Are you 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.
But there’s a simple secret to raising the value of each customer you sell to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Pricing 2017
By producing a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically increase your sales and provide more value to your customers.
In this article, I will present you to ClickFunnels, the application I’m using to build sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to use it, and it will really change how you run 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 will 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 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 an application for constructing sales funnels. With a lot of additional bells and whistles.
You can use it to build:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership websites
– 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 have the ability to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and replace your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Basically, you’re getting all you need to market and promote your products online, without needing to employ expensive developers.
And individuals 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 utilizing ClickFunnels.
That is remarkable.Clickfunnels Pricing 2017
What are the best parts of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
In case you have never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 distinct forms of funnels that he has employed 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 a few additional special funnels like Membership funnels you can create too.
They include simple funnels like the Squeeze Page Funnel which collects a visitor’s email address and then sends them into a Thank you page when registering.
Or to more complex 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 with Order Form bumps, and One Click upsells or Downsells.
In addition, each funnel type has its own group of free templates and paid templates. So even in the event that 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 Pricing 2017
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels provides you a great starting point with its funnel and webpage 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 place them where you want them.
While not as adaptable as Instapage’s landing page editor, it’s still quite good and it can be utilized to achieve just about any design you want.
What I like is that the editor is very intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and moving them where you want is quite seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and changing any element’s properties could be accomplished through the fly-out sidebar.
And unlike other editors out there, everything is organized in a logical way. You are not spending a lot of time searching for what you would like to do.
The important thing is that no coding is required. So you do not have to spend time studying HTML or CSS or any technical things like that.
Best Feature #3: Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are all essential for giving you the flexibility to design the exact pages you woud like and ClickFunnels gives you a wide variety of them to use.
Fundamental elements comprise of Headline, Photo, 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
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 from the editor sidebar. With majority of elements, you can change common properties like 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 no doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the best, legitimate affiliate marketing program that you can be a part of.
First the basics:
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.
In addition to that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program itself.
In addition you 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’ll also earn commissions on any upsells your referrals buy as they go through their specific funnels too.
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.
Whenever someone visits this URL, they will be able to bring this funnel directly into their account if they’re an existing ClickFunnels member. If they aren’t a member yet, they can sign up for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial 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 appears to take approximately 8-10 seconds each time.
While I don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me why this would take so long. It is somewhat 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 lowest plan. I am really not a fan of software products which limit you in this way.
If you are just building sales funnels for yourself, these limitations are most likely okay.
But you may get more annoyed at such constraints if you’re doing client work, building funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate using share funnels.
You will want to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to build unlimited funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The range of what ClickFunnels can do is fairely 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 pretty well made for the most part and when 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. Initially, they had 3 different pricing tiers, however they’ve now been consolidated 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 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 lets you create your own affiliate program.
To get access to that, you’ll need to go for the Etison Suite plan. It includes everything, plus you receive 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 purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some extra bonuses. This brings the cost down 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 seems like too big a commitment for your present budget, there is also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan which you can also have 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 fairly good in my experience, although they can be a little slow in responding. They use Intercom, so you may immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered in a few hours and I found the staff to fairly helpful to all my queries.
Do I need my own domain name? Clickfunnels Pricing 2017
You do not necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, although I would recommend it. If you don’t have one then your funnel URL will look something like http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus that I didn’t 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’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 feedback on your sales funnels and answer any questions that you may have.
Additionally, there are several other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates which are also quite active. The main one I suggest joining is Automation Nation. It is run by Spencer Mecham who is ClickFunnel’s top affiliate.
What integrations do they provide?
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 limitation with using Paypal though is that it does not support One Click Upsells or One Time Offers. That’s the reason why I would strongly suggest going with Stripe if you’re able to.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you’re looking to get the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it is 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 will also get a bunch 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 believe ClickFunnels gets some negative buzz around it because of all the affiliates who are making an effort 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 is a software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure companies.
When folks ask, “How can I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer 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 creating standard sales funnels, there are plenty of ways marketers are using ClickFunnels right now in their business.
It is terrific for creating opt-in funnels to help you generate more leads and build your email list.
You are able to create 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 can gate your premium content so that it’s accessible only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Pricing 2017
First of all, 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 before you do. Unless you only want to promote it as an affiliate.
Next, you need to be willing to invest 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 appropriate upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that complement or enhance your main product offering.
If you are unclear how to being, I’d have a look at Russell’s very 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 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) into promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By creating his very own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various different products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and much more.
As soon as you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the components that apply to your own company and create a strategy for your own sales funnel. Once you have that in place, you will 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 is a very popular tool in its own right.
It also recently introduced the capability to sell products directly on their pages with its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with a huge selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors that make it effortless for you to create the designs you want. And both integrate with all the popular email service providers.
However, Leadpages is significantly more limited in scope than ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will help you collect prospects. This is not a terrible thing because LeadPages really shines for building landing pages quickly.
At this time, 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 exceed your standard 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 will see today.
Therefore, if you’re primarily focused 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 alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, as soon as you master the instrument, it’s possible to really 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 build amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is geared towards getting setup and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it comes with 17 different checkout page templates which you may customize.
Concerning flexibility, there is not any 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 allow 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.
However, where Samcart is missing, is the ability to capture leads and build complete sales funnels. The 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 building marketing and sales funnels
– Editor balances ease of use with flexibility
– Integrates with all major email and payment providers
– Beautiful looking templates for each type of funnel
– Great on-boarding process for learning the program
– 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
– Lots of things to learn, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels Pricing 2017
Which software you go with depends on your requirements and the amount of work you’re willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although many of you are selling standalone products, are you ready to put in the effort necessary to create a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels could 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 clients is important to you, then I really recommend giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not only to get access to the software but also since the coaching that you receive will probably be both inspiring and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see whether you can use it to grow your business now.
