Are you currently trying to sell stuff online?
Then I’m sure 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 increasing the value of every customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Making A Clickfunnels
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically boost your sales and provide more value to your clients.
In this article, I will introduce you to ClickFunnels, the application 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 how you run your business.
Plus:
If you’re 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.
Here is 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 per 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 added bells and whistles.
You can use it to construct:
– 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 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 market and sell your products online, without having to hire expensive programmers.
And individuals 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 utilizing ClickFunnels.
That is amazing.Making A Clickfunnels
What are the best parts of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
If you’ve never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 different forms of funnels that he has employed 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 some other special funnels like Membership funnels you can make 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 signing up.
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 using 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 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. Making A Clickfunnels
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels gives you a great starting point with its funnel and webpage templates, the ClickFunnels editor is the place you can truly make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out using sections that can have any number of rows and columns. 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 nice 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 transferring them where you want is very seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and modifying any element’s properties could be accomplished via the fly-out sidebar.
And unlike other editors on the market, everything is organized in a logical way. You are not spending a lot of time hunting for what you would like to do.
The important thing is that no programming is required. So you don’t need to spend time learning HTML or CSS or any 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 woud like and ClickFunnels gives you a large variety 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 several advanced components 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 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 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 is little doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the very best, legitimate affiliate marketing program that you can be a part of.
First the basics:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays out 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.
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.
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.
Whenever someone visits this URL, they will have the ability to add this funnel directly into their accounts 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 amazing is that this share URL also functions as your affiliate link, and you will 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 around 8-10 seconds each time.
While I really don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes, it does not make sense to me why this would take a long time. It’s somewhat annoying, although only 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 cheapest plan. I’m not a fan of software products which limit you in this way.
If you are just building sales funnels for yourself, these limits are most likely okay.
However you can 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 definitely 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 pretty well designed for the most part and when you’ve assembled a couple funnels yourself, the entire 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, however they have now been merged 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 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 create your own affiliate program.
To gain access to that, you’ll need to go for 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 out there. However, you can purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which gives you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some additional bonuses. This brings down the cost 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 in any way which lets you give the software a complete test 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 which you can also have 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 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 utilize Intercom, so you can immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered in a couple of hours and I found the team to fairly helpful to all my questions.
Do I need my own domain name? Making A Clickfunnels
You don’t necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, but 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 did not know about is that ClickFunnels will get 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 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 opinions on your own sales funnels and answer any questions that you may have.
There are also other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates that 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 the best email marketing software on the market.
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’s 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 join 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 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 the affiliates who are making an effort to market it.
But no, ClickFunnels isn’t 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 is a great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure companies.
When folks ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer hands down. There is no other application that can do everything 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 at the moment in their business.
It is 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 promote your products and services.
And you can use it to create membership sites where you can gate your premium content so that it is accessible only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Making A Clickfunnels
First of all, 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 just want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be willing to invest time and money into creating your value ladder and constructing 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 main product offering.
If you are unclear how to start, I would take a look at Russell’s own multi-million dollar sales funnels to provide you with 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 yourself you can observe the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) to selling his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By building his own community of raving fans he can 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 components that are applicable to your own company and create a plan for your 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 which share a number 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 very popular tool in its own right.
It also recently introduced the ability to sell products directly on their pages with its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with a large selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors which make it effortless 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 help you collect leads. This isn’t a terrible thing since LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages quickly.
Right now, among the most effective strategies for developing your email list is by using content upgrades. By creating targeted lead magnets into your most popular articles you can get 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 automatic lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you’ll see today.
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.
However, 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 instrument, you can definitely explode your earnings once you start creating sales funnels for each of your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that lets users create amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a whole lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is geared towards getting setup and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it includes 17 distinct checkout page templates which you may 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 own 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 another great way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is lacking, is the capability to capture leads and build complete sales funnels. Both products come in at the 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 kind of funnel
– Great on-boarding procedure for learning the program
– Software has been better after each update
– Readily 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
– Limits 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 Making A Clickfunnels
Which software you go with depends on your requirements and the amount of work you are willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although many of you are selling standalone products, are you willing to put in the effort necessary 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 with 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 access the software but also because the training you receive will be both inspirational and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see if you can use it to increase your business today.
