:33] Chris: And so at the moment she goes into daycare, like two days a week. And so I usually I'll work on those days and then I can just hang out with her the rest of the day. So I guess that's the, I guess the biggest. thing for me. Just because yeah, like she'll only be like a kid once.
[00:11:47] Chris: And so it's just like always growing up so fast. So it's just good to have that time and be able to spend it with her. And I guess it's, it did take a, like a quite a long time to get to this point though. If I go back, my daughter was born in like [00:12:00] September, 2021. That's when I actually started writing the book for the book funnel.
[00:12:04] Chris: What happened was my my wife would she'd sleep during the night and I'd stay up and I'd work during the night and I was like working on the book. So I was like, cause I knew like the baby would wake up like every one and a half hours to two hours. It was like when she was really little and she always had to have a nappy changes.
[00:12:19] Chris: I'd like work on the book and then she's start crying. I'd go and change a nappy, put it back in the bed. And then I keep working on the book again. Then I go and change a nappy again and keep working out. So it was like a very slow process. And I'd say like [00:12:30] over three months, it actually took quite a while to write it.
[00:12:32] Chris: I actually took one of our blog posts on our site and converted it into the book, but I extended on it by a lot. And so it did take quite a while to do that, but I was chipping away at it each day. Like at nighttime and then, yeah, that's how I got to like that stage of then putting it into the funnel.
[00:12:49] Chris: And like all the like the templates and if you look at like our sales page, upsell page and things like that, a lot of that stuff is all from like Peaceful Profits, like all the training and Peaceful Profits and things like that. [00:13:00] So if people are just like. Follow the process exactly in the templates and things like that.
[00:13:04] Chris: Like it works really well.
[00:13:06] Chanelle: Oh, I love hearing that little glimpse into your family life and both, what it was like in the early days to be up at night and just writing at night and breaking for diaper changes and a baby crying. And then to now, when you get to really focus on Your daughter and to be with her.
[00:13:27] Chanelle: And that [00:13:30] is really precious time. Like you said, they're only little ones and to have that business that allows you that lifestyle is amazing. So that's a really cool thing. And then how about, so business wise, obviously it's less time that you're spending in your business.
[00:13:45] Chanelle: Anything else that changes with the way that you run your business?
[00:13:50] Chris: Yeah, less time. And then also, I guess it's just like the peace of mind, like one of the biggest things is just like constantly building like a list of buyers, which is like [00:14:00] such a powerful business asset to have.
[00:14:02] Chris: So we could just knowing anytime we could just send out an email, we could take on a client if we wanted to, like not even taking into account like the funnel and networking and things like that we could turn everything off. And we could just rely on say, like the biases that we've built up over time.
[00:14:17] Chris: I'm just like, I guess having that like sustainability and having that sort of peace of mind, that's a really good thing to have, I think in a business. And that's a really powerful thing about having a funnel like this, any sort of low ticket funnel or book funnel is yeah, just like [00:14:30] building up that bias over time.
[00:14:31] Chris: And you're just like, yeah, it's such a powerful business asset to have.
[00:14:35] Chanelle: Oh, definitely. And like you said, it definitely increases that peace of mind to know you have this asset. You have these people at the ready that you can, turn and send an email to and see a very quick return. So I love that.
[00:14:49] Chanelle: So I'm sure a lot of people listening are feeling like, okay, yeah. I would like to be there. That would be really great. I would love to, see all of the things that you've talked about, but specifically, [00:15:00] I'm curious what you would recommend for other business owners who are trying to increase their return on ad spend, because that's something that, that you've done really well with.
[00:15:10] Chanelle: So I'm curious also what you've learned in that process.
[00:15:13] Chris: Yeah, I have a few specific things to mention this was really related to return on ad spend. It has being like over the time it has been a challenge for us. I don't want to feel like it's just it's all been really easy.
[00:15:23] Chris: I think we have gone through three different media buys throughout that time as well. That just didn't work out and we ended up finding one that was worked [00:15:30] really well. But in the process we have learned a lot of different things when it came to the return on ads ad spend.
[00:15:34] Chris: And the first one is just like sending. The customer data and also the customer order value. So just like the order value of your front end offer, plus your order bumps, plus your upsell. So if the full value, say 300, sending that back to Facebook from your shopping cart. So then the algorithm can find you more high value customers.
[00:15:53] Chris: I think that's been one really powerful thing is getting that customer data back into Facebook. And the other thing has [00:16:00] just been like, I know not everyone has like the resources to do this, but if you can is like growing organic and paid together. So what we've just found is that when it gets to periods like Q4, when like ad click prices tend to get a lot higher in a lot of markets, you can rely on your organic traffic and retarget organic traffic when click prices are quite high in Q4 to offset that, that higher cost.
[00:16:23] Chris: And then what you can also do is you can show your front end offer. To your organic or your organic visitors on [00:16:30] exit intent. So that's what I mean by that is just like when someone's on a blog post or something like that and they're reading it and then they go to leave the post, like an exit intent might may come up and that this shows like your front end offer.
[00:16:41] Chris: So that can just be like a good way to diversify from having, getting sales through like organic and paid together. And then the last thing is just like being creative with the ads. So like people, like it's called like ad creative. So I guess it's it's creative for a reason. I think just a lot of people don't really spend a lot of time thinking about [00:17:00] how they can make their ads really creative.
[00:17:02] Chris: Like one of our best ads is like this rap video that I made. And so it's just like a short video. It's one minute video. And it's just we're talking about how you don't need to have a lot of content or a lot of blog posts to like have a really profitable sort of blog and business.
[00:17:17] Chris: And it's a disrupt on Gary V because it's like, he's like a very well known person in the space about talking about creating more. And so that's something we were able to do, early on, and then target that against Gary V fans and things like that. And just other [00:17:30] people in Interest like inbound marketing and things like that.
[00:17:33] Chris: That's been like like a really good ad for us and just like thinking about how you can just be creative. Like people do take notice of that when they look at the ads. So that's just like my, final tip there on getting like a good return on ad spend.
[00:17:45] Chanelle: Yeah, those are all really good tips.
[00:17:47] Chanelle: Thank you for getting so specific on there because those are really actionable, right? People can hear that and be like, okay, yes, I can go and try, I can try each of those things. So those were really good. So [00:18:00] I'm curious about, you have taken the time to really figure out your front end funnel. So figuring that out, what has that changed for you with your backend offer?
[00:18:10] Chanelle: How is that part of your business impacted by getting the front end funnel, right?
[00:18:15] Chris: Yeah. So I just say like first, when we first launched the funnel for me, it was like a bit more of a learning, learning experience. When I first started, I didn't actually have a high ticket backend offer. I just had a we had a 1, 000 course.
[00:18:27] Chris: But then over time I knew like people were asking [00:18:30] us like for done for you help with what was taught in the course and things like that. And so we did launch like the done for you offer, like at the high ticket offer. Eventually, and then yeah, when we did launch it, so we had buys that we had from like the funnels and then also from some past list building efforts.
[00:18:45] Chris: And when we did, we, when we launched it, we enrolled 18, done a few clients, and that was like in the range, people would pay anywhere from like 3000 to 15, 000 a month in terms of like the fees that we're paying. And it was like, the way we'd structure it was just like, like 120 [00:19:00] day sprints.
[00:19:01] Chris: So we're doing like, we figure out what their content schedule will be for the next 120 days. And then depending on how aggressive, like we're scaling, like their content that's like the reason for the range, like the three to 15, 000 a month. So in terms of figuring out the front end funnel and then how that translates to backend clients.
[00:19:18] Chris: We saw we saw that result with those 18 done for you clients. And then I guess now I guess about every second day we see calls come in. But the major benefit for me is being like growing that bias is like I said before, so that anything we launch [00:19:30] in the future, we have an audience for.
[00:19:32] Chris: I just noticed that when I launched like the done for you service I made a mistake with the offer. When I did it, so I like, we did like custom packages for everyone. And it was a lot of work for our team to do that. So we really scaled it back to a handful of clients and then we created product ties, service offerings to make the service more accessible and easier to fulfill for the team.
[00:19:53] Chris: It was just a moment for me where I realized. It's not really something I want to do with scaling like the service based business. Like [00:20:00] I have a lot of respect for people who are able to do that and scale like a service based business. To me, it wasn't really something, the path, like I wanted to go down and really scale in that way.
[00:20:09] Chris: So I just decided, yeah, scale it back and then create more product ties, sort of service offerings. So people still have that option there to get like the more done for you help. And then just focus on like other areas of the business. And we're still like, obviously like running the funnels and spending that amount on the funnels because I just think like building that buys is such like a powerful business.
[00:20:25] Chris: I said to have, so we're always doing it. Yeah.
[00:20:28] Chanelle: Yeah, totally. Which makes [00:20:30] sense. And thank you for sharing some of your, like that misstep a little bit of you didn't do it exactly right the first time with your done for you offer. And I think that. That's just part of the journey, this whole entrepreneurship journey and figuring out, okay, what is a peaceful business for me?
[00:20:48] Chanelle: What's going to actually make this peaceful. And in this case, it was not, doing a custom offer every time. And I think that's cool that you figured out the way that allows you to deliver in a way [00:21:00] that gets them results and lets you have the business and lifestyle that you want to have. So now we're at my favorite part of the client spotlight episodes.
[00:21:09] Chanelle: We'd love for you to tell our audience, what is the number one piece of advice that you would share with others who are working through this process of creating their front end funnel of putting their book out there, of spending money on ads, all the things that we've talked about today.
[00:21:24] Chris: Yeah, I'd say have one piece of advice for the different parts of the process.
[00:21:27] Chris: And so I'd say this is I break it down to the book, [00:21:30] the funnel, then the ads, and with the depending on what stage people are at right now. So if it's if you're just working on the book right now, where you don't even, haven't even started it just try and ship it away, ship away at it slowly.
[00:21:39] Chris: Just try and work at it two hours a day. Like I mentioned, I did it over three months. Like when the baby was sleeping. So if you're just at that stage, just try and do that. Take that first step and just slowly just work towards just finishing the book. If you're like, have the book done and you're up to the final step, I think it's really important to get that live as soon as you can, like getting that funnel up.
[00:21:58] Chris: It can like be deceiving, [00:22:00] take a quite a bit of time to get up, but try and get that up as fast as possible and then tweak it as you like. Buy data like you're buying ads and you're like getting data in because otherwise you can sometimes get into this, a place where like you have the book and now you don't launch the funnel for six months or something.
[00:22:15] Chris: So yeah, just trying to get it live as fast as possible. And then if you're at the stage where you've made the book and you've like you have the funnel and you're like ready to start running ads sometimes it can be quite expensive to hire like really good media buyers. So if you're like not ready to like pay for [00:22:30] someone to do the media buying for you.
[00:22:31] Chris: I just recommend people start at say like around a hundred dollars a day and managing those ads by yourself and just following like the Peaceful Profits training. And then when you do have like the resources to hire someone, as soon as you can, I just recommend you to hire someone to run your ads for you just because it is like its own skillset in itself.
[00:22:47] Chris: So I think you really should have someone doing that for you when you have the ability to pay someone to do it. Yeah,
[00:22:53] Chanelle: that makes sense. The common thread that I heard through all of that advice is just take action. It's even if [00:23:00] you can't sit down over a weekend or a week long and write your book, just take a little bit of action.
[00:23:05] Chanelle: Even if your funnel is not totally perfect right away, just put it out there and keep making progress and start your ads, even if you're not ready to hire. Yeah, like I love that common thread of just taking maybe imperfect action, but just taking action and getting it out there. And it's been really great to hear how well it has worked out for you following this process, just [00:23:30] doing the thing, getting it out there, continuing to learn, continuing to evolve.
[00:23:34] Chanelle: So congratulations on all your progress. And we would love to wrap up this episode by hearing how our listeners can find out more about you and how to work with you and all of the places to find you.
[00:23:46] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. If anyone wants to find out more, they can just go to content mavericks. com. That's the name of the business content mavericks.
[00:23:52] Chris: And the links to both our book funnel and the video funnel. So the two funnels that we have are both on the homepage. So you can check out either of those [00:24:00] and and like I mentioned, if you're looking like to Diversify organic and paid traffic, like doing both together. I think it is really powerful.
[00:24:06] Chris: You can check out the book, which talks specifically about the organic and combining that with like the Peaceful Profits method of the One Book Millions Method funnel. I think both those together is like really powerful when combined together. Yeah, that's the best place to go.
[00:24:18] Chanelle: Perfect.
[00:24:18] Chanelle: Okay. We will definitely link to those contentmavericks.com. And thank you so much for being here, Chris. It's been great talking to you and thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye. [00:24:30] Thanks. Bye.