Are you currently trying to sell things online?
Then I am sure you will agree that converting your visitors into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even harder.
There is a simple secret to raising the value of each customer you sell to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Template
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically boost your earnings and provide more value to your customers.
In this article, I will introduce you to ClickFunnels, the software I’m using to build sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to utilize it, and it will truly change the way you operate your business.
Plus:
If you are 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.
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.
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 websites
– 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 change out your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Essentially, you’re getting everything you need to market and sell your products online, without needing to employ expensive developers.
And people 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 Template
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 employed successfully in his own business.
The funnel types 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 make 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 sophisticated 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 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 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 Template
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 where 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 columns and rows. After that you can use your mouse to drag elements around and place them where you want them.
While not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it’s still quite good and it may be used to achieve pretty much any design you desire.
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 can be accomplished via the fly-out sidebar.
And contrary to other editors on the market, everything is organized in a logical way. You’re not spending a great deal of time searching for what you want to do.
The important thing is that no coding is required. 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 woud like and ClickFunnels provides you a large variety of them to use.
Basic elements include Headline, Photo, Text, Button, Input types and Video widgets. These are the basic building blocks for any landing page you construct in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes a number of advanced elements like:
– 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 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 change 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’s no doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the best, legitimate affiliate marketing program which you can be a part of.
First the Fundamentals:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays out 40% recurring commissions for every referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your own dream car as soon as you reach 100 active referrals.
On top of that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program.
You also earn 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.
That’s not all:
ClickFunnels also has another great feature for affiliates known as 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 are not a member yet, they can sign up 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 acts as your affiliate link, and you’ll get a recurring commission if this new user ends up staying on.
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 process appears to take approximately 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 would take so long. It’s somewhat annoying, although just 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 really not a fan of software products that restrict you in this way.
If you are just building sales funnels for yourself, these limits are most likely okay.
However you may get more annoyed at these limitations if you’re doing client work, building funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate using share funnels.
You will need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you would like to build infinite funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The range of what ClickFunnels could 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 program. The ClickFunnels interface is pretty well made for the most part and once you’ve built a few funnels yourself, the whole procedure 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.
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 restricted 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 make your own affiliate program.
To gain access to that, you’ll need to go with the Etison Suite plan. It includes everything, plus 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 available. But, you can buy Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus 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 constrained whatsoever which lets you give the software a complete evaluation before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month sounds like too big a commitment for your present budget, there’s also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan that 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 try 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 can immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered within a couple of hours and I found the team to fairly helpful to all my questions.
Do I need my own domain name? Clickfunnels Template
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 similar to http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus that I didn’t 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 discover how to do this from the first game in the onboarding training.
Do they have an active community?
ClickFunnels has an massive community. There’s 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 is an excellent place to get opinions on your own sales funnels and answer any questions that you may have.
There are also several other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates that 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 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’s the reason 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 sign up with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you’ll receive six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a bunch of additional training and bonuses 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 has some negative buzz around it because of all of the affiliates that are making an effort to promote it.
However, 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 men and women are utilizing ClickFunnels to build 6 and 7 figure businesses.
When people ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 response 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 many ways marketers are using ClickFunnels right now in their business.
It’s great 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 develop your brand and promote your services and products.
And you can use it to create 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 Template
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 until you do. Unless you only want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you need to be willing to commit money and time into creating your value ladder and building out your entire sales funnel.
That means at least creating a lead magnet or low-cost tripwire product to get clients or customers into your funnel. And coming up with proper upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that complement or enhance your principal product offering.
If you are unclear how to being, I’d have 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 you can see how he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into selling his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By creating 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.
As soon as you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the parts that are applicable to your own company and create a strategy for your own sales funnel. As soon as you have that in place, you’ll be prepared to begin making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a few 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 really popular tool in its own right.
It also recently introduced the capability to sell products directly on their pages using its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with a large selection of fine 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.
Leadpages is more limited in scope than ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that can allow you to collect prospects. This is not a bad thing since LeadPages really shines for building landing pages fast.
Right now, one of the most effective strategies for growing your email list is using content upgrades. By creating targeted lead magnets into your most well-known posts you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far surpass your standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the very best service for implementing this strategy with its LeadBoxes, 2 step opt-ins, and automatic lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you will see now.
Therefore, if you are primarily focused on lead generation, I’d 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.
But, 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 really explode your earnings as soon as you begin creating sales funnels for each of your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product which lets users create amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is targeted towards getting set up and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it comes with 17 distinct checkout page templates which you may 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 can design any checkout page you can dream about. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its own pre-made templates.
SamCart does allow you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells such as 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 capability to capture leads and build complete sales funnels. Both products come in at the exact 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 each kind of funnel
– Great on-boarding process 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 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 Template
Which application you go with depends on your requirements and the amount of work you’re willing to invest in your business.
Although many of you are selling standalone products, are you ready to put in the effort required to create a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels could be overkill for you. You can collect leads or market your front end product more cheaply with alternative services.
However, if increasing the average lifetime value of your clients is important to you, then I really suggest giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not just to access the software but also because the coaching that you get will be both inspirational and enlightening.
Make the most of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see if you can use it to increase your business now.
