How to Make Money with ClickFunnels Affiliate Program in 2024: $2 575 in One Week

As you should know quite well, affiliate marketing is one of the fast-growing industries, which allows marketers to make pretty good money. Affiliate partnerships generate over 20% of the annual revenue for publishers. The affiliate industry is worth more than $12 billion. And you are a part of this huge industry.

Today’s subject is in the public eye for a while. So, today we discuss ClickFunnels affiliate program, its details, advantages, and disadvantages.

Russell Brunson’s ClickFunnels affiliate program has been in the limelight over the past several years. Yes, if you haven’t heard about ClickFunnels, probably, you’ve been sleeping for the last couple of years. High, recurring commissions can’t be ignored in the marketers’ community. Moreover, you can choose ClickFunnels as your sales funnel building tool and you can benefit from the ClickFunnels affiliate program.

ClickFunnels: What Is This

Initially, ClickFunnels was founded in 2014 by Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson. As of summer 2020, ClickFunnels encounters more than 125 000 active users; the most recent data shows 140k of active users.

First of all, ClickFunnels is software specifically developed to:

• Quickly build a landing page
• Follow up customers (both existing and potential) through various channels, such as e-mail, notifications, Messenger, etc.
• Arrange a multistep process for new customers increasing their lifetime value (and your commissions respectively)
• Start your own affiliate program (Backpack). However, you should get the ClickFunnels Platinum package to get the Backpack.

To make it clear, Clickfunnels represents software that allows you to expand your business and increase sales. With this platform, you can create landing pages to follow your campaigns. Well, landing pages aren’t websites. Technically, with ClickFunnels you can build a website too; though, the platform was initially developed for designing landing pages. Landing pages aren’t as loaded with information and texts as websites; therefore, they allow taking a client through sales smoothly and fast.

ClickFunnels come in handy in many ways. Businesses can build landing pages, manage and control them, and even automate email campaigns. It’s all about automation. The entire sales process is automated with control over every step. With ClickFunnels businesses build sales funnels to collect leads and secure sales. You may still struggle with Google ranking, but ClickFunnels offers you a hassle-free alternative to expand your business.

Sales funnels: What Are They

Simply put, sales funnels are one-page websites (also known as landing pages) with a single offer and a chance to make an action (in this case, an action = to purchase).

A classic website has many pages and numerous posts with various options for actions to take. A single page with the only offer is pretty straightforward. Sure, not all visitors of your landing page take action (=purchase the product) at once. Sometimes people need time to consider your offer. You can always retarget them later. Thoroughly plan your future marketing strategy for this audience. Being too ‘pushy’ might lead to the opposite result. Give space and time to consider the offer, build trust and provide assistance if needed.

How Does ClickFunnels Help to Expand the Business

Some business owners consider creating a sales funnel as a tedious and tricky process. ClickFunnels has optimized the whole thing and allows managing everything via a single platform. The platform offers you an opportunity to create a landing page, test it, and monitor the performance. The list of tools and instruments includes training materials, web hosting, landing page templates, testing A/B, customer support, email auto-responder, several payment options, and affiliate management.

There are 26 customizable funnel templates, which were tested to show high conversion rates. When you select a funnel type, you’ll get access to the database of free and paid funnels. Before adding them to your own list, you can preview, edit and even test the funnels. Look around the platform, there are numerous useful training materials, such as e-books, guides, videos, etc.)

When you’ve chosen a funnel, the next step is the funnel editor. Here you tune the template to match your specific campaign. The order of pages can be also customized. Design and call-to-action should be catchy for potential customers. As experience demonstrates, the best results are received with the following order: Squeeze page (where you collect emails and offer a bonus), Sales page (set of products/services for sale), and one-time-offer page (time-limited offer).

Once your funnel is ready, you can tie it into a payment gateway and email service provider. The launch checklist provides all the details that should be completed before launching the funnel.

Clickfunnels also provides advanced analytical tools for monitoring the performance of your funnel.

ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

As an appetizer: many ClickFunnels affiliates claimed that they make over $4 000 a month with this platform.

Since the launch of the ClickFunnels affiliate program, affiliates have been paid more than $52 million in commissions. In 2018 ClickFunnels paid out more than $22 million. Besides that, 98 affiliates were awarded their "Dream Cars" (see details below). For affiliates, ClickFunnels offers very attractive terms for cooperation.

As seen from above, ClickFunnels provides "one of the most generous paying affiliate programs in the world". ClickFunnels pays 40% recurring commissions for the lifespan of a lead (customer).

ClickFunnels affiliates are paid for attracting new customers into the ClickFunnels array of products (definition from Russell). What does ClickFunnels sell? The platform offers two packages: $97 and $297. If a person buys a $97 package, you receive $38.8; if a person buys a $297 package, you get $118.8. So, to get $4 000 a month you need to sell 34 accounts of the $297 package or 103 accounts of the $97 package. Besides that, you can sell additional products, or customers might get interested in some ClickFunnels related products, so you’ll get additional 40% commission of the sales.  

Affiliates receive commission bi-weekly via PayPal, direct deposit, ACH transfer, money wire, or check.

How to Join ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

The ClickFunnels affiliate program is free to join. There is no need to have an active ClickFunnels account to join the platform’s affiliate program.

• You may sign up for a 2-week free trial.
• You may register in Russell's Free Affiliate Bootcamp.
• You may sign up directly here.

All offers listed in your affiliate dashboard have their own promotional materials, including banners, social media posts, email scripts, etc. From time to time check for new updates — in the affiliate section new material appears regularly. Another good thing is that all promotional materials are written and designed by world-class copywriters and web-designers, tested for efficiency by conversion experts. Still, you can reach better results using a combination of ready-to-use solutions from ClickFunnels and your own unique content.

Just for your information. If businesses (or you for your services) need to build a sales funnel and would like to hire Russell, he will charge:

Ok, some businesses can afford his services. But the majority can’t. But they still can get his best funnels working for them. This is your task as an affiliate to inform potential customers about the service they have never heard about or were unsure to use.

Main Reasons to Join ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

•  Reputation. Russel Brunson is a well-known online entrepreneur and marketer. His platform ClickFunnels has quickly earned the reputation of one of the most trustworthy digital marketing tools among intermediate and advanced marketers.
• As of now, the ClickFunnels affiliate program is associated with three terms: "revenue", "recurring", and "lifetime". ClickFunnels pays 40% commissions. This is a very high rate for the recurring affiliate commission (typically, rates vary from 4% up to 50% for a single action). Besides that, you receive 5% for all the commissions received by your affiliates.
• Loads of valuable training materials. Clickfunnels is easy-to-use; though, it might confuse novices in the beginning. On top of that, ClickFunnels has Free Bootcamp for affiliates. This course is free only for the first four days, to get unlimited access you still have to pay but the first days help you realize the value. As a bonus to the paid version, you get videos demonstrating leading affiliates with their funnels.
• Affiliates receive access to tons of promotional materials. All possible kinds of banners, links, images, swipe files, etc.
• Sticky Cookie. All your referrals are tracked accurately via a sticky cookie when a customer clicks on your referral link. This means that you’re paid commission on all products purchased by this very customer through any funnel.
• Share funnels. This is a very effective tool for promoting the ClickFunnels products.

The built-in Share Funnels have a shareable URL that you can generate from all funnels that you create. People click on your share funnel and they are redirected to the page with previews and video explanations. If a visitor has a ClickFunnels account, the share funnel will be automatically added to his account; other visitors (without existing accounts) will have a chance to enter a 14-day free trial. You get paid if a visitor will buy a package and become a member of the ClickFunnels platform. To use this strategy, you just copy the unique link and share it on various platforms, whether social media channels or paid ads. The procedure is simple: 1) edit the funnel you plan to share; 2) go to ‘Settings’; 3) select ‘Share this funnel URL box’; and 4) copy and share the URL.

How to Make Money with ClickFunnels Share Funnels

There are several methods of making money with share funnels; see the following examples. However, you might have other ideas of earning with the ClickFunnels affiliate program.

• Create a sales funnel for your business. In this case, you promote your product or service using ClickFunnels sales funnels. Besides selling your products, this strategy has additional benefits for marketers as they receive first-hand experience and a better understanding of how the platform works. Peng Joon, a well known digital marketer, has implemented this strategy for selling his Content Multiplier Formula. Promoting his 4-step funnel and using two upsells he made more than $10 million.  

• Affiliate Business in a box strategy. For beginners, the Affiliate Business in a box (BiB) might be the easiest variant. Single ads can be used for the promotion of a share funnel. This strategy implies driving traffic and collecting as many leads as possible through ClickFunnels trials.
• Use a share funnel for content upgrades. This method allows you to convince other marketers that the sales funnel significantly helped your business, so that they will sign up to your e-mail database and add your funnel to their ClickFunnels accounts. This strategy may boost opt-in rates given that you provide valuable and relevant content.
• Funnel-building services. You can become a sales funnel building consultant. Many businesses realized the importance of sales funnels but they aren’t proficient enough to build funnels on their own. So, you can build funnels for businesses. As of now, you can find ClickFunnels landing page designers on such freelance platforms like UpWork. Don’t forget that you get commissions from funnels you build by using the share URL. Additionally, as a member of the ClickFunnels community, you can sell your services (as a funnel builder) through ClickFunnels Funnel Rolodex service, which ensures more visibility to your funnel building service and boosts your income.
• Use share funnels for your e-mail marketing strategy. Just use your share funnel URL link as a part of the content you share with e-mail recipients.

How Do You Promote ClickFunnels

In short, you can promote ClickFunnels as any other affiliate program. Use your favorite well-developed marketing channels with a mainstream targeted audience. Here is a list of several marketing channels; however, you might have your own "secret weapon":

• Website or blog. Things seem pretty easy if you have a website with a market-related audience. Many marketers, Dream Car Challenge winners, note that their websites/blogs are the main sources of traffic in terms of referring visitors to the ClickFunnels affiliate program. If you decide to target local businesses, you can still build a new website. It has never been easier: select a reliable and inexpensive hosting (for example, WPX or SiteGround), choose a suitable domain, and a unique theme. Don’t jump into general keywords with the high competition; focus on valuable content with long-tail keywords. There are several helpful courses on "how to build white-hat niche sites" that beginners might find very useful.  
• Facebook pages and groups. Everyone is well aware that Facebook communities are great for marketing. They help you build almost personal relationships with the audience. To keep your group active and people engaged you need to ensure interactions via regular posts, reactions, and comments. You can also join ClickFunnels’ official group on Facebook to keep up with official updates, but read the rules thoroughly; and here is the official ClickFunnels’ page on Facebook.  
• YouTube. Another well-known and widely-used marketing channel. Use all available resources, tools, and skills to make your channel visible to the targeted audience. Make your videos informative and valuable for potential customers.  
• Create a course. Yes, you can create a course related to ClickFunnels; it should be based on the ClickFunnels platform and useful for potential customers. The idea is that you show people how to do something for their business and introduce them to the ClickFunnels platform. You can promote your course via Facebook ads thoroughly choosing the targeted audience.
• Share Funnels. Reread the paragraph above.  
• Pinterest. Pinterest is largely about DIY things. People use it to sell some hand-made or handicraft products; small businesses are largely represented on the platform to expand their business and acquire more customers. Now you got the idea: they want sales. Sales funnels are specifically designed to simplify the selling process.    

How Does a Sales Funnel Work

Successful marketers use sales funnels of different types.

Example:

• You run ads on Google Adwords or Facebook (or any other platform of your choice)
• If people click on your ad, they are redirected to your landing page with an offer. Here they can purchase the product or get a free bonus for entering the e-mail.
• You follow up by sending e-mails and telling about the advantages of using the product/service.
• Offer free or low-price testing of the product. Some marketers give away e-books free or for $1, some software brands offer free trials.
• Follow up with upselling.

Here is a step-by-step process:

• You can get a clearer idea about sales funnels and their types at ClickFunnels Affiliate Bootcamp. It’s free.
• Determine a target market that might be interested in your sales funnel.
• You can sign up for a 14-day free trial and build a landing page.
• Plan a free webinar on how to make a funnel and increase sales.
• Promote your webinar via Google Adwords, Facebook, or any other platform.
• Hold your webinar and explain how to set up a sales funnel and its benefits for the business.
• Follow up via e-mail that contains an affiliate link to the free 2-week trial.

Affiliate marketing just sounds like an "easy way to fill the pockets", though it requires planning and work.

Dream Car Challenge. This is one more perk for ClickFunnels affiliates. This is not a bonus but a challenge with the prize. The rules are quite simple: you subscribe 100 new ClickFunnels members and get $500 per month to cover the credit for your dream car; you subscribe 200 active members and receive $1 000 per month. Many affiliates are getting their checks already.  

Two Comma Club. Russell created the Two Comma Club specifically for all users who have made more than $1 000 000 with ClickFunnels. There are no bonuses except for the recognition of your peers.

How to Succeed with ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

• Earn on your strong marketing sides. For example, one of the successful ClickFunnels affiliates, Marley Baird, is focused on YouTube. By the way, she is the winner of the Dream Car Challenge. From the base, she expanded to a Facebook audience and branched out more from there.
• Thoroughly choose the targeted audience. In other words, you need customers with a high lifetime value (LTV).
• Make customers interested in an entry-level product. Yes, Russell is a guru in upselling, so, you’ll get paid.  
• What industries might be interested in Clickfunnels? It is not specific to any industry. All kinds of businesses and service providers (for example, fitness coaches, relationship experts, and all sorts of consultants) can use Clickfunnels to convert visitors into customers. As a marketer, you demonstrate how businesses can benefit from using ClickFunnels and generate sales.
• Beginners without a wide audience can still earn commissions by promoting Russell’s books, which people get free by paying shipping expenses only. When people use your referral link, they are added to the larger funnel "which is designed to generate maximum value from them". Thus, you make just the initial sale, but you’re rewarded generously for all purchases of your referral in the future.

How to Make Money with ClickFunnels

There are several ways to make money with ClickFunnels as an affiliate.

• Share Funnels. This is one of the powerful features of ClickFunnels. You can share any funnel of yours with a custom link.

The point is that to access your funnel people/businesses have to be a ClickFunnels member. So, they will have an extra reason to subscribe. And here comes a 14-day free trial. If you share a good funnel, people will see it in action and, hopefully, subscribe.  

• Funnels as a service. The strategy is similar to the first method, but here you don’t give away funnels – you sell them. Currently, several people use this strategy on the Upwork platform. Customers might become loyal to ClickFunnels and subscribe.
• Free ClickFunnels training. Some people might be interested but still unsure. To dispel a doubt, offer free training. It can be e-book, individual consulting, webinars, group coaching, virtual conferences, etc. This way you build trust too.
• Info products. It can be your own valuable and informative product, for example, an e-book or a course with a part of it dedicated to the promotion of the business via ClickFunnels. If your material is useful, readers might subscribe to ClickFunnels using your affiliate link.
• Detailed reviews. One of the best ways to promote any product or service is to write in-depth reviews. To get more organic traffic, use long-tail keywords (SEMRush is the SEO tool that helps you find keywords). Note that reviews shouldn’t praise only the advantages of the product. Be real and pragmatic. YouTube is a great platform to generate traffic with video reviews of the products. Many successful ClickFunnels affiliates (Steve Larsen, Spencer Mecham, Rachel Pedersen, and others) mastered YouTube reviews.
• Bonuses. Specifically designed bonus materials are very attractive, but they should be valuable for people. Offer only high-quality content as a bonus.
• Make bridges. Yes, build a bridge page between the traffic source and the ClickFunnels confirmation page. The "bridge" can be used to offer bonuses.
• Paid Ads. You may use paid ads on various platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, etc. Just always plan your budget and performance.
• Email marketing. It’s easy to make the entire email marketing process automated (check ConvertKit or any other email auto-responders). You can create email campaigns targeted at specific groups.  
• Webinars and virtual summits. Russell makes great webinars. It works just great. You can use this method as well. One of the leading ClickFunnels affiliates, Tyler Clark, deploys live webinars to his advantage. He’s pretty successful – Tyler is one of the Dream Car winners.

Important: When you promote The One Funnel Away Challenge, you get 100% commissions on all sales. There is no mistake. Moreover, ClickFunnels pays $100 for the course... and you keep this amount. It is one of the programs with the highest conversions. Just do not skip this challenge while developing your marketing strategy.  

The ClickFunnels Bootcamp reveals a 100-day plan on how to grow your business as an affiliate.  Russell offers his own recommendations on how to start from zero.

Step 1. Select a narrow and specific market. In the beginning, target only this chosen group (for example, local tennis courses).

Step 2. Squeeze page. For local businesses, Russell deploys a two-page funnel. The squeeze page is the first one that says something like “How to get more clients using ClickFunnels. Enter your e-mail to watch the video.” By submitting an e-mail the person is redirected to the bridge page.

Step 3. Bridge page. This is the second page of a simple funnel. Here is the video about the ClickFunnels strategy and value. It is recommended to make the video industry-specific (“as a tennis academy owner you want to get more customers…”) You also map out a funnel that can be used to get new customers.

Step 4. Giveaway. You give away a share funnel, which you build specially for this specific industry. At the bottom of your bridge page put a link to this free funnel. Prepare the preview of the funnel and invite to click and get it free. If they click, they will be offered to join a 14-day free trial to begin using the funnel.

Step 5. Generate traffic. As an option, you can run paid ads on Facebook.

Step 6. Follow up. Most people do not sign up for ClickFunnels at once, so you can remind them about ClickFunnels and invite them to watch the video via email. Later you can try to follow up with emails for different offers.  As Russell says, his autoresponder sequences usually consist of 8-9 e-mails.

Step 7. First, be ready to lose some money. Like with any business, you have to invest first to get the results later.

Step 8. Follow up. As time passes, your email list will expand. Continue making upsells and building trust.

Case Study 1: Chris Fong and ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

The story of Chris began in 2015. He just planned to sell white-labeled logo design services. At one moment, he ran onto ClickFunnels. After getting some experience with the platform, he wrote the ClickFunnels review and started getting steady traffic. Later Chris "created a few lead magnets and offered their white-label rights to up their value. And he invested in some other white-label software products that his referrals could use themselves for their own bonus offers… He tied them together with some personalized coaching to create what he considers to be the best ClickFunnels bonus package…"

This strategy allowed Chris Fong to qualify for the ClickFunnels Dream car award in 2019 (Chris referred 100+ active affiliates):

Besides, Chris began receiving "some nice ClickFunnels affiliate commissions":

Chris Fong also commented that his experience with ClickFunnels "has fundamentally changed the way he approaches affiliate marketing business". Now he focuses on "offering as much value as he can".

Case study 2: How Spencer Mecham made over $1 000 000 with ClickFunnels

Spencer Mecham from Buildapreneur is one of the leading ClickFunnels affiliates, a Dream Car winner, and a 2-Comma Club Winner. As of now, he makes 6-figure income only online as an affiliate. Recently Spencer revealed the steps he followed and confessed that he would implement the same strategy "to do it all over again".

Spencer said that he "built a list and ran ads through multiple channels and quickly rose to one of the top 10 affiliates of multiple programs. One of those programs is ClickFunnels, which is a very notable program."

Spencer Mecham posted the screenshot of his commissions with ClickFunnels affiliate program:  

It stands to reason, Spencer doesn’t open all the details in his posts, but he created his "Affiliate Secrets Course" where he opens up about choosing the right verticals, setting up funnels, traffic sources, etc. In fact, the fundamentals include selecting industries with ready budget (when people have money to spend), high-paying affiliate programs (one of them is ClickFunnels), adding value (valuable content, valuable bonuses, and so on), promoting affiliate offers (Spencer actively uses YouTube, Google Adwords, and Facebook to drive loads of traffic to his campaigns), and strategic follow-up (with upsells).

As you see, there is nothing new for experienced marketers. Maybe, it is persistence. He wanted to quit his 9h/5d job to achieve freedom, so he did it.

ClickFunnels Affiliate Program: Commission Structure

Commission rates depend on the performance of ClickFunnels affiliates:

• Badge Commission: 20%. This commission is applicable to anyone.
• Front-End Affiliate: 40% commission on front-end offers.
• Open Affiliate: 30% commission on SAAS + 40% on front-end offers.
• Qualified Affiliate: 40% commission on SAAS + 40% on front-end offers.

When you are approved as a ClickFunnels affiliate, you can promote front-end offerings (the Front-End Affiliate) with a 40% commission on these offers. Once you have earned $1 000 in a month, you can apply for "Open Affiliate". Open Affiliates are eligible to promote both front-end offerings and additional services, such as the ClickFunnels SAAS. Open Affiliates that maintain 40 unique ClickFunnels paid user accounts monthly may qualify for "Qualified Affiliate". Affiliates can receive Badge commission and Affiliate commissions together.

Pros&Cons of ClickFunnels Affiliate Program

Pros:

• High commissions. Affiliates receive up to 40% lifetime commission.
• Reputation. Regular payouts, excellent support, training materials, bonuses, and a free 14-day trial. Free trial helps to understand the functionality of the platform before purchasing a package.
• Everyone can apply to the basic ClickFunnels affiliate program to promote “the front end offers”, including DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and the One Funnel Away Challenge.
• Sticky cookie. All affiliate programs have a specified cookie period during which all purchases of your referrals top up your account. Some programs provide you only with a 24-hour cookie period (for example, Amazon’s affiliate program). ClickFunnels affiliate program equips you with a “sticky cookie” with no time limit.

Cons:

• The 75-day waiting for your first payout
• To promote the ClickFunnels software, you have to fit the requirements: 1) take the Affiliate Bootcamp course, and 2) make $1 000 in ClickFunnels affiliate commissions in the past month. These are recent changes that might represent a challenge to new affiliates. Yet still, it’s possible.
• Limits on funnels. On the cheapest plan, you are restricted to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20 000 visitors. If you use ClickFunnels for your own business, it is ok, but if you build funnels for multiple businesses, you might find it annoying. Well, other plans lift these restrictions.  

Conclusion

There is no secret that affiliate marketing is a challenging business. It might become a very profitable and lucrative venture provided that you develop and follow the proper marketing strategy. You can’t just wake up in the morning and see your bank account topped up from nowhere. Online passive income requires investments, both intellectual and financial (here you can reduce expenses by investing more time). Regardless of the level of your expertise, the ClickFunnels affiliate program provides you with multiple options of earning commissions. Join ClickFunnels Avengers (Affiliates) on Facebook. The group keeps you updated on all ClickFunnels Affiliate announcements and promotions and provides affiliate and Best Practice training. The best part of this community is in sharing experiences, ideas, and successes with other fellow ClickFunnels affiliates.

To unlock the potential you need to understand how the platform works. Hopefully, this article was useful. Russell’s books "DotCom Secrets" and "Expert Secrets" reveal some additional practical ideas that can be successfully implemented in many industries.