While many newbies get overwhelmed at the mention of the words “sales funnel”, the truth is that using an Affiliate Marketing funnel is essential to qualify your potential customers, increase your conversions and build a successful long term business.

After reading this article, you will know exactly how to create your own high converting affiliate funnel, why all successful affiliate use one and how to optimize it and apply it to your business.

Let’s get started!

What is an affiliate marketing funnel and why you need one?

When I was first learning about affiliate marketing, the most common explanation I’d hear was that affiliate marketers promoted products online and made commissions when people clicked their links and bought the products.

And while that is correct, it doesn’t quite explain why you need a sales funnels and where exactly does it fit inside this model.

So let’s take a closer look at the affiliate marketing process to understand why a funnel is necessary.

Direct Linking vs. Using a Sales Funnel

When you join an affiliate program in order to promote their products, you receive your own affiliate link. This link contains your affiliate ID so when you use it to direct people to the affiliate offer, they know which commission should be attributed to you.

Technically, you could place this link anywhere (as long as it is allowed by the affiliate program) so when people click on it, they go to the merchant’s site and if they buy something, you get a commission.

Simple right? Why would you want to complicate things…

Well, the reality is that the majority of people won’t buy the product after clicking your link. Actually, it takes an average of 8 touches to get a conversion with a new customer.

This is why using a sales funnel for affiliate marketing is essential.

When you use a simple sales funnel, you collect your potential client’s email before directing them to the affiliate offer. Some of them might buy the first time and some of them won’t. But now you have a way to follow up with them via email and get another percentage of them to buy.

Not to mention that you are building your email list at the same time and can now email them about other related offers in your niche for free and forever.

Benefits of Using A Sales Funnel For Affiliate Marketing

1. More conversions = More money

The main benefit of using a an affiliate marketing funnel to promote your offers is to increase conversions.

As I mentioned before, most people won’t buy the products you are promoting the first time they click on your link so if you are not following up with them you are missing conversions that are low-hanging fruit and basically leaving money on the table.

Now, most affiliate programs have a cookie duration time of around 30 days, which means that you would still get attributed a commission for a sale that was made in that time frame.

However, if the client decides to come back to the product after a few days, they will probably do a quick search on Google and end up clicking on someone else’s affiliate link so you lose the commission.

On the other side, if you use a sales funnel, they will receive your follow-up emails so they are a. more likely to make a purchase, and b. when they do, they will probably go through the link on your email campaign so you will still get that commission.

2. Build a lifetime money-making asset

The phrase “the money is on the list” might be a bit of a marketing cliché but not gratuitously. Any business owner or marketer knows that an email list is one of the most important assets to long-term success.

As an affiliate, you might choose to promote your offers via social media, a blog, or using paid ads but most of those platforms can distemper or shut down your account overnight making you lose your audience and income source which is why you don’t want to rely solely on them.

On the other hand, your email list is 100% yours and no one can take it away from you. Even in the weird case that an email company closes your account, you can always move your subscriber to another one and continue with your business.

And is that is not incentive enough, a popular study by DMA found that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42 which is more than you will get on any other platform.

3. You can promote other offers for free

While the short-term goal of using an affiliate marketing funnel is being able to follow up with potential clients and increase your conversions, it also allows you to promote other related to the people who opted into your email list.

This means that you can create a months-long or even years-long email sequence and promote other affiliate offers to your list on autopilot.

Of course, you want to make sure to also provide value to your subscribers and build a relationship with them so they don’t end up leaving your list. But, as long as you keep your email list happy, they will continue to buy the products you recommend.

Plus, the success rate of selling to a previous customer is 60-70%, versus that of selling to a new customer which is 5-20%. Basically, it’ll be easier and more profitable to promote other affiliate offers to your email list than it’ll be to promote them to a new audience.

4. You Build Your Personal Brand

Using a sales funnel to promote your affiliate marketing offers, is a great opportunity to build your personal brand and grow your authority in your niche.

Nowadays. people prefer following the recommendations of someone they know and trust so it is key to grow a relationship with your audience.

When you use a sales funnel, you use what is known as a “bridge page” (more on this later) which is where you have the opportunity to quickly present yourself and endorse the affiliate offer you are promoting. This way, when you email those who opted into your list, they will know who you are.

“But what if I don’t want to build a personal brand?”

If you were thinking that, do not worry, not everyone wants to build a personal brand and you don’t need to show yourself or do in order to use a sales or be successful but depending on your niche it can very beneficial to your business.

You can use paid ads with no issues

One of the methods affiliates use to bring traffic to their offers is paid advertisiment on platforms like Google, Facebook. Tiktok, etc. But most of these platforms are not very fond of affiliate marketers so they will often ban accounts that use affiliate links as the destination URL for their ads.

But when you use an affiliate marketing funnel, you don’t need to worry about this happening to your ad account since you will be sending all your traffic to your opt-in page instead of your affiliate link.

As an affiliate, your traffic source is the core of your busines and this allows you to diversify and scale your earnings with a lot more ease.

How does an affiliate marketing funnel look like?

Know that you are aware of some of the main benefits of using a sales funnel for affiliate marketing, let’s take a look at what does it actually means.

In the image above you can see an example of how an affiliate marketing funnel works and what parts it is composed of. (I will explain how to create one with more detail in the next section)

At the beginning, we have the traffic source that can be anything and as many, as you choose (eg. social media, a blog, Youtube, ads, etc.) and next we have the first step of the sales funnel which is an opti-n page that has the goal of capturing people’s email addresses and add them to your email automation.

Following, we have what’s known as a bridge page which has the goal of both pre-selling the offer to the visitor, introducing yourself and start building a relationship with your subscribers. Some affiliates skip this bridge page and simply go from the opt-in page to the merchant’s website but it helps conversions and improves your business long term.

From there, we direct visitors to the merchant’s website through the affiliate link where they might or not buy the product.

And finally, we have a 5-day email campaign that is sent automatically to those who opted-in and has the goal to convert more of them into buyers and, of course, make you more commissions.

How To Create An Affiliate Marketing Funnel

Now that you understand how an affiliate marketing funnel works, it’s time to learn how to create your first high-converting sales funnels for your affiliate offers.

Let’s get started!

1. Choose your affiliate offers

Before you start building your sales funnel, you want to make sure that you have chosen the right affiliate offer to promote. No matter how amazing your funnels are, if you have a bad product, it won’t perform well and it won’t be worthy of your time and effort.

If you have already decided on your affiliate offer, feel free to skip to the next point. Otherwise, here are some key factors to consider:

Commissions

Affiliate commissions vary a lot from program to program and can be anything from 3% to 50%+. There are also programs that pay recurring commissions every month or those that pay you based on leads instead of sales —known as CPA (cost peraction) programs.

Naturally, you are doing this to make money so you want to choose an affiliate program that offers a good commission rate. Recurring commission are also a great alternative to high ticket programs since your lifetime average value of your customers can be similar or higher.

I would suggest staying away from programs like Amazon, Target, and other retailers which pay around 3%-8% so you need a lot of sales to make a significant income.

Instead, go for high-ticket or recurring affiliate products that pay at least a 20% commission rate or have an EPC of $50 minimum. Typically digital products like software, apps, memberships, courses, etc. tend to pay higher commissions since they only invest in their product once and they can then sell it forever.

Reputation

When you promote or recommend an affiliate offer, you are putting your name and reputation behind it so you want to make sure it is a product you can trust and that you are happy to associate yourself with.

If the brand is super popular (e.g. Apple, Nike, Chase), this is obviously not an issue and you can promote it with no concerns. Otherwise, make sure to do some research about it, and read the reviews and if possible, buy the product and try it out yourself.

Ultimately, you don’t want to promote anything you would not buy and use so keep that as the bar for the affiliate products you promote.

Merchant’s Website

The sales page or website of your affiliate offer is as important as the product itself. While you are going to take people through your sales funnel, the merchant’s page is the last step so you want to make sure that it is well designed and optimized for conversions.

Most companies have entire teams taking care of this but it is always worth it to check that the page looks professional, loads fast, has clear buttons to shop above the fold, and takes both credit card and Paypal.

1. Create your Opt-in Page

Your Opt-In Page is the first step of your affiliate marketing funnel and where you will direct all your traffic towards.

The main goal of an opt-in page is to capture visitors’ emails by offering something free in return (also known as a lead magnet).

Naturally, the lead magnet or freebie must be related to the offer so it makes sense to present the affiliate product to those who opted-in to receive it.

Here is what you need to consider when creating your opt-in page:

a. Choose your lead magnet

As I mentioned before, your lead magnet is a free item that you will offer to your visitors in order to capture their emails. And it will also help you to reach the right audience.

For example, if you are promoting a weight loss supplement, you could offer a 7-day weight loss plan as a lead magnet since those who are interested in that freebie are also very likely to be interested in the weight loss supplement.

A freebie doesn’t need to be anything too complicated or that takes you weeks to create but it does need to have a high perceived value and solve a problem for your target audience.

In the example for the weight loss supplement, you can imagine that people who are trying to lose weight are also wondering what they should eat to get results. That’s why something like a meal plan, recipes, or weight loss hacks are freebies that they would be interested in.

Some other popular lead magnets you can consider are templates, worksheets, discounts, free consultations, pdf guides, ebooks, video series, etc.

While your lead magnet is important, you won’t know how well it works until you test it so try to not overthink it. You can always optimize it later once you get some data so it is best to put your funnel into action and see how it performs, especially if this is your first time promoting a certain product and still don’t know if it will convert well.

b. Use an attractive headline and Call To Action (CTA)

Once you have chosen your lead magnet, the next important step is to communicate it in an attractive way so your visitors understand the benefit they can get from it.

When visitors come to your opt-in page, you only have a few seconds before they decide if they stay or if they simply close the page so it is key to use a clear and concise headline that captures their attention and motivates them to give you their email.

Below are some proven formulas to create high converting headlines are:

• How to Achieve [Result] in [Timeframe] Without [Thing You Hate Doing]
• [Number] Quick Tips to Getting Easy [Result]
• Discover How You To [Desired Outcome] in [Timeframe]
• [Number] Beginner Strategies to [Desired Outcome]

You can also check out this article for 100+ headline templates you can use on your opt-in page.

c. Be consistent with the merchant’s website

Something key to consider when creating your opt-in page (and the rest of your affiliate marketing funnel) is to be consistent with the design and message of the affiliate company you are promoting.

Your visitors should feel like all the pages are related and be able to navigate seamlessly throughout all the sales funnel without any noticeable differences.

Using a message or design that is not consistent with the merchant’s website might make them think there is something sketchy about the offer or that they have landed on the wrong page.

In the image below you can see an example I created for an affiliate offer. The last one is the merchant’s landing page so I used the same colors and types of images to create the opt-in and bridge page and achieve consistency across the whole funnel.

d. Use a sales funnel builder

If you are wondering how would you even go about building all of this without any coding or design experience, do not worry.

Nowadays there are dozens of drag-and-drop funnel builders that make the whole process completely easy and intuitive.

Here is a list of my top best alternatives for beginners if you want to check it out. I personally use and recommend Clickfunnels to my readers since I have found it to be the easiest one to use.

It has premade funnel templates that you can simply import and customize to match the colors and branding of your affiliate offer.

It also offers an email autoresponder so you don’t need to go through the trouble of integrating a separate software. Click here to get a free trial.

2. Create your bridge page

The next step in your affiliate marketing funnel is the bridge page, which has the purpose of connecting your opt-in page with the merchant’s website.

The main goals of your bridge page are to introduce the affiliate product to your visitors and “pre-sell” it with the hopes of increasing the conversions.

But it is also an opportunity to briefly introduce build yourself to your audience and start building your own personal brand and authority. This way, you can start creating trust with your subscribers and they are more likely to remember you and read your emails.

So, what should you include on your affiliate bridge page?

• Thank you message: Thank people for opting-in and let them know that the free item that you promised is on the way to their inbox. You can also ask them to check their spam folder and whitelist your email address so they have more chances of noticing your next emails.

• Headline: Use an attention-grabbing title that highlights the benefits you are about to present and increase the chances of them not closinf the tab.

• Introduce yourself and the offer: This is the main element of the bridge page where you will introduce yourself and your credentials to start building your authority and give more weight to your recommendations.
  
  Then introduce the affiliate product and recommend it from your own personal experience to increase its social proof. This is best done through a short video but some affiliates use just text and pictures, below you can find some examples.

• Call to Action Button: Finally, include a clear and direct CTA button and direct it to your affiliate link. This way when people click on it, they will go to the merchant’s website and you will be credited for their purchases.

Tip: Make sure to keep the message and branding consistent throughout all your funnel so visitors never feel confused or wonder if they have landed on the wrong page.

3. Merchant’s website (Affiliate Offer)

The next step in your affiliate marketing funnel is the merchant’s website, which is where your audience will go if they click the link on the previous bridge page.

It is estimated that around 1%-2% of visitors make a purchase when visiting a website for the first time so you can expect to get 1-2 sales for every 100 clicks.

But don’t worry, for the majority of them who didn’t buy the affiliate product, you have a chance to follow up via email which is where the next step comes…

4. Create your email campaign

Since only a small percentage of visitors will buy the product when first visiting the page, the goal of your email campaign is to convert more of them into buyers.

One of the most effective email campaigns is the SOAP Opera sequence, create by Russel Brunson. This series of five emails that you can send five days in a row that focus on building a relationship with your new prospect, creating trust as well as an interest in your brand and/or product

As the name suggests, the “soap opera sequence” involves creating a story that relies on open-ended, high drama “episodes” that catch your readers’ attention and make them want to find out more (aka, open your next emails). 

Here is a breakdown of the five emails in the sequence:

Email 0: Lead Magnet

Before starting with your SOAP Opera sequence, your first email should be to send the lead magnet or freebie that you offered on your opt-in page. You can also let your subscribers know that you will be sending them some important information in the coming days so they know what to expect.

Email 1: Set the Stage

The first email in the sequence is the welcome email. This is your first opportunity to introduce yourself and create a connection with your subscribers. You want to create some mystery so they feel compelled to learn more. Here is an example of how to do it:

“I’ve been in the fitness industry for nearly a decade but only two years ago I discovered a little-known scientific fact that change it all for me. I’m getting results I never thought possible and doing it almost effortlessly. Do you want to know what this fact is? Watch out for my next email and I’ll share my secret with you.”

Email 2: High Drama

At this point, your subscribers are wondering what is the fact that has given you so great results. They are already interested so you can share more information to keep them hooked and start the selling process.

You can increase the drama by sharing a low point in the story. In the case of the fitness example, it could be an injury that leads to getting out of shape and needing a highly efficient training method.

As you promised, share the “secret” and present the affiliate offer:

“Before I go, it’s time to share the fact I discovered with you. Take a look at this website and see the results people are getting with it”

Email 3: The Epiphany

By now, your readers are invested in the story, have been introduced to the offer. But most importantly, they feel a connection with you and want to find out how you overcame the difficulties.

So now is where you use the Epiphany email to tell them:

“What I discovered was that I need a training method that I could do anywhere…”

Naturally, this epiphany needs to be related to a benefit of the product you are promoting so they can begin seeing the value they can get from it.

Email 4: The Hidden Benefits

At this point, your subscribers already know the product you are promoting and its potential value but this is where you help them understand and imagine how it can actually work from them and improve their lives.

Imagine yourself using the product and share all the ways it can benefit them. Make them realize how much they actually need it.

Make sure to add your affiliate link and a call to action inviting them to purchase.

Email 5: The Call to Action

This is the last email of your SOAP opera sequence. Your subcirbers are already familiar with you and the affiliate offer.

Here you can add some sense of urgency to invite them to make a purchase soo. See this example:

“I don’t know how long this offer will be available but if you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity click here now”

Note: After this email sequence, you can (and should) continue to email your list to continue to build trust with them and promote other related offers.

4.1 Sell 24/7 on autopilot with email automation

The best part of using a sales funnels for your affiliate offers is that you can create email sequence that does the selling for you on autopilot while you focus on other tasks, sleep or go on vacation.

You can do this with an email autoresponder like to use ActiveCampaign which connects to your opt-in page so your subscribers are automatically added to your list. This way, every time a person that opts-in to receive your freebie, they will receive all the emails in that automation.

5. Send traffic to your affiliate marketing funnel

Once your affiliate marketing funnel is set up, it is time to “feed” it with some traffic so it can start converting visitors into buyers.

The main benefit of using a sales funnel for your affiliate marketing offers is that the sales process is automated and you can focus 100% on getting visitors and let the funnel do its job.

There are many platforms and methods that you can use to attract visitors but overall, they can be split in two main categories: organic and paid traffic. Let’s explore them a

a. Organic traffic

Also known as free traffic, the term “organic traffic” refers to the visitors that land on your website (in this case, your opt-in page) as a result of unpaid (“organic”) strategies. In other words, organic traffic is the opposite of paid traffic, which happens when you use paid ads.

Here are some of the platforms you can use to drive organic traffic to your affiliate marketing funnel:

• Social Media: you can use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Snapchat, etc. to create content that attracts your potential audience and direct them to visit your opt-in page.
  
  This is also known as content marketing and nowadays it is one of the fastest ways to get some significant free traffic.
  
  On the other hand, content on social media platforms has a short lifespan so you need to post continuosly to keep sending traffic to your funnel.

• Search Engine Optimization: Also known as SEO, this method involves creating quality and relevant content on blogs, websites and Youtbe and optimize it with relevant keywords so it can appear on search results.
  
  Search engines like Google, Youtbe and Pinterest have a high buying intent since people are actively looking for an answer or solution so if you manage to rank your content on top results, it can give you passive commissions for years.
  
  While SEO takes some time until you start getting traction, once you do, it becomes more passive than social media.

b. Paid Traffic

The other alternative for bringing visitors to your affiliate marketing funnel is using paid traffic. This means traffic that results from visitors clicking on a link in an ad that you paid for.

Almost any online platform offers the possibility of buying paid ads so you have lots of opportunities to reach your target audience. Here are some of the most popular:

• Search Engines: Youtube, Pinterest, Google
• Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapachat
• Native Ads: Apps, Mobile, News Publishers

Like with organic traffic, each one of these platforms has its own learning curve and it is best to focus on one at the time until you have mastered it before moving to the next one.

Additionally, if you are a beginner, I recommend starting with organic traffic so you can get some visitors into your funnel and get an idea of your conversion rate and how much you can pay per click to stay profitable before spending money on ads.

6. Optimize and scale

Another advantage of using an affiliate marketing funnel is that once you start sending some traffic and getting some data, you can see inside your stats exactly how each one of the steps is performing.

This will allow you to identify where you can make improvements and easily increase your conversions and profits.

Using a software like Clickfunnels, allows you to create A/B tests with one click and test different variations of your pages to see which ones give you a better conversion rate.

Some elements you can split test are:

• Copy (text) starting with your headlines, buttons, calls to action, etc.
• Colors of your text, buttons, background, etc.
• Placement of your images.
• DIfferent images
• Using / not using a video sales letter.
• Adding a social proof plug in.
• Adding a live chat option
• Adding / switching the testiomanials,
• etc.

By optimizing your sales funnel, you will be able to continuously make more money with the same amount of visitors.

In a similar way, you can analyze the optimize the different elements of your email sequence to improve its conversion. In this case, you can split test out different subject lines, images, calls to action in order to improve open rates and click through rates.

This might seem like a tedious step but these tweaks have the power to duplicate or triplicate your income without much effort so you don’t want to skip it.

Affiliate Marketing Funnel FAQ

How do I create a funnel for affiliate marketing?

Summing up what I have detailed in the article above here are the steps you need to follow to create your own affiliate marketing sales funnel:

1. Choose your affiliate offers making sure they are high quality products that pay good commissions.
2. Create a “freebie” or lead magnet related to your affiliate so you can attract potential buyers and build trust with them by giving them something valuable that helps their problems.
3. Create an opt-in page where you offer your lead madnet and capture people’s emails. This way you can then follow up with them and build a long term profitable email list.
4. Create a bridge page where you introduce yourself and present the affiliate offer. Add a button with an attractive Call To Action and direct people to the merchant’s website through your affiliate link.
5. Create an 5-day email sequence to follow up with your now subscribers and turn more of them into buyers.
6. Analyze your funnel data and do A/B testing to optimize opt-in rates, purchase rates and email rates.
7. Boom you now have a high converting affiliate funnel!

If you rather have someone guide you step by step while you build your affiliate funnel and learn other high-income skills, make sure to check out this beginners 15-day challenge

What is the best funnel for affiliate marketing?

My favorite funnel builder and the one I recommend to my students is Clickfunnels. It is really intuitive and beginner-friendly so anyone can create funnels from scratch without any design or coding experience.

Also, Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels, was one of the first people to create a sales funnel builder for online businesses and you get access to tons of education, tutorials, and templates. Not to mention you can win a 2 comma club award and be a part of a great community.

Can you use ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing?

Yes, ClickFunnels is one of the most popular funnel builders used by affiliates to make money online. The platform offers high-converting templates and features that make it easier to track and optimize your conversions like detailed stats and one-click-split-testing. It also offers email automation so you don’t have to go through the trouble of integrating a separate software.

Additionally, Clickfunnels also has a great affiliate program that you can promote to anyone with a business or wanting to generate an online income. One of the best parts of their affiliate program is that they pay up to 40% monthly recurring commissions for life to their affiliates. You can learn more about making money as an affiliate in my Clickfunnels Affiliate Program Review.

Takeaway

Using a sales funnels for affiliate marketing will not only allow you to build a successful and profitable long term business but you will also help you build your authority and create a connection with your subscribers that will protect your business against any setback.

While the idea of creating a sales funnels can sound intimidating for beginners, there are now tools and software that do most of the work for you and that anyone can use without any design or coding experience.

So, if you are serious about your affiliate marketing business, setting up your sales funnel is one step you can’t skip!

That’s why I’ve decided to do a thorough comparison of Thinkific vs Kajabi, two of the more popular online course platforms so you can have an in-depth look into the differences between these two platforms, their pros and cons, their plans, pricing, and so on.

Both of these platforms are great in their own way, and will allow you to create, market, and sell online courses and digital products to your audiences. However, while they are used for similar purposes, they do differ from one another in a few major ways.

Therefore, in order to make the right decision for your online business, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with all of the features, tools, and benefits that they offer and that’s what we’re here to help you with!

Before we begin, if you’re not quite familiar with these two platforms, here’s a quick overview of each of them.

Thinkific Vs Kajabi: What do they do?

Thinkific and Kajabi are both cloud-based platforms where you can create, market, and sell courses and membership sites.

Both platforms are designed to help you deliver online courses and digital products to your students, build your brand, build your website, grow your business, and everything else in between, without having to rely on any tech knowledge.

In comparison to other popular online course platforms like Udemy and Skillshare, Thinkific and Kajabi let you retain complete control over your courses. You can set your own course policies surrounding refunds, pricing, managing student data, and everything else.

Although there are a lot of similarities between these two platforms, there are some major differences that we’ll discuss in depth below, so you can figure out which platform works best for your needs.

While there are many differences between these two platforms, some matter more than others, so we’ll start with those ones and finish off with some of the ones that you may have a preference for, but won’t be a deal-breaker in deciding which platform to go with.

Pro and Cons of Thinkific and Kajabi

To help you make the right choice for your business, let’s take a look at the main benefits and features of these platforms, category by category, starting with their plans and pricing.

But first, a quick overview of their main pros and cons.

Thinkific Pros and Cons

Pros

• Free plan available
• Less expensive (paid plans start at $39/month)
• Easy to use builder, very intuitive
• Unlimited courses on all paid plans
• Better quiz answering options
• Live or interactive classroom experience
• Comprehensive training tools and guides
• The ability to sell courses in bulk
• Course-completion certificates
• Can sell your courses on Shopify

Cons

• Limited marketing options
• No live chat support for their free plan – only email support
• No 24/7 support
• Need integrations to automate your email marketing
• No mobile app

Kajabi Pros and Cons

Pros

• All-in-one business platform with an array of marketing and selling tools
• Advanced email marketing and automation features
• 24/7 customer support
• Live chat support
• An Android/iOS app available
• Kajabi University with resources on everything you need for your digital business

Cons

• No free plan available, 14-day free trial only
• A bit on the expensive side
• On Kajabi’s cheapest plan ($119/month) you can only sell 3 courses/digital products
• Third-party payment gateway integration required to sell in Shopify stores

Now that we’ve covered the main pros and cons of both platforms, let’s get into a more detailed comparison of their plans, features, and everything else.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Main Features

Let’s take a look at the main features offered by these platforms and how they compare.

Course Creation

Both platforms offer all the standard course creation features including:

• Built-in Content Creation Tools
• Full Video & Content Hosting
• Coupons
• Course Bundles
• Affiliate Management Tools
• Downloadable Content
• Retain Ownership Over Your Content
• Import Existing Content
• Launch Membership Sites and more

Both Thinkific and Kajabi have intuitive course builders, that are easy to use and don’t require any technical knowledge. Thinkific offers a range of course template options you can use, and you also have the option of customizing your courses even further using HTML and CSS if you’re up for it.

With Kajabi, the whole process of creating courses is as fun and as enjoyable as Thinkific, although the main drawback users sometimes comment on is the fact that things are organized and labeled a little bit differently in Kajabi, making the platform a bit less intuitive than Thinkific.

So, while these features in Kajabi are more customizable, they also come with a steeper learning curve, which is why those who are looking for an easier and faster way to create their online courses might prefer going with Thinkific.

However, if you value personalizing your courses and don’t mind the fact that their course-building process isn’t as user-friendly as Thinkific’s is, then Kajabi will be a good choice for you.

Thinkific’s course builder is a bit limited in terms of visual design especially in comparison with Kajabi’s course builder which allows you to easily choose themes that differentiate how elements are visually organized on the screen, you can easily control the placement of images, text, and other elements, edit image-sizes and more.

While it doesn’t offer as much versatility in course creation as Kajabi does, with Thinkific you have more features that can be used for creating lessons, such as presentations and student feedback.

Building and Designing Your Website

To make sure your courses sell, you’ll need to create a website where people can find everything there is to know about you, your content, and the digital/physical products you’re selling. Your website needs to be easy to navigate and visually appealing so you can attract more potential customers and grow your business.

Both Thinkific and Kajabi offer users a chance to create beautiful websites, using their easy-to-use builder that allows you to build out a website around your courses or other digital product. Using their drag-and-drop builder, you can completely customize your pages and create a unique look for your website, without doing any coding or having to hire a web designer.

You can simply use their website builders to design and create your website from scratch, offering a lot of design flexibility so you can create the website you’ve envisioned for your business.

While their website builders function similarly, Kajabi’s builder offers more advanced options and customizations so it might be a better option for those of you who are looking to create a professional-looking site. If your priority is to have the best design for your website and courses, Kajabi might be the better option for you.

Themes and Templates

Using pre-designed themes and templates, you can easily build the courses you’ve envisioned, along with your website, membership site, and more. When you have access to different templates that are ready to go, building your online courses is easier than you’ve envisioned.

With Thinkific, you have three different themes to choose from that are available in your theme library. You can change the style of your theme in the settings, along with the colors, images, fonts, and so on.

With Kajabi, you have a larger selection of available themes, 12 to be exact. They are suitable for different types of products, online courses, webinars, membership sites, and more.

Same as with Thinkific, Kajabi allows you to customize the available themes, by changing the style to fit what you’ve envisioned for your business to look like.

Reporting and Analytics

To be able to understand your customers and their needs better you need to know what they like and don’t like about your content, as well as how they interact and engage with it. This will let you know what aspects of your online course business need improvement and help you identify your customers’ preferences.

Reporting and analytics are therefore essential to your business.

With Thinkific, you can get advanced reporting options so you can track your revenue, orders, student engagement, and so on. Using the tools offered by Thinkific, you can get better insight into your customers’ activity and get to know your audience better. This will help improve your marketing strategy so you can boost your sales.

In addition to Google Analytics, Thinkific provides a few other useful integrations that can be used for tracking and analytics, including Facebook Pixel, Mixpanel, Segment, Sumo, and Wizebank Analytics.

With Kajabi, you get three built-in analytics tools you can use, including Google Analytics, Segment and Facebook Pixel.

Kajabi allows you to monitor your subscription rate, your revenue, page views, opt-ins, and provides useful and detailed reports on profitable areas, areas where you can improve and more.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Available Plans and Pricing

When it comes to pricing, Thinkific’s plans are more affordable than Kajabi’s.

Here’s a quick overview of their plans, starting with Thinkific:

Here are the packages that are available through Kajabi, and their prices:

The main difference between these two platforms when it comes to the plans they offer is that with Thinkific you can get a free plan, whereas Kajabi just offers a 14-day trial. You can use their trial to test out the platform and see if it’s a fit for you and then make your decision about purchasing, whereas, with Thinkific, you can stay on their free plan for as long as you want, or until you feel the need to upgrade to a more comprehensive plan.

Even when you decide it’s time to upgrade, Thinkific’s basic plan is still a lot cheaper than Kajabi’s. Their basic package is priced at $39 per month (paid annually) or $49 per month (paid monthly), while Kajabi’s is priced at $119 per month (paid annually) or $149 per month (paid monthly).

Kajabi’s growth package is priced at $159 per month (paid annually) or $199 per month (paid monthly), while their Pro package is priced at $319 per month (annually) or $399 per month (monthly).

However, as you will see below when we compare their features and the tools they offer, you’ll notice that Kajabi is more advanced in that matter and offers some features that are not available through Thinkific. That’s because Kajabi is an all-in-one business platform, while Thinkific is designed primarily as a course creation platform. This helps justify their differences in pricing.

While Thinkific is more budget-friendly, considering everything that the platform offers, in the end, it will depend mainly on your needs and the needs of your online business when determining which platform suits you best.

Visual Appearance

Both Kajabi and Thinkific look great out of the box and provide themes that are modern, professional, attractive, and functional. You can use their templates to build professional landing pages, sales pages and you can even go with custom themes and templates when you want to achieve something unique.

With Thinkific, on the other hand, there isn’t a market for custom, premium themes, so if you want to build something that differentiates you and makes you unique, you will need to do custom coding on the theme you select.

Ease of Use

With Thinkific’s visual editor, you can easily build your courses from scratch using pre-made templates. Thinkific makes it easy to add all types of different content, including text, PDFs, audio, videos, surveys, assignments, quizzes, and more. Just use their drag-and-drop editor to upload all content, add your descriptions, choose different color themes, fonts, and more.

Thinkific is designed to be easy to use and quite intuitive, meaning you don’t need to be tech-savvy to be able to create great-looking courses and content.

While Kajabi also comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that allows you to easily build everything including courses, membership sites, landing pages, sales pipelines and customize pre-designed templates to make your courses stand out without having to do any coding, Kajabi isn’t as intuitive as Thinkific, and many find that to be one of its flaws.

With Kajabi, editing your site can sometimes be a bit confusing as the platform isn’t as flexible and as easy to use as Thinkific is. The main criticism users have about Kajabi on this subject is the way some things are named, and where they are located.

That’s why once you figure all of that out it will be much easier to go on from there. Expect to spend some time figuring out where everything is located and how things work before you start creating your courses and other aspects of your business. And if you get stuck at any step of the way, you can always contact Kajabi’s chat support or check out the guides and tutorials available on their website and through their Hero University.

We won’t discourage you from using the platform just because it is not as intuitive as Thinkific is and will require a bit more time until you figure out how everything works, we would just advise you to not be afraid to ask for assistance from their support team or freelancers who offer Kajabi services so you can get the most out of the platform.

Student Experience

The experience students have when taking your courses plays an important role in the success of your online course business. Not only is it directly connected to the success of your courses by helping generate more sales, referrals, and upsells, but it also makes your courses look and feel premium and professional.

Here’s how Thinkific vs Kajabi compare when it comes to student experience.

Thinkific’s dashboard is visually appealing, clear, and easy to follow. Students can easily track their progress, keep up to date on what’s next in their course, and more. The whole learning process is improved by the option to add many content formats for students to interact and engage with, including text, images, videos, multimedia, downloadable files, quizzes, surveys, presentations, webinars, and more.

Other aspects of Thinkific that help improve the student experience include:

• Built-in certificates available through Accredible
• Reminder emails
• Free Wistia video hosting

When it comes to Kajabi, you also have the option of adding text, images, videos, quizzes, and other similar content to make your courses more engaging to your students.

The platform also offers more available themes and templates than Thinkific so you can create a better learning experience for your students by customizing and tailoring it to fit their needs best.

What’s great about Kajabi is that they have a mobile app that allows students to follow your courses on the go and track their progress through their phones. The app saves their progress and allows them to pick up from where they left off and it also comes with a “magic link” that students can use to access content without a password.

While both platforms are designed to provide a great learning experience for your students, since Thinkific is specifically designed with that aspect in mind, it does have an advantage over Kajabi in that regard.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Student Accommodation Limit

Another important aspect that course creators should consider when choosing an online course platform is the number of students they can accommodate.

When it comes to Thinkific, it doesn’t matter which plan you choose to go with, since all 4 available plans, including the free plan, allow for an unlimited amount of students.

With Kajabi, however, that is not the case. If you go with Kajabi, the number of students you’ll be able to accommodate will depend on the type of plan you choose to go with. Their Basic plan allows for 1000 active members (students), their Growth plan can accommodate up to 10,000 and their Pro plan can accommodate 20,000.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Other Limits

The number of students you can accommodate isn’t the only limit you’ll need to take into consideration when making the choice of Thinkific vs Kajabi.

Other aspects you should consider include:

Course Limits

When it comes to Thinkific, if you decide to go with their free package you will be limited to three courses. However, if you choose to go with one of their paid plans, you can have an unlimited number of courses, no matter which of the paid plans you choose.

With Kajabi, their Basic plan allows you to create 3 products (courses) and 3 pipelines, their Growth plan allows for 15 products and 15 pipelines and with their Pro plan you can create up to 100 products and 100 pipelines.

Website Limits

With Thinkific, you are allowed to set up as many websites as you’d like, but you’ll have to purchase a separate plan for each of them, as they do not have a master admin area where you can have access to multiple Thinkific schools in one dashboard.

With Kajabi, on the other hand, you can create multiple websites (3 to be exact) under their Pro plan only, but their other plans are limited to one website.

Admin Users Limits

On Thinkific, site admins have full admin privileges that are similar to those of the site owner. They are allowed to manage students and courses, and have all the permissions as the site owner, aside from being able to transfer account ownership and set up payment integration.

On Thinkific, you can assign 2 site admins if you’re on their Pro plan and 5 site admins if you’re using their Premier plan. Simply assign them their role in the user roles section by checking off-site admin and you can allow them to have all the site admin privileges over your courses, sites, and content.

When it comes to course admins, the Pro plan allows for 5 course admins/authors, whereas the Premier plan allows for 50.

With Kajabi, you can have only one admin user on their Basic plan, 10 admin users on their Growth plan, and 25 on their Pro plan.

Marketing and Selling

Both Thinkific and Kajabi are specifically designed for marketing and selling purposes. Therefore, both platforms offer a range of tools and features that you can implement to achieve your marketing goals.

When it comes to Thinkific, most of these marketing features can be found under the market and sell section, although they are dispersed throughout other sections as well.

Here’s what Thinkific offers when it comes to marketing and selling:

• Coupons. With Thinkific’s paid plans, you have the option of offering coupons to your students that they can use when purchasing your courses.
• Affiliates. Use this feature to incentivize your students or fellow marketers to sell your courses, bundles and membership programs to prospective learners by paying them commission for every course or digital product sold.
• Sales Widget. Use this feature to direct your users straight to a landing or checkout page by placing a sales widget onto your website.
• Customize your website. In the design your site section, you can find all the tools you need to customize your sign up and checkout page so you can have a more visually appealing site and boost your conversion rates.
• Offer a free trial. Thinkific allows you to offer your students a free trial as part of your courses, which your learners can use to get more familiar with what you offer and then be able to purchase your course if they like your content.
• Create bundles. You can create bundles of related courses and sell them as one single product for a single price. This way you can offer some discount for your content and sell more courses.

While Thinkific offers a wide range or tools and features specifically designed for marketing purposes, Kajabi’s features when it comes to marketing and selling are more advanced and the tools they offer are designed to help you market your courses better.

The platform offers tools that can help you maximize your ability to market your courses.

Those include:

• Automations. Streamline and simplify the whole process on the platform by creating automations which are available in almost every part of the service. Depending on your subscription plan, you can have access to basic and advanced automations. You can use these processes to automate all of your basic admin actions, so you can focus more on the creative part of your process as an edupreneur. Automations can be found in pipelines, email campaigns, events, forms, offers, posts and so on.
• Pipelines. As part of Kajabi’s available automations, pipelines are automated marketing and sales funnels used to take your potential customer through the journey of getting to know your product and becoming a paying customer. Pipelines help you automate that whole process by creating landing pages, email campaigns and offers which are completely automated and free up your time so you can focus on creating exceptional content for your students.
• Email campaigns. With Kajabi, you can easily learn how to create and send email campaigns to your list of subscribers in the form of email broadcasts or email sequences.
• Email sequences. Automate the process of sending one or more emails to your visitors and students after they’ve completed a certain action like completing a form, making a purchase and so on.
• Email broadcasts. You can use email broadcasts to send announcements and newsletters to a specified audience in your contact list by creating email campaigns.

If you place priority on marketing your courses and have the budget to go with one of Kajabi’s plans, then we recommend this option. While Thinkific offers all the standard marketing features, such as bundles, coupons, affiliate marketing and integrations with email service providers, the tools offered by Kajabi in terms of marketing and selling are not found in alternative platforms, so if this is something you value highly and wouldn’t mind paying a bit extra to get it, Kajabi is the way to go.

Sales Tracker

Both Kajabi and Thinkific allow you to track your revenue and sales through their sales tracker.

Kajabi’s sales tracker offers more advanced options and more data points that you can analyze. One advantage of Kajabi’s sales tracker over that of Thinkific is that it displays your revenue and sales data graphically and it also has a separate affiliate marketing report. While Thinkific’s sales tracker may not be as advanced and robust as Kajabi’s, it still offers complete and informative reports that you can use to track your sales and make improvements so you can boost your performance.

Affiliate Program

Both platforms offer affiliate programs that you can use to reach more learners and scale your business.

The only downside when it comes to Kajabi’s affiliate program is that it is available on the higher-paying levels only and is not a part of the basic package.

With Thinkific, on the other hand, the affiliate program is available for all tiers.

Customer Service

Both Kajabi and Thinkific offer reliable and professional customer support to help users navigate their platforms better and improve their experience.

Thinkific offers customer support via:

• Email
• Live chat support on paid plans
• Phone (Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm PST).
• Facebook community
• Tutorials designed to make the onboarding process easier
• Hour-long onboarding call to help you get started (Pro and Premier plans only)

Kajabi, on the other hand takes the lead in this category, by offering customer support via:

• Email
• 24/7 live chat for those using the Growth and the Pro plan
• Onboarding call to help you get started
• Training webinars through Kajabi University
• A community of experts on their social media platforms
• Live training to help users solve issues in real-time

FAQs

Let’s take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions about Thinkific vs Kajabi that people usually have before they decide which platform to go with.

Do Kajabi and Thinkific Offer Free Plans?

With Thinkific, you have the option of selecting their free plan from the 4 available plans that they offer. Their free plan is not limited to a period of time but is limited in the features and tools that it offers as well as the number of courses you can create. You can stay on their free plan as long as you want, and upgrade to one of their paid plans when you’re ready to scale up.

With Kajabi, you can only get a 14-day free trial, available for all three packages that they offer. This allows you to test out the platform’s features for free, but if you decide to continue using the platform you will need to subscribe to one of their paid plans.

Are Kajabi and Thinkific Expensive?

Thinkific’s lowest-priced package starts at $39 per month (paid annually) or $49 per month (paid monthly), and they also offer a free plan. In comparison, Kajabi’s cheapest plan is priced at $119 per month (paid annually) or $149 per month (paid monthly), and they do not offer a free plan. Although their basic plan is around $100 more than Thinkific’s basic plan, the fact that Kajabi is an all-in-one platform and provides more tools and features that are designed for marketing and selling purposes than Thinkific does justify its price.

Do Kajabi and Thinkific Charge Transaction Fees?

No, neither of these platforms charge transaction fees when someone purchases your course or digital product. You keep all of the money you charge for your products, aside from the processing fee of 2.9% + 30 cents collected by Stripe for each transaction.

Can I Move My Courses from Another Platform to Thinkific or Kajabi?

Whichever course creation and hosting platform you’re using now, both Thinkific and Kajabi can ensure a seamless and quick transition and migration for your courses and your students. Their support team is here to make sure all aspects are covered and everything from logins, to student progress, enrollment dates, and so on are transitioned properly onto your new online course platform.

If after reading this review, you’re still left with unanswered questions about the way Kajabi and Thinkific work, check out their FAQ sections on Kajabi and Thinkific to find out what it is you’re looking for.

Thinkific vs Kajabi – Which One is Best?

All in all, we can conclude that Kajabi is a great all-in-one platform that’s suitable for experienced course creators who are looking to create and scale their knowledge business and have all parts of their online business under one roof, while Thinkific is suitable for those who are looking for a course creation platform only, and don’t necessarily need to have their website, email automation, sales funnels and everything in one place. If you already have your business up and running, have your own website set up, and you already do email marketing, Thinkific would be the way to go.

If, however, you want to take advantage of all the extra marketing and sales tools Kajabi has to offer and would benefit from using an all-in-one platform that has all of the necessary tools and features under one roof, then you should consider paying extra and going with Kajabi. In the end, it’s up to you, your needs, and your budget when it comes to determining which platform suits you best.

You can learn more about each one and make sure you are choosing the right one in this Thinkific Review and Kajabi Review

What is Kajabi?

Kajabi is an all-in-one business platform that allows users to build and grow a successful business online. Their mission is to empower knowledge entrepreneurs to achieve their passion and sell their content online.

The platform is designed to help users easily create premium digital products such as online courses, coaching programs, membership sites, and more. Using Kajabi’s main features and capabilities, you can then create multiple options for monetization and automate your marketing and sales process.

We’ll get more into the details of what Kajabi offers below.

What’s Kajabi Used For?

Basically, Kajabi is used for creating, hosting, marketing, and selling digital products. It provides all the necessary features needed to create a professional website, a range of digital products, sales pages, sales funnels, email campaigns, and much more.

You can even sell physical products through the platform if you want, although that’s not its main purpose.

Who Uses Kajabi?

Kajabi is used by over 40,000 course creators, entrepreneurs, and influencers worldwide. It is a platform that’s primarily used by individuals and businesses who have valuable educational content they want to create, package and sell online to students across the world.

The platform is designed with edupreneurs in mind, including speakers, authors, creatives, consultants, writers, coaches, and others who make a living by creating and selling educational content or those who have valuable information and/or educational content that they want to share with their students and monetize it.

Kajabi Review: Main Features

If you’re looking to create your first course, or if you already have courses that you want to move to a better platform and you’re considering switching to Kajabi, here’s what you need to know so you can make an informed decision and see if this platform works for you.

1.    Kajabi Course Builder

Course and Website Building

If you’re just starting out, building your website will be one of the crucial things you’ll need to do so you can promote your content and present yourself and your business to the world.

If your intent is to become an edupreneur and create courses and digital products for your students, then choosing a platform that offers those options and allows you to create a website as well will be very useful to you and will save you a lot of time and money in the process.

What’s great about Kajabi is that you can create an engaging and professional-looking website easily, without having any knowledge in web design. Creating a website with Kajabi is easy since you can use their drag-and-drop builder to integrate all of your ideas and create the website you’ve envisioned.

In addition to making the website creation process easy and intuitive, their online course creation tool is also really easy to use so you can build your courses from the ground up. Kajabi makes the whole process of creating courses easy and enjoyable. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to create amazing courses on the platform.

Simply write your scripts and lessons, record any audio or video you need for the course, create your graphics, and once all that content is created and edited, you can start uploading it onto the platform.

Choose among the different product templates available. Within the template, you’ll have the option of creating categories, sub-categories, and posts (lessons). Within each lesson, you can add all kinds of content, including:

• Text
• Images
• Videos
• Assessments
• Downloads
• Comments
• And Kajabi Automations

The platform makes it easy to upload your content and create your courses according to your preferences so you can create the course you’ve envisioned and start marketing and selling it right away.

Website Themes

Kajabi has an extensive library of available themes that are ready to go. You can simply select the one that fits best and modify it as much as you’d like so it can look the way you imagined it.

Each theme has a particular aesthetic using a collection of layouts and elements. Aside from using a predefined theme, you can also import your own custom theme.

Additionally, you have the option of using different themes on different products, so each product can have a unique aesthetic and be easy to distinguish from the others.

Product Creation

Kajabi offers a ton of great templates that you can use to create mini-courses, full courses, drip courses, and more. Apart from course creation, you can use Kajabi to create communities, memberships, and coaching programs using their templates with pre-loaded content which you can easily modify, move around, structure, and so on, so you can get everything set up right away.

Kajabi provides easy-to-use templates for creating live events as well. Just set up your Zoom webinar through the platform and build a pipeline with a registration page, a post-event offer, and a checkout page to make the most use out of your webinar and convert more leads.

Consistent Branding

By having both your courses and your website in one place, you can easily incorporate the same colors, styling, and elements across all pages so you can remain consistent with your branding. Since Kajabi has the same page builder for building course products, websites, landing pages, checkout pages, funnels, email, and all other forms, it’s super easy to keep your branding consistent.

Design and Customizations

You don’t have to be tech-savvy to be able to create appealing and well-structured courses. Kajabi offers a ton of templates that you can choose from. Using a template will make the process a lot easier for you since they offer pre-selected layouts and elements which you can then tweak and make changes to until you’re satisfied with the way your course looks.

Once you select a template, you can go through each element and customize it further. You can make your site and courses as unique as you want, particularly if you have access to the code editor available in the higher-paid plans. Then, you can use CSS and HTML to make certain edits outside the available customizations.

To remove the “Kajabi” brand from your site and domain URL, you will have to purchase the growth or pro package.

Good Video Streaming Capabilities

Kajabi offers integration with Wistia, a video hosting platform that allows you to take full control of your video content, which you can integrate with your tech stack so you can send engagement data to your CRM and use that to grow your business.

You can use Wistia to upload and stream your videos and you can rest assured that they will be secure on their platform. The fact that you have Wistia integrated with your Kajabi account means that you’ll save money by not having to buy a separate license for Wistia, which costs $99 per month.

Unlimited Hosting

As an all-in-one platform, all Kajabi plans offer web hosting with an unlimited amount of storage and bandwidth. They also have an auto-scaling feature to optimize performance depending on how much web traffic you’re getting. With Kajabi’s unlimited hosting you can have as many visitors on your site, create as many pages, and have unlimited storage space. You won’t have to worry about website speed regardless of how many visitors you’re getting.

User Experience

Kajabi is designed to be user-friendly and easy to use. On the dashboard, you can see everything laid out clearly and from there you can easily access different modules by navigating through the tabs.

Along with intuitive navigation, you also have the help of the Kajabi Assistant so you can look up certain tools and features by keywords. If you still can’t find what you are looking for on the platform, there are a ton of helpful guides and videos on Kajabi that are designed to help you navigate the platform better.

One instance where you may struggle a bit at first are the automation tools, at least some of them, which are harder to figure out, especially for someone who hasn’t worked with automations before. If you need help setting up automations talk to their customer support team or check out their useful guides on the subject.

2.    Kajabi Support

Kajabi Community

The great thing about Kajabi is that it has a strong community of people who use the platform and are super enthusiastic about getting the most out of it, as well as helping others like them succeed by offering advice and solutions through meet-ups, their Facebook group, forums and more.

This dedicated community is comprised of experts, new and enthused users, influencers, edupreneurs, and other people alike.

Training/Onboarding Process and Customer Service

The process of getting started with Kajabi is easy if you follow their simple onboarding steps. You’ll get access to a ton of recourses, training videos, and educational content designed to make the onboarding process easy and help you get started on the platform.

For any questions and issues that may arise during the process, their customer service representatives are here to provide phone and live chat support in a friendly and professional manner and help you solve the issue you’re facing as soon as possible.

If you’re using their basic plan, you’ll get access to customer support at certain times during the day, whereas if you’re on the growth or pro plan, you’ll get access to customer support 24/7 a day, via chat or phone.

Aside from the great customer service they provide, they are dedicated to providing their users with extensive online training and a community of individuals that is here to support each other and improve along the way. That’s why they’ve created Kajabi University – called Hero University – where you can access free and paid courses and learn from leading experts in the industry on how to build, market, and sell online courses and other digital products.

3.    Marketing and Selling with Kajabi

Sales Tools

The sales and marketing tools available on Kajabi are some of its main draws. Each plan has a certain set of marketing tools and built-in features that are designed to help you sell more courses, offer all kinds of products to your customers, and build customer loyalty.

Here are some of the helpful features it provides:

• Setting prices. Kajabi offers users the ability to sell courses individually, bundle them together and sell them for a discounted price, give out coupons and team up with affiliates to sell even more courses and digital products. You can also offer your students payment plans so they can have more flexibility when paying for your courses.
• Integrated check-out. Through Stripe and PayPal, you can accept payments from anywhere in the world.
• 1-click upsells. Give your customers the opportunity to buy more from you with just one click and use that opportunity to earn more by providing 1-click upsells.
• Subscriptions. Build customer loyalty with weekly, monthly and annual subscription plans.
• Abandoned cart recovery. Give your leads another chance to buy your products when they’ve abandoned their cart without completing their order. Send them automated emails reminding them to complete their order so you can improve your conversion rate.
• Free trials. Offer free trials to prospective student so that you can give them a taste of your content and then convert them onto paying customers.

Sales Funnel Builder / Pipelines

A sales funnel describes each step someone takes in becoming your customer/client. Sales funnels illustrate the journey prospective customers go through, so understanding this process and the places in the process potential customers usually drop out and leave your site will help you convert more leads and grow your business faster.

You don’t need to be an expert in sales funnels to create one in Kajabi. With Kajabi the whole process is automated and you have tested and proven blueprints that you can use for every marketing purpose. Using these blueprints, you can easily customize and launch pre-built frameworks designed for lead generation and connect several different marketing channels into multi-channel funnels.

You can use Kajabi’s pre-written copy to create sales funnels that are guaranteed to work. They are designed by some of Kajabi’s best and most successful customers. All you have to do is fill in the blanks and do any tweaks and customizations and you’ll be ready to launch a new pipeline right away. Their automated pipeline software is designed to make the process of collecting leads and making sales easy, so you can grow your business and focus on continuing creating successful courses, webinars, and other types of digital content, instead of learning the ins and outs of pipeline marketing.

The pipeline marketing software that you can integrate with Kajabi is called Clickfunnels and is used for creating sales and landing pages.

Clickfunnels is used as the primary method of capturing leads, designing sales pages, making an offer to your customers, and completing a sale. This means that using Clickfunnels, you can guide your visitors through the entire sales process so they don’t get confused along the way and leave without purchasing the product you’re offering.

You can also use Clickfunnels to follow up with visitors even after they’ve left your site by quickly capturing your visitor’s contact information. This way you can generate new leads constantly and be able to contact them again and again so you can increase your conversion rates.

4.    Kajabi Integrations

Another relevant marketing feature on Kajabi is the integrations. Kajabi offers built-in tools that you can use to integrate many functions. Currently, there are 10 native integrations for third-party apps that are available, including Google Analytics, MailChimp and so on. We’ll get more into the subject of integrations below, as we go through each of them one by one.

For non-native integrations, you can use the Zappier app, which allows you to integrate third-party apps that are not available through Kajabi.

Email Integration

Kajabi is an all-in-one business platform that provides all the necessary tools and features you can use to create courses and then market and sell them to potential students.

Kajabi functions as your email service provider or ESP, so you don’t have to pay extra for those services.

Email integration is the process of tying together an email service provider with systems, software, and tools, including course builders, so that when customers purchase something from you or fill out a form their email address and details can be ported right onto your inbox. You can later use this information to send out newsletters, promotions, free giveaways or notifications of any kind so that you can engage with your audience and boost your sales.

Kajabi offers integrations with 5 email services, including:

• Aweber
• Mailchimp
• Drip
• ConvertKit
• ActiveCampaign

When you integrate one of these five email applications available through Kajabi, the platform will automatically export any customer contact data and create and update your list of contacts and subscribers.

The platform allows you to set up conditions for when your students complete a lesson, a test or some other milestone, so they can get an automatic email response to congratulate them on the successful completion of that step.

This way you won’t need to connect an outside email service and set up a subscription plan that would cost you extra.

If you don’t see your email service provider on this list, that doesn’t mean you can’t connect it to your courses. To achieve that you’ll need to use a third-party service called Zapier that’s available through Kajabi so you can connect your course provider with your email service provider.

Analytics

Kajabi offers three built-in analytics tools that you can use. Their analytics integrations allow users to track and measure the performance of their site. This way you can gain valuable insight into your customer base and get to know your audience better. By analyzing the data provided by these third-party integrations you can make more informed marketing choices and grow your business faster.

To use these analytics tools, simply put the tracking codes from these apps onto your site so you can track and analyze all data in one place.

Kajabi offers the following three integrations used for tracking and analytics purposes:

• Google Analytics. Web analytics service by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
• Segment. Customer data platform that you can use to collect, clean and control your customer data.
• Facebook Pixel. Measure, optimize and build audiences, ensure your audiences are well-targeted, create custom audiences for your ad campaigns and learn everything there is to know about your website traffic.

Use these integrations to get rich insights about how people are interacting with your website, build a custom audience to reach your customers, and increase your sales.

5.    Kajabi Student Management Tools

Assessments/Quizzes

When you’re creating courses, you’ll probably want to create quizzes or assessments for your students so you can add an extra layer of engagement and provide your students with the chance to check their knowledge on the subject and see where they stand.

Assessments are a great tool for creating quizzes, tests, surveys, and more.

Using Kajabi, you can create super simple quizzes with multiple-answer questions as well as more complex ones, depending on your needs.

To create quizzes on Kajabi, simply open the “People” tab on the dashboard, then under “People” select “Assessments” and add a new assessment. Once that’s done you can start customizing your assessment depending on what you want to achieve with it.

Certificates

Kajabi doesn’t provide certificates through native integrations so you will need to use a 3rd party platform like Accredible or other similar platforms to offer your students completion certificates.

Webinars

Kajabi offers the option of adding evergreen webinars to your product and sales pages. These webinars can be done on a live stream or can be composed of pre-recorded videos. You can set up evergreen webinars as a way to generate passive income, while you focus on other aspects of your work. You can use these webinars to ease new subscribers into the onboarding process by giving them access to your foundational content and connecting to them via video, rather than a dull text or PDF document.

6.    Marketing and Selling Your Courses with Kajabi

Affiliate Program

You can use Kajabi’s integrated affiliate program to increase your reach and find new audiences so you can boost your revenue. The affiliate program is a great way to generate new leads and expand your audience.

Use this option to encourage others to sell your courses for a commission so you can maximize your revenue and grow your business.

Your affiliates do not need to have a membership to your site to be able to become your affiliate and begin selling your courses.

Using the affiliate program you can set up an affiliate marketing system, track affiliate conversions, create detailed reports, and more.

Note: This option is available with the Growth and Pro plans only.

Membership Sites

Kajabi allows users to create exclusive membership sites where their audience can access gated content. This is a really good way of getting your audience interested in more of your content. You can create as many membership sites as you want and have different offers for each of them. Simply select the payment options your audience can choose from as well as how often they’ll be billed for their subscription (monthly or annually) and you can start offering your members access to a gated community on your site where they can access exclusive content and you can bring in even more in revenue.

Blog

Blogging is a great way of boosting your website performance on the Search Engines and can help you rank better. If you’re updating your blog with useful information that’s relevant to your audience and you’re doing so on a regular basis the search engine algorithms will index your website more often and keep it on their radar.

Having a blog can also keep users on your website longer, which is another ranking factor for search engines.

You can use your blog to target certain keywords and attract more audiences organically. And most importantly, having a blog allows you to connect better with your audience and gain regular followers so you can start a continued relationship with the audience you want to reach.

Podcasts

Use Kajabi to create a podcast that you can use to market your business, grow your audience and increase your revenue. Each Kajabi member has the ability to host a podcast and distribute it to Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.

On Kajabi, you have all the necessary tools to create, import, distribute and monetize your podcast, all while having everything neatly organized under one platform. You can have your courses, your website, your products and your podcast under one roof, so you can focus solely on growing your business without having to navigate from one platform to another.

Podcasts are great lead generation and branding tools that you can use to grow your audience. Through the platform, you can offer public and private podcasts. You can monetize your podcasts by making them private, or you can offer them to your membership program or as a part of another product.

7.   Kajabi Pricing Plans & Packages

Cost-wise, Kajabi’s plans start at $119/month and go up to $319/month.

Kajabi offers 3 different packages that range from basic to pro.

Let’s take a look at each package separately, so you can see which one works best for you.

Basic Package

Kajabi’s basic package is priced at $119 per month (paid annually) or $149 per month (paid monthly) and it offers the basic tools and features necessary to easily create, market and sell your courses and other digital products.

With Kajabi’s basic package you can get all the core features of the platform, including a few additional ones, like:

• Kajabi University
• 0% Transaction Fee
• Webinars & Events
• Ready to Use Templates
• Assessments (Quizzes & Surveys)
• 1 Customer Success Activation Call
• Chat Support
• Automations

This package is suitable for those of you who are starting out and looking to create your first courses or want to test out the platform and see if it’s a good fit for you. You can even test-drive Kajabi’s basic features for free by signing up for their free 14-day trial. This option is available for all of their plans.

If you start out with the basic package and decide to expand your business later on, you can switch to one of their more advanced packages that offer more features and benefits to meet the needs of your growing business.

Growth Package – Most Popular Plan

Kajabi’s growth package is priced at $159 per month (paid annually) or $199 per month (paid monthly) and it’s great for creatives and edupreneurs who are looking to create and sell up to 15 products.

Kajabi’s growth package includes all the basic features of the platform, including a few additional ones, like:

• 24/7 Chat Support
• Advanced Automations
• Ability to Remove Kajabi Branding
• Affiliate Program

The growth package provides more volume and more features in comparison to the basic plan and is suitable for growing companies and businesses who are looking to scale their business by using the additional benefits the plan offers.

The affiliate program feature that’s added to the growth plan can help business get more exposure and grow, the 24/7 chat assistance can be useful in supporting them with any type of issue they might face and the option to remove the ‘Powered by Kajabi’ can give them more brand independence. These are just some of the benefits offered by the growth plan in addition to the increase in volume in almost every feature in comparison to the basic plan.

Pro Package

Priced at $319 per month (annually) or $399 per month (monthly), Kajabi’s pro package is designed for those of you out there who are looking for even more than what the growth package can offer. Advanced customers who are looking to deliver online education at scale and digital agencies who manage multiple clients can benefit most from using this package.

With this plan, you can easily build an education empire as all the limits in the number of products, pipelines, websites, contact, users and everything else are increased.

Kajabi’s pro package includes all the growth features of the platform, in addition to its code editor.

Kajabi Access Plan

In addition to the three main plans they offer, you also have the option of adding the Kajabi access plan to your subscription plan for $99 per month so you can unlock even more services, resources, and 6 one-on-one guidance sessions with a Kajabi Customer Success Manager. They will help guide you so you can optimize your platform to the fullest and will provide strategic advice that’s unique for your particular business.

By getting a Kajabi Access membership, you can immediately double the number of products, pipelines, and everything else on the list so you don’t have to move straight to the next plan right away and save money in the process.

Another benefit of the Kajabi Access membership is that you’ll be able to get access to Kajabi’s custom code editor, which is normally available to pro plan users only.

With Kajabi Access, you can be the first to hear about new releases, new Kajabi features, and improvements and be able to participate in Beta launches.

These are some of the benefits that come with Kajabi’s access plan, so if the features and benefits unlocked with this plan sound like something you and your business could benefit from, give Kajabi Access a try.

Is Kajabi Expensive?

Since pricing is often the #1 objection course creators have when discussing Kajabi’s plans, we decided to shed some light on the matter and determine whether or not Kajabi’s pricing is too high.

Although Kajabi started out as a basic online course platform, over the years it has transformed into an all-in-one business platform that has virtually replaced any other online tool you would use for your business, from a website and online course hosting to e-products, e-mail marketing, lead/sales/checkout pages, video hosting, funnels, and payment processing. This means that Kajabi offers all the features you need to make your online business work in one single place.

While their plans might seem steeply-priced at a first glance, especially for people who are just starting out and looking to create their first course or other digital products, using Kajabi you would get all of those services in one place, which means you would actually save money by not paying each subscription separately.

Additionally, not only would you get all of those tools and features for one price, but Kajabi also keeps expanding the list of tools they offer while keeping the price the same.

Do They Offer a Free Plan?

While some course platforms, like Thinkific, have a free plan that you can use, Kajabi offers paid plans only. However, if you want to test out the features of the platform risk-free, you can sign up for their 14-day free trial and see whether Kajabi is right for your needs and budget.

Sometimes they run extended free trial promotions to give prospective users enough time to test out the platform’s tools and features and make an informed decision, so keep a lookout for those if you want to give Kajabi a try without any obligations.

Kajabi Review: Pros and Cons

Kajabi Pros

• Coupons and bulk sales: With Kajabi, you have the ability to offer discounts to your current and prospective students via bundles and coupons.
• Make selling easier: Make it easy for your customers to pay by offering different payment options, such as one-time payments, installments, subscriptions, trials, one-click upsells and more.
• Have everything in one place: Have your entire business and everything connected to your business all in one place.
• No transaction fees: Get paid in full for your courses, without paying any transaction fees to Kajabi.
• Useful automations: Kajabi offers integrated automations that are very useful to course creators and can help you scale your business, so you can focus on rolling out new content for your students.
• 24/7 support: Experienced and professional support team that’s ready to answer any and all questions regarding the platform at any time.
• Kajabi university: Hours of detailed training you can access through your Kajabi membership so you can master all of Kajabi’s tools and features.

Kajabi Cons

• No free plan: Kajabi only offers a 14-day trial period, but no free plan.
• No staging area: There’s no way to test out any changes on your website/s before publishing the content live, as there is no staging area that would allow that.
• No central media library: If you want to access media files from an old course a while back, you can’t go to a central media library and search for them there. The only media files that are easily and readily available to you are the 30 or so most recent uploads.

Kajabi Review: FAQs

If you’re still left wondering whether Kajabi is right for you and you have some unanswered questions regarding the platform, we’ve got you covered below!

Let’s take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions about Kajabi to help you decide if the platform is a good fit for you.

Is Kajabi worth it?

Kajabi is an all-in-one business platform that offers more than just course creation. It puts a major focus on marketing and sales and provides intuitive marketing tools to help promote and sell your courses. It provides access to tools and services which would cost more than Kajabi’s subscription if you were to buy them separately, which makes Kajabi worth it.

Does Kajabi offer a free plan?

No, Kajabi doesn’t have a free plan, but if you want to try it out for free, you can check out their 14-day free trial, so you can see if Kajabi is right for you without any risk.

Is Kajabi user friendly?

All of Kajabi’s available features and tools interact seamlessly. The platform’s navigation is very intuitive and user-friendly. Everything is easy to set up so that the user won’t need to have any technical knowledge to achieve their goals.

Is Kajabi SEO friendly?

Yes, it is. The platform offers users a variety of tools and features that can be used for SEO purposes.

Can I sell physical products on Kajabi?

Yes, in addition to courses, you can also sell physical products through the platform. However, Kajabi’s software is primarily designed for selling courses and digital products, which is why it might not be the best fit for you if your main goal is selling physical products.

Does Kajabi charge transaction fees?

No, they do not charge transaction fees.

Wrapping Things Up

Kajabi is an excellent “all-in-one” web-based software platform where you can create, market, and sell online courses and digital products. You can use the platform to create a range of digital products, design your website, create sales pages and funnels to boost your sales and scale your business, and much, much more.

The platform is simple and intuitive and doesn’t require any tech knowledge for you to be able to navigate through its features and tools and create something unique and creative.

While its plans are pricier than some of its competitors, the features and tools it offers make this platform a solid choice for those looking to create and sell digital products.

What is Thinkific?

Thinkific is an online course platform that helps educators and entrepreneurs to create and sell their courses online without any design or coding experience needed.

Thinkific combines plenty of features both for teaching and for selling which makes it a great all-in-one solution for anyone looking to sell an online course easily and efficiently.

Thinkific’s platform allows individuals and businesses to create online courses in their field of expertise as well as deliver and sell those courses to their audience. The opportunities to create courses are unlimited. From social media marketing to online hockey coaching programs, Thinkific caters to all types of creators and students.

They currently have over 25,000 creators on their platform, delivering classes to students in over 160 countries.

What’s Thinkific Used For?

From coaches, bloggers, and YouTubers to authors, speakers, and business owners, everyone can use Thinkific to provide students with online courses and achieve their business goals. Experts can use the platform to scale their business and monetize their expertise by creating an engaging student experience.

You can use Thinkific to book more clients, increase your revenue and grow your business. Using Thinkific’s course-creation, marketing, and selling tools, you can easily create a website where your audience can find and purchase your courses.

But what type of features does Thinkific offer, and how do they compare to other similar platforms?

Thinkific Review: Main Features

Before picking the right platform to sell your online courses on, you need to make sure that it works for you and your course-building needs.

To help you make a well-informed choice, we’ve covered all of Thinkific’s main features and benefits so you can check out whether they fit your needs.

Here are some of the main things that make this platform stand out in comparison to other platforms:

1. Thinkific Course Builder

Course Player

The course player is what your students will see when they take your course. It’s where they spend most of their time, enjoying your lessons and discussing them with other students who are also taking your course.

Thinkific allows you to customize several details of your course player appearance so it matches your branding or the look-and-feel you want to create for that specific course.

You can go with a course template, and upload your text, audio, or video content all at once. Or you can use their drag-and-drop option to build the layout of your pages and course in the way that works best for your content.

Here are some of the options that Thinkific offers when it comes to customizing the course player.

• Brand your course. Put your logo at the top of your course and use your brand colors so you can keep your branding strong.
• Select your color and font. Select the primary color of the course player (you can use your brand color) and the course player font.
• Select player theme. Select between their light and dark theme for each of your individual courses.

In addition to these features, there are other ways to customize your Course Player, so you can provide your users with the best possible experience. Those include:

• On-Lesson Discussions
• Completion Messages
• Course Reviews
• Free Preview
• Drip Schedule
• Prerequisite Lessons
• Individual Course Player Appearance Customizations

Some of these features are available on the free plan but the paid packages offer even more customization options like dark/light themes, custom fonts, your own course player logo and labels for each type of lesson.

No matter what your industry or business is, these white-labeling options can help you strengthen your personal brand and recognition.

Alternatively, you can also easily integrate Thinkific with your existing website in case you want some extra space for customization or want to bring your courses to your existing audience.

Content Support

Keeping your students engaged can be challenging so switching up your type of content can help you make the learning experience more interactive and entertaining.

For this purpose, Thinkific supports a wide variety of content types, so you can choose the one that best suits the lesson and learning needs of your students.

Here are the different types of lessons you can host on Thinkific.

1. Video
2. Quiz
3. Multimedia
4. Text
5. Survey
6. PDF
7. Audio
8. Downloads
9. Presentations
10. Brillium exams
11. Assignments
12. Live feed (beta)

Note: Thinkific allows you to upload your videos directly removing the need of paying for another hosting service. They host the files through Wistia and you can upload as many as you want as long as they are 2G.

Drip Content Schedule

Thinkific allows you to “drip” your content, controlling when your students get access to each part (or to all of it). This is especially useful when you do a pre-sell and don’t want students to get access to the course until the official launch or if you want to release one lesson at a time to help students pace their learning.

You can create a unique Drip Schedule per course based on three options:

1. Student Enrollment Date 
2. Student Course Start Date 
3. On a Specific Date (ie. Calendar Date)

This feature is not available of the free plan so you’d need to upgrade to the Basic Plan to use get access.

2. Thinkific’s Website Builder

Your website is where you will sell your course so naturally, it plays an essential role in the success of your online coaching business.

Thinkific doesn’t fall short when it comes to features for creating a high-converting website for your courses.

Here are some of Thinkific’s website functionalities:

Drag-and-drop Builder

Ten years ago, the process of creating a website was exclusive to those who knew how to code but nowadays anyone can do it thanks to drag-and-drop builders like the one Thinkific offers.

Their drag and drop feature which allows you to “grab” certain sections or objects and drag them to your desired location. This way you can easily build your course and go from concept to a fully-built course within a couple of hours, as opposed to having to code everything from scratch

You can choose between banners, call-to-action, checklist, countdown timers, image gallery, reviews, videos, and much more.

You can use their available layouts that are specifically designed for educational businesses and simply change some of the details you want to personalize or you can choose to use their drag-and-drop feature to create your layout from scratch.

Theme Library

Thinkific’s Theme Library comes with 10 pre-built templates that you can customize to have your website ready in a few minutes instead of having to start from scratch.

Their templates are focused on education businesses so you can make sure any of them would work well for selling your course.

Checkout Page

The “Design Your Site” section offers you the ability to customize your sign up and checkout pages and as you probably know they are an integral part in ensuring sales.

If you’re looking to improve your conversion rates, you should take the time to improve the design and layout of your sign up and checkout pages, using the customizing options offered in the “Design Your Site” section.

Thinkific’s Sales Pages

When it comes to sales pages, Thinkific is really easy to build with, using their niche-specific or business sector templates. You can easily employ their templates and do some CSS and HTML customizations to achieve the look you want.

For your Thinkific course to do well and sell, you’re going to have to design a tempting sales page to convince your audience to buy your course. With Thinkific you can easily achieve this, even if you have no knowledge in web design. Using their user-friendly site builder, you can add all the elements your course needs to be successful, including:

• A proper banner using whatever image you want
• A proper description of your course
• Your bio
• FAQs
• Testimonials and reviews
• CTAs and more

3. Thinkific Student Management Tools

3.1 Manage Learning Section

The “Manage Learning Content” section offers you the chance to create categories for your courses, which is a great way to group different courses together, giving your students more perspective as to which courses are related.

Use this section to create any kind of category you want, add images to each category, and group your courses accordingly. Other helpful features that you can find in the “Manage Learning Content” area include:

• Membership types. The “Manage Learning Content” section allows you to set differente membership types and payment options for your students to choose. Some of the options you can choose from include
  • Free membership plan
  • One-time payment
  • Subscription membership
  • Monthly payment plan
  • Custom pricing options

Although, you’ll need access to Thinkific’s Pro plan to use these membership options.

• Adding a free trial feature to your course. Learners can then sign up to your course for free and get access to the free part of your course, but will need to pay to access the rest of your content.

• Customizing the completion page of your courses so you can promote related courses, which is a great selling feature.

• Split revenue between instructors. If you have a pro or a premier account, and you’re selling courses that feature multiple instructors, you can use this section to determine the percentage in which the revenue will be split amongst each contributor.

• Bundle courses. If you’re using any of Thinkific’s paid plans, you can create bundles of courses that you can sell as a single product, which is another great marketing feature.

3.2. Thinkific’s Quizzes

Quizzes and tests are a great form of self-assessment for your students and give them the chance to check their knowledge and motivate them to continue learning.

Thinkific allows you to create simple and more complex quizzes using multiple-choice assessments.

They have a simple template that you can use to import your questions and answer alternatives as well as choose whether each question has one or multiple correct answers. If you’d like, you can also provide your students with further explanation as to why that answer is correct and offer them further guidance on how to get the right answer.

Thinkific will keep a record of your questions and answers stored there and the option to easily import them into a different system if you choose to.

If you’re using their Pro or Premier plans, you can also set your quizzes and tests as a prerequisite for moving on to the next chapter of your course, meaning your students will need to pass the quiz to continue.

With Pro and Premier plans, you also have the chance to randomize your questions, by pulling from a bank of questions you’ve previously set up.

If you’re just starting out by offering a couple of courses to your audience, and aren’t planning on creating really elaborate quizzes, then the basic plan will work well for you. If, however, you’re an advanced learning business that’s planning to scale up, even more, you should consider taking advantage of Thinkific’s Pro or Premier plans.

3.4 Certificates

With the help of Accredible, Thinkific issues completion certificates to students who successfully finish a course, so each learner who finishes your course can be presented with a personalized certificate.

If you want to give your students certificates at the end of each of your courses you will need to use Thinkific’s Pro or Premier plan, which offers such options. The cost of a pro-level or premier-level license is something that might be worth considering, especially if you’re serious enough about what you’re teaching that you want to provide certificates for it and it is something students will value.

If you decide that you want to provide your students with certificates for completing your course, you can use Thinkific’s certificate templates to provide personalized certificates to each student. You can also set a time period for which the certificate will be valid. 

If you’re not satisfied with Thinkific’s certificate template, you can also browse different designs on Accredible. Due to Thinkific’s integration of Accredible, you can customize your certificates to suit your needs best. Using their editor, you can change and remove elements of the certificate, change the branding, the text, and everything else, by adding or removing “dynamic” elements, until you achieve the look you want.

4. Thinkific App Store

Earlier this year, Thinkific launched their Thinkific App Store, making the process of creating professional-looking content much easier. Their app store has around 30 apps across 4 different categories, including automation, email marketing and growth, analytics/tracking, and student experience.

The Thinkific App Store allows creators to more fully customize their courses and other learning products they’re offering.

In addition to helping course creators, developers can also benefit from creating and selling apps for the Thinkific App Store by accessing a global market of over 50,000 active course creators.

5. Marketing and Selling with Thinkific

Unlike academic learning management systems, Thinkific is a platform that’s specifically designed for marketing and selling purposes. Since marketing and selling online education is one of Thinkific’s main uses, it provides a range of features course creators can implement to achieve their marketing goals.

Most of these features can be found under the “Market and Sell” section on the panel, but you can also find some of the other marketing and selling tools in other sections, so if you want to make use of everything Thinkific can offer, make sure not to skip out on these.

Here’s where you can find some of Thinkific’s most valuable marketing and selling features, beginning with the “Market and Sell” section.

Market and Sell

The “Market and Sell” section offers a range of options when it comes to selling and marketing. Some of those include:

• Setting up coupons. If you’re using one of Thinkific’s paid plans, you’ll have the option of setting up coupons that can be used when purchasing your courses or bundles. You can set the discount percentage for the coupon, set an expiration date (optional) and the number of times the coupon can be used (also optional).

• Adding affiliates. Thinkific’s platform allows you to add a person or more people as affiliates, who will help sell your courses for a commission. This process is pretty straightforward and simple. All you have to do is add that person as a user and select “affiliate” as his role. You can also do this with existing users.

• Use the sales widget feature. Generate an HTML code using Thinkific’s sales widget feature that you can place on your existing website and have users go straight to a landing page or to checkout. You can customize the widget to display as a button or add a product image to it and any text you want displayed.

No Transaction Fees

Unlike other similar platforms, Thinkific doesn’t charge course creators transaction fees when a student purchases their course, nor does it take a commission from their sales.

The amount you pay on a monthly or yearly basis depends on the level you select. In addition to their free plan, they have packages ranging from $49 to $499/month, so you can choose the one that works best for your needs and change it at any time.

6. Thinkific Integrations

Simply put, the term integrations describes pieces of software that are able to “talk to each other” and pass information through some type of coding. Integrations matter a lot when it comes to online course platforms because they improve the users’ experience and can make the whole process a lot easier when implemented properly.

So far, Thinkific offers integrations in the areas of automation tools, e-commerce, tracking/analytics, email marketing, student experience, and growth tools. Depending on the plan you have, you will have access to different areas of integration, although the essentials will be available to all users, including the ones using the free plan.

Thinkific’s app store is constantly growing, allowing users to find all kinds of apps specifically designed to help course creators in their process.

When you get started with Thinkific, there are a few essential integrations that you should set up so you can start marketing and selling your courses.

Here’s what those areas are, and where you should begin when you’re just starting out with Thinkific.

E-commerce

Thinkific supports direct integrations with two payment gateway services, Stripe and Paypal. You can integrate one of those options or use both if that’s what you prefer. You can set up your payment gateway by navigating to the “Payments” tab, located under “Settings”.

You can use PayPal for one-time payments only, and when it comes to Stripe, in addition to one-time payments, you can also set up subscription and payment plans. Stripe also allows you to change your currency, while PayPal integration supports USD only.

Other integrations in the area of e-commerce include Stunning, a service that’s designed to identify and recover failed Stripe payments, and Quaderno, which helps users manage their taxes.

There are a ton of other apps under the e-commerce section that you can integrate to sell more courses and scale-up.

Some of the most useful ones you should consider setting up, include:

• Shopify. Add a new revenue stream and grow your online course business by creating a Shopify store and selling related products and services to your audience.
• Keap. Grow your business and increase sales using this automated sales and marketing automation software.
• eWebinar. Sell your courses on autopilot and automate the whole sales process.
• DropInBlog. Add a blog to your site and boost your search engine ranking.
• CartStack. Send targeted emails, SMS and web push reminders to recover lost sales from visitors who’ve left your site without completing their purchase.
• Capture. Create engaging quizzes and pop-ups to grow your email list.

These are just some of the available apps and integrations you can use to grow your business and sell more. Depending on the plan you have, you might be able to implement some or most of these integrations to get more customers, more sales, and grow your business.

Tracking/Analytics + Growth Tools

By using Google Analytics and other tracking and analytics tools that can be integrated with Thinkific, you can gain valuable insight into your customers’ activity. Using the tools Google Analytics offers, you can get to know your audience better, analyze all data in one place, get detailed reports and use those to make more data-driven decisions to grow your business.

To use Google Analytics, simply put your tracking code and site verification code into Thinkific so you can track and analyze all data in one place.

Apart from Google Analytics, Thinkific provides a few other useful integrations that you can use for tracking purposes. 

Those include:

• Facebook Pixel. Which you can use to track conversions from Facebook Ads, build your audience and optimize your ads based on the data you collect.
• Mixpanel. Track in-depth student actions using this advanced analytics platform. Improve student experience using real-time data, behavior tracking and data insights.
• Segment. Clean, collect and control customer data to create your ultimate data foundation and understand how your customers are interacting with your site.
• Sumo. Increase your website leads and conversions, drive traffic, market your content better and automate your site’s growth.
• Wizebank Analytics. Keep all your analytics data and everything you need to know about your e-learning business in one place and save time and money in the process. 

Email Marketing Integration

Email integration is the process of connecting the email service you use to the course builder, so that when a customer purchases your course that email can be ported right over to your inbox.

Thinkific connects with you to use 6 different email email marketing platforms so you can add your students to your mailing list and automate the entire process. These include Mail Chimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft and ConstantContact.

This is not the case with most course builders, which typically connect with 1-2 email services.

While this may not seem like a big deal, as even if your email service provider is not on the list of available providers, you can use a third-party service to connect your email service to the course provider if you don’t want to spend extra money on additional services choosing a course builder that connects with multiple different email services can save you a lot of money.

This is a really important step for online course sellers so they can add Thinkific students to their mailing list and be able to send them updates, promotions, offers, and so on.

Using your preferred email marketing platform, you can build powerful email and marketing campaigns. You can use the tools these apps provide to grow your online course business by finding new customers, keeping them engaged, and coming back for more by using segmented and automated emails.

Student Experience

There are a ton of different apps you can integrate with your Thinkific account to deliver better student experiences. Here’s an overview of a few of those integrations:

• Accredible. Issue digital course completion certificates to your students to help motivate your students and boost completion rates.
• Beastnotes. Offer your students a better way of taking notes that’s designed to be distraction-free so they can learn better and engage more effectively with your content.
• Community Box. Turn your classroom into a community and enable your students to network with each other and with other visitors on your site.
• Ding. Keep your students informed and excited about your latest content, new courses and other events by sending them smart, personalized notifications.
• Lessonspace. Create engaging one-on-one or group teaching sessions for your students. Teach using video conference, whiteboards, text chat, document editors, or even code.
• Motrain. Use a personalized reward system to motivate your students with prizes, virtual coins and more!

And if you have a premier-level account, you can make use of the Thinkific Brillium integration to create advanced examinations, surveys, and more.

Accessing Your Apps

To access all your apps simply visit the Thinkific App Store, where you can find, set up and access a variety of apps and integrations. You can install any of the apps straight from the store and once they’re installed, you can access them through your Apps page in your Admin Panel.

What If You Can’t Find the App You Need?

And finally, if you can’t find the perfect tool or app among the array of integrations available on Thinkific, you can either:

• Use Zapier, which is a tool that allows users to integrate the web applications they use and automate the whole process.
• Contact Thinkific’s support team and request an app that you think might work together well in their ecosystem. If they like your idea they might implement it and you might see that app in their constantly growing app store.
• Alternatively, you can join the Thinkific Partner Program and build the app you want yourself, if that’s something that might interest you.

7. Thinkific Pricing Plans & Packages

Thinkific offers 4 different packages that range from free to premier. 

Let’s take a look at each package separately, to see which one would be the best choice for you.

Thinkific Free Package

What makes Thinkific really stand out from other online course platforms is that they offer a free plan in addition to their paid subscription plans. The free plan allows you to use the core features of the platform so you can create a limited number of courses completely free of charge.

• Limited courses (up to 3)
• Unlimited students
• Email support
• Quizzes & surveys
• Content hosting 
• Instant access to your funds

This package is suitable for those of you who are starting out and looking to create your first courses. You can test-drive Thinkific’s core features for free and later on if you’re looking to expand your business, you can select one of their paid plans that offer more features and benefits to meet your needs.

Thinkific Basic Package

Thinkific’s basic package is priced at $39 per month (paid annually) or $49 per month (paid monthly) and it offers the basic tools and features necessary to prepare and launch your first course.

Thinkific’s basic package includes all the core and free features of the platform, including a few additional ones, like:

• Unlimited courses & students
• Live Chat support
• Coupons 
• Email students 
• Drip (scheduled) content
• Affiliate reporting
• Custom domain
• Email integrations 
• Zapier triggers 
• Manual student enrollment & exports 
• Thinkific App Store

Thinkific Pro Package – Most Popular Plan

Their pro package is priced at $79 per month (annually) or $99 per month (monthly) and it offers course creators including authors, speakers, creatives, consultants, coaches, and trainers a complete suite of tools and features necessary to create an amazing student experience.

Thinkific’s pro package includes all the basic features of the platform, including a few additional ones, like:

• Unlimited courses & students
• Live chat support
• 2 Site admin accounts
• 5 Course admins/authors
• Private & hidden courses
• Advanced course pricing options 
• Memberships and bundles 
• Certificates
• Advanced Customization 
• Priority Support
• Assignments
• Communities 
• Live Lessons with Zoom

Thinkific Premier Package

Priced at $399 per month (annually) or $499 per month (monthly), Thinkific’s premier package is designed for advanced customers who are looking to take their courses to the next level and deliver online education at scale. With this plan, there are no limitations that can stand in the way of you building an education empire.

Thinkific’s premier package includes all the pro features of the platform, including a few additional ones, like:

• Unlimited courses & students
• Live chat support
• 5 Site admin accounts 
• 15 Group Analysts 
• 50 Course admins/authors 
• Single sign on (SSO)
• Onboarding package

Thinkific Plus Package

For those of you out there who are looking for even more than the premier package can offer, there is one more plan that’s available and can be requested by contacting Thinkific directly. The plan comes with a few extra features, such as:

• Course-specific branding
• Plus API Allowances
• Custom migration planning
• Dedicated Customer Success Manager
• Dedicated sandbox site
• Advanced password complexity
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) 99.5%
• Master Services Agreement (MSA)
• Course duplication
• Robust launch preparedness review

Thinkific Review: Pros & Cons

Thinkific Pros

• Free basic plan: This is one of the main advantages of Thinkific vs. other course creation platforms. Many educators and entrepreneurs don’t a big budget when starting their business so this reason alone is enough to draw them to Thinkific.
• No transaction fees: Thinkific doesn’t charge any additional transaction charges on the payments made by students which can make a big difference for most educators.
• Instant access to your funds: Regarldess of the plan you’re using, Thinkific offers you instant access to your funds which is a feature lacking in platforms like Teachable and Udemy.
• Custom domain: For those planning to use their own domain, Thinkific provides custom domains from its Basic plans which helps you build your online presence and recognition.
• Phone support: Thinkific is one of the very few platforms offering phone support. Additionally, Thinkific’s email support is quite responsive.
• White-labeling solution: If you want to crate your own course platform you get rid of the Thinkific branding and can leverage their siftware and features with your own brand. Availabe with Growth packages.
• Third-party integrations: Thikific intergates seamlessly with some of the most popular email autoresonder and payment gateways which makes up for the lack of integrated email or marketing tools. Their app store also has around 30 apps for automation, email marketing and growth, analytics / tracking and student experience.

Thinkific Cons

• Two-step checkout process: Thinkific has a two-step checkout process where users are required to create an account before purchasing a course which could increase cart abandonments. 
• No marketplace: Thinkific doesn’t offer a course marketplace which could be a drawback when trying to marketing your course. However, Thinkific is not seeing as a marketplace and doesn’t get organic visitors looking for course which explains why mot of the educators that use the platform already have an audience or other source of traffic.
• No email marketing tool: While Thinkific comes with various third-party email integrations, it doesn’t provide its email autoresponder, which means you need to pay for a separate software.

Thinkific Review | FAQs

If you’re still left with some unanswered questions regarding the platform, its features and anything else related to it, we’ve got you covered below!

Let’s check out some of the most frequently asked questions about Thinkific that might help you decide whether the platform is a good fit for you.

1. How good is Thinkific?

Thinkific is one of the best course creation platforms available. It is designed to help educators, entrepreneurs, and business coaches promote and grow their business seamlessly thanks to their integration with multiple third-party platforms and apps.

2. Is Thinkific free forever?

If you choose the free plan, yes. However, their free plan is limited to three courses, so when you want to scale up and create more courses, you will have to upgrade to one of their paid plans.

3. Is Thinkific safe?

Yes, Thinkific is a very safe and reliable platform with secure cloud hosting and daily backups. All updates are automatic so you always have access to the latest features. It also has built-in security and SSL. Their Support and Engineering teams are trained to report, review and monitor any possible incidents that might occur so they can be resolved right away.

4. What makes Thinkific different from other course creation platforms?

Thinkific is really easy to set up and use since it doesn’t require any coding knowledge or experience. The platform is designed to provide you and your users with an incredible experience. Their Support and Engineering teams are here to help you out every step of the way so you can create and sell your courses seamlessly.

5. Can I build my entire website on Thinkific?

Thinkific gives you the freedom to build not only your courses but your entire brand within one seamless platform. You can achieve all of that without having any knowledge or experience in web design, since the platform is designed to facilitate every step of the process from start to finish, from building to marketing, selling, and so on.

6. What is Thinkific’s Growth package and how much does it cost?

Their Growth package is designed to help course creators scale and expand their business. This package is available as an add-on to Thinkific’s Pro plan and provides course creators with additional features like bulk emails, bulk enrollment, student groups, advanced segmentation, and more. The package price is set at $0.10 per active student, with the first 100 students being free.

Thinkific Review: Wrapping Things Up

Thinkific is an all-in-one platform for course creators where they can seamlessly create, market, and sell their courses to earn revenue and grow their business. Thinkific allows coaches, instructors, and creators to create engaging courses and high-converting sites without any coding or design experience.

The platform is suitable for everyone from small businesses to coaches, authors, creatives, professional trainers, universities, and larger companies. Everyone from solo edupreneurs to large corporations can get benefit from the platform and the variety of features it offers.

Even if you’re still not sure whether Thinkific is the platform for you, there are no risks in trying out their free plan so you can see for yourself if this platform is the way to go.

You might be making sales and having profits but if you are not strategically turning visitors into leads and leads into buyers, is like you are playing blindfolded.

But don’t worry, in this article I’ll explain why a Lead Generation Funnels is so crucial to any business and how to create one that brings leads in on autopilot.

What is a Lead Generation Funnel?

Funnels are way simpler than marketers make them sound and this case is not the exception.

A lead generation funnel is a 2 or 3 step website that has the unique goal of capturing visitors’ emails by offering them a free item known as “lead magnet” in exchange.

The term ‘funnel’ references the fact that there are more people at the ‘top’ who are the visitors and only some of them will get to the other side and become buyers (or in this case, leads).

Funnels are based on the premise that customers follows a purchase journey from the momenet they become aware of their needs and your offer until they are ready to buy.

There are a few different models and theories on this customer path and the marketing steps that accompany it. However the most relvenat point is that a potential buyers needs to hear from you a few times and come to trust you before they even consider buying from you.

This is why sales funnels and lead generation funnels are so important. Because once you collect a visitors email you can build a relationship with them, manipulate and optimize that journey in your favor.

Additionally, lead generation funnels are the first steps into qualifying a potential lead. If someone is not interested in your free lead magnet they will most likely won’t be interested in your paid offer either. So it is a way of filtering and reducing your audience to spend your marketing efforts in those who will generate a return on investment.

Do you need a Lead Generation Funnel?

To put it simply, YES! Generating leads is among the most important activities in sales and marketing. Every business needs paying customers and in order to get them, it first needs leads.

Even if you are already making sales without a lead funnel, you can still benefit from one to automate and scale your process, make more sales, and in consequence, more money.

Here are some of the reasons why your business needs a Lead Generation Funnel:

It helps you narrow down your products and services

If you are just starting out and haven’t yet defined who your perfect customer is and what is the perfect offer for them, a lead funnel can help you do it.

When you first create a funnel and a lead magnet you are going to have to be very specific with the problem you are going to help them solve. If you create a lead funnel and it starts converting really well it means there is an opportunity to explore service around that need further.

On the contrary, if you make a lead magnet for a problem you thought was a good idea yet it doesn’t work very well, you know you need to change your approach. Testing and optimizing with a lead funnel is easy and you can quickly change directions. Without one, you could have spent lots of time, energy, and money pushing an offer that had no audience.

Additionally, you can start a conversation with your leads and ask them directly how you can best serve them which already gives you a huge advantage over your competitors.

It makes the selling process easier

When you use a lead generation funnel, you can “warm” your customer, build a relationship and show your authority until the point where they are practically asking how they can work with you or buy your products.

“People don’t like being sold to but they do like buying”

This saying illustrates why funnels are so successful. People are always looking for solutions for their problems and are willing to pay for them IF and WHEN they decide you have what they need.

A lead funnel allows you to do exactly. You get to provide value first and present your offer as a natural consequence to continue to help them once you have earned their trust.

It lets you focus on what you like doing

As an entrepreneur or business owner, you want to spend more time helping people and creating more content and less time prospecting or pushing your product.

When you have your lead funnel in place, you can focus on what you do best and let the funnel do the rest.

Regales of the platform(s) you use fpr growing your audience and generating traffic you only need to direct them to your funnel and it will do the rest.

It guarantees long term success

Generating leads for your business won’t only help you make sales now, but you’ll be growing a list of people to whom you can sell forever.

Did you know that every email subscriber generates on average $1-$2/month and up to $5 on some niches? That’s why companies don’t mind spending up to $20 to get someone on their lists.

Besides the short term benefits and sales, getting leads for your company is the best way to ensure you are successful in the long term.

It protects you and gives you freedom

Collecting leads for your business means you will have an asset of your own that you have 100% control of.

On other platforms like social media you don’t control the traffic, even you are getting a good reach now, the algorithm can change at any time and you coudl stop getting views. Ir if you are doing paid ads, you account could get banned and you’d lost all your data.

In a similar way, if you are using SEO to brinf traffic to your site, Google’s algortihm can also change and your traffic could drop dramatically.

These are all things that don’t happen so often but they definitely happen. This is why building your own email list in one of the safest things you can do for your business. You own your list 100% and even if one email software company were to close to the account you could simply move to another one.

Additionally, when using social media or paid ads you are at mercy of their limitations and terms and conditions, there are certain things you shouldn’t say and you don’t have complete freedom to market your business. This is also fixed by collecting your own leads since you can say anything you want (within reasons) in your email campaigns.

How To Create a Lead Generation Funnel?

Now that we have talked about the importance of collecting leads and how can it impact your business, let’s explore how exactly you can create your own Lead Generation Funnel easily and quickly.

Before we dive deep, its important to understand the main elements that it has:

• Lead Magnet: is the free item or “freebie” that you’ll offer visitors in exchange for their emails.
• Funnel: this includes the Opt-In Page where visitors will be presented with your lead magnet as well as the Thank You Page.
• Email Sequence: This is the email campaign(s) you will send you collected leads in order to nurture them and convert them into buyers.

Now lets explore each one in detail….

1. Create your Lead Magnet

Naturally, the first and most important part of a lead generator funnel is the lead magnet. Your conversion rate, as well as the type of visitors you will attract, will depend hugely on it

How to create the perfect lead magnet to attract your audience? There are a few key factors you can consider:

• It is quick and easy to implement. You want your lead magnet to be something your audience can take action on and see results fast. This way they’ll get immediate satisfaction and will be more willing to take the next step with a paid offer.

• It is really specific. This relates to the previous point but it’s important that you focus on one specific problem or pain point your audience is facing. If you try to go too broad you won’t be able to provide a quick solution and the value of your lead magnet will dilute. People don’t put too much value on free stuff so they are most likely to take prolonged action on something they have paid for than on something free.

• It is part of the bigger problem your paid product solves: Your lead magnet will help you pre-qualify your potential customer for your paid products or services. So it should be something that your perfect audience will be also interested in.
  
  Let’s say for example your paid offer is a 12-week fitness program, you could your lead magnet a 1-week challenge. Or if you paid offer is a Social Media Management service, you can make your lead magnet a free pdf guide on 10 tips to create a social media profile. The point is that you can later introduce your offer as a natural next step in their path to solve their problems.

Some examples of attractive lead magnets are:

• Mini Ebook
• Ultimate Guide
• Checklist
• Spreadsheet
• Workbook
• Recipes / Meal Plan
• Case Study
• Webinar
• Cheat Sheet
• Polls, Quizzes, and Surveys,
• Video Course/ training
• Resource list
• Free trial
• Discount
• Free consultation

If you don’t want to create your own lead magnet, you can also find ready-made one on places like IDPLR.com or have one made for you on Fiverr for a great price.

2. Create your Funnel Pages

Once that you have your Lead Magnet ready is time to create your actual funnel so you can begin capturing emails. It should consist of two pages:

a. Opt-in Page

This is also known as landing page since it is where people will “land” after clicking on whichever traffic source you are using (more on that later).

On this page, you will present your lead magnet in the most attractive and efficient way possible. The goal is to encourage visitors to give you their email to get access to it.

Your opt-in page should be simple and direct and only contain a few key elements:

• Headline: This is the first the will see when they land on your page. It should present the benefits of your lead magnet in a direct and enticing way. A good formula to follow for your headline is “Discover how to [Result] in [Timeframe]Without [Thing You Hate Doing]”.
  
  Check out this article later for more Catchy Headlines Ideas.

• Lead Magnet Mockup: This is optional but having a physical representation of your lead can help make it more tangible and increase its perceived value.

You can create your own lead magnet mockup easily using one of Canva’s templates. If rather pay someone else to do it you find some very affordable designers on Fiverr.

• Benefits: Present a few key benefits they will achieve by downloading your lead magnet. Remember to focus on something that is easy to implement and that delivers quick results.

• Email Form + Call To Action: Last but not least, invite people to opt-in with their email and use a clear call to action button. Make sure this part is above the fold, meaning it is visible without them needed to scroll down.
  
  The least information you ask, the better so try going for the email only or include the name if you consider it essential.

b. Thank You Page

After someone decides to opt-in to get access to your lead magnet, they should be taken to your Thank You Page. Naturally, this is where you’d place a Thank You message but there is a couple of other things you should consider:

• Deliver your lead magnet: You can include a link here so people can download your lead magnet or you can choose to only send it via email.

• Tell them what to expect: You can use this page to tell your subscriber what they can expect from you. Will you send them valuable information, promotions, discounts? etc. You should be emailing them frequently so this way they are a little bit more predisposed to open your emails when they land in their inbox.

• Offer an upsell: If they have already opted in to your lead magnet why not use this opportunity to start offering a paid product? some of them will choose to buy it and those who don’t will already have in mind that you have more to offer in the future.
  
  You can do this by placing an order form in the Thank You Page or by presenting the offer and including a link that takes them to a checkout page.

• Link to your other channels: If you don’t want to present an offer yet, you can still use this page to drive traffic to your other platforms whether than is your blog, social media, or website.

How to design your lead funnel? What Software is best?

If you are wondering how to create the pages themselves, there are many drag-and-drop builders you can use that require zero design or coding experience.

I personally create all my funnels and pages in Clickfunnels. It is very easy to use and you can have a page ready in minutes.

It also has lots of templates based on the type of page you want to create e.g. opt-in page, thank you page, check out page, etc.

You can import a Lead Generation Funnel template with one click and simply tweak it for your own copy, logo, and images.

If you want even more options then Russell Brunson, the owner of Clickfunels, has a library of perfect Lead Generation Funnel Templates you can get when you buy his $7 book – Lead Funnel Swipe Copy.

Just tick the box for the upsell on the order page – very good value.

3. Create your email sequence

Once you start collecting leads, you want to nurture your relationship with them so you can convert them into your paying customers — which is the ultimate goal of getting leads in the first place.

This is usually done through a series of preplanned emails called email sequence or email campaign. This is the part where automation happens and you get to see sales coming in without you doing anything.

The first email you should send is the one that will deliver the lead magnet immediately after they opted in on your landing page. After that, you should start your email sequence with the purpose of introducing yourself and your products or services.

One very famous and effective email sequence you can use is a “Soap Opera” sequence. It is called that way because it uses a little bit of drama to hook people in and leaving them wanting to hear more.

Ideally, your email sequence should be like this:

• Email 0 Welcome: Lead magnet delivery email

• Email 1: Set the Stage: This is where your first and best chance to create a connection with your prospects and leave them wanting more. One way to do so is by mentioning you have a secret that has given you great results and you will share it in the next emails

• Email 2: High Drama: Now that your prospect is hooked it’s a good idea to start with a backstory. Think about the hardest time in your business growth where you might have almost failed, except for one thing. You want them to realize they are going through the same problem, but somehow you’ve found the solution.

• Email 3: The Epiphany: At this point, your readers are hooked and want to learn how you overcame your problem and found a way how to succeed. This is where you present your epiphany and link it to your product. E.g.: I realized I needed to automate this process with a software…” They can now start to see the value of your product.

• Email 4: The Hidden Benefits: Now that your readers have an idea of your offer, you need to help them understand all the different ways that they can benefit from it. You can now add your link so they can make a purchase.

• Email 5: The Call to Action: In the last email of this sequence, you can add a compelling offer with a sense of urgency. Alternatively, you can add a couple more of emails to this sequence with a time deadline reminder and even a last-minute deal.

That concludes your first email sequence that should result in your leads turning into buyers! You should continue to stay in touch with your subscribers on a regular basis sending not only offers but also valuable content.

How to set up an automated email sequence?

You can use an email autoresponder to send your email sequence on autopilot every time you collect a lead.

I have tried almost every email software out there and nothing compares to ActiveCampaign. You can create every automation you can imagine and it is really easy to visualize and integrate with your funnel.

You can separate contacts based differect criteria like if they open an email or not, if they clicked on your offer, bought one of your products, etc.

They also offer a free 14 day trial without a credit card required so you can try it out without worries.

4. Send traffic to your Lead Generation Funnel

Now that you have your high converting funnel and email sequence in place, is time to send traffic and get those leads coming!

When it comes to traffic, There are organic and paid source, like SEO, PPC ads, Facebook ads, YouTube, TikTok, etc.

If you already have a platform like a website/blog or social media account where you are getting significant traffic, you can definitely start using them to direct people to your funnel landing page.

If you don’t have a audience yet, you can use paid traffic sources like Facebook, Google or Youtube Ads.

Each one has its own benefits and withdrawals but the best is to start with one that you are more comfortable with and stick with it until you have master it. Paid traffic takes some time to optimize so if you don’t stick with one long enough you won’t get to the results parts and will end up losing money.

If you want to learn more about the best traffic strategies for your Lead generation Funnel and your business in general, I definitely recommend this FREE BOOK by Clickfunnels creator Russell Brunson. You only need to pay $7.95 shipping.

5. Track and Optimize

Once your traffic is sending prospects to your opt-in page you can seat back for a minute and appreciate your funnel bringing leads on autopilot.

But you should also take a look at your statistics and strive to optimize them so you can bring more leads for less money.

All the tools I have mentioned along the post allow you to see the stats of every part of your funnels and emal sequence so you can know exactly how each piece is performing and where it could use some improvement.

Some statitics to look at are:

• If you are using paid ads, its click through rate, conversion rate and cost per lead. This will tell you how good your images, copy and targeting are.

• In your funnel: your opt-in rate and conversion rate if you include and offer in your thank you page. You can split test any element of your pages with just one click on Clickfunnels so you can improve your statistics continuously.

• In your email sequence: your open rate which will depend on your subject line and your click through rate on your links which will depend on your email copy. In ActiveCampaign you can also split test your emails to see what performs best.

Lead Generation Funnel FAQ

How do you make a lead generation funnel?

To create a lead generation funnel that brings qualified leads on autopilot, follow the steps outlined in this article:

1. Create your Lead Magnet
2. Create your Funnel Pages
3. Create your email sequence
4. Send traffic to your Funnel
5. Track and Optimize

What is lead generation marketing?

In marketing, Lead generation is the process of capturing the contact information of potential clients. This leads are then nurture with the goal of converting them to paying customers.

What is b2b lead generation?

B2B lead generation is a business model in which companies take care of the lead generation process with the goal of later selling those leads to companies in a certain niche or market.

Takeaway

Automating your Lead Generation process is the first step to grow your business and continue to improve your sales and profits. You can not grow a business without sales and you can not sales (efficiently) without leads.

This system will allow you to get qualified leads from on autopilot, nurtured them, and converted them into paying customers 24/7.

If you want someone to take your hand while you launch your fist lead generation funnel, I can not recommend this 30-day challenge enough. Even after 10 years in the digital marketing world, I got amazing value from it. And if for any reason you don’t like it, you can get a full refund back no question asked.

Congratulations! Selling an online course is one of the best ways to make money online while spreading your message and helping your audience.

A lot of coaches, creators, and experts in differents areas can create amazing courses in a matter of days but get stuck on the marketing and sales aspect.

If that is your case, then this article is for you. I am going to share the step by step guide on how to sell your online course on autopilot by using sales funnel.

This way the funnel will do the selling part for you and you’ll be able to focus on sharing your knowledge and continue to create amazing content that attract and grow your audience.

Why a sales funnels is the best way to sell your online course?

https://affiliatesmind.com/digital-products-to-sell/If you have ever tried to sell an online course without a sales funnels you have probably been in one of these two scenarios (or maybe both):

a) Uploading your amazing course, the fruit of your hard labour and years of experience into a marketplace and being forced to sell it for $10 and getting only 50%.

b) Spending thousands on dollars on Facebook Ads to get hundreds of visitors yet making only a couple of sales.

If you have experienced that, you are in the right place. I’ll tell you how to sell your course on your own and make more money than what you decide to spend on ads (if you do).

You see, the mistake a lot of entrepreneurs and creators make is that they think because their course is great it will sell, but they are missing a key point.

In the same way, you won’t buy a great house just because you saw an ‘On Sale’ sign, people won’t buy from you just because you put an ad in front of them.

Potential customers need to be ‘filtered’ and ‘nurtured’ before being ready to buy, and that is what sales funnel do.

Their whole purpose is to gain your audience’s trust and ‘move’ them through the purchase stages. From being a first time visitor becoming aware of your offer to a ready-to-buy life-long loyal customer.

They “warm them up” through smaller commitments and provide enough value to earn their trust and prove you can help with their problem.

They also allow you to have a higher conversion rate than a regular website and build your email list while you sell your course. This way, you can promote other offers after they buy your course and sell different products to those who didn’t buy it.

Additionally, you can use the same platform to host your course in a membership area so it is all fully automated and you can simply bring people in and let the funnel do the rest.

Step-by-Step Guide to Selling an Online Course

There are many different types of funnels that you can use to sell your course, from webinar funnels to survey and application funnels.

But what I’m going to teach you today is what I have proved over and over to work best when it comes to selling a course: a free email course funnel.

Note: This guide will focus on the selling part and not on how to create the course but if you don’t have your course yet, it will still be beneficial for your creative process to understand how online selling works.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Step 1: Create a free mini course

The first step to selling your course is to get qualified leads inside your funnel. This means getting the emails of people in your niche who it can help to and who will potentially buy it.

The best way to do this is to create a lead magnet and offer it in exchange for people’s emails. Lead Magnets can be of many different types including pdf guides, videos, spreadsheets, etc.

I am sure you have seen everyone plus their moms have a free ebook and while I don’t have anything against those but in most cases, they don’t deliver any real value. People don’t simply want something because it is free, they want a solution to their problems so that’s what you need to come up with.

Think of one specific problem you can help your audience fix and create a simple course that can be delivered in 5 emails.

The cool thing about ta mini-email course is that it combines a high perceived value of the course with the selling potential of an email sequence.

This way you don’t have one but 5 chances to provide value, gain your subscriber’s trust and prepare them to receive your offer.

If you are thinking ‘I want to sell a course not give away one for free’ I get it, it might seem a little bit counterintuitive but I guarantee you that by doing this you will NOT lose any sales. All the contrary, this is one of the highest converting practices you can use to turn your leads into paying customers.

How to create your free offering? Think of one specific problem you can help your customers with that is related to your paid course.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, actually, the simple the better.

• Is your paid course about manifesting the life of your dreams? make a free offering on how to manifest a new job by using affirmations.

• Is your it about becoming debt free? make your free offer about creating a monthly budget

• Or is your paid course about becoming an influencer? make your lead magnet on how to grow an Instagram account.

To try to keep it simple think if your lead magnet can be used in the following sentence: [problem]? Fix it by learning [lead magnet offering].

Step 1 recap: Create a free course offering that you can send in 5 emails. Solve on specific problem of your potential audience.

Step 2: Create an opt-in page for your lead magnet

After you decide on what your lead magnet or free mini course, you need to create an opt-in page to offer it and collect people’s emails.

While this is a free course you still want to get the best opt-in rate possible since every subscriber increases your chances of making a sale and improves your overall profits.

Especially if you use paid ads to get traffic, every metric will impact your final cost per lead and cost per purchase.

So, how to create the best opt-in page for your free course? It is actually easier than you think. Here are the main elements you need:

1. Attention-grabbing headline that mentions what problem this course is going to solve for them.
2. Short list of benefits so they know what to expect.
3. Clear Call to action visible above the fold.

You can include some extra testimonial or screenshots of results if that is something that you have or would apply to your course but with the first 3 elements, you have yourself a solid opt-in page.

Below is the template I use for most of my opt-in pages as well as my clients’. As as you can see, it is very simple when it comes to design yet with the right offer and text, I always get a 15%-20% opt-in rate.

Actually, I have actually found that more elaborate or fancy designs don’t have any impact on the conversions so I’d advise you to keep it simple unless of course you are a designer and need to show off your skills.

You can create a page like this one with any drag-and-drop funnel builder Clikcfunnels or Karta. They are both great and allow you to host your course and connect your pages to a membership area I just find Clcikfunnels to be a bit easier to use.

You can download this template by clicking here and simply replace it with your course details. if you don’t have a Clickfunnels account it’ll give you the option to get a free 14-day trial.

Here are some other examples of opt-in pages for free courses you can use as inspiration.

• Free 5-day Course For Pregnancy Exercises

• Free 5 day course for setting up a website

Step 2 recap: Create an opt-in page for your free course. Keep it simple and direct while focusing on the problem you will help them solve. You can use the sample funnel builder to create this page and host your course.

Step 3: Turn leads into paying customers

Now that your opt-in page is ready to bring you new unlimited leads, it’s time to deliver that amazing-value course and turn those subscribers into paying customers.

This is when you’ll deliver your free course during the first 4 days and will offer your paid course on the 5th day.

This option works best, as the emails are long enough to get provide some great value, yet short enough to where you can keep engaged the entire time.

Plus once you have created it, it will continue to sell on automatic all day every day. You can do this by connecting your funnel to your email software (CRM) and it will send the emails to every people that opt-in to your course.

I personally use Active Campaign since it integrates easily with Clickfunnels and their automation is the best I have found out there. But if you are using other email software they will also be able to do it.

The structure of your email sequence should look something like this:

• Day 1 — Intro, overview, lesson 1
• Day 2 — lesson 2
• Day 3 — lesson 3
• Day 4 — lesson 4
• Day 5 — offer

The first 4 days will be dedicated to your providing value and the lessons should move them closer towards your offer but without any hard selling.

You can start to mention your course day 3-4 but is not until day 5 when offer your paid course. You should still offer some value at first so they don’t bounce right out but after that, should explain your full offer and how you can help them.

You want to add some sense of urgency so they feel more compelled to take action soon. After the Day 5 email I have found the following urgency emails to work best:

• Urgency email 1: the course is only open until X.
• Urgency email 2: get $50 off if you sign-up within the next 48 hours

On email #5 and the urgency email, you should have a clear Call To Action button that takes them to the next step: your course sales page. But before…

Step 3 recap: Deliver your free course in a 5-day email sequence. Do not present your course until day 5. When you present your offer, you should include a sense of urgency and follow up with 2 urgency inducing emails.

You can connect your opt-in page to your email software and set the emails to b

Step 4: Your Course Sales Page

If you have done a good job with your email sequence, your audience should be ready to buy by the time you present them your offer.

So a long sales page is not necessary but rather a simple landing page that recaps the course and shows call-to-action that takes them to the checkout page.

Alternatively, If you have another email list of subscribers that haven’t gone through the free course that is a case when you’d want to use a long sales pages since to warm them up and really sell the offer.

Or you can also send them first to the course opt-in page and let them follow the same journey we just outlined.

To summarize, if your leads are coming from a 5-day mini-course, a simple landing page is enough.

You can use the same funnel builder you used for your opt-in page to create your sales page and you can automatically grant access to your membership area to those your buy.

Step 5: Send traffic to your funnel

Once you have completed steps 1-4 you are almost ready to seat back and relax while your automated sales funnels takes cares of the rest.

But there’s just one thing missing: you need to get leads in through the top of your funnel so they can come out the other side as buyers.

There are many ways in which you can do this including free and paid traffic sources.

if you have a significant following on social media then definitely use those to send traffic to yoru funne. As you continue with your content calendar, make a few posts and videos where you direct people to your opt-in page.

If you are using Facebook, Instagram or TikTok you will need to do this constantly since the content has a short expiration date.

In the other side, if you are using Youtube or your own blog, one or two pieces of content can be enough since they will bring traffic for years (once they have ranked).

If you don’t have an audience, do not worry, you can use paid ads in platfrom like Facebook, Instagram and Google.

For both cases the ads and content should be focus on your free course and sending people to the opt-in page. You don’t need to do any selling of your paid course since the funnel will do that for you.

Step 6: Optimize and Enjoy

Congratulations! You have your automated sales funnels in place!

Now what? You can actually take a break and relax since that was some serious work to do and you deserve it.

But after you take your well-deserved break you should monitor your funnel and optimize all the pieces so it can make you more money every time.

To do this you can look at the data that your funnel builder and email software will show in your stats. If you are using paid ads you will also be able to see the statistics of how well they are performing.

Look at your funnel from top to end and continue to tweak and improve those pieces that could be doing better. Here are the main ones to look for:

• Your ads click-through rate: aim for more than 2%
• Your opt-in page opt-in rate: aim for more than 10%
• Your email open rate: aim for more than 20%
• Your emails click-through rate: aim for more than 2%
• Your sales page conversion rate: aim for more than 20%

Recap: Selling an Online Course on Automated With Sales Funnel

Step #1: Create a free email mini-course that solves an immediate problem for your potential buyers. 

Step #2: Create an opt-in page to offer your free course and collect people’s email in exchange. 

Step #3: Deliver your email course to those who opted-in. On day 5 present your paid offer and include a Call To Action that sends people to your course sales page.

Step #4: Create a simple sales page for your course where you present the content of the course since people should be ready to buy after the email sequence.

Step #5: Send traffic to your opt-in page form free or paid traffic sources.

Step #6: Let your funnel run on autopilot, observe the data, and optimize to improve profit margins.

Bonus: keep your subscribers engaged by emailing them at least once a week so you can, later on, sell them a different offer.

Below is a visual representation of how your automated sales machine will look like.

Takeaway

Selling an digital course is one of the best ways to make money online.

However, many experts and course creators don’t know how online sales work so they end up either spending lots of money on ads without seeing much return, or selling their courses in marketplaces that take most of their profits.

Creating your own automated sales funnels is by far the best way to get consistent sales round the clock so you can focus on what your know how to do, producing great content and serving your audience.

It might take some work upfront but once you set it up, this system can bring you money while you sleep for months and years.

Finally, remember that the key to the success of your funnel and course is to always provide more value than expected and really care for your audience so they become life-long loyal fans.

Would you be able to replace your current salary? Would it give you the certainty to pursue another passion or side hustle?

Whatever your goals are, $1000 a week is more than the average American does (1) and for most of us, it represents the freedom and comfort we want in our lives.

I am sure you have seen other articles with long lists of ways in which you can achieve this. From UberEats, to transcriptions and garage sales, so I’ll save us both some time and won’t repeat them.

Instead I am going to tell you about one of my favorite ways of making $1000 a week (and more)…Affiliate Marketing.

So let’s get started!

Making $1000 a week Online with Affiliate Marketing?

In case you are not familiar with Affiliate Marketing, it is a pretty simple concept. It basically means you promote a product or service in exchange for a commission.

85% of companies use Affiliate Marketing as part of their marketing strategies. It allows brands to expand their audience and make more sales and they only need to pay the affiliate when a sale is made so it is 100% risk-free for them.

You have probably seen marketers and influencers telling you to click their link or use their code to buy a certain product they are promoting. This was most likely an affiliate offer since that is how companies keep track of sales.

When you sign up for an affiliate program, you receive a link or code which will be used to know which sales were referred by you, so you can be compensated.

Why use Affiliate Marketing to make $1000 a week?

If you were to get a regular job or even a side hustle where you basically exchange your time for money, you can technically make $1000 a week by finding something that pays $25/hour and do it for 40 house a week (25×40=1000).

But if what you are looking for is a way out of your current job or a potential opportunity to more freedom and money, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to exchange one hourly-based job for another.

Even if you’d change a job you don’t like for one that you do like, your time and potential earnings would still be limited.

On the other hand, with affiliate marketing, you will need to spend some time, in the beginning, setting everything up but once you have your process in place, you can invest as much time as you want on it.

Additionally, you can start making money with affiliate marketing while you work on your current job and you can scale it as much as you want without being limited to the time you invest.

So, how to make $1000 a week with Affiliate Marketing?

There is not only one but MANY ways of making money with Affiliate Marketing. I, for example, started with funnels and Facebook ads and have after expanded to blogging, native ads, and Facebook groups. So the possibilities are endless.

In this section, I will share the basic steps you need to follow as well as the options for each one so you can pick the ones that work better with your goals and likes.

Eventually, I’d advise you to focus on one strategy until you master it and then you can expand to include new ones and increase your profits.

That being said there are 3 basic components to this method no matter your choices:

1. The offer: The product or service you choose to promote
2. The funnel: The process you’ll create for your potential buyers to follow
3. The traffic: The external source(s) you’ll use to bring people into your funnel.

If your goal is to make $1000 a week, you can easily achieve it by choosing a product with a profit of $20 for example and selling 50 of those a week. That will come down to less than 8 sales a day which, when seen like that, is a lot easier to grasp.

Now, let’s begin with the actual strategy.

Making $1000 a week online as a beginner

If you are thinking, “this sounds too good to be true, why isn’t everyone doing this”, I get it, that’s what I thought when I first learned about affiliate marketing.

But the truth is, if you are new to digital marketing, it can be a bit overwhelming. People who start without a clear plan or thinking it is a ‘get rich quick scheme’ usually end up quitting when when they don’t get rich after a month.

But if you are able to put some time and effort to build a solid foundation, you can be successful not only in the short but in the long term as well.

Step 1: Choosing your offer

As I mentioned, more than 85% of companies have an affiliate program so finding an affiliate offer you want to promote won’t be a problem.

However there are some factors to consider when choosing the best offer:

• Niche: Is the category or industry in which you’ll decide to focus on. Some examples of broad niches are health, fitness, finances, relationships, pets, etc. But inside each one of these, there are smaller and more targetted niches which is what you want to focus on. E.g. Fitness> Women’s fitness> Postpartum Women’s fitness.
  
  Consider that most profitable niches are Health & Fitness, Relationship, and Money/ Financial. If you are a beginner sticking to those niches would be a good bet but that being said, those tend to have the most competitive there and you can absolutely make money in almost any niche.

• Commission: This is the percentage you can make with each sale and it varies from 1% to 40%. Amazon, for example, has one of the biggest affiliate programs but they recently cut down most of their commissions to 1% so I wouldn’t advise investing your time with them.
  On the other hand, companies with digital products like courses, memberships, and software have much higher commission since their costs are significantly lower and their profits, higher.

• Approval: For most affiliate programs, you need to go be approved to able to promote them. The application process in some cases is easier than in others which is why I recommend keeping your option open by applying to a few different ones and specially, to affiliate networks which have lots of offers to choose from. I will explain more on that later.

So, how exactly to find and choose affiliate programs?

While many companies run their own affiliate programs independently, a good option is to find and apply to affiliate networks like Clickbank, MaxBounty, and M4trix, Mamong others.

These networks act as intermediaries between publishers and affiliates so they manage lots of affiliate offers. This means once you are approved to join, you can choose between their many offers to promote.

There are many other networks but the ones I have mentioned are characterized by having a significant amount of digital offers. Which means they also have higher commissions.

In the image below you can see some of the offer of Clickbank where you can finds lots of digital products with 70%+ in commission or $30+.

Suggested Read: Clickbank Review

Another example is M4trix, which has lots of eCommerce products with payouts of $30+ per sale.

In comparison, the highest categories in Amazon pay 3% so when you see it that way, it is pretty obvious which sort of program you should apply for.

Note: Though I would clarify, I do not make any money by you joining these programs.

I 100% encourage you to do your own research and find the affiliate offers that most appeal to you but, for the purpose of this article and its goals, I’d recommend choosing one that pays at least $30 per commission.

Otherwise it’ll just be harder to achieve those $1000/week. For the most part, you’ll need to put the same time and effort for a $3 payout offer than for a $30 one so you might as well choose the one with the higher profit.

Step 2: Your $1000/week funnel

I know the word funnels is very overused and widely misunderstood but hopefully, in this section, I’ll manage to clear out some confusion and explain why this is the most important part of your journey to make $1000 a week.

To put it simply, your (sales) funnel will the the process your potential buyer will follow from the first time they come across your offer until they decide to purchase it.

In this case, we are talking about a sales funnels that happens 100% online so the process will start when your customer first finds your ad, article, or landing page (more on that soon) and will end when they choose to buy from you. Although if you are smart, it will actually never end.

As you can imagine, there are lots of different ways in which you can create an online sales funnel to increase your chances of selling as well as your profits. Some better than others…

Option 1: Direct linking

When you are approved for an affiliate program you will receive your affiliate links. You will use these to direct people to the offer’s page and at the same time will be use to track your commissions on the program’s dashboard (that you’ll have access to).

Lazy affiliates and those who want to make some ‘quick money‘ don’t want to put some time into creating anything more than a few ads so they tend to use ads or other strategies like commenting on blogs to share their links and hope for a sale.

I won’t go into too much details about why this is a bad idea but once you red the next options you’ll understand the differences.

Option 2: Bridge Page

A bridge page, as it sounds, is a page that exists between your traffic source and the affiliate page.

Some platforms like Facebook ads, google ads and formerly Pinterest, wouldn’t allow the use of affiliate links so people would use a bridge page as a ‘cushion’. This way they’d send people first to the landing page and from there to the affiliate page.

This is obviously way better than direct linking since you are the owner of the bridge page and can pre-sell the customer on the offer improving the conversion rates and also the user experience.

Option 3: The Opt-In Page

The third option and the one I recommend is to create an opt-in page where visitors are asked for emails in order to get access to the affiliate offer.

This might seem like a small difference but most times, it is what separates a successful campaign from a failed one.

You see, most people won’t buy an offer the first time the come across it and that’s why collecting their emails is crucial.

After you collect their emails you have the alternatives of sending them to the affiliate offer which is still acceptable since you have already achieve the most important goal (the email).

But another option is to include a Thank You Page where you add your personal take or experience with the offer before sending them to the affiliate page. This can be very powerful to predispose the visitor to buy the product and it also helps you start building a relationship with them.

Once you have their emails, you can follow up with them and highlight different benefits of the products that appeal to different needs. It also allows you to build trust with their audience and there’ll be a percentage of them who will end up buying the offer who otherwise would have never done it.

Aditionally, this allows you to start building an email list of people in your niche who you can continue to promote other offers for life and without having to spend any money on ads.

The average email subscriber can make you anything from $1-$3/month depending on the category which is why successful affiliates know that the key to a profitable campaign is collecting emails and following up with them.

So, how to build this $1000/week funnel?

If you have no prior experience with digital marketing, you might be wondering how would you eve start building this funnel.

But worry not, luckily nowadays there are many funnel building tools that allow you to do it without any programming or design knowledge.

I personally use Clickfunnels and it is the one I recommend to my clients. Another alternative if you are looking for a cheaper option is GetResponse which also has a plug-and-play “auto-funnel” option so it’s worth checking out.

No matter what tool you choose to use, it is the message of your pages and your follow up emails which will allow you to make $1000 a week.

Step 3: Choose your traffic source

Once you have your funnel set up, the next step is to choose what platform you will use to bring people in. This is where options get even broader since there are dozens of channels and methods you can utilize.

How to choose one will depend on your personal preferences around time investment, money investment and if you like to be on the spotlight or stay behind the scenes.

Free VS. Paid

One of the decisive factors you’ll consider to choose your traffic source is if you want to use a free one or a paid one.

Paid traffic sources like ads will logically bring you traffic more quickly and free traffic sources will require you to put in more time.

You can make $1000/week with either one but if you are using paid ads, your profits will be smaller. That is not a problem since you can increase your traffic and in consequence, make more sales a week.

It is just something to considering and one of the reasons why I recommend choosing an offer with a decent payout so you can choose to use paid ads and still keep a healthy margin.

Without further adieu, here are some of the best traffic sources you can use:

• Facebook Ads: They are very popular since they give you the option to start driving traffic to your funnels almost instantly. You can create a campaign in a few minutes and have people coming to your offer on the same day.
  
  The drawback is that, like any other platform, it has a learning curve and if you have no experience with it you’ll be spending some money as you learn, find your right audience, and improve your images and text.
  
  Eventually, it’ll be worthwhile since you can turn your ads on and get traffic on demand but if you are on a tight budget I would recommend staying away from Facebook ads at least for now.

• Facebook Groups: They are a great untapped source of traffic. People are on Facebook literally all day and they “hang out” in groups with people who shared their same interests.
  
  Also, compared to Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups have a much bigger organic reach which means people will see your posts on their feeds if you do a good job at keeping your group interesting and spam-free.
  
  In this case, you’ll need to spend some more time growing and engaging with your group but the benefit is that it is 100% free.
  
  You can use the groups’ announcements and pinned posts to share your funnel link and direct new members to your offer. You can also make sporadical posts about it but make sure to post consistently and engage with the members so they are happy to check out the offer when you do share it.
  
  Recommended: Best Strategies for Affiliate Marketing On facebook

• Google Ads: in most cases, google ads are a much better option for beginners than Facebook Ads (in my humble opinion).
  
  With Google, you choose who you want to show your ads to, based on the specific search they make. This can practically guarantee you that person will be interested in what you have to offer.
  
  Additionally, you can get away with targeting very specific keywords with a lower cost and competition which is great for someone on a low budget.

• Instagram Shoutouts: These are something not a lot of people talk about since they are kinda “unofficial” but they are a great alternative for a beginner who doesn’t have a big budget to spend on ads or the time to grow their own platform.
  
  Instagram shootouts can be a cheap way to reach a big audience but you have to do your due diligence to evaluate a page’s true potential. Influencers can be a lot pricier than theme pages so I’d recommend starting with the later while you grow your profits and budget.
  
  When looking for an Instagram page for a shoutout, you want to think about your audience and what type of page would they follow. This strategy might not work for all niches and markets but there are Instagram pages for a wide variety of interest so it is worth considering it.
  
  The cost for a shoutout will depend on how many followers a page has as well as its engagement rate. A good engagement rate means users are actually interacting with the page and are not just robots or bought followers.
  
  You can use pages like this to calculate a page engagement rate and use the following table to see if it is a good one. But you also want to manually check their posts and make sure the comments are genuine.
  
  Alternatively, if you have some the time and patience, you can create and grow your own Instagram page and use it exclusively to bring traffic to your offer for free.

• Youtube: It is a great long term strategy since videos can generate free traffic for years but they also take some time to rank and of course, to produce.
  
  If you are looking for a long term strategy for almost passive income, I’d recommend considering Youtube.
  
  There are many types of videos you can make to promote your affiliate offers, such as reviews, comparisons, “best of” videos, tutorials, or “how-to” videos where you suggest the product as part of the solution.
  
  You want to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think of what type of videos or answers they’ll be looking for on Youtube that you can solve with the affiliate product you are promoting.
  
  And if you are camera-shy, you can also create videos by using animations, images, or videos where you don’t appear on camera so don’t let that be an obstacle.

• Pinterest: this platform works both as a search engine and a social media so it is a great option to explore depending on your niche.
  
  The majority of Pinterest users are women aged 30-49 and some of the categories that work great in this platform are health, fitness, fashion, beauty, travel and cooking.
  
  If your offer is among these categories or even a different that can appeal to this audience then definitely give Pinterest a try.

• Others: It would be impossible to name all the traffic source but these are the ones I’d suggest considering as a beginner. Other options people use include forums like Quora and Reddit, solo ads, native ads, TikTok, and blogging.
  
  Regardless of the traffic source you use, make sure you stick to it long enough until you have mastered it. You can have success in making $1000/week and more with any traffic source. The worst you can do is switch from one to another without the proper dedication and time it takes to learn them.

Suggested Read: Exploit your Profits with Youtube for Affiliate Marketing

Making $1000 a week funnel example

Now that you know the process you need to follow in order to make $1000/week with Affiliate Marketing, let’s take a look at an example so you have an even clearer idea of what it look like.

Step 1: Choose your offer

For this example, I will choose the Diet and Weight Loss niche and look for an offer between the many available on Clickbank.

I will choose the product above which is an offer for a customized keto meal plan and has an average payout of $42.36 which means if I wanted to do paid ads I could afford to pay up to $20 per sale and still have a very profitable margin.

Step 2: Choose your funnel

Once you have your affiliate offer selected, the next step is to create your funnel. I will go with an Opt-in page to collect emails, a Thank You Page where I will include the affiliate link and will follow up those who didn’t buy with an email sequence.

This is also what I recommend you to do. It might take some minutes or hours more to create but it will make a huge difference in your overall results.

• For the Opt-In Page, I will use a “freebie” or “lead magnet” which will encourage people to give me their emails. This is also something I’d recommend you doing since you are giving some extra value from the beginning and it will improve your conversion rate significantly.
  
  You can create a free pdf guide or have someone do it for you for a reasonable price on Fiverr
  
  If your affiliate offer contains a video you can also ask for the email as a way to give access to the video. Something like “Exclusive video reveals… Enter your email here for immediate access”

• After people “opt-in” on the first page, they’ll be taken to the Thank You page where they will get the message that their guide will be sent to their inbox. You can set up to be done automatically in any of the funnel builders I mentioned above.
  
  Additionally, we’ll use this page to present our affiliate offer. This is where you’ll place your affiliate link.
  
  Psychologically, Since people have already agreed to give us their email and we have earned their trust by delivering the promised offer, they are now more open to whatever offer we present.
  
  Please consider that this is only an example and your work as an affiliate is to come up with an attractive freebie, landing page, and text to capture your audience.
  

• Finally, when people click on the button above, they’ll be sent to the affiliate page which in this case looks like this.

• The rest of the selling is in hands of the affiliate company. Some of the visitors will turn into buyers and some will choose not to buy at this point. You’ll be able to track the sales in real-time in your affiliate dashboard.
  
  This is why you’ll have created an email sequence to try to convert some of those who didn’t buy or didn’t even go to the affiliate page.
  
  In the case of Clickbank, some of the offers even have email swipes available that you can use or you can write your own if you prefer. You can also set those up to be sent automatically through your funnel building software like Clickfunnels or GetResponse

Step 3: Choose your traffic source

Finally, once you have your funnel set up, you can start sending traffic with the method you prefer. In this example, we used mostly free traffic sources like Instagram Pages and Facebook groups but you could choose the traffic source of your preference.

• Instagram Page

• Facebook groups

What is more important is that you focus on just one traffic source, one funnels and one offer until you have mastered them.

After that, you can continue to expand your traffic as well as your profits.

As you can see if you choose an offer with a payout of $30 on average, you’d only need to make 4-5 sales a day to achieve your goal of making $1000/week. And the best part is that once you have everything set up you can make sales when you are away or working on something else.

But remember than most sales will come not from the first visits but from the people you follow up with via email so don’t leave that part out. A lot of affiliates neglect their email campaigns and think they can make up for it by spending a lot of money on ads.

This leaves them spending more than they make and complaining that affiliate marketing doesn’t work.

Optimizing your way to $1000 a week

This might as well be the most important pieces of your money making recipe: optimization. This is just another fancy marketing word for tweaking and improving the different pieces of your funnel.

Myself and thousands of other marketers know this method work but that doesn’t mean it will be perfect or profitable from the beginning, specially if you choose to use paid ads as a traffic source.

So, the difference between a yet not successful campaign and a successful and profitable one lies in how much you continue to optimize all the pieces that it contains.

Each part of the funnel can have an impactful difference in your overall results. An opt-in rate of 20% vs one of 10% would cut down all your possibilities in half. The same applies for your email open rates and how many of those click on the links (click-through-rate).

So, you want to continiously be testing different options of images, copy, email subject lines, etc., in order to achieve better results.

Again, this can be done easily through your funnel software where you can create an A/B variation and compare the difference results each one gets.

Making $1000 a week FAQ

How long will it take to make $1000/week Online?

It will depend on you and you only. Realistically, you can create everything in a couple of weeks if you work on it 1-2 hours a day.

If you decide to use paid ads, you can start getting traffic inmediately and make $1000/week on your third week.

If you decide to use a free traffic method, it will take some time to grow and get consistent traffic but on the good side, it is free.

Do I need money to make money?

Investing money can make things happen faster like in the case of paid ads but you can also create this for yourself without having to invest.

If you decide to use a free traffic source, the only thing you’ll need to pay for is your funnel platform which costs $49 a month with GetResponse and $97 with Clickfunnels However, they both have free trials which give you plenty of time to set everything up.

Making $1000/week summary

Making $1000 a week is not complicated. It is also not easy or anyone would be doing it. It requires some work, perseverance and patience.

If you are new to this, it might take you some more time than it would to someone who has been doing it for years but think that you are learning valuable skills that you’ll make you money for years.

I have used this strategy since my beginning years as an affiliate and have been able to make money with different niches and offers so I know it works. If I was able to do it, with no experience back then, you can do it too.

Unfortunately, I can not tell you exactly what offer to promote or how to do it since that is part of every affiliate’s own job and talent. But I do can tell you to give it a shot if you are looking for a consistent way to make $1000/week and more. Once you make your first sale you will be hooked!

When I first started with digital marketing I procrastinated building my list. I thought, since I didn’t buy anything from the emails I received, most people wouldn’t either. (I now know better and wish I had started sooner).

Email marketing is one of the most effective and cheapest forms of online marketing. When compared to social media, it is approximately 10 times more effective and has the lowest cost per conversion among all marketing channels.

Even more importantly, you can make between $2-$3/ month per email subscriber (more on some niches), with zero advertising costs.

For this reason, building your email list is a no brainer but you also don’t want to spend a lot of money of ads while doing it leat alone attempting to buy pre-collected emails.

You want to grow your own email list and grow a relationship with people who actually want to hear from you. But…how to do it for free? In this article, I’ll share the method I’ve been using to build my email list to more than 9,000 subscribers for free and how you can do it too.

How To Build Your Email list for free

In this article I am going a the best formula I’ve found to grow my email list everyday for free. How? Using the power of Facebook, and more specifically, your Facebook profile.

I am going to show you how to create a list-building machine by optimizing your Facebook profile to drive traffic to a simple opt-in page and collect users’ emails.

Pay attention to the following steps!

6 steps to build your free emails list

1. Create your offering (lead magnet)

The first step to building your email list is choosing and creating your ‘lead magnet’. This will be the ‘gift’ you will offer visitor in exchange for their email.

Giving something of value to your potential subscribers is the most effective way to collect their emails. Plus, it will serve as a filter to attract only people who are truly interested in your products or services into your list.

Logically, it must be related to your niche and the products or services you plan on presenting later on.

Let say you are a fitness trainer and your main product is Personalized Coaching. Then you must think about what sort of free offering someone who could buy your product would be interested in. If they will eventually be interested in a training plan, maybe you could offer them a free workout guide or a fitness planner

Or if you are a graphic designer and your main service is a Social Media For Business Package, your lead magnet must be something entrepreneurs or new business owners would need. Like a video series on how to set up their social media accounts or create their first posts.

You see the point (hopefully).

Do not overthink your lead magnet too much since, you won’t be spending any money on ads after all so you can always make an A/B test and see which one works better.

Some criteria to consider when creating your lead magnet are:

• It solves a real problem
• It promises one tangible solution
• It looks easy to digest and implement
• It offers a high degree of perceived value
• It provides quick results
• It demonstrates your authority

Some examples of good lead magnet are:

• E-books: they are the classic lead magnet and have a universal perceived value since people are used to paying for books. You can create one by simply compiling your most popular blog posts into an e-book format with a nice intro and cover.

• Webinars: they are a great way to provide value while showing your authority and building a relationship with your audience. Webinars also have a high conversion rate so you pitch your product.

• Mini-Courses: you can deliver a mini-course through a series of emails or give subscribers access to a membership area. You could include articles, videos, audio recordings, quizzes, and more.

• Checklist: people love a checklist for the sense of security it gives them of being in the right path to their desired result. This type of lead magnet works for many niches plus it’s easy to create and distribute.

• Spreadsheets: Depending on your industry, you can design a spreadsheet that people in your industry would find useful. Include an instruction manual for customizing the spreadsheet, programming calculations, etc.

• Planners: there are already enough places where you can download a free generic planner. However, you can create one designed specifically for people in your industry. Consider offering it as both a free printable download and as a digital PDF file that users can fill in on their computers.

• Guides: they are similar to an ebook but shorter and with a more narrow topic. Guides work great for any niche and you can pack a lot of value that helps you build your authority and gain the trust of your audience.

• Quizzes: People love quizzes and they have a shareable factor that can also help you reach more users. They are also a great way to present your products as a consequence of their quiz result. e.g. ‘your results say you are 89% stressed…get our meditation app to help you relax’.

• Free trials: They are one of the better-converting leads magnets. If you have a membership site, software app, or a similar product definitely try this option.

2. Create your opt-in page

After creating your offering, you will need an opt-in page where you can capture visitors’ emails deliver the free lead magnet.

The unique goal of encouraging people to ‘opt-in’ with their emails to receive the offered lead magnet.

Opt-In page are simple and concise but there are some key elements to consider to improve their effectiveness and get you the best conversion rate possible:

1. Lead Magnet

Present your awesome lead magnet it in a way that people can visualize it quickly and get a sense of what they’ll be receiving.

You can use Canva to create a mockup cover and make it look more appealing and tangible. If you prefer someone else to do it for you, you can find someone for $5 on fiverr.

2. Headline

Your headline needs to capture your audience’s attention immediately, make them feel like you know their struggles and can provide an effective solution.

A big percentage of your visitors will make their decision based on yur headlines so..no pressure.

To help you out, here are some ideas on proven headline templates you can use to plug-and-play your own lead magnet headline.

• How to [Result] in [Timeframe] Without [Thing You Hate Doing]
• [Number] Quick Tips to GettingEasy [Result]
• The Fastest Way to [DesiredOutcome]
• The [Number] Biggest MistakesYou Can Make When [Action]
• [Number] Hacks to [Desired Outcome]
• How to 3x [Desired Outcome] With This Little Known Secret
• [Number] Easy Techniques to become [Desired Outcome]
• [Number] Beginner Strategies to [Desired Outcome]
• [Number] Things That All [Specific Audience] Shouldn’t Do
• Discover How You Can [Desired Outcome] in [Timeframe]
• The Ultimate [Type Of Lead Magnet] to [Desired Outcome]
• How to [action verb] a to [Desired Outcome]

3. Testimonials

If you have any testimonials of previous clients you can include, they are always helpful as social prove. If you don’t have any at the beggining do not worry, you can include them later on as more people recevied and use your lead magnet.

You could also ask some friends or people you know in your niche to check it out and give you their honest opinion. As long as it is a real one is all good.

4. Benefits

Include 3 or 4 concise benefits your audience will receive by using your lead magnet. How will it impact their business, what specific problems will they be able to solve, will it free up their time, etc.

5. Introduce yourself

Tell people about your experience, credentials and story. You want to reinforce your authority and expertise but it is also a good idea to share our own journey, struggles and show your personality. People like connecting with people more than with brands.

6. Final Call To Action (CTA)

Take a last chance to invite people to opt-in and receive your life-changing lead magnet.

7. Thank You Page

Finally, on the Thank You Page, allow them to access your Lead Magnet AND Use it as an opportunity to tell start telling them about your paid services or products!

How to Build Your Opt-In Page?

Luckily, you do not need any design or coding skills to build your opt-in page.

You can use one of the many drag-and-drop landing page builders like Clickfunnels, Get Response, Kartra or Unbounce.

They are super easy to use and are designed especially for beginners.

My favorite one and what I recommend to customers is Clickfunnels. You can get a Clickfunnels FREE 14 day trial here.

You can also download my opt-in page template here. See what I did there? It wouldn’t be a list-building article without my own list-building offering.

3. Optimize your Facebook Profile

Now, this is the cool part of this strategy. While using a lead magnet and an opt-in page to collect emails is commonly used, this is the missing piece of this formula that has allowed me to grow my email list and get unlimited daily leads.

I do not need to tell you how huge Facebook is and how much time people spend on it. But when it comes to using Facebook to build your email list, there is a huge unutilized opportunity: Your Facebook Profile.

We have all checked out someone else’s profile after an interaction or after reading a comment they made in a post. The same happens when you do networking inside Facebook groups when you talk with someone new or see a comment that catches your attention.

It is in our innate curiosity to want to know who that person is and other people check your profile too so why not take advantage of it?

In this strategy we are going to turn your Facebook profile into a funnel that will drive people into your opt-in page where you’ll be able to capture their emails.

How? By optimizing all the now unemployed elements of your profile and using them to your favor.

1. Cover Photo

Your Cover Photo is key to presenting your lead magnet. Is the first thing anyone will see when checking out your profile.

Here you should use the headline from your opt-in page, a button, and your lead magnet mockup.

Facebook images are not ‘clickable’ but that will make the image open and show the description. Here you will write a ‘Call to Action’ and place the link to your opt-in page where they can claim your lead magnet.

2. Profile Photo

When it comes to your profile picture, you don’t need to change much. You do want to keep a picture of yourself that preferably matches the colors on your cover photo.

You do want to modify its description so when people click on it, they see the same message and link as in your cover pic.

3 & 4. Intro Section and Bio Link

Your Intro Section and Bio Link is antoher, otherwise wasted space of your profile.

For your intro section, You can use the same text you placed in your photo descriptions and you can simply put the URL or your opt-in page as your bio link. You can also use a link shortener like Bitly so your URL looks nicer.

5. Featured Photo

Finally, your featured photo is the last weapon you’ll use to take people to your link. Similar to your cover photo, add a headline and button for better results.

In the description, present your“call to action” to claim the free lead magnet.

That’s it! Your Profile is Optimized for free list-building!

Now that you have optimized these 5 key factors, your profile is ready to capture as many profile visitors as possible.

4. Use the power of Facebook Groups

Now you have created your lead magnet, opt-in page and have optimized your profile. All you have to do is engage on Facebook with your potential customers and start creating building your email list with only a few minutes a day.

Facebook groups are a gold-mine for every marketer, entrepreneur, and business owner. There are groups for almost every single niche and industry and people are literally looking for help and willing to receive advice.

All you need to do is interact with them, provide some help, post valuable information and after you have created a connection, send a friend request, and introduce yourself.

You don’t need to sell or convince them of anything. Remember that people like buying but do not like being sold.

The purpose of your interaction is just to establish the connection so they feel compelled to check your profile and it will take care of the rest.

5. Nurture your email list

Now that you have a system to grow your email list, you want. to make sure to build a relationship with them so they get used to hearing from you.

There is no point in building your email list if you are going to send one email a month trying to sell them something. That will not only not work but it will end up hurting your email deliverability and IP score.

After someone opts-in to your Lead Magnet, you MUST follow up with them via email to start creating a relationship and sell them on your products.

If you did a good job on identifying your potential customer needs with your lead magnet then they will also be interested in your services.

Start with a simple 4-5 automated email campaign and you will start turning visitors into paying customers every day

This is how your free list-building formula should look when you are done:

6. Run A/B Tests

Additionally, after you have your free email list builder in place, you can continue to optimize your conversion. You can create a/b test of your opt-in page with different lead magnet, different headlines, colors, etc.

You can do this easily on Clickfunnels. All it takes is to click one button that creates a second version of your page and then sends half the people to each version and compares the results.

Benefits of building your free email list

As mentioned above, email marketing is a highly effective marketing technique in the world. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing sees a 4300% average return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the US.

Similarly, ExactTarget stats shows that every $1 spent on email marketing generates the average return on investment (ROI) of $44.25.

If you are still not convinced, here are re the top benefits of building your email list.

1. Email is Personal

It doesn’t get more personal than a user’s inbox. Contrary to other marketing techniques where you are using a public platform, email is more direct and personal.

You can discuss the issues your customers are facing and help them to solve their very unique problems. That helps to build intimate relationships and create happy customers that can help to grow your business through word of mouth.

2. Email is Purposeful

Subscribing. toan email list in a voluntary act, , a user fills out a form to signup for your email list and confirm their email address.

Someone doing this much work is much more receptive to your message that someone scrolling through Facebook or trying to watch a Youtube video.

3. Email is Targeted

Email software gives you the ability to segment users by the interest they have shown, which one of your emails they have seen, what pages they have visited and much more.

This allows you to deliver them highly relevant offers to get better results.

4. You Own Your Email List

Contrary to other platforms like social media or search engines, you do not own your followers or control their algorithms.

You are another user of their services and they can change their policies or even block your accounts overnight. It is not common if you follow the rules, but it is always a risk worth remembering.

But you own your email list. Having a mailing list means guaranteed access to the inbox of thousands of users, at least until they stop using the email address.

5. More People Use Email Several Times a Day

Every internet user has at least one email account and professionals check their email 15 times per day, or every 37 minutes on average.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list and why they are willing to spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists.

Because they understand that email marketing is the best long-term investment with a much higher return. Because people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.

Why buying an email list is a bad idea

We can all agree that an email list is one of the best assets any business can have but not all lists are the same.

Building your own email list with targeted people that want to hear from you is very different from buying a cheap email list online. However, many entrepreneurs and marketers are tempted to do so.

However, not only will it not work but it can seriously harm your  email marketing program

Here are the reasons why buying email lists can be the end of your email marketing efforts.

1. You’ll violate the rules of consent under GDPR.

Most email marketers around the world are legally required to allow recipients to opt out of emails they no longer want to receive.

But with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) now governing all email correspondence across Europe, adding an opt-out option to your email template no longer cuts it.

Under this act, you must have explicit consent from your contacts to send them emails. Explicit, in this case, means the checkbox a person must click to opt-in to an email subscription isn’t pre-checked when they see it on your website.

And when you buy your email lists, the people on it haven’t been given this option — making you non-compliant with GDPR before you send your first email.

2. Reputable email software services don’t let use bought emails lists.

If you are doing email marketing you are most likely, using email marketing software. any reputable email software will require that you use opt-in email lists.

And yes, you want to use a reputable email software since the other option is those that typically suffer poor deliverability. It is just a lot of trouble to get into and no light at the end of the tunnel.

3. Good email address lists aren’t for sale.

Would you sell your legitimately collected email list? Probably not. The truth is, if an email list is for sale it is because it has been proved non-responsive or unworthy for marketing outreach.

While bought email lists might’ve had value at some point, they’ve likely been spammed to the ends of the earth by now. Otherwise, the company selling will be using it to generate profits for themselves.

4. People on a purchased or rented list don’t know you.

Most email lists for sale or rent are often scraped from other websites, which, we can all agree, is an unlawful way to get email contacts.

But even if the email addresses you’re looking to purchase were earned legitimately through people “opting-in., those people agreed on receiving emails from another company, not from you.

This means they do not recall having a prior relationship with you and will probably mark you as “spam” when you arrive in their inboxes.

5. You’ll harm your email deliverability and IP reputation.

Your deliverability and IP reputation will determine if your emails go into a user’s inbox or straight into the spam folder.

If you purchase a list, you have no way of confirming how often those email addresses have been emailed, whether the email addresses on that list have been scrubbed for hard bounces to prevent identifying you as a spammer, or from where those email addresses originated.

6. Low open rates and even lower conversions.

People who don’t recall interacting with you or signing up for your email will not be interested in opening your emails and even less in buying from you.

Email marketing is about building a relationship with someone who has agreed on it. You can not force anyone to buy from you and having their emails won’t change that.

Growing an email list for free | Takeaway

There is no doubt that building your own email list is the one of the best marketing practices you can implement for your business.

Big companies are aware of the power of a legitimately-collected email list and are willing to spend millions of dollars in advertising to build their.

But you do not need to have a huge marketing budget to build your own list and start future-proofing your business.

With the formula shown in this article, you can expand your email list constantly with just a few minutes a day. Do not procrastinate on building your list and do not let it just seat there.

You need to keep your list nurtured and engaged or otherwise is the same as not having a list at all.

With so many funnel builders out there it can be difficult to make a choice without feeling like you are missing out. But on the bright side, with so many options available companies are pushed to offer more features and benefits at more competitive prices.

The truth is there is more than one great funnel builder and it will all depend on your purposes so in this article I will tell you which ones are my favorite for each specific case.

In this article, I will give you the details on over ?? tools with their features, benefits, and prices to show you the right choice for your business.

We will reveal which one is the best sales funnel builder for collecting leads, sell physical or digital products, increase your profits, automate sales, host webinars, courses, and managing affiliates.

Even most importantly, a funnel builder that helps you create a complete funnel in minutes no matter your experience.

So let’s get started!

• 1. Best Overall Funnel Builder: Clickfunnels
• 2. Runner up Sales Funnel builder: Kartra
• 3. Best Budget Sales Funnel Builder: GetResponse
• 4. Free Sales Funnel Builder: GrooveFunnels
• 5. Best Funnel Builder for WordPress: Thrive Themes
• 6. Best Landing Page Builder: LeadPages
  

What is a funnel builder?

If you are looking to build your sales funnel, you know how important a funnel builder is to make things easier and more efficient.

But what exactly is a sales funnel builder or also called sales funnel software?

To put it simply, a funnel builder is a software that allows you to create, automate, and integrate all the necessary pieces for your online business.

Without a funnel builder, it would take a lot more time, work, and money to create something similar to what a funnel builder can do quickly and easily.

Sales funnel builders also allow anyone without any prior knowledge of programming or design to have a complete funnel running in a matter of hours.

Without funnel builders, you’d need to hire someone to code your funnel from scratch and integrate all the different applications together.

Even worst, in that case, you’d have to deal with a lot of different software and support centers if something wouldn’t work. They most likely wouldn’t be able to help completely since they only control one side of things.

As you can see, funnel builders are amazing tools that facilitate people from all levels and background to design a complete sales funnel for a business in one place.

Why are sales funnels important?

Without going into the depth of what sales funnels are, I just want to summarize that a sales funnel is the process any customer goes from being exposed to an offer from the first time, to making a purchase and becoming loyal customers.

Sales funnels exist for every business whether they have been intentionally designed or not. So what is the importance of having a thoughtfully created sales funnel?

• While a sales funnel is a path that exists whether you have intentionally created it or not, a well-structured sales process created higher conversion, massive growth, and long term success in business

• Sales funnels are based on the premise that most of the visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy but you can convince them to give away their contact information by offering valuable content in exchange.

• Finally, the average attention window visitors have when coming to your site, before deciding to leave, is 8 seconds. By minimizing bounce rates and eliminating all forms of exits and multiple menus you have more chances to persuade them to stick around.

This is one of many reasons why a sales funnel builder is needed to help you accomplish this in no fast time.

What to look for when choosing a funnel bulder?

1. Features

Looking at a sales funnel builder features might seem like the obvious first steps when you are trying to choose the right software for you. But with so many features it can get overwhelming and you might lose sight of those that are the most important for your business.

Some key features I suggest to consider are:

• Limits: Some funnel builders will have a maximum of pages, funnels, and contacts you can have with your plan. The most standard plans will usually come with a limit and they will increase as the price does and some premium prices might come with unlimited assets so make sure to consider what your business needs are.

• Email Software: Email automation is a key part of a sales funnel. We tried to get the visitor’s email on the first contact so that we can follow up with them and guide them through the next stages of our funnel via email so you can’t really build a sales funnels without it. Some funnel builders will have an email software included in some plans, some in all plans and some will need to work with a third-party app.

• Storage: For most types of funnels you won’t need any storage space but if you are planning to host an online course or membership site with lots of videos this might be a key factor for you. If your funnel builder doesn’t offer storage you can always use a free service like Vimeo but that tends to come with restrictions.

2. Integrations

The main purpose of funnels is to be an all-in-one solution eliminating the need to have separeate platforms.

However, even funnel builders have their limits and there’ll always be a third-party app you’ll need to integrate for an specific task depending on your business.

It could be a fulfillment app is you are doing ecommerce, a different payment gateway than the ones included, a webinar app, etc.

This is completely normal however not all funnel builders integrate with every app out there since it requieres an extra effort on both sides to offer that option.

When you choose your funnel builder make sure it integrates with any other apps you are planning to use to save you some troubles later.

3. Education

Another important aspect of a sales funnel builder is how much educational material they have available.

Having the right training and tutorials available is essential when you are first starting to use a software without any previous experience.

When you are choosing a funnel builder, make sure they have enough information to help you navigate their software and keep moving forward without any issues.

4. Reputation

While you might not care too much about a company’s reputation, a company that has been in the market for a good time and has proven to be reliable can have an actual impact on your business.

You will be able to find a lot more videos, blog posts and tutorial on how to do something with a software that has been on the market for 10 years than for one that has been launched last month.

In the same way, a well-established company will probably have more integrations available since other platforms know it has a significant amount of users and they wanna work with them.

5. Support

An efficient and quick support center will make a huge impact in your business. You don’t want to wait a week when you are stuck with an issue or having to hire someone to help you when you are already paying for a funnel builder with support included.

Most sales funnel software nowadays have a support center as default but you want to consider it is a fast and reliable one.

6. Price

Last but not least is the price. I am aware this is a determining factor for a lot of people so I wouldn’t want to leave it out.

While you obviously have to choose a funnel builder that is inside your budget I’d advice you to be careful and think long time.

Most new funnel software are trying to lure people in by offering a low entry price but they tie it to a small number of contacts.

Eventually, the goal of your business is to grow and to increase your leads so you will end up paying the same as with other pricer software and getting less of the benefits.

Make sure to think long term and considering that your business you grow along with your software needs.

Funnel Builder vs. Landing Page Builder vs. Email Software

Before getting started with my picks for the best funnel builders out there, it is important to mention that many times Funnel builders and mixed in the same category with Landing Page Builder and Email Software.

While they can all share some features and people use them interchangeably, they also have important differences that are necessary to consider when making a choice.

• A funnel builder is the only one of the three that will allow you to actually build a complete sales funnel with many pages, upsells, front and back-end offers. etc.

• Landing Page Builder, as the name implies, only allows for stand-alone pages. This means you can not build a complete sales funnel with them but they work if you only want an opt-in or squeeze page.

• Finally, some email software currently are offering page building feature which is more similar to a landing page software than a funnel builder but sometimes wrongly marketed as one.

In this list I’d feature my pick for the best sales funnel builder as well as for this alternatives if they happen to be better for your needs.

Best Sales Funnel Builder Software

1. Best Overall Funnel Builder: Clickfunnels

ClickFunnels is probably the most famous funnel builder out there and is not in vain. It was the first funnel building software to come out and it revolutionized the way of doing online marketing.

Its founder Russell Brunson did not only came up with the Clickfunnels software but he also created a whole funnel strategy as a variation of traditional sales funnels.

Not only that but contrary to all other funnel builders, it is the only one who runs all its business on the its own software. Talk about confidence. Since it was first launched in 2014, ClickFunnels has turned into a $100 million a year business and they just crossed over 115,000 active members as of May, 2020.

With Clickfunnels you can build landing pages, sales pages, create webinars, write sales scripts, build online courses, create membership sites, manage affiliates, and more.

But my favorite part about Clickfunnels besides the great software is that they do not only teach you the technical part of building a funnel but they are experts in digital marketing and will teach you how to create an online business from scratch if you need to.

ClickFunnels Features

• Drag-and-Drop sales funnel builder

ClickFunnels interface consists of an easy drag-and-drop builder where you can design a page in minutes by simply dragging the element you need.

• Pre-built funnel templates

ClickFunnels provides you with many pre-built funnel templates for whatever your needs are whether you are trying to create an opt-in page, a webinar, or a complete sales funnel. This allows you to easily customize the template to your business and have them done quickly even if you have no sales funnel building knowledge.

• Split Testing

With literally one click, you can create a duplicate version of your current page to modify one element like the text, colors, images, etc. and see which one performs better. This will allow you to continuously optimize your funnels to increase conversion and overall profits.

• Analytics

With Clickfunnels you can see the statistics of your whole funnel to quickly visualize your opt-in and conversion rate. This allows you to have a whole picture of your funnels and see where you have space for improvement.

• Shared funnels

This Clickfunnels exclusive feature allows you to send a complete funnel with a link. The person who receives the link will be able to install the link directly in their Clickfunnels account. The same way if someone shares a funnel with you, you can use instantly get it to your account and use it for your business.

• Membership site

You can create membership sites and gives customer exclusive and restricted access to your content depending on their membership status.

• Integrated email automation

‘Follow-Up funnels’ is the name of Clickfunnels built-in email software that lets you follow up with your contacts and send emails based on their actions inside your funnel.
The best part of this feature is that it has UNLIMITED contacts and emails. Something no other software offers.

• Affiliate management software

Clickfunnel Affiliate Platform is called ‘Backpack’ and it lets you create and manage an affiliate program of your own which is the easiest and safest way to increase your sales.

• FunnelFlix

FunnelFlix on its own is reason enough to declare Clickfunnels the best funnel builder. It is a collection of over a dozen marketing training and courses by industry-leading experts.

This are training bu Russell Brunson himself and his mentors like Tony Robbins who he paid to be able to white label.

By being a Clickfunnels user you get access to this amazing content FOR FREE.

• Community

While not a feature of the software itself, Clickfunnels community and philosophy would make me chose it over other software at any time. They have a huge Facebook group with the highest engagement, yearly events, and awards to recognize their users success.

ClickFunnels Pricing

Clickfunnels has two pricing plans after the 14-DAYS FREE TRIAL.

• The Standard plan which is priced at $97 per month
• The Platinum plan which goes for $297 per month

Clickfunnels Pros

• Complete all-in-one solution
• Easy drag-and-drop-builder
• A comprehensive library of trainings
• Most prestigious tool in the market
• Integrated email automation
• Funnel Templates
• Unlimited email contacts

Clickfunnels Cons

• Expensive for beginners

Click Here to Try Clickfunnels For Free

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2. Runner up Sales Funnel builder: Kartra

The second spot in the list goes to Kartra.

Kartra is also an amazing funnel builder with as many features as Clickfunnels (and a couple more). It is a great all-in-one software that offers almost every functionality you need as a business owner.

The features and prices are very similar so when it comes down to choosing between the two of them it can come to a matter of preferences, but here are the main differences:

• Kartra offers hosting space for videos and a help desk feature that Clickfunnels doesn’t have.

• Clickfunnels has against it, is the training materials, the community, and prestige. I also find the Clickfunnels interface to be more simple but it can be subjective.

• Kartra offers email integration from its cheaper $99 plan while Clickfunnels only includes it on its premium $297 plan.

• While Clickfunnels has unlimited contacts on its $297 plans, Kartra’s $299 plan has a 25, 0000 contacts limit and its $499 plan has a 50,000 contacts limit.

Kartra Funnel Software features

• Done for you campaigns

As the name suggests, Kartra’s ‘Done for You’ campaigns offers you plug-and-play templates that include complete with pre-written copy, pre-made pages, preset automation, and more – that you can easily customize to fit your brand in no time.

These have been created by world-class marketers and they are always uploading new ones. Some of the ready-made campaigns include:

• List-Builder Campaign
• Quick Launch Campaign
• Book Funnel Campaign
• The eShop Campaign
• MasterClass Campaign

• Hosts videos

With Kartra you do not need to host your videos on other platforms like Youtube or Vimeo. They offer an inbuilt video hosting solution where you can host all the videos you want to use for your funnels and online courses.

• Helpdesk

The Kartra Helpdesk is inbuilt ticket support and customer management tool. It includes a ticket system and knowledge base management system so you can help your customers at multiple levels.

• Kartra Calendar

You can use Kartra’s calendar feature for booking events and managing appointments with clients and customers.

• Drag-and-drop builder

If you don’t want to use Kartra’s campaigns you can also start your own funnels and pages from scratch and use their drag-and-drop builder.

• Membership sites

With Kartra’s membership feature, you can build a membership-based site and deliver your content to authorized members. You can also display your user’s progress as they go through your course or training.

• Affiliate management tool

Kartra also offers a built-in affiliate management system so you can assign affiliates, commissions and manage payouts.

They also have an affiliate marketplace where you can display your product and let marketers apply to promote it for you.

Kartra Pricing

Kartra offers you a trial period of 14 days for 1$ after which you can choose between any of its pricing plans:

• Starter Plan for $99 per month (Up to – 2,500 contacts)
• Silver Plan for $199 per month (Up to – 12,500 contacts)
• Gold Plan for $299 per month (Up to – 25,000 contacts)
• Platinum Plan for $499 per  month (Up to – 50,000 contacts)

Kartra Pros

• Complete all-in-one solution
• Plug-and-play campaigns
• Integrated email automation
• Videos hosting and helpdesk

Kartra Cons

• Expensive for beginners
• It gets more expensive as your business/list grows

Click Here to Try Kartra For $1

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3. Best Budget Sales Funnel Builder: GetResponse

If you are looking for the best funnel builder but can not afford Clickfunnels or Kartra, then GetResponse might be a solution for you.

While it has limited features and you can not do the same than with a complete sales funnel software, it is a good alternative for the price.

Get response started as an email automtion software so that is for what it is most know on the digital marketing world.

However, they have now added a bunch of cool features on the funnel building’ area that make it one of the best funnel builder/ email software integrated tools out there.

So let’s take a look at GetResponse’s feature and what you can do with them.

GetResponse Features

• Integrated email software

Some funnel builders have email software integrated, in the case of GetResponse is the other way around. It staretedas an email automation and added a funnel building tool later on. No matter. the order, the result is similar, you get an integrated tool with email software and sales funnel building all-in-one.

Since email marketing is GetResponse’s expertise, you can carry out advanced email marketing activities than other funnel building software do not offer.

Furthermore, it has lots of email templates included and a high your deliverability rate which is essential for the long term success of your business.

• GetResponse Autofunnel

Autofunnel is GetResponse’s funnel building tool. As the name implies, it allows you to create a fully automated marketing funnel with opt-in page, email follow-up, sales page, webinars and thank you pages.

You can choose between any of the ready-made templates to sell your products, recover abandoned orders, and convert customers. It also includes lead scoring and segmentation.

On the other hand, this funnel building software has some limitations since you can not add upsells, downsells or order bumps which are pretty important for a profitable business.

• Page Templates

A regular in the industry but GetResponse also includes opt-in and sales pages that you can easily customizable in a couple of minutes.

• Ecommerce store

GetResponnse store feature lets you integrate your emcommerce store easily with just a couple of clicks.

You can integrate stores from third-party apps like Shopify, eBay or Woocomerce or you can create your own by adding your own products and integrating your payment processor.

• Team management

If you work for a number of clients or have a team working for you, GetResponse Team feature let;s you ve give them quick access to your GetResponse account with their individual logins ta unique set of permissions and access levels.

• CRM

You can use GetResponse CRM to get deeper insights into your leads. You can see your entire sales process at a glance so you can easily spot opportunities, build lasting customer relationships, and nurture new leads.

Plus, you can set your own stages to match your business processes and sales funnel.

GetResponse Pricing (after free trial)

• The Basic plan of $15/mo
• Essential plan of $49/mo
• Professional plan of $99/mo
• Enterprise plan of $1,199/mo

Note: Prices vary by number of contacts you can have any plan with a different contact number and the price will be different.

GetResponse Pros

• Cheaper startup price
• Email integration from the cheapest plan.
• Automated sales funnels
• Advanced email features
• High deliverability

GetResponse Cons

• It gets more expensive as your business/list grows
• No order bumps, one-click upsells and downsells
• Limited templates
• No affiliate management tool
• No membership site feature

Click Here to Try GetResponse For Free

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4. Free Sales Funnel Builder: GrooveFunnels

Looking for a free funnel builder? Then GrooveFunnels is for you. This funnel builder is the newest software in the market and at the moment they are running a 100% free lifetime deal.

Groovefunnels is co-founded by Mike Filsaime who also created Kartra, EverWebinar, and WebinarJam so while it is new in the market is has some reputation in its favor.

Not only that but GrooveFunnels is an all-in-one funnel building platform containing a range of apps that are all designed to help you market, sell, and promote your business.

So what is the catch?

Well, to begin with they’re still in beta mode so some issues might still arise and since it is literally free because of the same reason, there is no much you can complain about.

Another limitation is that you won’t get all the features on the free deal BUT you get access to build your 3 of your first funnels or carry out your first project.

If you are just starting out that might be all that you need and if you ever come to need the upgrade that will probably mean that your business is going good and you’ll be tablet to afford it at that point.

You can get on it right now and start building your funnels. No credit card, no contract nor hidden agreements.

So, what exactly do you get with GrooveFunnels?

GroovePages Features

GrooveFunnels is an all-in-one funnel builder so you can build a complete website, sell products with upsells and downsells, manage your affiliate program, collect payments, and host videos.

• GroovePages

GroovePages is an intuitive drag-and-drop page and funnel builder you can use to create your funnels and landing pages easily.

• GrooveSell

GrooveSell allows you to sell your products, create one-click upsells, order bumps and integrate with your payment gateways.

• GrooveMail

This GrooveFunnels’ inbuilt email automation. It is simple to use and allows you to follow up with leads and automate your sales process. This feature is available with the upgraded plan.

• GrooveAffiliate

Similar to other platforms, GroveFunnels has its affiliate marketing platform that allows you to recruit an army of affiliates to help drive traffic to your products or services.

• GrooveMember

With GrooveMember you can create and host your membership sites and course in minutes.

• GrooveVideo

GrooveVideo is the inbuilt advanced, marketing-oriented video hosting/player. This feature has tons of cool possibilities but it is also available on the Silver or Gold Plan.

GrooverFunnels has other features still in the works. I believe these will also be included as part of the upgraded plans:

• WebinarGroove: Build your live and evergreen webinars
• GrooveKart: dropshipping and eCommerce platform
• GrooveBlog: For creating SEO friendly blog posts
• GrooveCalendar: Calendar application that syncs with your entire funnel
• GrooveDesk: Inbuilt helpdesk platform

GrooveFunnels Pricing

As mentioned before, GorrveFunnels is running a free lifetime deal.

While it comes with limitations, it is still a good option if you have no budget and are looking for something to get started now.

As of now, the free lifetime deal requires no credit card, no contract nor hidden agreements.

If you wish to upgrade your free plan, you can choose between the Silver membership at $99/month or the Gold Membership at $199/month.

Cons of GrooveFunnels

GrooveFunnels Pros

• Free lifetime deal
• Up to 3 free funnels
• Option to upgrade for full features

GrooveFunnels Cons

• It is still in beta mode
• Relatively new in the game
• Limited features on the free plan

Click Here to Try GrooveFunnels For Free

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5. Best Funnel Builder for WordPress: Thrive Themes

If you are looking for a sales funnel builder that works along your WordPress site then Thrive Themes might be perfect for you.

While other funnel builders can also be integrated with a WordPress site through their plugins, a solution like Thrive Themes is better if you don’t need all the features of a full sales funnel builder and prefer something cheaper.

If you have ever tried to optimize your WordPress site to increase your conversions, you know it takes a ton of plugins and marketing tools.

However, Thrive Themes is specially designed to tackle this problem. It will help you create landing pages, pop-ups, times, sales funnels, and so much more.

More importantly, once you create a page on Thrive Themes, you own it. Even if you terminate your subscription, your pages can continue to be live since they remain on your self-hosted website (contrary to all other funnel building softwares)

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative to increase your site conversions and don’t need all the features of a funnel builder, ThriveThemes is ideal for you. The same applies if you want the freedom to choose specific third-party platforms to integrate with.

Thrive Themes Features

• Easy to use builder

Thrive Themes main builder is called Thrive Architect and it offers an easy to use a landing page and website builder, where can create pages from scratch without the need for any coding skills.

• Pre-built templates

You can use Thrive Them templates pre-built and pre-designed unlimited templates to build your marketing sales funnel.

In a similar way, you can use their feature called “Thrive Leads” to build conversion-focused opt-in forms using the form templates and pages or create one of your own from scratch with their simple drag and drop tool.

• A/B testing

Thrive Optimize allows you to split test your landing pages, sales funnel, opt-in pages, and squeeze pages to continuously improve your conversions.

• Thrive Themes Quiz Builder

Thrive Themes has a feature known as quiz builder, which can help you come up with quizzes on your WordPress site. This is a great tool to help you convert site visitors into contacts.

• Comprehensive Range of List Building Elements

Thrive Themes is amazing when it comes to email list building on your WP site. It has tons of tools and features that are specifically designed to increase your chances of converting visitors on your website.

Thrive Theme Pricing

• Thrive Theme membership $30/mo on a quarterly basis or $19 on monthly
• Agency Membership $69/mo on a quarterly basis or $49 on monthly

Thrive Themes Pros

• Cheaper than most funnel builders.
• You own the pages even if you stop paying your memberships.
• Awesome list building elements.
• Specially design for WordPress
• No coding needed

Thrive Themes Cons

• Works only on WordPress
• Tons of plugins and integrations needed
• No email automation or affiliate platform
• No 1-click upsell, downsell and order bump feature
• Limited in functionalities (no webinar or membership feature)

Click Here to Get Thrive Themes

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6. Best Landing Page Builder: LeadPages

While Leadpages is not a funnel builder, I wanted to include it in this list since some people think they are looking for a funnel building software while all they need is a landing page builder, which is what Leadpages is.

Contrary to a funnel builder, a landing page builder allows you to build, well…landing pages. No upsells, order bumps, sales funnels, or any other of the many features funnel builders have.

But if you don’t need to build a sales funnels and only want to create beautiful, easy to build, conversion-focused landing pages then LeadPages is the ideal tool.

Leadpages is one of the ‘oldest’ landing page builders but continue to be one of the most popular.

It features an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop sales page software with lots of beautiful 100% customizable templates that allow you to design landing pages and generate leads for your business online without any coding required.

It contains lots of modern, high-end looking templates to choose from. Or you can also create yours from scratch by dragging and dropping funnel elements on the page editor.

This online tool is efficient for gathering leads and integrates with most email autoresponders seamlessly to convert your leads into buyers.

Leadpages Features

• Easy drag-and-drop interface

Leadpages drag-and-drop interface is easy to use and you can create your website, landing pages, and forms in minutes.

• Pop-up opt in boxes 

Pop-ups increase your subscriber growth. With Leadpages’ ‘exit-intent’ pop-ups, you can get an opt-in form triggered when visitors move their mouse to close a page. 

• Free templates

Leadpages offers hundreds of templates to choose from so you can easily create your pages in minutes without any design or coding knowledge.

The templates also include Pop-ups, opt-in forms, and landing page templates.

• Facebook Ads Creator

Leadpages built-in Facebook Ad creator allows you to create a Facebook Ad based on your landing page.

The Ad Builder has been proven to perform 2-5 x better than using the Facebook Ad Manager. 

• Automatic Facebook pixel tracking

When you use the Leadpages Ad Builder, your Facebook Pixel is placed automatically so you don’t need to worry about doing it manually.

• SEO-friendly pages

SEO is essential for organic traffic and organic traffic is essential to create passive income. Leadpages have easy-to-edit metadata fields and a wide range of SEO-friendly templates that make SEO easy for anyone.

LeadPages Pricing

LeadPages offers three different plans, after theirs 14-DAY FREE TRIAL.

• The STANDARD plan is priced at $25 per month
• The PRO plan at $48 per month
• The ADVANCED plan at $199 per month

LeadPages Pros

• Cheaper than most funnel builders.
• Facebook Ad creator
• SEO friendly
• Beautiful templates
• Pop-up opt-in forms

LeadPages Cons

• Not a complete sales funnel builder
• No email automation
• No membership site feature
• No webinar features
• No 1-click upsells, order bump
• No affiliate platform

Click Here to Get Thrive Themes

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How to Choose the Best Sales Funnel Builder?

There is no one single right answer since the best sales funnel builder will depend on your specific needs. But that being said let;s look at the criteria that makes a funnel builder a great one overall.

1. It is easy to use

A funnel builder must be frinedly, intuitive and easy to use. Otherwise it loses its whole purpose. One of the main reasons to use a sales funnels instead of hiring someone to code it from scratch is that you want to be able to do it on your own in a simple and quick way.

Beside the main drag-and-drog interface, which most software have in common, your funnel builder should make all the other important task easy like creating an upsell, integrating your payment processor, visualizing your funnel statistic, etc.

Take for example the Clickfunnels editor,

It has all the features you want in your funnel building software. The elements are easy to locate, third-party apps are easy to integrate and you can create an A/B test with literally one click.

This is one of the reasons why I recommend LCickfunnels over Kartra especially if you are new to this. While they both offer similar features, Kartra has a bigger learning curve vs. Clickfunnels intuitive interface.

2. Plug-and-Play Templates

If you have no experience in design, color, layouts, etc. then you are going to appreciate funnel builders predesigned templates.

By not having to worry about anything design-related you can get straight to the point (selling your product) and have an amazing looking funnel anyway.

All sales funnel builders come with templates at this point so is just a matter of favoring the ones you like the most and know are going to convert.

ClickFunnels for example, let’s you choose the objective for your funnel, and then you can choose between their many templates. Since Clickfunnel has used these same templates to build a multimillionaire business, you can trust you have a good base.

In a similar way, with Kartra you get to choose between their many Done For You pre-buil funnels and campaigns with predetermined text included and  plug-and-play them into your business.

Kartra’s page templates has been built by expert marketers to convert greatly.

3. Email Automation

A lot of people focus on the sales pages and forget about the email part of the funnel. But without an email autoresponder, the whole purpose of the funnel is lost.

The idea os a sales funnel is to build a relationship with your potential customers and guide them from visitors to customer and you will not be able to do that on their first visit. That is why an email integration is essentiall.

You need to be able to monitor and automatically follow-up with your leads depending on the action taken.

4. Membership Site & Video Hosting

Digital products like courses and online memeberships are some of the best ways to make money online.

While there are some course-specific platfroms, a good sales funnel software should also allow you to create a membership area and provide you with hosting for your course materials.

This eliminates the need for another software and monthly fee.

Tools like ClickFunnels, Kartra and GrooveFUnnels are great solutions with membership sites.

If online courses are your focus, I’d recommend favoring Kartra out of those three since it offers the most interactive and marketing-align features.

5. Affiliate Platform

If you are just starting out, creating your own affiliate program might seem like a distant plan but once you have proven your offer, recruiting affiliates is the easiest and safest way to increase your sales and profits.

Other Criteria To Consider:

• Ability to host webinars
• One-click upsells, downsells and order bumps
• Inbuilt shopping cart
• Ease for integrations
• Training courses for users
• Community
• Responsive and helpful customer support

What sales funnel builder software to choose?

As I mentioned at the beggining of this artcile, the purpose of this list was never to include as many software as possible but to offer you with a selction of the best funnel builders out there.

This is why I believe all of these funnel builders to be great options, high-value and ideal for each need.

So which one is the best for YOU?

If you are an entrepreneur, freelance, affiliate marketer, coach, or small business owner wanting to use sales funnels to create an online business and make money…

Clickfunnels is your best option.

Not only it has the easiest to use interface but it includes all the features you want in a funnel builder PLUS amazing extras like a community, high-value trainings, and unlimited leads for your email automation.

If you are in the same position but are a bit more tech-savvy and your main focus is to create an online course, then Kartra is the funnel builder for you.

On the other hand, if you which you could get Clickfunnels but is out of your budget, then I’d recommend GetResponse. You might not have access to all the features of a complete funnel builder but you’ll still be able to build funnels and create email campaigns for a lower price.

Are you looking for a completely free funnel builder? Then go for GrooveFunnels. You will be limited to 3 funnels and no email automation but you can get started and upgrade for more options once you are already making money.

Or if you want a funnel builder that works with WordPress I’d recommend ThriveThemes. It is specifically design for WP and you will own the pages even if you decide to cancel your membership.

Finally, if you have realized, after reading this article than want you really need is a landing page builder then there is no better choice than LeadPages.

Sales Funnel Builder Software Takeaway

With so many tools available and more coming out constantly, it can be overwhelming to choose a funnel builder without second-guessing if you are making the right choice.

After all, you are picking the software that is going to be the base for your business so it is not a decision to make lightly. You don’t want to run into obstacles or having to switch platforms along the way.

That is way in this article I have consider ONLY the options are consider are the best out there and will give you the best value for your money.

If you are still unsure, I’d recommend trying them out, most of them have a free trial available and it’ll be the best way to make an 100% confident choice.

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