Article · about a 5-minute read

Where the clicks leak: five places a new affiliate funnel loses people

By Justin Ventola · 1 November 2026

A funnel is a set of pages people move through: an opt-in page, a thank-you page, the videos, the emails, the offer. At every step some people leave. That’s normal. The problem is when you don’t know where they leave, because then you fix the wrong page. Here are the five places mine leaked, in the order I found them.

1. Before the page even loads

Slow pages lose people before they read a word, and most page builders ship heavy templates. Mine had a demo video that didn’t play and three fonts it didn’t use. Strip the page to what it needs, then check it on a phone, because most of your visitors are holding one.

2. The headline

If the headline doesn’t match what the visitor clicked to get there, they bounce. If the video said “a four-day walkthrough”, the page has to say the same words in the same order. Match the promise exactly; clever is a leak.

3. The form

Each extra field is a leak. Email only, or first name and email. Nothing else until you have a reason you could explain to the visitor’s face.

4. The thank-you page

This is where I lost the most, and it’s the page almost nobody looks at. The visitor has just signed up; they are paying more attention right now than they ever will again. A thank-you page that says “check your inbox” and nothing else wastes that moment. Mine now shows the first video right there, says what arrives tomorrow, and warns that it might land in the spam folder.

5. The email that never arrives

Email sent from a free address (Gmail, Yahoo and the like) now gets blocked or filtered by the big inbox providers. A mailbox on your own domain, with the authentication records set up (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), stopped being optional in 2025. It’s the least visible leak and usually the biggest.

How to find yours

You can’t fix a leak you can’t see. Count people at each step — visitors to the page, sign-ups, video views, clicks on the offer — and divide each number by the one before it. The step with the smallest result is the one to work on this week. One at a time. The Getting Started manual sets this up with click-tracking software so the numbers come to you; a spreadsheet and the page statistics you already have will get you started today.

Read next: The one page that asks for an email →
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