Are you currently trying to sell stuff online?
I’m sure you will agree that converting your visitors into revenue is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even harder.
There is a simple secret to increasing the value of every customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Create Affiliate Program
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, it is possible to dramatically increase your earnings and provide more value for your clients.
In this post, I’m going to present you to ClickFunnels, the software I am using to create sales funnels for my business.
You do not need any technical know-how to use this, and it is going to truly change how you operate your business.
Plus:
If you’re prepared to throw yourself into the ClickFunnels world, it’s one of the best affiliate programs out there. I’ll be talking about that too later on.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was created back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his team. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels to a $100 million per year company and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
In its core, ClickFunnels is a software for building sales funnels. With a bunch of added bells and whistles.
You can use it to build:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership sites
– Every kind of sales funnel you can think of, complete with order bumps, upsells and downsells
Plus, with the highest end Etison Suite package you’ll even be able to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and replace your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Essentially, you’re getting everything you need to market and sell your products online, without needing to hire expensive programmers.
And people are using ClickFunnels with great success.
If you check out their 2 Comma Club site, you can see that nearly 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels utilizing ClickFunnels.
That’s amazing.Clickfunnels Create Affiliate Program
What are the best parts of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
In case you’ve never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 distinct types of funnels that he has used successfully in his own business.
The funnel types fall into 3 main categories: Lead Capture Funnels, Sales Page Funnels, and Event Funnels. But there are a few additional special funnels like Membership funnels you can make as well.
They include simple funnels like the Squeeze Page Funnel which gathers a visitor’s email address and then sends them into a Thank you page when registering.
Or to more sophisticated sales funnels such as the 2-Step TripWire Funnel which sells a low ticket front-end product (your tripwire) and then upsells them to a more expensive products using Order Form bumps, and One Click upsells or Downsells.
Moreover, each funnel type has its own group of free templates and paid templates. So even if you don’t have any design skills, your funnel pages will have a consistent, professional design.
Here’s a high-level overview of how to create your first sales funnel:
- Choose a funnel type.
- Select a template.
- Customize each page to fit your business.
- Add your products and ensure all your email and payment integrations are set up.
- Set a domain name for your new funnel.
- Save your funnel.
Your sales funnel is now live and you can start sending traffic to it. Clickfunnels Create Affiliate Program
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels gives you a great starting point with its funnel and webpage templates, the ClickFunnels editor is where you can truly make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out using sections that can have any number of columns and rows. After that you can use your mouse to drag elements around and place them where you need them.
While not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still quite good and it can be used to achieve just about any design you desire.
What I like is that the editor is quite intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and transferring them where you want is quite seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and changing any element’s properties could be done through the fly-out sidebar.
And contrary to other editors on the market, everything is organized in a logical manner. You’re not spending a great deal of time searching for what you would like to do.
The important thing is that no programming is required. So you do not have to spend time learning HTML or CSS or some other technical things like that.
Best Feature #3: Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are all essential for providing you the flexibility to design the specific pages you want and ClickFunnels provides you a wide array of them to use.
Basic elements include Headline, Image, Text, Button, Input forms and Video widgets. These are the fundamental building blocks for any landing page that you construct in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes several advanced elements such as:
– SMS Signup
– Surveys
– Pricing Tables
– Progress Bars
– Facebook Comments
– FAQ Blocks
– Countdown Timers
– Custom HTML
Plus, there are specialized elements like Membership elements for your own membership pages and order and shipping form elements for your order pages.
Each element can be easily customized in the editor sidebar. With most elements, you can alter common properties like background colors, margins, fonts, and orientation.
Then there are element specific attributes like the image URL for the Image element or the Button text of your button.
Best Feature #4: The ClickFunnels Affiliate program is awesome
There is no doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the best, legitimate affiliate marketing program which you can be a part of.
The Fundamentals:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays 40% recurring commissions for every referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your own dream car once you reach 100 active referrals.
On top of that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program itself.
You also get 40% commissions by promoting any product in the ClickFunnel’s ecosystem including DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets or even the Software Secrets books.
And thanks to the ClickFunnel’s sticky cookie, you will also earn commissions on any upsells your referrals purchase as they go through their specific funnels as well.
But that’s not all:
ClickFunnels also has another excellent feature for affiliates called share funnels.
Within the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your Share Funnel URL.
When someone visits this URL, they’ll be able to add this funnel directly into their account if they’re an existing ClickFunnels member. If they are not a member yet, they can register for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial then get your funnel added to their accounts.
What’s really awesome is that this share URL also functions as your affiliate link, and you will get a recurring commission when this new user ends up staying on.
What I do not like about ClickFunnels?
Bad Part #1: Why is adding a funnel so slow?
After picking your funnel type and template, it needs to get added to your account.
For some reason, this procedure appears to take around 8-10 seconds every time.
While I don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me why this could take so long. It is a bit annoying, although just a minor annoyance.
Bad Part #2: Limits on funnels you can create and visitors
ClickFunnels limits you to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors on their cheapest plan. I am really not a fan of software products that limit you in this manner.
If you’re just building sales funnels for yourself, these limits are probably okay.
However you can get more annoyed at these limitations if you are doing client work, creating funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate with share funnels.
You will need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to develop unlimited funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The range of what ClickFunnels can do is pretty huge, and it can definitely be intimidating to some.
That’s why ClickFunnels put so much work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the software. The ClickFunnels interface is pretty well designed for the most part and when you’ve assembled a couple funnels yourself, the whole process does get easier over time.
ClickFunnels Pricing
Over time, ClickFunnels has evolved their pricing plans. In the beginning, they had 3 different pricing tiers, however they’ve now been merged into 2 separate plans.
So how much is ClickFunnels now?
At the moment, the cheapest ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all of the funnel production tools, but you are limited to creating 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors. You also don’t get access to Actionetics, their built-in email service provider and Backpack, which allows you to create your own affiliate program.
To gain access to that, you’ll need to go for the Etison Suite plan. It features everything, and you get unlimited funnels, pages, and visitors. However, this will run you $297 a month.
As far as I can tell, there aren’t any ClickFunnels coupon codes available. However, you can buy Funnel Hacks for $997 which gives you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some additional bonuses. This brings down the cost to $166.16 a month.
ClickFunnels does make it easy for you to demo their service with their free, 14-day free trial. It’s not constrained in any way which lets you give the software a full evaluation before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month seems like too large a commitment for your current budget, there’s also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan that you can also have access to for just $19 a month. You can only create 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it is a great way to test out ClickFunnels on a budget.
Everything else you should know about ClickFunnels
How is their support?
ClickFunnels support is quite good in my experience, although they can be somewhat slow in responding. They use Intercom, so you can immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered within a couple of hours and I found the staff to pretty helpful to all my questions.
Do I need my own domain? Clickfunnels Create Affiliate Program
You do not necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, although I would recommend it. If you do not have one then your funnel URL will look something similar to http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus I did not know about is that ClickFunnels will get you your first domain name for free and even set up SSL on it for you. You can learn how to do this from the first game in the onboarding training.
Do they have an active community?
ClickFunnels has an enormous community. There’s the official group on FB with over 100k members as well as the ClickFunnels Avengers FB group (for affiliates) that has over 30k members.
Both groups are very active and it’s a great place to get opinions on your own sales funnels and answer any questions that you might have.
Additionally, there are several other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates which are also very active. The main one I recommend joining is Automation Nation. It is run by Spencer Mecham who is ClickFunnel’s top affiliate.
What integrations do they offer?
Even though ClickFunnels has its own email service provider via Actionetics, it also integrates directly with all the best email marketing software out there.
For payment gateways, ClickFunnels integrates with Stripe, Paypal, Clickbank, Infusionsoft, Authorize.net, and a few others. The one constraint with using Paypal though is that it does not support One Click Upsells or One Time Offers. That is the reason why I would highly suggest going with Stripe if you’re able to.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you are looking to get the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it’s definitely well worth it to join with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you are going to receive six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You will also get a lot of additional bonuses and training that include:
– 6 Week Funnel Hacks Master Class ($2,997 value)
– Instant Traffic Hacks ($1,997 value)
– Inception Secrets ($1,997 value)
– SOAP & Seinfeld Email Sequences ($997 value)
Is ClickFunnels a scam?
I think ClickFunnels has some negative buzz around it because of all of the affiliates who are trying to market it.
But no, ClickFunnels isn’t a scam. It’s definitely the real deal.
It’s a great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to build 6 and 7 figure businesses.
It’s a software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure companies.
When people ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 response hands down. There is no other software that can do every thing that ClickFunnels does at the moment.
What else is ClickFunnels used for?
Besides building standard sales funnels, there are plenty of ways marketers are using ClickFunnels at the moment in their business.
It’s terrific for creating opt-in funnels that will help you generate more leads and build your email list.
You can create webinar funnels to help you grow your brand and sell your services and products.
And you can use it to create membership sites where you can gate your premium content so that it’s accessible only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Create Affiliate Program
To start with, you need to have a product or service to sell. If you don’t have something to market, then do not even bother looking into ClickFunnels before you do. Unless you only want to promote it as an affiliate.
Next, you need to be ready to commit time and money into creating your value ladder and building out your entire sales funnel.
That means creating a lead magnet or low-cost tripwire product to get clients or customers into your funnel. And then coming up with proper upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that complement or enhance your principal product offering.
If you’re unclear how to start, I would have a look at Russell’s own multi-million dollar sales funnels to provide you with inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he explains exactly the why and how of building sales funnels and how to tell stories to marketing your services and products.
And as you go through his own sales funnels yourself you can see how he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By building his own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various other products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and more.
Once you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the parts that are applicable to your own business and create a plan for your sales funnel. Once you have that in place, you’ll be ready to begin making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a few ClickFunnels alternatives out there that share a number of the same capabilities as ClickFunnels. Two that I use myself are LeadPages and SamCart.
ClickFunnels vs LeadPages
Today, LeadPages is among the market leaders in the landing page builder space and it is a very popular tool in its own right.
It also recently introduced the ability to sell products directly on their pages using its new Checkout widget
Each product features a huge selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors that make it effortless for you to build the designs you want. And both integrate with all the popular email service providers.
But, Leadpages is significantly more limited in scope compared to ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will help you collect prospects. This isn’t a terrible thing because LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages quickly.
Right now, among the most effective strategies for growing your email list is by using content upgrades. By producing targeted lead magnets into your most well-known posts you can get opt-in conversion rates that far exceed your standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the very best service for implementing this approach with its LeadBoxes, 2 step opt-ins, and automated lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you will see now.
So if you are primarily focused on lead generation, I’d definitely recommend trying out LeadPages.
However, if you are selling a product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better choice. While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the tool, you can really explode your sales once you start creating sales funnels for each of your products.
But, if you are selling a service or product, then ClickFunnels is the better alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, as soon as you master the instrument, it’s possible to definitely explode your earnings as soon as you begin creating sales funnels for each of your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that lets users create beautiful, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is geared towards getting setup and selling quickly. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it includes 17 distinct checkout page templates which you may customize.
In terms of flexibility, there’s absolutely no comparison between ClickFunnel’s drag and drop editor and SamCart’s.
ClickFunnels is infinitely more powerful in that you can design any checkout page you can dream of. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its pre-made templates.
SamCart does allow you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells like ClickFunnels does. You can also quickly create coupons for your products which is another great way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is lacking, is the capability to capture leads and build complete sales funnels. Both products come in at the exact same $97 per month price point, and I find ClickFunnels to be quite a bit more flexible and more powerful compared to Samcart.
ClickFunnels Pros
– Best software for creating marketing and sales funnels
– Editor balances ease of use with flexibility
– Integrates with all major email and payment providers
– Beautiful looking templates for every type of funnel
– Great on-boarding procedure for learning the program
– Software continues to get better after each update
– Readily share any funnels you build and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL set up
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limitations on the amount of funnels, pages, and visitors with the standard plan
– Plently of things to learn, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels Create Affiliate Program
Which software you go with depends on your needs and the amount of work you’re willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although a lot of you are selling standalone products, are you ready to put in the effort necessary to make a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels might be overkill for you. You can collect leads or market your front end product more cheaply with alternative services.
But if increasing the average lifetime value of your customers is important to you, then I truly suggest giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not only to get access to the software but also because the training you get will be both inspiring and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see whether you can use it to increase your business today.
