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Value ladder

Russell Brunson's model from DotCom Secrets for laying out a business's offers as rungs, from a free or low-cost first step up to its most expensive, most valuable one.

What It Means

A value ladder is Russell Brunson's way, in DotCom Secrets, of arranging everything a business sells in order of price and value. The first rung is a free or low-cost offer that lets someone show interestInterest rateThe yearly percentage a lender charges for borrowing money, not counting fees; the APR adds certain fees to show a fuller cost. See more, and each rung above gives more value at a higher price. Every rung serves the same customer toward the same result, at a different level of service.

Try It: Climb a Value Ladder One Rung at a Time

A made-up bookkeeping business. Slide up the ladder to see each rung.

Rung1 of 4

Bait

Example: a free month-end checklist for freelancers.

Prices are made up. In Brunson's model, each rung up gives more value at a higher price.

How People Say It at Work

  • "What's the next rung on our value ladder after the course?"
  • "We've got a backend offer and nothing at the bottom of the ladder."
  • "The free checklist is the bait. The real business is the monthly plan."

The Breakdown

Formula

There's no number to calculate. The ladder is a layout, and ClickFunnels' guides give its four stages:

RungWhat it isPrice and value
BaitSomething that gets a person to say "yes, I'm interested"Free or low cost
FrontendThe first thing they buyLeast expensive, least valuable
MiddleA bigger offerMore expensive, more valuable
BackendThe top offerMost expensive, most valuable

Worked example. A bookkeeper (made up) offers a free month-end checklist, a $49 setup course, monthly bookkeeping at $300 and a full-service plan at $1,500 a month. All four serve freelancersFreelancingWorking for yourself, selling your skills to different clients by the project or the hour instead of holding a long-term job with one employer. See more who want clean books, each with more done for them.

Benchmark. None. A value ladder is a planning model, and no published rate says how many people should climb each rung. ClickFunnels presents it as a way to raise customer lifetime valueCustomer lifetime value (LTV)The total revenue a business expects to earn from one customer over the whole time that customer keeps buying. See more, so the numbers to watch are the ones on the LTV and LTV to CACLTV to CAC ratioCustomer lifetime value divided by customer acquisition cost, showing how many dollars a customer brings in for each dollar spent winning them. See more pages, where Harvard Business School Online gives at least 3 to 1 as the benchmark in most industries.

Where It Comes From

Russell Brunson laid out the value ladder in DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels, first published in 2015, with an updated Hay House edition on August 9, 2022. ClickFunnels, the software company he co-founded, explains it in its own guides.

Good to Know

A ladder only helps if each rung is worth its price by itself. Someone who buys the frontend offer and stops there should still get what was promised, and price every rung so it covers its own cost to deliver. This is Brunson's model, so treat the four stages as a way to sort your offers, and watch what real customers buy before adding rungs.

FAQ

What are the four steps of a value ladder?

Bait, frontend, middle and backend. ClickFunnels' guides describe the bait as free or low cost, the frontend as the least expensive and least valuable offer, and the backend as the most expensive and most valuable.

Who came up with the value ladder?

Russell Brunson describes it in his book DotCom Secrets, and ClickFunnels, the company he co-founded, teaches it under that name.

Does a business need all four rungs to start?

ClickFunnels' guides describe four stages, and a business can start with fewer. Buhata's suggestion: build the rung you can deliver well today, then add the next one when customers start asking for more.

Do It in Buhata

Team Space

Write each rung of your value ladder as a task in your Team Space in Buhata, with its price and what the customer gets, so the team can see which rung is missing.

Open Buhata

Related Terms and Categories

  • Customer lifetime value (LTV)

    The total revenue a business expects to earn from one customer over the whole time that customer keeps buying.

  • Money model

    Alex Hormozi's term in $100M Money Models (2025) for a planned sequence of offers, what to offer, when and how, that a business makes to each customer.

  • Hook, story, offer

    Russell Brunson's three-part formula from DotCom Secrets for any sales message: a hook to get attention, a story to build trust, then the offer.

Business and entrepreneur terms

Sources

Russell Brunson, DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels (Hay House, updated edition 2022; first published 2015); Google Books, "Dotcom Secrets"; ClickFunnels, "The Value Ladder Explained: How to Maximize Customer LTV"; ClickFunnels, "What Is a Value Ladder? Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide"

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