How to Use ClickFunnels for Affiliate Marketing in 2023 (GUIDE)

ClickFunnels is one of the most popular marketing tools used by online sellers, including affiliate marketers, to make money online. 

You may even be surprised to learn that you can become an affiliate of ClickFunnels and earn money promoting ClickFunnels products. 

But, that’s completely up to you. Essentially, you can promote any affiliate program you’d like using the powerful ClickFunnels sales funnel software. 

In this guide, I’ll share with you the in’s and out’s of how to use ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing…so you can earn money (dare I say it…) in your sleep!

What is ClickFunnels?

You may already have an idea of what clickfunnels is, or maybe you’re just finding out about them now. If it’s the latter, then there’s a lot more to ClickFunnels than you may realize! 

First, and foremost, ClickFunnels is best known for their sales funnel software. Sales funnels can be a little tricky for beginners to understand, so they created a funnel hacker guide to be used with their software. 

This all-in-one online marketing tool has helped more than 100,000 everyday people become successful entrepreneurs.

ClickFunnels even has some awesome accolades including:

• Best Entrepreneurial Company in America by Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneur360 List (2019)

• America’s Fastest-Growing Privately-Held Companies by Inc.’s Inc 500 List (2018, 2019)

• America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes (2020)

Awards notation courtesy of PR News Wire

ClickFunnels Free Trainings

In addition to their sales funnel software, they offer entrepreneurs free online training for how to get your products and ideas out to the masses.

Three such trainings are: Funnel Hacking Secrets, Perfect Webinar Secrets, and the 5-Day Lead Challenge.

ClickFunnels Paid Trainings:

But if you prefer to skip the free stuff for the more advanced step-by-step training, then there are paid trainings you can take. 

These include the One Funnel Away Challenge, the Funnel Builder Secrets Bundle, and Two Comma Club Live.

Russell Brunson Books

And for those that prefer to consume knowledge by reading, ClickFunnels co-founder, Russell Brunson also has a series of online marketing books. Each of these books will give you a piece of the puzzle on how to start and scale an online business. 

I would definitely recommend grabbing all three books to complete the trilogy! 

Russell’s Trilogy of Books are:

• DotCom Secrets

• Expert Secrets

• Traffic Secrets

ClickFunnels Pricing – Can I Get it FREE?

Yes! You can take ClickFunnels for a free two-week test drive by going here.

Once you’ve decided you want to use ClickFunnels in your business, then you can choose from a tiered monthly subscription plan. 

These include the following plans:

• $97/month – 20 Funnels limit, 100 pages limit, FunnelFlix

• $297/month – Unlimited Funnels, Unlimited Pages, FunnelFlix + Additional hours of trainings and courses

• $2,497/month – – Unlimited Funnels, Unlimited Pages, FunnelFlix + Additional trainings and courses, Coaching Program

But there is a special backdoor deal that gives you a 45% discount on ClickFunnels. Only a few people are privy to this.

If you’re looking to save on your subscription plan, then definitely check out the best ClickFunnels Deal here.

How to Use ClickFunnels for Affiliate Marketing

Now let’s go over how you can use ClickFunnels in your affiliate marketing business. 

In this guide, I’ll show you a real ClickFunnels affiliate funnel I use in my business, as well as how I promote it to make affiliate sales. 

You’ll also have an opportunity to clone this professionally designed funnel to use in your own business if you’d like! 

So let’s get started! 

Step 1: Choose a Profitable Affiliate Niche 

The key to making serious money with affiliate products is to choose a profitable affiliate marketing niche first. Health, wealth and relationships are just some examples of the most profitable niches for affiliate marketing.

These three areas of interest are things we as humans have always been interested in, and will continue to be in the foreseeable future. This makes promoting affiliate products in these areas a highly profitable venture.

Take for instance, the health and wellness niche. One may immediately think it’s a saturated space to promote affiliate products.

I mean, with all the diet fads and latest exercise trends, how could one possibly make money when so many people are already promoting it?

Well, there are plenty of sub-niches, or smaller audiences, within this enormous space of health and wellness to consider.

Here are just some quick examples: 

▪ Ketogenic diet	▪ Beginner Runners
▪ Intermittent Fasting	▪ Long-Distance Runners
▪ Paleo Diet	▪ Weight Lifting for Men
▪ CrossFitters	▪ Weight Lifting for Women

This practice of zoning in on a smaller subset of a larger audience, can really catapult you into making affiliate sales much faster! 

Step 2: Join the Best Affiliate Programs

These days, you can promote nearly any product under the sun – Though that doesn’t mean you should!

Joining top affiliate programs that pay you the highest amount of affiliate commissions is worth spending time looking into. 

For instance, many software programs that offer monthly subscription plans will pay you a recurring monthly commission for each affiliate sale you make. 

ClickFunnels is one such affiliate program. As a ClickFunnels affiliate, you’ll get paid between 20% – 40% every month per affiliate sale you make of a monthly ClickFunnels subscription plan.

On the other hand, when you promote the monthly stock market subscription tool, Stock Invest US, you’ll only get paid commissions for the first month of that sale.

Below is a breakdown of what 6-months affiliate commissions would look like if you were to make 1 affiliate sale of each program’s basic subscription plan.

MONTH	CLICKFUNNELS (Recurring Commissions)	STOCK INVEST US (Non-Recurring Commissions)
1	$38.80	$4.78
2	$38.80	$0.00
3	$38.80	$0.00
4	$38.80	$0.00
5	$38.80	$0.00
6	$38.80	$0.00
TOTAL:	$232.80	$4.78

With the ClickFunnels Affiliate Program, at the 40% commission level, you’d earn $38.80 per month commission for a subscription sale of $97.00. This is the case for as long as the customer stays on the plan.

For the Stock Invest US Affiliate Program, you’d earn a $4.78 affiliate commission for a subscription sale of $15.92. Even if the customer continues on the monthly plan for six months, you only get paid one-time.

Joining the wrong affiliate programs could literally cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars lost in affiliate commissions!

For that reason, I put together a list of the highest paying affiliate programs and the best recurring affiliate programs. Definitely make sure to check them out.

Step 3: Build an Affiliate Bridge Funnel

So what they don’t tell you when you first start affiliate marketing, is that most people who click on your affiliate link won’t immediately purchase from you. 

I know, it’s a bummer! 

But you can increase your chances of making an affiliate sale by first building a ClickFunnels Affiliate Bridge Funnel. 

This ‘bridge funnel’ will help you capture the information of your prospect, such as an email address, before bridging them over to your affiliate offer. 

This way, you’ll be able to follow up with your prospect and further share the benefits of purchasing the affiliate product. Creating this type of funnel is not difficult to do. 

Here’s the simple process to follow:

1 – Inside your ClickFunnels dashboard, go to:

Build Funnel > Cookbook Builder Process > Start Cookbook

2 – Choose from one of the ClickFunnels pre-built bridge funnels.

3 – Create an opt-in form to capture email addresses.

4 – Seamlessly bridge your prospect over to the affiliate offer. In the ClickFunnels editor, go to: Settings > General > ‘On Submit go to’ > and enter your affiliate link.

This funnel will build you an asset of potential repeat customers, who may be interested in other relevant affiliate offers you have for them. That’s the power of building an email list. 

Now there’s actually a lot more that goes into building a high converting affiliate funnel. There’s the call-to-action, the sales copy, the placement of images and videos and tons of stuff that one wouldn’t normally think about.

For that reason, ClickFunnels created the OFA Challenge to get you started building your first funnel.

You can check out the entire funnel used in this example here. It’s the exact funnel I use to bridge prospects over to the One Funnel Away Challenge with my affiliate link.

And as promised, you can download the same funnel for FREE by going here.

Step 4: Promote Your Affiliate Bridge Funnel

A funnel can only make you money if you get actual eyes on it. If no one is able to find your affiliate bridge page, well then, no one will buy your affiliate offer.

So next, I’ll share with you a couple of ways in which you can easily drive traffic to your newly created ClickFunnels affiliate funnel. 

But if you want the entire playbook that shares with you an infinite amount of ways to drive free traffic to your offers, then I suggest grabbing this book.

1 – Blogging

According to Awin, almost 65% of affiliate marketers generate traffic by blogging. This is without a doubt one of the best ways to make affiliate sales and build a long-term online business. 

As a full-time affiliate marketer myself, I can attest to the benefits of having a blog as being one of my best drivers of sales. 

Using SEO tools, you can uncover exact phrases people are searching for online, and write content pertaining to those searches. From there, you can place your affiliate bridge funnel throughout your blog content where people can find it.

Additionally, you can add the ClickFunnels plug-in to your WordPress site and seamlessly integrate this sales funnel builder into your blog! 

2 – YouTube

YouTube for affiliate marketing is another great option. As a matter of fact, this is another way I personally use to drive more traffic to my affiliate funnel! 

The concept here is simple.

As a YouTuber, you can create video content that helps someone answer a question they may have, or shows them something they are looking to learn.

For example, on my YouTube channel, one of the topics I often speak on is how to use ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing. In this video, I share my exact affiliate marketing framework and attract viewers interested in learning this.

From there, I direct viewers to the links within the description of my videos, where I have my ClickFunnels affiliate bridge funnel. 

You can even place your affiliate bridge funnel as a ‘live’ link within your YouTube banner. That way, you’ll have it front and center for everyone to see!

On many occasions I have also turned my blog content into video content for YouTube. So essentially, you can put out two pieces of content that help drive more traffic to your affiliate bridge funnel! 

If you want to start a YouTube channel to drive traffic, then I would recommend checking out this free YouTube Masterclass.

Affiliate Marketing Funnel Created on ClickFunnels (FREE)

Since there are various ways to do affiliate marketing using ClickFunnels, I want to share with you another example of an affiliate funnel. 

This funnel example is one very commonly used to do affiliate marketing by some of the top gurus, including ClickFunnels Super Affiliate, Spencer Mecham.

This two-page funnel is called the Squeeze Funnel. It consists of two pages:

• Squeeze Page – is used to collect the email address of your prospect.

• Thank You Page – is used to bridge prospects over to your affiliate offer.

With this strategy, you entice a prospect to give you their email address in exchange for a ‘freebie’ offer. This freebie would be something closely related to the affiliate offer that you will introduce them to on the next page.

An example of a ‘freebie’ offer would be something such as ‘Get 150 Keto Diet Recipes FREE!’. 

This squeeze page is simple and offers very little distraction. It is meant simply to attract people interested in one thing. In this case, it’s Keto recipes.

Within the ClickFunnels editor, you can connect your email marketing tool. Simply go to the ClickFunnels Editor, then Settings > Integrations.

Many of the popular email marketing softwares integrate with ClickFunnels, including:

• Active Campaign

• Aweber

• Convertkit

• Constant Contact

• Drip

I personally use the Aweber integration with ClickFunnels. It’s easy to use and super affordable compared to other email marketing softwares. You can try out Aweber for FREE by going here.

Once a prospect enters their email address they are sent to the second page in the funnel, which is the ‘Thank You’ page.

This page is where you introduce yourself, and where you present your prospect with an affiliate offer. This offer would naturally follow the next thing they would be interested in after opting-in for the ‘freebie.’

In this example, a relevant affiliate offer could be a Keto Subscription Snack Box.

Sales copy is really important when it comes to writing the marketing content for your ‘Thank You’ page. The better you’re able to write it, the more affiliate sales you’ll make! 

This FREE FunnelScripts class will share with you how to write great sales copy in 10 minutes or less. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Now while some people will buy from you right away, other people may need a little more time to decide.

So, you’ll want to send out emails to your new prospects and follow up with them. This can be a bit challenging for many beginner affiliate marketers. But there are email swipe files available that you can copy and paste to help you get started.

You can check out nine of these email swipe files here.

Here also is a copy of this ClickFunnels affiliate funnel that you can use in your affiliate marketing business. If you already have a ClickFunnels account, then great! If not, then you can take the funnel for a FREE 14-Day test drive as a new user.

Best Courses for Using ClickFunnels for Affiliate Marketing

This guide is meant as a high level overview for how to create a passive income affiliate marketing business using ClickFunnels. But maybe you feel as though you still need the nuts and bolts to really get you on your way to making affiliate sales.

If that’s the case, then there are two courses that will give you the roadmap needed to move forward. 

The first comes from Spencer Mecham, one of ClickFunnels’ top affiliate and Dream Car Winner.

Affiliate Secrets 3.0, Spencer Mecham 

Spencer Mecham is a multi-millionaire affiliate marketer, who has helped over 500 students make money with affiliate marketing. In total, his students have earned over $1 million dollars in affiliate commissions, and over 15+ have won cars in the process. 

He’s someone that I have learned from over the last couple of years, and admire greatly for his quality content and leadership. 

Here are just some of the things you’ll learn in Spencer’s affiliate marketing course:

• How to pick wildly profitable niches that no one else is targeting

• How to find little-known products with insanely high profit potential

• Full courses on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Blogging included!

• How to get leads to your affiliate system every single day using completely free traffic

• How to create automated email sequences that drive sales on autopilot for years to come

• How to create landing pages that convert almost every visitor into potential sales

ClickFunnels Affiliate Bootcamp

ClickFunnels offers a free affiliate bootcamp that consists of Super Affiliates sharing stories of how they earn HUGE ClickFunnels commission checks.

This free affiliate marketing course is geared towards people interested in promoting ClickFunnels products. But the core training from ClickFunnels founder, Russell Brunson, can really apply to promoting any affiliate product.

Some ClickFunnels Super Affiliates who are featured in the bootcamp include: Steve J. Larsen, Dave Gambrill, Rachel Pedersen, Peng Joon, Jim Edwards, and Greg Jeffries. You can check out my full bootcamp review here.

This free course is for you if you are starting from SCRATCH, with:

• No large list to email

• No product of your own

• No influencer connections

• And no online reputation established just yet

How to Use ClickFunnels for Affiliate Marketing Conclusion

ClickFunnels remains one of my favorite tools to use in my affiliate marketing business, and is one I recommend often.

I’ve been a ClickFunnels customer for 4+ years and I truly wouldn’t want to use any other sales funnel builder out there. They have helped me sell online courses through their software and training – and more recently ClickFunnels has helped me promote and make sales of various affiliate offers via affiliate bridge pages. 

If you need further help in using ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing, then Spencer Mecham’s course is my top choice for help.

You can check out Spencer’s free training here.

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