A Progress Update And I’ve Gone On A Spending Spree!

Posted on October 4, 2020 by Gary

Table of Contents

Update On John Thornhill’s Ambassador Program

First up, it’s been a while since I posted anything about my experience promoting John Thornhill’s Ambassador Program.

This has been a dud for me as a marketer.

It just isn’t resonating with my readers, mailing list or on any of the platforms where I’ve promoted it.

I’ve been sending prospects directly to the Ambassador Program Webinar rather than to a squeeze page where I first collect their email address.

This has probably been a mistake since I couldn’t follow up with anyone who signed up to watch the webinar, but they do go onto John’s list where he promotes his program to them with an email series that contains my affiliate link.

I do track the number of hits to the webinar page but I can’t track the number of those people who actually watch the webinar since I can’t add code to John’s page.

But the number of hits to my tracking link is low, lower than I would have expected, which is what shows me the promotions I’ve been running haven’t connected with people.

That could just be down to bad ad or email copy from me rather than the webinar itself not appealing to people once they get to the page to register for it.

So, I’ve put the Ambassador Program on the back burner for the moment and only advertise it here on the blog, at the bottom of posts (in the random ad section) and on some but not all of my email lists.

Switching Tack Part 1

A program I came across recently is Partner With Anthony which I’d heard good things about.

It’s another course on how to build an affiliate marketing business, focusing on building up an ongoing passive income rather than making lots and lots of individual sales.

The passive income route is what most top mentors teach, though their methodologies and strategies will differ.

I’m working my way through the program at the moment, slower than I’d like, as my productivity has definitely dropped during the pandemic and its societal impact.

I’m about a third of the way through the course and I really like it.

There’s a lot I’m already familiar with as it’s aimed primarily at newbies but the training videos are short (usually 5-15 minutes) and each focuses on just one thing.

It’s set up as a 30-day course and the next day’s lessons only get unlocked when you complete the current day’s ones and the tasks (homework) you need to complete.

This prevents students from skipping ahead and not taking the time to digest “today’s” lessons but, on the other hand, slows the progress of students who may be familiar with the early material in the course.

I’ve now started promoting the program using the simple sales funnels it provides to start building my own lists as I promote the program.

So, I’ve been promoting both funnels to see which one has the best engagement from prospects.

I hope to write a review of the PWA program in the near future, time allowing.

Switching Tack Part 2

You may know that I’m a Clickfunnels affiliate and that I actively promote that funnel building service.

In fact, a lot of the passive income programs have Clickfunnels at the core of their business models as a passive income source.

Clickfunnels is an expensive service though, costing $97/mth for the Basic Plan and a whopping $297/mth for the Pro Plan.

You don’t need to be a Clickfunnels subscriber to promote it as an affiliate.

Affiliates get a 40% commission on all their front-end offers and a 20% recurring commission on any of their subscription plans.

Once you have earned $1,000 in commissions in a month you can apply to become an approved affiliate earning 30% monthly recurring commissions (but you don’t automatically get bumped to 30% commissions).

And, once you have at least 40 active ClickFunnels’ members paying for their membership through your affiliate ID for at least 30 days, you can qualify to have your commission increased to 40% monthly recurring commissions.

Clickfunnels used to offer a 5% recurring commission to affiliates for any 2nd-Tier sales (when people you recruited sell products or services to their referrals) but this was removed in 2019.

So affiliates can only make commissions from their direct referrals now.

The problem I’ve found with promoting Clickfunnels is that there’s a high churn rate amongst subscribers – that is, they sign up for a month or two and then cancel their subscriptions.

This might be because they can’t sustain the monthly fees or they’re really not ready to use this funnel building service.

One of the reasons Clickfunnels is so popular with the top marketers, mentors and coaches is that it’s easy to share funnels between users.

A coach/mentor can build a funnel in Clickfunnels and give out a link to people so they can add that exact funnel into their own accounts.

The funnels, however, can’t be shared to other funnel builder platforms so this locks people into the Clickfunnels ecosystem.

Clickfunnels has also established a huge amount of trust with the people and businesses who use it, so its reputation is absolutely rock solid and that tends to be a reason why people and businesses choose it.

If you run a business, then $297/mth is just another business expense that won’t break the bank.

If you’re a lone marketer, then even the $97/mth plan might be too expensive for you.

The best approach for promoting Clickfunnels seems to be to point business owners to it rather than other affiliate marketers.

GrooveDigital

A funnel builder I also promoted was GrooveDigital (formerly known as GrooveFunnels).

Up until recently, you could buy Lifetime access with no account restrictions to it and all it’s other tools for a single $497 fee.

Several people took advantage of this through my promotions, even though it was not ready for public release.

GrooveFunnels moved out of its Beta Testing Phase some time ago and that $497 offer has since been removed.

It costs $99/moor $497/yr (equates to $42/mo).

Other plans are available.

There were no restrictions on what members can do.

If you’re interested, here’s my bonus page for GrooveFunnels:

You do get access to all the tools in the Groove suite and you also get Unlimited everything as well – so no account restrictions.

If $497/yr is too expensive, then you can pay monthly but its over twice the price:

$497/yr equates to $42/mo
$99/mo otherwise

The monthly fee is still about $50/mo less than you’d pay for Clickfunnels 2.0 and you get more features in Groove.

On the other hand, for $97/mo, you also get unlimited everything with the Systeme all-in-one marketing platform.

Personally, I’ve come to prefer Systeme as it offers a Lifetime-free account that’s got more than enough resources for beginner marketers.

And Systeme’s two other plans are way less expensive than Groove’s or Clickfunnel’s.

GrooveDigital Affiliate Program

Becoming a Groove affiliate is free and GrooveFunnels pays a 40% recurring commission on Tier-1 sales (your direct referrals) and 10% on Tier-2 sales (people your direct referrals recruit).

Builderall 7.0

Builderall is a service I looked at briefly as it was often touted as a less expensive alternative to Clickfunnels.

Turns out that wasn’t the case at all.

Why?

Because, despite the number of useful tools in the Builderall suite, it didn’t have a dedicated funnel builder.

Yeah, you could cobble a funnel together with the website builder but it was like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

Builderall did finally introduce their own funnel builder earlier this year which I covered in this post but I was already committed to using Clickfunnels by then.

Then came the announcements that Builderall 4.0 was going to be released later this year…

…and as that time approached, a firm release date was set.

That date was October 1st, so just a few days ago.

In the run-up to the launch, I took another good look at Builderall and the changes that would be coming in Version 4.0.

I’ve examined those in detail in these recent posts, so I won’t reiterate all that here:

Now Builderall 4.0 does look like a real alternative to Clickfunnels.

However, it’s price is rising – there’s a Lifetime 30% discount on offer during October – and it will be $99/mth for people who join after October 31st.

And yeah, you guessed it, I’m offering a bonus package for Builderall too.

Once again, Builderall has an affiliate program that’s free to join.

It pays a 30% recurring commission on your direct referrals (Tier-1 sales) and a 30% recurring commission on Tier-2 sales.

Those Tier-2 commissions makes it the potentially most lucrative funnel builder platforms to promote for affiliate marketers.

I don’t think it has the brand awareness that Clickfunnels does, but one of its selling points is that you get a range of useful business tools rather than the single funnel builder tool that Clickfunnels provides.

The Common Pattern

All the major funnel builder platforms are coming in at the same price point – $97-$99 – for their basic plans.

Higher-level plans are also on offer at different price points but it looks like they’ll range between $197 and $297 per month.

What’s different will be the account restrictions and limitations and what other tools are included in the various Plans.

Given that two major funnel builder platforms – GrooveFunnels and Builderall 4.0 – are being launched this month, both of which include a variety of additional tools as part of their suites, Clickfunnels is going to have to up its game.

From a user perspective, I find it’s funnel builder to be clunky and it doesn’t allow me to fine-tune the placement of page elements on a page.

And being able to create, at most, 20 funnels or 100 pages on the Basic Plan is far too restrictive in this day and age.

I would now say that, in comparison to the competition, Clickfunnels is overpriced.

Nevertheless, I am promoting all 3 funnel builder platforms and will continue to do so.

Consumer choice is a good thing!

My Spending Spree

I mentioned in the title of this post that I’ve been on a bit of a spending spree in the last couple of weeks.

After taking a hard look at Builderall 4.0, I decided to sign up for it.

I took advantage of the Lifetime 30% discount, so I’ll be paying $69.90/mth instead of $99.90/mth.

If you’re interested in this offer, I’m also offering a big bonus package is you sign up through my links. You can check that out here.

I’ll be moving some of my simpler funnels over to it from Clickfunnels when I get the time.

Some funnels I’ll have to leave on Clickfunnels as they contain videos that will only play on that domain (even though those funnels are masked with my own domain name) or they contain membership sites that would take a lot of time to move (if that’s even possible).

At least it will free up resources in my Clickfunnels account that really need to be hosted there (I’m already at my 20 funnel limit).

Since I’ve signed up for Builderall 4.0, I won’t be signing up for GrooveFunnels.

I just don’t need another funnel builder.

Aside from subscribing to Builderall, I also subscribed to PR Rage, a course that teaches you how to find, buy and sell domain names for significant profit.

Then I bought Shuffler Pro, which creates new squeeze pages and complete Done-For-You funnels in 1 literal click each – on top of genuine opt-in email leads delivered on literal AUTOPILOT (the bit I’m really interested in).

Then I went and bought Viral Lead Funnels, another system for generating leads.

After that, I bought PressPlay, a tool that provides a lot more control over videos that I puist on my pages. It allows me to add Call-To-Action buttons and optin forms directly on top of videos (like YouTube videos), change the video skin, change playback speed, how videos are displayed and so on.

And, finally, as far as internet marketing products go, I bought the Secret Email System ebook from Matt Bacak.

On the non-internet-marketing front, I bought all 6 seasons of Grimm on Blu-ray. This is a series I really enjoyed when I fist saw it and it comes to a satisfying conclusion, unlike a lot of other series.

On the PC gaming front, I upgraded to an MSI X470 Gaming Plus MAX motherboard, an AMD Ryzen 3600 processor and 16Gb of Corsair Vengeance Memory. along with a copy of Horizon Zero Dawn which I’m really enjoying and have nearly completed.