Can You Use ClickFunnels For Affiliate Marketing?

Can you use ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing? Well in this article, we’ll be going over whether or not, the very popular funnel building tool ClickFunnels, is suitable for affiliate marketing and some cases where it’s been used in the past.

Let’s get cracking. ?

So… Can You Use ClickFunnels For Affiliate Marketing?

The easy answer is: Yes, ClickFunnels can be used for affiliate marketing. ?

ClickFunnels can be used for affiliate marketing on other people’s products like the ones found on clickbank, JVzoo or other similar marketplaces, aswell as for itself, and it’s been used in the past by some of its most popular affiliates in both cases.

But before we get to answering the question in more detail and going over some of the cases where you can use ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing,let’s go back to the basics…

What Is ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels is a robust sales funnel and website building software, that was created by Russell Brunson in 2015, that helps entrepreneurs and business owners, sell their products online.

It allows you to have access to dozens of pre-made, field tested and scientifically proven to convert sales funnel templates, that you can modify at your own will depending on what it is you’re offering.

This is essentially what ClickFunnels is, but if you want to know more, i do go into more detail on Another Blog Post.

ClickFunnels For Affiliate Marketing

And as with a lot of products, services, softwares and “softwares as a service” (SAAS) out there…the product creators can let other people know about their products either: By buying advertising (which doesn’t guarantee any sales for dollar of ad spend) or using affiliate partners (which they only pay out IF a sale is generated by them).

As you might have noticed, the 2nd option is a great strategy (even though ClickFunnels uses both) because they have affiliates promoting their product on their behalf, and they don’t have to pay anything to them, unless a transaction is made. It’s great!  

Because Affiliate Marketing is such an important part of any business, and ClickFunnels knows it, they created both a complete affiliate marketing membership site, structure, and compensation plan which is very generous towards affiliates, as well as a Complete Affiliate Training on how to promote their software.

So essentially ClickFunnels is the complete package. It’s an amazing, powerful and useful software, that is king of it’s field…but that also is something that will incentivize affiliate to promote it, because of how great it is.

Because of this, and as we’ve mentioned before ClickFunnels can be both used as a tool for affiliate marketers, as well as the product an affiliate can promote. If that makes any sense. ?

So you can use ClickFunnels to sell products online, either your own or someone elses, but you can also promote ClickFunnels as an affiliate. Got it?

That’s all good and all… but this configuration, actually makes it possible to promote ClickFunnels through itself (as opposed to something like a youtube video, or a blog post like this one). This can get pretty “pyramidal” fairly quickly.

It’s when you dip into the “self replicating” style funnels, that “ClickFunnels and affiliate marketing”, become a bit more complicated of a subject…and i wanted to mention what these are in this post, so that you have an idea (in case you’re unaware of them).

A lot of these, are not a good idea to be a part of, so it’s good to spot them when you see them. 

ClickFunnels “Business In A Box”

Because of the ClickFunnels compensation plan, the awesomeness of the product, the community, the affiliate training, the sticky cookie and more…ClickFunnels is a very attractive product for affiliates to promote, and because share funnels feature …the “Business in a box” (BIAB) strategies are common.

The BIAB is basically a style of funnel who’s main function is to promote the software itself (as efficiently as possible) and has some sort of “viral” aspect to it. It requires people to share the funnel to other people, who’ll need to create a ClickFunnels account, to have it work.

Because the only “goal” of these BIAB style funnels, is to generate income by promoting the platform as an affiliate (to share the funnel) and get paid through their compensation plan, it’s been associated with a lot of “make money fast” style offers.

Essentially, one person would create the funnel with ClickFunnels, they’d make a few trainings on how to promote the funnel (be it through paid strategies or free ones), they’d make a facebook group for social proof purposes (to increase conversions) and they’d start promoting.

One of the most recent cases of “business in a box” affiliate marketing style funnels, was the case of the SAM funnel, or secret affiliate machine. This funnel was built with ClickFunnels, and required ClickFunnels to be able get access to it. It was made to promote the software through paid traffic, and was really hyped up.

Since the only real way to make money with it, was through the ClickFunnels trials (or the traffic if you were the creator of the funnel), a lot of people would pay a lot of money for traffic and get very little return, creating a lot of pissed off people and a huge backlash. 

As a result of this, ClickFunnel recently updated their policies, not to completely prohibit these funnels, but to tighten the grip on them, make them less of a hype and more compliant.

This is not to say that some BIAB funnels have not been successful! In fact, the number one ClickFunnels affiliate, Spencer Mecham, created a similar funnel for Automation Nation and it was good (because there was actual training and support), and so have a few other affiliates like Rachel S. Lee, Catlin Bettridge and a few others.

Conclusion

Can you use ClickFunnels for affiliate marketing? Yes for sure! You can use it both for promoting other people’s products, as well as promote ClickFunnels as an affiliate yourself, as long as you do it in a compliant way.

ClickFunnels is a great, because it’s both an awesome product to use, that will give you amazing results and has a great team behind it, but it’s also a great product that you can both be happy to promote and that you can potentially make a lot of money with. 

If you want to learn how to be an affiliate for ClickFunnels, and learn the training needed to be able to promote it, I recommend you check out ?Their Free Affiliate Bootcamp here.

Have a great one!

Pablo