Are you currently trying to sell things online?
I’m sure you will agree that converting your visitors into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even tougher.
There’s a simple secret to raising the value of each customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Vs Aweber
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, it is possible to dramatically increase your sales and provide more value to your customers.
In this article, I’m going to introduce you to ClickFunnels, the application I’m using to create sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to utilize it, and it will truly change how you operate your business.
Plus:
If you’re ready 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.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was created 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 a software for building sales funnels. With a bunch of additional 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 be able to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and change out your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Basically, you’re getting everything you need to advertise and promote your products online, without having to hire expensive programmers.
And people are utilizing ClickFunnels with great success.
If you check out their 2 Comma Club website, you can see that almost 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels utilizing ClickFunnels.
That’s remarkable.Clickfunnels Vs Aweber
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 distinct types of funnels that he has used successfully in his own business.
The funnel types 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 create too.
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 such as 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.
Moreover, 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 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 Vs Aweber
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 where you can actually make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out using 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 flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it’s still very good and it may be utilized to achieve pretty much any design you want.
What I like is that the editor is quite 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 via the fly-out sidebar.
And contrary to 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 need 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 vital for providing you the flexibility to design the specific pages you want and ClickFunnels provides you a large variety of them to use.
Fundamental elements comprise of Headline, Image, 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 several advanced elements like:
– 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 in the editor sidebar. With majority of elements, you can alter 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 is little doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the best, legitimate affiliate marketing program that you can be a part of.
First the Fundamentals:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays 40% recurring commissions for each referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your own dream car as soon as you hit 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 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 as well.
But 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.
When someone visits this URL, they will have the ability to add this funnel directly into their account 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 will get a recurring commission if this new user ends up staying.
What I do not 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 process appears to take approximately 8-10 seconds each time.
While I really don’t understand what is really going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me why this could take so long. It is a bit 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 on their cheapest 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.
However you may get more annoyed at such constraints if you’re doing client work, creating 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 so much work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the program. The ClickFunnels interface is fairely well designed for the most part and when 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, however they’ve 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 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 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. However, you can purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free and 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’s not constrained whatsoever which lets you give the software a complete evaluation before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month seems 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 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 fairly good in my experience, although they can be a little slow in responding. They use Intercom, which means you may directly ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered in a couple of hours and I found the team to pretty helpful to all my questions.
Do I need my own domain? Clickfunnels Vs Aweber
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 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 and the ClickFunnels Avengers FB group (for affiliates) that has over 30k members.
Both groups are extremely active and it’s an excellent place to get feedback on your own sales funnels and answer any questions 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 offer?
Even though ClickFunnels has its own email service provider via Actionetics, it also integrates directly with all 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 limitation 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 get the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it’s definitely well worth it to sign up with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you are going to receive 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 think ClickFunnels gets some negative buzz around it because of all of the affiliates that are making an effort to promote it.
However, no, ClickFunnels is not a scam. It is 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 great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people 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 everything that ClickFunnels does at the moment.
What else is ClickFunnels used for?
Besides building standard sales funnels, there are many 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 are able to produce webinar funnels that will help you grow your brand and promote your products and services.
And you can use it to build membership sites where you’re able to gate your premium content so that it’s accessible only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Vs Aweber
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 promote it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be ready to commit time and money into creating your value ladder and constructing 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 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’d take a look at Russell’s very own multi-million dollar sales funnels to provide you with inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he explains precisely the why and how of building sales funnels and how to tell stories to marketing 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 own community of raving fans he could 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 parts that apply to your own company and create a strategy for your own sales funnel. As soon as 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’s a very popular tool in its own right.
It also recently added the ability to sell products directly on their pages using its new Checkout widget
Each product features a large selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors which make it easy for you to build the designs you desire. And both integrate with the popular email service providers.
But, 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 since LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages quickly.
Right now, among the most effective strategies for growing your email list is 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 standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the very 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.
So if you are primarily focused 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 product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, as soon as you master the tool, you can definitely explode your sales once you start generating 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 lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is geared towards getting set up and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it includes 17 different checkout page templates that you can 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’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 quickly create coupons for your products which is just another great way to raise conversions.
However, where Samcart is missing, is the ability to capture leads and create 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 creating 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 procedure 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 set up
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limits on the amount of funnels, pages, and visitors with the standard plan
– Lots of things to understand, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels Vs Aweber
Which application you go with depends on your requirements and the amount of work you are willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although a lot of you are selling standalone products, are you willing to put in the effort necessary to create a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels might be overkill for you. You can collect leads or market your front end product more cheaply using alternative services.
However, if raising 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 you receive 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.
