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5 Unexpected and Overlooked Places to Add Instant Profits to Your Site

If you’re already selling anything online this entry is going to show you how to add extra revenue you didn’t even know you had “hiding” in your site without getting any more visitors.

1. An Upsell – If you’ve been in marketing for any time you’ve probably heard of “upsells” or “bumps”. Car dealers are excellent at using this technique. Once you have agreed to buy a car you then go into the finance office. This finance guy is really another place where they try to extract as much money as possible from you; dealer financing, extended warranties, rust coating, a low-jack security system, etc.  These additions will normally add as much, or more, profit to the dealer as the original sale. These are upsells or cross-sells.

Another great example is if you’ve ever called a late night infomercial you will be given an upsell. They will offer you a special deal on the third bottle of super grime cleaner if you buy 2 bottles. These upsells usually end up bringing more profit than the original item people intended to purchase.

Why not do the same online?

This little “magic trick” can instantly increase your profits 15-66% even without getting any additional business or website visitors. It works great because your prospect is all hot and heavy and ready to buy. They’ve got their credit card in their hand and they’ve already made the commitment. (If you read Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” you’ll see commitment and consistency is a key psychological trigger.)

There are a couple ways I’ve successfully used upsells on my sites:

First you can use an “intermediary” page. Once prospects click on the order buttons they’re taken to a new page (and not the order form). This page tells people about a special offer that is for today only and that they can get a ‘deluxe’ or ‘gold’ version of the package for X dollars more. You can make the upsell a big dollar amount or a small insignificant little ‘bump’. I do this on InstantSalesLetters.com. We sell our product for $40 and then people click to order and they have an opportunity to get the “Gold” version for only $15 more.

They figure – heck, if I was going to spend $40 bucks on Instant Sales Letters I might as well spend $15 dollars more and get the whole shebang. The way I present the offer is that it’s only 15 dollars more. Not it’s $54.97. The $15 seems small in relation to the $39.97 they were going to spend anyway. My numbers have been quite good using this technique  – as high as 68%. So think about my additional profit margins just by inserting this one extra page. Awesome!

Another way of doing this is by “recommending” a product. Anytime you buy something from Amazon – that’s exactly what they do. Up comes a page that “Customers who bought __ also bought__” and then they have a slew of products.

Next, you can also have the upsell right on the Order page. I’ve even used something as simple as putting a check box on my order form. (We do that on InstantSalesLetters.com too). It could be that simple. On this checkbox we get anywhere from 10-35% upsell rate.

You have to play fair and let people get the original price and package you offered but there’s no reason you shouldn’t add a complimentary upsell immediately. The upsell is one of the easiest (and most profitable) techniques you can start implementing tomorrow. This is like the “would you like fries” strategy. Unless you’re offering “fries” you’re missing out on tons and tons of profit. You simply need to come up with a couple more compelling bonuses, packages or up-sells that people will get for the upgrade.

2. Thank You Pages – After upsells, I’d say ‘thank you’ pages are one of the most overlooked profit hot-spots. Once again, there are several ways I’ve used this technique. First of all, anytime somebody buys a product from you online – they are taken to some kind of thank you page. Most people will simply put “Thank you for your order” and that’s it. They leave the customer with their credit card in their hands to go off to some other website and give them money. Why not give people a special deal on the thank you page or at least give them links to your other products or other people’s products that you make an affiliate commission on?

Now if it’s a digital product – then they need to get their download but you can also put some recommended resources right on the download page. At the bottom of the digital download page for PublicDomainRiches.com  we have a recommendation for the new Public Domain Goldmine™ package.

“Here’s Your Chance To Cash In on The Booming Demand For ‘How To’ Info in 35 Different, High-Demand and High-Profit Potential Niches — Without Being an Expert or Even Writing a Word Yourself”

COMING SOON: Public Domain Riches Gold Mine
(Volume I-IX sold-out in weeks!)

Click here to sign up for priority notification to get the first chance when we release the next volume with all-new and totally different works.

Those aren’t the only thank you pages. Many people totally forget about the ‘thank you’ pages that come up after someone signs up for your list. Now where you want to send them will depend on where they are in the sales process – but you can have a list of recommended resources that comes up AFTER people subscribe to your email list. Why not? If that’s the last action you were expecting – you should look for ways to profit from this.
 

3. Using Pop-ups – Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve certainly been exposed to “pop-ups” online. Pop-ups have been losing effectiveness with more pop-up blockers and Windows Service Pack 2 upgrades, etc. but they are still effective. There are several ways you can be using pop-ups.

a. Exit pop-up – you can set the pop-up to “pop” after someone leaves a particular page on your site. I’ve used this to get people to subscribe to my email newsletter, make a special last-minute deal (a sell down). Or another variation is to have it pop-up after they leave the order form without submitting their order giving them more reasons to purchase. I’ve seen this work very well.

b. Delayed pop-up – Another type of pop-up is one which you can set a delay  interval from when someone hits your site. For instance on GetFitWhileYouSit.com I have a delayed pop-up that shows up after 30 seconds of a visitor coming to the site. It gives them a $10 discount which is only valid for 10 minutes. Then the countdown starts. (Actually a count-down timer is a feature you can incorporate in any pop-ups. It works like a ‘self destruct’ mechanism – great for scarcity!)

c. Pop unders – Pop-unders are sometimes called “polite pop-ups” because they don’t pop-up but they actually open up a new browser window underneath the main window. If you go to NoBSsalesletters.com you’ll see that another browser window is opened but it doesn’t show up until you close your main browser window. This allows you to put another sales letter and get just one more shot at selling something without aggravating most people.

d. “Hover Pops” – These are something somewhat new which are like a “layer” that goes on top of your website (technically DHTML windows). Aweber now has a ‘hover pop’ template. One of the biggest advantages is that “Hover Ads” cannot be blocked by pop-up blockers. However, the big problem with them is they can be only be set to “pop” on entry. You can’t use them as exit pop-ups. Some people have found this to work very well and others find it drops their conversion rate to have a pop-up on entry so the best idea is to test.

4. Thank You Emails/Confirmations – Don’t overlook the initial email confirmation you send back to your customers. We talked about making offers on the thank you page but your ‘thank you’ email is one of the most read emails. In addition to the ‘typical’ stuff you should include like customer service information, who will bill their credit card, etc why not add a simple P.S. to the bottom of the email like I do:

P.S. Check out these other best-selling resources from Yanik Silver:

“In Only 2 1/2 Minutes You Can Quickly and Easily Create A Sales Letter Guaranteed To Sell Your Product Or Service…Without Writing! http://www.Instantsalesletters.com

—
“How To Find, Re-Package And Sell Public Domain Content As Your Own Moneymaking Information Product – Discover The Fortune That Lies Hidden in The Massive Stockpile of Public Domain Works — Yours FREE For The Taking Without Permission or Paying a Dime in Fees http://PublicDomainRiches.com

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5. Package Inserts – I’m going to cheat a little here because this isn’t really an online technique but so few online marketers do this that I wanted to include it here. If you’re selling anything online that needs to be shipped to the customer you may be overlooking a lucrative profit center with package inserts. You know for a fact, someone who ordered a product is going to open the box so a package insert will definitely get looked at it. It’s practically free money.

I don’t know why more Internet marketers don’t include package inserts with every box shipped. With nearly every physical product I have a little ‘ride-along’ or package insert for some of my other products.

Now if you don’t have any other products to sell you can put inserts in for other people’s products and make a commission. Once again all free money. Or if you really have a ton of packages going out you can even have a company like Leon Henry broker your package inserts and sell to other advertisers.

There you go. I guarantee you if you put these 5 overlooked and unexpected profit centers to work for your website you’ll see some significant increases to your bottom line. Let me know what you think.

**3 Quick Charity Updates ** 

1. The LitLiberation – DonorsChoose charity drive is ending on October 31, 2007. Please do me a favor and donate a few bucks to some of the wonderful projects teachers have for assistance. I’ve already committed $10k of my own money. Check it out.

2. Frank McKinney’s Palm Beach Experience – there are only a few seats left for incredible charity gathering that takes place November 14, 15, 16 and 17, 2007. I’m co-hosting this and you’ll get a chance to tour amazing multi-million dollar mansions and rub shoulders with some of the most exceptional individuals – including Rich DeVos, co-founder of Amway and owner of the Orlando Magic. All event proceeds will go directly in support of Frank’s charity, Caring House Project Foundation.

3. Last year I played in the “Freeze the Disease” celebrity hockey game to benefit cystic fibrosis. Unfortunately, I can’t make it out to LA this weekend for the game – but I’ve still contributed to their worthy cause. If you’re a hockey game – there’s some cool memorabilia that will be auctioned off. Or if you’re in the L.A. area – go check out the game. More info here.