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’s a simple secret to raising the value of each customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Drop Down Menu
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically increase your earnings and provide more value for your customers.
In this article, I’m going to introduce you to ClickFunnels, the software I’m using to create sales funnels for my business.
You do not need any technical know-how to use it, and it will really change the way 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 speaking about that too later on.
Here is what I’m going to be covering in this ClickFunnels review.
- What is ClickFunnels?
- What are the best parts of ClickFunnels?
- What I don’t like about ClickFunnels
- ClickFunnels Pricing
- Everything else you need to know about ClickFunnels
- How can you make ClickFunnels work for you?
- ClickFunnels versus the competition
- Pros and Cons of ClickFunnels
- Final Thoughts
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was created back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his team. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels into a $100 million per year company and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
At its core, ClickFunnels is a software for constructing 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
Additionally, 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).
Basically, you’re getting everything you need to advertise and promote your products online, without needing to hire expensive programmers.
And individuals are utilizing ClickFunnels with great success.
If you check out their 2 Comma Club website, you can see that nearly 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels using ClickFunnels.
That’s amazing.Clickfunnels Drop Down Menu
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 different forms of funnels that he has employed successfully in his own business.
The funnel forms fall into 3 main categories: Lead Capture Funnels, Sales Page Funnels, and Event Funnels. But there are some other special funnels like Membership funnels you can create too.
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 set of free templates and paid templates. So even if you don’t have any design skills, your funnel pages will all have a consistent, professional design.
Here’s a high-level summary 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 Drop Down Menu
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels gives you a wonderful starting point with its funnel and page 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. You can then use your mouse to drag elements around and place them where you need them.
While not as adaptable as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still very good and it can be utilized to achieve pretty much any design you want.
What I like is that the editor is very intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and transferring them where you want is quite seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and modifying any element’s properties could be accomplished through the fly-out sidebar.
And contrary to other editors out there, everything is organized in a logical way. You’re not spending a lot of time hunting for what you would like to do.
The main thing is that no coding is needed. So you do not need 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 vital for providing you the flexibility to design the specific pages you want and ClickFunnels gives you a large array of them to use.
Fundamental elements include Headline, Image, Text, Button, Input types and Video widgets. These are the fundamental building blocks for any landing page that you build in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes a number of advanced components like:
– 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 majority of elements, you can alter common properties such as background colors, margins, fonts, and alignment.
Then there are element specific properties 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 little doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the very best, legitimate affiliate marketing program that you can be a part of.
The basics:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays out 40% recurring commissions for every referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your very own dream car as soon as you hit 100 active referrals.
In addition to that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program.
You also get 40% commissions by promoting any product in the ClickFunnel’s ecosystem such as 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 too.
But that’s not all:
ClickFunnels also has another excellent feature for affiliates called share funnels.
Inside the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your Share Funnel URL.
Whenever someone visits this URL, they’ll have the ability to add this funnel directly into their accounts if they’re an existing ClickFunnels member. If they aren’t a member yet, they can register for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial and then get your funnel added to their accounts.
What’s really amazing is that this share URL also functions as your affiliate link, and you’ll get a recurring commission if this new user ends up staying.
What I don’t like about ClickFunnels?
Bad Part #1: Why is adding a funnel so slow?
After choosing 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 each time.
While I don’t understand what’s really going on behind the scenes, it does not make sense to me why this would take so long. It is a bit annoying, although only a minor inconvenience.
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 lowest plan. I’m not a fan of software products which restrict you in this manner.
If you are just building sales funnels for yourself, these limitations are probably okay.
But you can get more annoyed at such constraints if you are doing client work, creating funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate with share funnels.
You’ll want to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to build infinite funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The scope of what ClickFunnels can do is pretty huge, and it can certainly be intimidating to some.
That is why ClickFunnels put a lot of work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the program. The ClickFunnels interface is fairely well designed for the most part and once you’ve built 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 have now been consolidated into 2 separate plans.
So how much is ClickFunnels now?
At the moment, the lowest priced ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all the funnel production tools, but you are limited to generating 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 get 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 provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free and some additional bonuses. This brings down the cost to $166.16 per month.
ClickFunnels does make it easy for you to demo their service with their free, 14-day free trial. It’s not limited whatsoever which lets you give the software a full test before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month sounds like too large a commitment for your present budget, there is also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan which you can also get access to for only $19 a month. You can only produce 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it’s a great way to test out ClickFunnels on a budget.
Everything else you need to 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 directly ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered in a couple of hours and I found the staff to pretty helpful to all my queries.
Do I need my own domain name? Clickfunnels Drop Down Menu
You don’t necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, but I would advise it. If you don’t have one then your funnel URL will look something like 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 install 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 is 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 extremely active and it is an excellent place to get opinions on your sales funnels and answer any questions that you may have.
There are also other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates that are also quite 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 couple of others. The one constraint with using Paypal though is that it does not support One Click Upsells or One Time Offers. That’s why I would strongly suggest going with Stripe if you’re able to.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you’re looking to acquire the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it is definitely well worth it to sign up 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’ll 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 that are making an effort to promote it.
But no, ClickFunnels isn’t a scam. It is 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 fantastic software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to build 6 and 7 figure companies.
When people ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer hands down. There’s no other software that can do every thing that ClickFunnels does at the moment.
What else is ClickFunnels used for?
Besides creating standard sales funnels, there are plenty of ways marketers are using ClickFunnels at the moment in their business.
It is terrific for creating opt-in funnels to help you generate more prospects and build your email list.
You can create webinar funnels that will help you grow your brand and sell your services and products.
And you can use it to build membership sites where you can gate your premium content so that it’s available only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Drop Down Menu
To start with, you need to have a product or service to market. If you do not have something to market, then don’t even bother looking into ClickFunnels before you do. Unless you just want to promote it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be ready to commit money and time into creating your value ladder and constructing 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 match or enhance your principal product offering.
If you’re unclear how to start, I’d take a look at Russell’s very own multi-million dollar sales funnels to give you inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he describes exactly the why and how of creating sales funnels and how to tell stories to marketing your products and services.
And as you go through his own sales funnels you can see the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into selling his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By building his very own community of raving fans he could then upsell his various other products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and much more.
Once you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the parts that apply to your own company and create a plan for your own sales funnel. As soon as you have that in place, you’ll be prepared to start making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a few ClickFunnels alternatives out there which share some 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 really popular tool in its own right.
It also recently added the ability to sell products directly on their pages using its new Checkout widget
Each product features a huge selection of fine looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors which make it easy for you to create the designs you want. And both integrate with all the popular email service providers.
Leadpages is more limited in scope than ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will help you collect prospects. This isn’t a bad thing because LeadPages really shines for building landing pages fast.
At this time, one of the best strategies for developing your email list is using content upgrades. By producing targeted lead magnets into your most popular posts you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far surpass your typical pop-up.
LeadPages is the very best service for implementing this strategy 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’re primarily concentrated on lead generation, I would 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.
However, if you’re selling a product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the tool, it’s possible to definitely explode your earnings once you start generating sales funnels for each of your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that lets users create amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a whole lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is geared towards getting set up and selling quickly. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it includes 17 different checkout page templates which you can customize.
Concerning flexibility, there’s absolutely no comparison between ClickFunnel’s drag and drop editor and SamCart’s.
ClickFunnels is infinitely more powerful in that you’ll be able to design any checkout page you can dream about. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its pre-made templates.
SamCart does permit you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells like ClickFunnels does. You can also easily create coupons for your products which is just another terrific way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is missing, is the ability to capture leads and create complete sales funnels. Both products come in at the same $97 a month price point, and I find ClickFunnels to be quite a bit more flexible and powerful than 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 each kind of funnel
– Great on-boarding process for learning the software
– Software has been better after each update
– Readily share any funnels you create and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL set up
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limits on the number of funnels, pages, and visitors with the standard plan
– Lots of things to learn, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels Drop Down Menu
Which application you go with depends on your requirements and the quantity of work you’re willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although a lot of you are selling standalone products, are you willing to put in the effort necessary to make a high converting sales funnel?
If not, ClickFunnels might be overkill for you. You can collect leads or sell your front end product more cheaply with alternative services.
But if increasing the average lifetime value of your clients is important to you, then I truly recommend giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not just to access the software but also because the training that you receive will probably be both inspirational and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see whether you can use it to increase your business today.
