One-to-many sounds like the dream to so many founders. You create something once, share it and collect payments while you sit on the beach.

And it makes sense — founders are 30 percentage points more likely to have volatile income in their business than non-business owners, so it is only logical that the promise of a passive income stream steadily supporting your business sounds alluring.

In reality, most founders burn a ton of cash pursuing this because they get swept up in the optimism and aren’t prepared for the reality that one-to-many still takes hard work to get going.

All too often, you see an entrepreneur launch a course no one asked for and run ads for content that doesn’t convert. The problem isn’t one-to-many itself, but instead it’s doing it backwards.

Done right, one-to-many is one of the highest-ROI ways to grow a business. Done wrong, it’s a very expensive hobby.

Here’s how to approach it like an operator, not a content creator, so you get ROI from your pursuit of one-to-many.

Start with understanding your market

The fastest way to waste money is to build a one-to-many offer based on what you think people want, or worse, just building what you want to offer.

The fastest way to make money is to build it based on what they’re already looking for.

Before you create anything, think through your interaction with your market so far. What are people asking you for repeatedly? Think through past clients and what they could have used before they hired you, or to support them after they hire you.

Consider explanations on topics that you continue to give over and over again. Perhaps there is a way to provide an easy-to-digest format to enhance your existing offerings or offer a lower-cost entry point for newer clients.

Protect your ROI by keeping your production lean

High production value often does not beget the best results. In fact, overproducing too early is an extremely common money drain when launching a one-to-many approach.

Focus on keeping your first version of your offer simple and scrappy. Don’t wait on perfection to launch — it won’t sell by sitting in your drafts. Then, regularly update it based on ideas you have and the feedback your clients provide.

Truly — keep it simple. Record yourself on screenshare or with a simple iPhone tripod with some slides, rather than spending a ton on a studio to film in. Keep your emails simply branded instead of overly designed.

Think about it like in this early phase: You’re testing demand. You don’t need to get it perfect because you really don’t know what will work anyway. It’s cheaper and easier to launch and iterate than trying to get it perfect off the bat. Then, you can spend more money once you have the data that proves it’s worth scaling.

Sell it live first

This is non-negotiable if you want to avoid wasting money. Before you record a course and build a fancy funnel for it, you should sell the offer live at least a few times first.

Selling live plays a few critical parts. It validates your pricing early and proves there is true demand. It can also surface objections or awkward parts in delivery that you can smooth over way easier when it’s live versus in a prepackaged version. Selling live also generates some starting cash for the offer, which can help to fund your ongoing build and automation of a lighter-lift version.

Think of it like this: If people won’t buy it when you’re personally explaining it, automation will not magically fix that.

Build one funnel — yes, just one

Another common mistake is trying to do too much at once. One-to-many works best when it’s focused.

Pick one primary funnel with one main lead source, one core asset and one nurturing flow, all wrapped with one single, clear CTA. Get that up and running before you start on anything else.

For example, you could run a newsletter and push readers to a consult call. You could run a webinar and push them to a group program. Whatever it is, focus on getting it up and running and converting before sinking time and money into an additional funnel.

Tracking the right metrics

The metrics that matter in one-to-many are conversion metrics. Things to look at right away are cost per lead and the conversion rate of those leads from each step in the funnel to the next.

Other helpful metrics are the sales cycle length and the total spend per subscriber or customer, so you can get a sense of how long people are deciding for and how much they spend once they do.

One final metric to look for is some measure of retention or repeat purchase. Way too often, customers are unhappy with their one-to-many purchases and don’t stick around — and definitely don’t repurchase. Focus on how many people are getting value from your offer, and therefore are actually sticking around.

Don’t worry about getting the KPIs exactly right either. What’s most important to start is having a directional pulse on how things are going; there’s no need for the perfectly packaged KPI dashboard.

Scale once you have proof

The final place people waste money is scaling too early. Ads, affiliates, partnerships and aggressive growth strategies only work when the core system is already converting, so before you go all-in, here are some things to consider.

Before you invest in scale, you should already be seeing predictable engagement and sales from your offer. You should have a strong, data-driven pulse on client behavior and the metrics that describe that behavior. You should feel confident, based on your proof so far, that this is a repeatable process.

If you are still putting in more to marketing than you’re selling each month, or you don’t have a good grasp on overall total ROI right now, pause and focus on that first.

Once you have it humming, then it makes sense to spend money to invest since that just amplifies what’s already working.

Ultimately, one-to-many is simply a way to get you leverage as a founder. The hit successes you see online around one-to-many are people who have spent months and years testing their offer to get to this point, so don’t be disappointed if it takes some time.

Just like the winners you see online, focus on being data-driven and willing to experiment and iterate. Treating this strategy like a full system is the best chance you have to have the same result.

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