Are you currently trying to sell things online?
Then I’m sure you will agree that converting your visitors into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even harder.
But there’s a simple secret to increasing the value of each customer you sell to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Ontraport
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, it is possible to dramatically boost your earnings and provide more value to your customers.
In this post, I will introduce you to ClickFunnels, the software I am using to create sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to use it, and it will really change the way you operate your business.
Plus:
If you are ready to throw yourself into the ClickFunnels world, it’s one of the best affiliate programs out there. I will be talking about that too later on.
Here’s what I will 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 made back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his group. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels to a $100 million a year company and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
At its core, ClickFunnels is an application for building sales funnels. With a bunch of additional bells and whistles.
You can use it to build:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership websites
– Every type 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 change out your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Essentially, you’re getting all you need to market and sell your products online, without needing to hire expensive programmers.
And people are utilizing 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 using ClickFunnels.
That is amazing.Clickfunnels Ontraport
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 forms fall into 3 main classes: 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 to a Thank you page when registering.
Or to more complex sales funnels such as the 2-Step TripWire Funnel which sells a very low ticket front-end product (your tripwire) and then upsells them to your more expensive products using Order Form bumps, and One Click upsells or Downsells.
In addition, every 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 all 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 Ontraport
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels provides you a wonderful starting point with its funnel and page templates, the ClickFunnels editor is the place you can actually make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out with sections that can have any number of columns and rows. You can then use your mouse to drag elements around and put them where you need them.
While not as adaptable as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still quite nice and it can be used to achieve pretty much any design you desire.
What I like is that the editor is quite intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and moving them where you want is very seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and changing any element’s properties can be done through the fly-out sidebar.
And unlike other editors on the market, everything is organized in a logical manner. You are not spending a great deal of time hunting for what you would like to do.
The main thing is that no programming is needed. So you don’t have to spend time studying HTML or CSS or some other technical things like that.
Best Feature #3: Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are all vital for giving you the flexibility to design the exact pages you woud like and ClickFunnels provides you a wide variety of them to use.
Fundamental elements include Headline, Photo, Text, Button, Input types and Video widgets. These are the fundamental building blocks for any landing page that you construct in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes a number of advanced components such as:
– SMS Signup
– Surveys
– Pricing Tables
– Progress Bars
– Facebook Comments
– FAQ Blocks
– Countdown Timers
– Custom HTML
Additionally, 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 change common properties such as background colors, margins, fonts, and alignment.
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 that 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 hit 100 active referrals.
In addition to that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program.
In addition you 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’ll also earn commissions on any upsells that your referrals buy as they go through their specific funnels too.
But that’s not all:
ClickFunnels also has another great feature for affiliates known as share funnels.
Inside the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your Share Funnel URL.
When someone visits this URL, they will be able to bring 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 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’ll get a recurring commission when this new user ends up staying.
What I don’t 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 each time.
While I really don’t understand what is 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 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’m really not a fan of software products which restrict you in this way.
If you’re just building sales funnels for yourself, these limitations are probably okay.
But you may get more annoyed at such limitations if you’re 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 range of what ClickFunnels can do is fairely 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 made for the most part and once you’ve assembled a few funnels yourself, the entire 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, but they’ve now been merged into 2 separate plans.
How much is ClickFunnels now?
Currently, the cheapest ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all the funnel production tools, but you are restricted 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 get access to that, you’ll need to go with the Etison Suite plan. It includes everything, and you get unlimited funnels, pages, and visitors. However, this will run you $297 a month.
As far as I can tell, there are no ClickFunnels coupon codes out there. However, you can purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some additional bonuses. This brings the cost down to $166.16 a month.
ClickFunnels does make it easy for you to demo their service with their free, 14-day free trial. It is not constrained 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’s also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan which you can also have access to for only $19 a month. You can only create 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it is a great way to try 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, which means you may immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered within a few hours and I found the team to pretty helpful to all my questions.
Do I need my own domain name? Clickfunnels Ontraport
You don’t 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 like http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus that I did not know about is that ClickFunnels will buy you your first domain name for free and even install SSL on it for you. You can discover how to do this from the very first game in the onboarding training.
Do they have an active community?
ClickFunnels has an massive 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 very active and it is an excellent place to get feedback on your sales funnels and answer any questions 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 the best email marketing software on the market.
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 why I would strongly recommend going with Stripe if you can.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you are looking to acquire the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it’s definitely worth it to join with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you are going to get six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a bunch of additional training and bonuses which 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 believe ClickFunnels has some negative buzz around it because of all of the affiliates that are trying to market it.
But no, ClickFunnels is not a scam. It is certainly 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 is a software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are utilizing ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure businesses.
When folks 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 right now in their business.
It is great for creating opt-in funnels to help you generate more leads and build your email list.
You can produce webinar funnels to help you grow your brand and promote your services and products.
And you can use it to build membership sites where you’re able to gate your premium content so that it is available only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Ontraport
To start with, you need to have a product or service to sell. If you do not have something to market, then do not even bother looking into ClickFunnels until you do. Unless you only want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be willing to commit money and time 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 customers or clients into your funnel. And then coming up with proper upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that complement or improve your principal product offering.
If you’re unclear how to being, I would take a look at Russell’s very own multi-million dollar sales funnels to provide you with inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he describes exactly the why and how of building sales funnels and how to tell stories to sell your services and products.
And as you go through his own sales funnels yourself you can observe the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By creating his own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various different products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and more.
As soon as 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. Once you have that in place, you’ll be prepared to begin making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a couple of ClickFunnels alternatives out there that share some of the same capabilities as ClickFunnels. Two that I use myself are LeadPages and SamCart.
ClickFunnels vs LeadPages
Today, LeadPages is one of the market leaders in the landing page builder space and it’s a very popular tool in its own right.
It also recently added the capability 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 that make it easy for you to create the designs you want. And both integrate with all the popular email service providers.
However, Leadpages is 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 since LeadPages really shines for building landing pages fast.
Right now, among the most effective strategies for growing your email list is using content upgrades. By creating targeted lead magnets into your most popular posts you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far surpass your standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the very best service for implementing this approach with its LeadBoxes, 2 step opt-ins, and automatic lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you will see today.
So if you’re primarily concentrated on lead generation, I would definitely suggest 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 are selling a service or product, then ClickFunnels is the better choice. 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 all your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that lets users create amazing, 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 different checkout page templates that you may customize.
In terms of flexibility, there is 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 of. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its own 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 another great way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is lacking, is the ability to capture leads and create complete sales funnels. The products come in at the exact same $97 a 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
– Amazing looking templates for every kind of funnel
– Great on-boarding procedure for learning the software
– Software has been better after each update
– Easily share any funnels you build and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL installed
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limitations on the number 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 Ontraport
Which application you go with depends on your requirements and the amount of work you are willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although many of you are selling standalone products, are you ready to put in the effort necessary to make a high converting sales funnel?
If not, ClickFunnels might be overkill for you. It’s possible to collect leads or market your front end product more cheaply using alternative services.
However, if increasing the average lifetime value of your customers is important to you, then I really suggest giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not just to access the software but also since the training that you receive will probably be both inspirational and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see if you can use it to increase your business today.
