Are you currently trying to sell stuff online?
Then I am confident you will agree that converting your traffic into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even harder.
But there is a simple secret to raising the value of every customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Owner
By producing a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically increase your earnings and provide more value for your customers.
In this post, I will introduce you to ClickFunnels, the software I am using to build sales funnels for my business.
You do not need any technical know-how to use this, and it is going to really change how you operate your business.
Plus:
If you’re prepared to throw yourself into the ClickFunnels world, it has one of the best affiliate programs on the market. I’ll be speaking about that too later on.
Here’s 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 made back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his group. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels into a $100 million a year business and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
At its core, ClickFunnels is a software for building sales funnels. With a lot of added bells and whistles.
You can use it to construct:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership sites
– Every type of sales funnel you can think of, complete with order bumps, upsells and downsells
Additionally, with the highest end Etison Suite package you will even have the ability to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and change out your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Basically, you’re getting everything you need to market and sell your products online, without having to employ expensive programmers.
And people are using ClickFunnels with great success.
If you check out their 2 Comma Club site, you can see that almost 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels using ClickFunnels.
That is remarkable.Clickfunnels Owner
What are the best parts of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
If you have never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 different types 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 a few additional special funnels like Membership funnels you can make 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 complex sales funnels like the 2-Step TripWire Funnel which sells a 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, each funnel type has its own set of free templates and paid templates. So even in the event that 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 Owner
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels provides you a great starting point with its funnel and page templates, the ClickFunnels editor is the place you can truly make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out with sections that can have any number of rows and columns. After that you can use your mouse to drag elements around and put them where you need them.
While not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still quite nice 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 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 need 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 specific pages you want and ClickFunnels gives 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 you construct in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes a number of 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 membership pages and order and shipping form elements for your order pages.
Each element can be easily customized from the editor sidebar. With most elements, you can change common properties such as background colors, margins, fonts, and orientation.
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’s 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 out 40% recurring commissions for each referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your very 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.
In addition you earn 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 purchase as they go through their specific funnels as well.
That is not all:
ClickFunnels also has another great 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 be able to bring this funnel directly into their accounts if they are an existing ClickFunnels member. If they aren’t a member yet, they can sign up for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial and then get your funnel added to their account.
What’s really awesome is that this share URL also acts 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 choosing your funnel type and template, it needs to get added to your account.
For some reason, this procedure seems to take approximately 8-10 seconds every time.
While I don’t know what’s really going on behind the scenes, it does not make sense to me why this could take a long time. It is somewhat 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 in their lowest plan. I am really not a fan of software products that limit you in this way.
If you are just building sales funnels for yourself, these limitations are most likely okay.
But you can get more annoyed at these limitations if you’re 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 would like to build unlimited funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The range of what ClickFunnels can do is pretty huge, and it can certainly 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 once you’ve built a few 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, but they have now been consolidated into 2 separate plans.
So how much is ClickFunnels now?
Currently, the cheapest ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all the funnel creation 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 make your own affiliate program.
To gain access to that, you’ll need to go with the Etison Suite plan. It features everything, plus you receive 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 available. However, you can purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free and some extra 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 is not limited whatsoever which lets you give the software a complete 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 that 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, even though they can be a little slow in responding. They utilize Intercom, which means you can directly 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 queries.
Do I need my own domain name? Clickfunnels Owner
You do not 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 buy 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 is the official group on FB with over 100k members and the ClickFunnels Avengers FB group (for affiliates) that has over 30k members.
Both groups are extremely active and it’s a great place to get feedback on your sales funnels and answer any questions that you might have.
Additionally, there are other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates which are also very active. The main one I recommend joining is Automation Nation. It’s 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 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 is the reason why I would highly recommend going with Stripe if you’re able to.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you are looking to acquire the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it is definitely well 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 lot of additional bonuses and training 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 think ClickFunnels gets some negative buzz around it due to all the affiliates that are trying to promote it.
But no, ClickFunnels isn’t a scam. It’s 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’s a fantastic software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are utilizing ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure businesses.
When people ask, “How can I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer hands down. There’s no other application 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’s terrific for creating opt-in funnels that will help you generate more prospects and build your email list.
You can create webinar funnels to help you develop 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 is available only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Owner
First of all, you need to have a product or service to market. If you don’t have something to market, then do not even bother looking into ClickFunnels until you do. Unless you just want to promote it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be willing to invest 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 clients or customers into your funnel. And then coming up with appropriate 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 own multi-million dollar sales funnels to give you inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he explains precisely the why and how of creating 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 how he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) to promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By building his very own community of raving fans he could 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 business and create a plan for your own sales funnel. As soon as you have that in place, you will 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 one of 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 with its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with 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 the popular email service providers.
Leadpages is more limited in scope than ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will allow you to collect leads. This is not a terrible thing because LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages fast.
Right now, among the most effective strategies for developing your email list is by using content upgrades. By producing targeted lead magnets into your most well-known posts you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far surpass your typical pop-up.
LeadPages is the 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’ll see today.
Therefore, if you’re primarily concentrated 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 product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the tool, you can really explode your earnings as soon as you begin generating sales funnels for all your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product which allows users to create amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is targeted towards getting set up and selling quickly. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it comes with 17 different checkout page templates which you can customize.
Concerning flexibility, there is 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 about. 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 just another great way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is missing, is the ability to capture leads and build 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 compared to Samcart.
ClickFunnels Pros
– Best software for building marketing and sales funnels
– Editor balances ease of use with flexibility
– Integrates with all major email and payment providers
– Amazing looking templates for every type of funnel
– Great on-boarding process for learning the program
– Software has been better after each update
– Easily 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
– Plently of things to understand, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels Owner
Which application you go with depends on your requirements and the amount 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 required to create a high converting sales funnel?
If not, ClickFunnels could be overkill for you. It’s possible to collect leads or sell your front end product more cheaply using alternative services.
But if raising the average lifetime value of your customers is important to you, then I truly recommend giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not only to get access to the software but also because the coaching that you get 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.
