Are you trying to sell things online?
Then I am sure you will agree that converting your traffic into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even harder.
There is a simple secret to increasing the value of every customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Upsell
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, it is possible to dramatically increase your sales and provide more value to your clients.
In this article, I’m going to introduce you to ClickFunnels, the application I am using to create sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to use this, and it is going to really change the way you run 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 will be speaking about that too later on.
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 business and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
In its core, ClickFunnels is a software for constructing sales funnels. With a bunch of additional bells and whistles.
You can use it to construct:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership websites
– 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 all you need to advertise and promote 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 site, you can see that almost 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels using ClickFunnels.
That is remarkable.Clickfunnels Upsell
What are the best features 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 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 create as well.
They include simple funnels such as 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 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 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 Upsell
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 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. After that you can use your mouse to drag elements around and put them where you want them.
While not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still very good and it may be used to achieve just about 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 quite seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and modifying any element’s properties could be done 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 hunting for what you would like to do.
The main 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 providing you the flexibility to design the exact pages you want and ClickFunnels provides you a wide array of them to use.
Fundamental elements comprise of Headline, Photo, Text, Button, Input types 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 components 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 own 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 alter common properties like 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’s little doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the best, legitimate affiliate marketing program which you can be a part of.
The basics:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays 40% recurring commissions for each referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your very 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 will also earn commissions on any upsells that your referrals buy as they go through their specific funnels as well.
But that is 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’ll 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 and 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 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 process seems to take around 8-10 seconds every time.
While I really don’t know what’s really going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me why this could take a long time. It’s 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 am really not a fan of software products which restrict you in this way.
If you’re just building sales funnels for yourself, these limits are most likely okay.
However you can get more annoyed at such limitations if you are doing client work, creating funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate using share funnels.
You’ll need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you would like to develop infinite funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The scope of what ClickFunnels could do is pretty huge, and it can certainly be intimidating to some.
That’s why ClickFunnels put a lot of work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the software. The ClickFunnels interface is fairely well designed for the most part and once you’ve assembled 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, but they have now been consolidated into 2 separate plans.
How much is ClickFunnels now?
Currently, the lowest priced ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all of the funnel production 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 allows you to make your own affiliate program.
To gain 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. But, you can purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which gives 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 constrained whatsoever which lets you give the software a full evaluation before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month seems 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 just $19 a month. You can only create 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it’s a great way to try out ClickFunnels on a budget.
Everything else you should know about ClickFunnels
How is their support?
ClickFunnels support is fairly good in my experience, even though they can be a little slow in responding. They utilize Intercom, which means you may immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered in a few hours and I found the team to pretty helpful to all my questions.
Do I need my own domain? Clickfunnels Upsell
You don’t necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, but I would advise it. If you do not have one then your funnel URL will look something similar to 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 discover 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 is an excellent 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 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 out there.
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 the reason why I would strongly suggest going with Stripe if you can.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you are looking to get 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’ll get six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a lot 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 think ClickFunnels has some negative buzz around it due to all of the affiliates that are making an effort to market it.
But no, ClickFunnels isn’t 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’s a great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many men and women are utilizing ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure businesses.
When folks 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 building 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 prospects and build your email list.
You are able to create webinar funnels that will help you grow your brand and sell your products and services.
And you can use it to create 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 Upsell
To start with, you need to have a product or service to market. 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 ready 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 customers or clients into your funnel. And then coming up with proper upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that complement or enhance your main product offering.
If you’re unclear how to being, I’d take a look at Russell’s 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 services and products.
And as you go through his own sales funnels you can see the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into 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.
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. 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 among 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 with its new Checkout widget
Each product features a large selection of fine looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors that make it easy for you to create the designs you desire. And both integrate with the popular email service providers.
But, Leadpages is significantly more limited in scope compared to ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will help you collect leads. This is not a terrible thing because LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages quickly.
At this time, among 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 exceed 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’ll see now.
Therefore, if you are 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’re selling a service or product, then ClickFunnels is the better choice. While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the instrument, it’s possible to really explode your earnings once you start creating sales funnels for all your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that allows users to build beautiful, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a whole lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is targeted towards getting setup and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it includes 17 distinct checkout page templates which you can 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 can design any checkout page you can dream of. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its pre-made templates.
SamCart does permit you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells such as 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 capability to capture leads and create 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 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 every type of funnel
– Great on-boarding process for learning the software
– Software continues to get better after every update
– Easily share any funnels you create and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL installed
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limitations on the amount 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 Upsell
Which application 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 willing to put in the effort required to make a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels might be overkill for you. You can collect leads or sell your front end product more cheaply with alternative services.
However, if raising the average lifetime value of your customers is important to you, then I really recommend giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not only to access the software but also because the coaching that you get will probably be both inspiring and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see if you can use it to grow your business today.
