Quick Overview

Book: DotCom Secrets
Author: Russell Brunson
Pricing: $7.95 or $14.95 (depends on where you are having the book shipped to)

Summary: DotCom Secrets is a book providing actionable tips/advice for those looking to start their business or take their company to the next level
Rating: 90/100
Recommendation: The book is definitely a solid read for any entrepreneur/business owner. The only reason I haven’t given it a perfect score is because I haven’t had the chance to action a lot of the things mentioned in the book yet. Once I do and can see the results myself, would be happy to bump it up to a 100 🙂

Table Of Contents:

  • What is DotCom Secrets?
  • Who is Russell Bruson?
  • How much is the book?
  • Where To Get It?
  • DotCom Secrets Chapters Overview
    • Chapter 1: Ladders and Funnels
    • Chapter 2: Your Communication / Follow-up Funnel
    • Chapter 3: Funnelology Leading Your Customers To The Sale
    • Chapter 4: Funnels and Scripts
    • Chapter 5: Clickfunnels
  • Compiled Reviews

About DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson

DotCom Secrets is a playbook for entrepreneurs and businesses to help them drive more traffic, improve conversions, and more. The playbook is based on many successes and failures that Russell himself has gone through. 

The book itself is written in a way that explains potentially complex concepts in an easy-to-read-and-understand manner. Also, the book is only 255 pages, so you could get through it in a week or two if you wanted to.

On Amazon, as of the date of this post, the book has 594 reviews and is rated 4.7/5. On Goodreads, it is 4.4/5. So, not bad at all!

Who is Russell Brunson? 

russell brunson dotcom secrets

Russell Brunson is the co-founder of Clickfunnels, the software for creating landing pages and the fastest-growing non-venture backed company in the world. According to Forbes in 2017, they were valued at $360 million after just 3 years.

Before Clickfunnels, Russell himself was an entrepreneur and was deeply immersed in the internet marketing space. In fact, his first success as a marketer was selling potato gun DVDs 😂. Eventually, he was quickly able to make his first million dollars selling his products within a year of graduating college. Pretty impressive if you ask me!

You can check out Russell Brunson’s own personal website for more on his background.

How much is DotCom Secrets?

The book is under a “Free + Shipping” offer. What that REALLY means is that you still have to pay for it… it’s not free at all haha. They make it “free” by just making shipping more expensive and profit from that. Just another classic marketing messaging tactic. If you’re in the US, then you pay $7.95 and if you’re not then it’s $14.95

dotcom secrets book

If you ignore the whole “Free + Shipping” annoyance, the price itself isn’t too bad. You’re definitely paying for what you get and books are typically in this price range anyways.

Just a heads up, as you purchase the book, you’ll be upsold on other things like the Dotcom Secrets audiobook, Xpert Secrets book, funnels, and more. You won’t be forced to purchase any of these of course – all optional.

Where to get DotCom Secrets

You could get the book on Amazon, but it’ll be a little more expensive than if you get the book on the main website for the prices I mentioned above. You can get the DotCom Secrets book here

***** BEFORE YOU CLICK THE LINK ABOVE… READ THIS!!!!! ***** 

A big part of the book talks about re-engineering other people’s funnels and using them for your own business. That means going through someone else’s website (or a competitors), buying their products, and seeing the steps they take you through, what kind of products they upsell you on, etc.  

However, that naturally means you have to spend money to go through the website/funnel. In this case, since you are getting the book anyways, it is a good idea to pay special attention to the design, upsells, and more as you go through the website. I would recommend taking screenshots of each step of the funnel and copying the URL link for future reference.

DotCom Secrets Chapters Overview

There are 5 sections in the book that I’ll give you a quick taste of. I’ll talk about some important items that were discussed in the book. Naturally, I won’t be covering everything because if I were, this post would be way too long 😄 Too many good tidbits of information! Alright let’s get started.

Chapter One: Ladders and Funnels (37 pages)

A big piece of this section is understanding the Value Ladder. This ladder is a visual representation of how you can be offering more products/services to your client. Every business has their own value ladder and the key is identifying what your value ladder is.

value-ladder-normal

As the graph above indicates, the premise behind the Value Ladder is offering something at a low price point but still useful and valuable to the customer. Then, once you’ve established a connection with the customer and proved that you can provide value, you offer even more value at a higher price point. 

Naturally, not all the customers who bought your first product/service will buy the second product/service, but you’re able to monetize the customers who would.

value-ladder-dentist

The above graph is a sample Value Ladder provided in the book for a dentist. The lowest in the ladder is a free teeth cleaning that attracts patients. Then, a certain percentage of patients would also benefit from teeth whitening, then a certain percentage would benefit from a retainer, and so on. 

It is important to identify what your Value Ladder is so that you can maximize the value each customer is worth to your business and also build the right funnel. 

Chapter Two: Your Communication / Follow-up Funnel (31 pages)

As you get more and more clients/customers, you should also be building an email list to continue building a connection and providing value. However, you need to be sure that you are communicating with your list effectively and having them actually open up your emails.

attractive character

This section discusses the importance of identifying and understanding the Attractive Character that you want to have for your business. Attractive Character is another way of saying the persona that you want to be speaking on behalf of your business. Russell talks about the 4 elements to a strong Attractive Character

  1. Backstory. Share so that people can see where you came from and, as a result, they will want to follow you to where you are now. You don’t want to seem untouchable
  2. Speak in Parables. Use stories to get across a message. People love stories and it’s a great way to communicate with your audience
  3. Share Character Flaws. By sharing flaws, you make your AC very relatable and real
  4. Harness the Power of Polarity. Many people (myself included!) try to stay neutral on a lot of subject matters to avoid offending anyone. However, neutral is boring and you end up reaching no one. Having polarizing opinions and taking a stand in things they believe in creates fans and people who will buy from you

In later parts of the chapter, Russell also talks about the Soap Opera Sequence and the Daily Seinfeld Sequence.

soap opera sequence

The Soap Opera Sequence is essentially a strategy of email marketing for your communication with your email list. Russell talks about how your emails should essentially be soap opera episodes where at the end of every email, you have some sort of open-ended hook that makes people want to open the next email.

Eventually, you develop a habit in your email list and people actually enjoy opening up your emails. Russell goes over a lot of good examples in the book that you can take and modify to your own business.

daily seinfeld sequence

The Seinfeld Sequence, another email strategy, relates to the sitcom Seinfeld show and is about how your emails should be playful. Russell mentions in the book that when he switched his emails from 100% content to 90% entertainment and 10% content, all his readership, opens, clicks, and sales skyrocketed.

 

Chapter Three: Funnelology Leading Your Customers To The Sale (56 pages)

Personally, this is where things got really interesting. I enjoyed reading about the concepts in section 1 and 2, but I found section 3 much more relatable and directly actionable. 

This section essentially talks about how to “funnel hack”. What this really means is taking an existing funnel that you KNOW works (either from a competitor or similar type of business that is already driving lots of business), going through their sales flow, and then re-engineering it for your own business. 

But first, you need to know what to look for and re-engineer. Russell says that there are 5 parts to successful funnels and ad campaigns. They are:

  1. Demographics
  2. Offer
  3. Landing Page
  4. Traffic Source
  5. Ad Copy

He goes over in the chapter what to be thinking about for each of these items and how you can be “spying” on your competitors to take their best ideas and recraft them for your own business. 

As a marketer who has worked very closely in the startup space, I LOVED this hacking 😁

Later in the chapter, Russell also talks about the 7 phases of a funnel.

lifeline-of-a-lead

This part of the chapter was also interesting because he talks about customer psychology. He talks about how to think about the experience behind acquiring customers based on where you acquired them, the type of customers they are, and more. 

Chapter Four: Funnels and Scripts (66 pages)

Section four is a great addition to the book and a logical next chapter after what you are taught in section three. He goes over all the different types of funnels and value ladders that you could be using for your business. He talks about 7 different funnels:

Funnel #1: Two-Step, Free-Plus-Shipping
Funnel #2: Self-Liquidating Offer
Funnel #3: Continuity
Funnel #4: The Perfect Webinar
Funnel #5: Invisible Funnel Webinar
Funnel #6: Product Launch
Funnel #7: High-Ticket, Three-Step Application 

free-plus-shipping-two-step

For each of these funnels, he gives a good example based on his own experience so you know that it’s not just theory. In fact, the DotCom Secrets book itself uses Funnel #1 with the Free-Plus-Shipping Offer. As mentioned above, when you purchase the DotCom Secrets book you should definitely be mindful of the funnel that he takes you through and what the experience is like.

Chapter Five: Clickfunnels (6 pages) 

This section is a few pages of Clickfunnels upsell. It is very quickly talking about what Clickfunnels is, showing how to use it at a high-level, and why it’s great. Other than that, nothing much here. These few pages aren’t meant to be a comprehensive tutorial for how to use Clickfunnels, so if you’re looking for that, you can check out this page here for answers to potential questions you might have. There are also definitely a lot of how-to YouTube videos out there on how to use Clickfunnels so you can check those out as well. 

Also, Clickfunnels has a 14-day free trial (you’ll have to enter your credit card information, but you can cancel aftwards), so you can also try it out to see if it’s for you first.

DotCom Secrets Reviews

I’ve compiled some screenshots of reviews I found on Goodreads that were inline with my take on the book. From what I’ve seen, there are definitely bad reviews as well, as with any product, but none that changed the fact that the content itself was solid. It appeared people didn’t like that Russell was upselling Clickfunnels at the end of the day (which is to be expected in my opinion). 

dotcom secrets review dotcom secrets review dotcom secrets review

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a DotCom Secrets Audiobook?

Yes, there is! However, you will only get access to the audiobook once you purchase the physical book itself. 

Is there a DotCom Secrets PDF available?

Yes, there is! Same as above. Once you’ve paid for shipping, you’ll have the option to download the PDF option

Is DotCom Secrets worth it?

If you’re an entrepreneur who has been looking to start their own business, then yes! There are so many golden nuggets and actionable tips that you can use to get started the same day you’re reading the book. However, if you’re someone who is on the bench and not sure if you even want to start your own business, then maybe you don’t need this book just yet. 

Summary

The DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson is an amazing read for any entrepreneur. The book comes to about $8 or $15 depending on where you are getting the book shipped to, so it is definitely worth the price. When you finish the book, you feel as if there’s so much you should be doing and trying – that’s a great feeling to have with any book you read. However, as with anything, it is really up to you to take what he teaches you and actually take action.

 

Stay amazing,
David

Looking for other books to read as an entrepreneur? Rich Dad Poor Dad is another of my favorite for those interested in learning more about personal finance. Check out my review of the book!

About David Lau

David Lau is a blogger and internet marketer at heart. He enjoys the excitement that comes with building an online business and helping others do the same.

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