Are you currently trying to sell stuff online?
Then I am confident you will agree that converting your traffic into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even tougher.
There is a simple secret to raising the value of each customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Was Sind Clickfunnels
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically increase your earnings and provide more value to your customers.
In this article, I will 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 really change the way you operate your business.
Plus:
If you’re ready to throw yourself into the ClickFunnels world, it has 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 a year company 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 build:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership websites
– Every type 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 everything you need to advertise and sell your products online, without needing to employ expensive programmers.
And individuals are using 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.Was Sind Clickfunnels
What are the best parts 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 forms of funnels that he has employed successfully in his own business.
The funnel forms 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 make 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 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 a more expensive products using Order Form bumps, and One Click upsells or Downsells.
In addition, every funnel type has its own set 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 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. Was Sind Clickfunnels
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels provides you a wonderful 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 using 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 is still quite good and it can 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 changing any element’s properties could be done through the fly-out sidebar.
And unlike 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 main thing is that no programming is required. So you do not have 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 large array of them to use.
Basic elements include Headline, Image, 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 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 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 very best, legitimate affiliate marketing program that 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 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.
In addition you earn 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 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 have the ability to add this funnel directly into their accounts if they are an existing ClickFunnels member. If they aren’t 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 procedure appears 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 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 in their lowest plan. I’m really not a fan of software products which limit you in this way.
If you’re 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 with share funnels.
You’ll want to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to develop unlimited funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The scope of what ClickFunnels can do is pretty 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 designed for the most part and once you’ve assembled a few 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 merged into 2 separate plans.
So how much is ClickFunnels now?
At the moment, the lowest priced ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all of 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 allows you to create your own affiliate program.
To get 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 purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides 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 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 large a commitment for your present budget, there’s 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 test out ClickFunnels on a budget.
Everything else you need to know about ClickFunnels
How is their support?
ClickFunnels support is quite good in my experience, even though 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 within a few hours and I found the staff to pretty helpful to all my queries.
Do I need my own domain name? Was Sind Clickfunnels
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 similar to http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus 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 learn how to do this from the very 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 a great place to get opinions on your sales funnels and answer any questions that you may have.
There are also several other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates which are also quite active. The main one I recommend joining is Automation Nation. It’s 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 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 can.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you’re looking to acquire 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’ll receive six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a bunch of additional bonuses and training which 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 due to all of 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 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 to help you generate more prospects and build your email list.
You are able to create webinar funnels that will help you develop your brand and promote your products and services.
And you can use it to create membership sites where you’re able to gate your premium content so that it’s available only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Was Sind Clickfunnels
To start with, you need to have a product or service to sell. If you don’t have something to sell, then don’t even bother looking into ClickFunnels before you do. Unless you only want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be ready to commit money and time 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 coming up with appropriate upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that match or enhance your principal product offering.
If you are unclear how to start, I’d have a look at Russell’s very own multi-million dollar sales funnels to give you inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he describes exactly 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 you can observe the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) to promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By creating his own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various different products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and more.
As soon as you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the parts that apply to your own business 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 a number 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 capability to sell products directly on their pages using its new Checkout widget
Each product features a huge selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors that make it effortless for you to build the designs you want. And both integrate with the popular email service providers.
Leadpages is more limited in scope compared to ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that can allow you to collect leads. This is not a bad thing because LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages fast.
Right now, among the most effective strategies for growing your email list is by using content upgrades. By creating targeted lead magnets into your most well-known articles you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far exceed your typical 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.
Therefore, if you’re 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 service or product, 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 definitely explode your sales once you start creating sales funnels for all your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product which allows users to build amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is geared towards getting set up and selling quickly. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it includes 17 distinct checkout page templates that you can customize.
Concerning flexibility, there’s absolutely 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 about. 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 easily create coupons for your products which is just another great way to raise conversions.
However, where Samcart is missing, is the capability to capture leads and build complete sales funnels. The 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 every type of funnel
– Great on-boarding procedure for learning the software
– 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 set up
– 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 Was Sind Clickfunnels
Which software you go with depends on your needs and the quantity of work you’re willing to invest in your business.
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 could be overkill for you. It’s possible to collect leads or sell your front end product more cheaply using alternative services.
However, if increasing 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 that you receive will probably be both inspiring and enlightening.
Make the most of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see whether you can use it to grow your business today.
