Tutorial

Using Upsells And Backend Sales To Increase Profits

Once you have managed to persuade someone to buy one of your products or services, you should have a good sales funnel in place to try to increase the minimum order value (MOV) as this will make it much easier to be profitable if you are going to use paid traffic.

Your front-end offer should allow you to break even with any ad spend; this means that you are acquiring customers for free.

Then your sales funnels work to add profit to your business.

So, let’s look at a couple of components of a sales funnel which can have a big impact on your profit margins; upsells and backend offers.

Giving More Value with One Time Offers

One time offers are a great way to increase the money you make from each offer. You can get people to agree to purchase a product from you at a lower price that’s only available right that second, making the sale a bit easier.

This is a good way to increase the amount of your sale since they’re already in buying mode. A One Time Offer is shown right after the customer clicks the Buy button. But before they checkout, the OTO is presented for them to consider.

One time offers are a very good way to give customers more value. It’s less expensive than the product would normally be, giving your customers the opportunity to grab another great deal from you while they already have their credit card out.

Another great way to offer additional value is to trade OTOs with other marketers. For example, if you have a product that complements another marketer’s product (and vice versa), then each of you would present the other’s products to your customers as the OTOs, either sharing the revenue or giving the owner 100% in exchange for a reciprocal arrangement.

If you can’t find someone who will JV with you on an OTO offer, you can try to find someone with an affiliate program who will allow you to offer their product as an OTO at a discount. Simply tell them you expect a good volume of sales and you’d like to offer their product at a slight discount.

You probably won’t be able to land a deal like this unless you can prove you can do a large volume of business, because it would mean setting up a special sales page (or at least setting up a coupon code that could be easily tracked with your affiliate ID).

The best OTOs are usually very difficult to say no to. They offer exceptional value at a very special price. There are three separate types of one time offers. One is usually an upgrade to the first product, such as a more comprehensive version of it.

The second could be a coaching program that takes the ideas of the product and offers them in a one-on-one coaching system. And the third could be a turnkey solution that goes along with the product you sold. For example, if you’ve sold an eBook about making money with AdSense, you could offer a package of AdSense templates as the OTO.

Membership sites can also have OTOs. When someone joins your membership site, you could offer them an upgrade to a higher access level. Let’s say you have two access levels – silver and gold.

The silver level typically costs $50 per month, and the gold level costs $100 per month. You could offer anyone who joins at the silver level an upgrade to gold for only $25 more, at $75 per month – a $25 savings from the normal gold level price. You can also offer one-on-one coaching as an OTO for membership sites. Since memberships are already a monthly fee, coaching is a perfect complement to many membership sites.

Make sure you test your one time offers just like you test any part of your sales copy or site performance. Replace the offers and see which ones convert better and then tweak that offer until it performs as well as it can.

Have A Plan for Your Backend Sales

Every good marketer knows how important it is to increase the lifetime value of the customer. It’s much cheaper to make a sale to a previous customer than it is to get a new one onboard. The cost of acquiring new customers can be high but getting more money out of existing customers won’t cost you a penny.

Building a backend to your business isn’t hard but without one, you’re limiting your financial potential. A backend is how you continue selling to an existing customer. Let’s say you sell an eBook on how to make money blogging.

Your eBook could discuss what a blog is, how to set one up, and how to make money from it. Your backend sales could come from affiliate items (if you don’t feel like taking the product creation route again) or a new eBook, membership site, or video/audio package you sell.

Whenever you first start selling online, always think of complementary topics you can tack on as a backend. For our example, your backend sales could be about social networking on other networks like Instagram, Twitter etc..

After they’ve begun seeing success, your backend sales could focus on more paid methods of marketing, such as AdWords. You progress your offers with your audience like steppingstones, moving from the first logical starting point to a more advanced stage.

Plop your offers right into your autoresponder system and it’ll automatically cater to the needs of your subscribers the longer they stay on your list. Another common way to add a backend onto a product is to offer personal coaching.

Personal coaching can be expensive, sometimes costing thousands of dollars per month. A lot of marketers offer this as a backend strategy, giving them the potential to significantly increase the return on their investment (ROI) of acquiring the prospect.

If you take care to create backend offers that add value to their needs and which are of top quality, they’ll continue buying from you. If you promote anything and everything just for the sake of cashing in, they’ll lose trust in you.

Your backend sales strategy isn’t all done just through your autoresponders. You can put links to backend products on your “thank you” pages. And don’t forget that each product can act as a backend item for another one. So, you might start with an eBook about WordPress and then use a blogging eBook as your backend item for the customer.

Just make sure you don’t set yourself up for limited profits by using a single product without implementing a backend strategy that will work to increase your ROI repeatedly. You’re building a business, not dabbling in a few hit or miss sales.

Niche Marketing

Which Type Of Blog Should You Create To Make A Profit?

So, you have decided that you want to make money online and want to start with blogging. That’s great but do you know what type of blog you should be creating if you want to monetise it?

Before we begin, it is important to note that building a business around a blog is a great way to start a business and it is also very cheap to do so; all you need to start is a domain name and some web hosting so it is well worth giving it a try.

And if you have an existing business, why not incorporate a blog into that too to boost your earnings 😊

There are several different types of blogs out there. Not all will earn you money… and even those that you think will generate an income, might not – if you commit a few cardinal errors.

This article will shed light on a few types of blogs and what you can do with them. Instead of pigeonholing the blogs into specific categories, it’s important that you view them based on their income-generating possibilities rather than the purpose for which they’re built.

By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.

OK, let’s crack on…

Personal Blogs

These types of blogs have very low income-generating potential. Generally, they’re nothing more than online ramblings where you write about your thoughts and feelings on what’s going on in your life, etc.

You may have a readership that’s comprised of your friends, family and the occasional curious onlooker. Monetizing such a blog will be difficult unless you specialize in one topic and make most of your upcoming content about it.

For example, a lady who has a personal blog may decide to write about make-up tips and so on and start promoting cosmetics, skin care products, etc. It’s possible – but difficult to make money with this type of blog.

Niche-Specific Blogs

These are the most common types of blogs which are created to target a specific audience. If you wish to do affiliate marketing or sell your own products, you’ll want to create these niche blogs.

It’s important to get an umbrella domain for the market while you niche down. What does that mean?

Let’s assume you wish to create a blog on ‘homemade dog food’, buying a domain that’s too closely related to the niche such as DogFoodZone.com will stifle your growth. What if you wish to blog about dog training in future?

Instead, you may buy a domain such as HealthyPaws101.com (this domain is probably taken, but you get the idea).

By having a domain that is like an umbrella for the niche, you’ll be able to blog about other topics in the niche. After you’ve written about 200 articles on homemade dog food and you’re ranking well, what then?

Well, with the HealthyPaws101 domain, you can start blogging about puppy training. It will be a new category on your blog. As time goes by and you start going deep into each different and related category, you’ll have an authority site.

This is how authority sites are built. They’re just a niche sites that grew big.

Journey-Type Sites

These sites are similar to personal blogs, but they have a purpose here. Let’s assume you’re overweight and decide to go on a weight loss journey. So, you start a blog to journal your progress and let people know what you’re doing.

When you have progress, you can share what tools and methods you’re using. If you’re following a program such as P90X, and losing weight, you can share your affiliate link to the Beachbody website and make commissions when others sign up.

You may also have links to products on Amazon. Maybe you’re using resistance bands, push up bars, yoga blocks, etc. Whatever you’re personally using, you can promote too – because it works for you.

Herein lies the crux of this type of blog – You MUST be making progress and succeeding for people to trust you.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an online marketing blog or a keto blog or even a calisthenics blog. You MUST have results for people to trust you. Your success and progress will spur them to trust your journey and do what you’re doing – and buy what you’re using.

Curation Blogs

These are blogs with different topics that you’ll curate content from different sites.

You won’t need to create much content yourself… and will make most of your money from ads and affiliates who promote your site.

Beginners would do well to steer clear of these types of sites. You’re better off targeting one niche and building a brand and an audience.

Guest Post Blogs

Similar to curation, but you’ll be vetting the different guest posts and only posting what’s relevant to your niche. This is more of a technique than a type of blog per se. Some blogs are totally made up of guest posts… while others have lots of content created by the blog owner and the guest posts are also thrown into the mix.

You’ll need to decide if you need guest posts to supplement your content marketing efforts or if you’d rather have a blog where all content is proprietary (with no need for outbound links).

Besides these types of blogs, there are blogs that are dedicated to teaching… or the pursuit of a certain lifestyle, etc.

At the end of the day, the fundamentals are the same when it comes to profitability. Your blog will need traffic… and once visitors reach the blog, it will need useful and entertaining content that promotes and sells products.

The profitability of a blog is dictated by its ability to sell. You’ll do that with affiliate links, product links, ads, and also build a list that you can re-market to in future.

While you don’t need all these components in place, you definitely need the list building and the links that translate to sales. Your blog only makes money when people buy from or through you.

Create a blog that people love because of its value… and they’ll trust you and buy whatever you recommend.

“Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It’s about building a loyal following over time.” – David Aston

4 Ways To Increase Sales Right NOW

Are things not going the way you’d like? Want more sales? Feeling kind of helpless?

You’re not alone. As marketers, sooner or later we’ve all been there.

The important thing is to DO something. Any action is better than paralysis, because it gets you moving. You can always course correct as you go.

I’m sure you have heard of the phrase “fail forward” and it is a good mantra to stick to when running an online business (in fact, any business really).

Don’t let fear of failure stop you from taking action because that is a sure fire way to fail.

OK, with that being said, here are 4 ways to increase sales and increase your income right now.

You might balk at one or two of them. All I can say is try them before you pass judgment.

1: Get More Affiliates

And I mean LOTS more affiliates. How much time do you spend creating products? Or getting new people onto your list? This is also how much time you should be spending on recruiting more affiliates, and especially GOOD affiliates.

If you can afford it, I highly recommend getting an affiliate manager. If you can’t yet afford it, then become your own affiliate manager. Watch launches and see which affiliates do well, as well as which product owners are building a list that’s perfect for your offer.

Recruit bloggers who are list building. Ask your list and especially your product buyers if they want to be affiliates.

Every where you go within your own niche, watch for people who might be your next affiliate, even if they’re not currently doing affiliate marketing.

Then cultivate relationships with these people. Don’t just approach them and forget them. Send them personal emails, comment on their blogposts and act as though you are friends, because that’s the best way to MAKE friends.

And don’t discount little affiliates, either. I once had a new affiliate who made exactly ONE sale. However, that sale was to a super affiliate who contacted me, asked to promote my product, and sold 420 copies in one week. You just never know.

2: Grow Your Lists

Yes, this is obvious, isn’t it? We all know that the money is in the list, right?

Well, I know marketers who aren’t aggressively list building, and they wonder why they’re not making sales.

On a typical list, you’ll have attrition. And I don’t just mean people unsubscribing, either. The person who is hot to buy your product today will have forgotten who you are in 6 months, or they moved on to another interest, or whatever. You have to be continuously building your lists – all of them.

This includes your email list, your Facebook group and any other list of potential prospects you’re building. Be continuously building, because if you’re not, then your list is shrinking.

Do more guest posting, more webinars for other people’s lists, more JV’s and anything else that will further fill your lists with prospects.

3: Increase The Number Of Marketing Messages You Send To Your Lists And Prospects

If you’re placing ads, place more and better ads. If you have a Facebook group, send them more marketing messages. If you’re doing webinars, do more webinars for your lists.

And by all means send more marketing messages to your lists. A lot of people are scared silly to email their list more than once or twice per week, but here’s what happens when your list doesn’t hear from you every single day:

They forget about you.

They even forget who you are and why they subscribed to your list.

Plus, just about no one on your list is going to open every email you send. It just isn’t going to happen. You might have to send 4 or 5 emails on the same offer before some folks will open even one of them.

Yes, you will get a few more unsubscribes from your list when you email daily, or even twice per day.

But that’s okay, because you will also keep the rest of your list engaged and interested, and you will likely double or perhaps even triple your sales.

Email daily. Email twice a day if you can keep it interesting. But only do this sparingly and if you are email marketing correctly i.e. you are providing value upfront before ever promoting anything to them.

And here’s an alternative if you don’t want to write two different emails in one day – send the same email twice. The second time you send it out, only send it to those who didn’t open your first email. Nearly every email program now gives you this option, so take it.

Some marketers take this to extremes during a launch and do a “crush campaign” which really hammers your poor subscribers when they get 5+ emails the same day about the same promotion. I don’t treat my list like this but there are those who do; I normally unsubscribe when I get hammered like this because I don’t think the marketer really cares about their subscribers by doing this.

4: Raise Your Prices

If your sales page is converting well, then raise your prices and see what happens.

Even if you wind up converting at a lower rate, you’ll likely still be making more money because your prices are higher. Consider a $20 product converting at 7%, versus that same product priced at $35 and converting at 5%. You’re looking at $140 versus $175 per 100 visitors, or a $350 increase for every 1,000 visitors. It adds up.

In addition, by raising your prices you automatically rebrand your product into a higher-perceived level of quality. This is why – oddly enough – there are times when an increase in price can actually result in an increase in sales.

When you raise your prices, some of your steady customers will stop buying. But you’ll also get new customers who want to pay for quality, and you will make more money.

When marketer Dan Kennedy advises any business owner on how to increase revenue, the first thing he tells the owner is to raise prices. Nearly every time the business owner will balk and tell Dan it’s a terrible idea. And nearly every time it results in a MAJOR boost in revenue.

And there you have it – 4 ways to increase your sales and revenue right now. These might not be for the timid, but I can tell you from experience that they work.

Becoming A More Effective Affiliate Marketer

If you are reading this post, you must already realise that affiliate marketing is one of the quickest and most lucrative ways to start an online business.

But it isn’t always as straightforward as it seems and we’re going to look at a couple of affiliate marketing strategies that you can use to boost your effectiveness as an affiliate marketer and these are based around the concept of SEO (search engine optimisation).

Firstly, we’ll take a look at keyword research to help you rank in Google and then we’ll look at best practices to set up your site so it can be easily found.

This may sound like affiliate marketing for beginners, but I reckon most would benefit from these 2 tips.

Sound good? Let’s dive right in…

Basic Keyword Research For Affiliate Marketers

As an affiliate marketer, you want to learn the best ways to use keywords to help build your business. But if you don’t have any experience working with keywords, it can be a little confusing.

These helpful tips should assist you in being able to learn the best keywords and how to use them. First, you need the right tools to help you gather the best keywords.

These are called keyword tools and their purpose is to show you which keywords people are using to search for things.

If you’re just starting out, there are some great free and paid keyword tools you can use. One of the good free ones is Google AdWords. You can also use tools like Wordtracker, SEMrush, SpyFu, Ubersuggest, Wordze or Keyword Discovery.

Some of these have all free access, some free but limited usage offers and others are paid.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is very easy to use. When you pull up the screen, type the word or phrase you’re thinking of using on your website or blog. For example, if you’re selling acne products, you’d type the word acne in the box where you list the word or phrase.

When the words come up, you’ll see: acne, cystic acne treatment, adult acne treatment, best acne treatment, etc. The tool will show you if the competition is high, medium or low and what the volume of global and local monthly searches is.

One helpful tip is that you also want to cover other terms people would use to search for acne. To get other words people might be using, you can pull up an online thesaurus and type in acne.

You’ll get a response of: blemishes, pimple, skin inflammation etc. – and you can put those words in the keyword tool and see how they rank.

You want to make sure that you’re looking for both broad and longtail keywords. A broad keyword has the potential to bring more views to your site if you’re able to rank high for it.

These are words that people use when they’re looking for something but aren’t completely sure what they want. For example, someone might type in the keyword ‘shoes.’

When you’re doing keyword research, you also want to look for exact matches. An exact match is how it sounds. Your keyword or keywords exactly match what someone has typed into the search engine.

For example, if someone types in ‘black lamp’ and you have that as your keyword, it will lead them to your website or blog or ad.

You want to make sure that you use longtail keywords. A longtail keyword is a set of 3-5 words that are better targeted toward someone’s search because they’re more specific.

While ‘play guitar’ is an example of a keyword phrase, an example using longtail keywords would be ‘learn how to play guitar’ or ‘how to play guitar notes’ or ‘how to play guitar for kids’ etc.

Longtail keywords are important because you can get more traffic because you rank well – and you’ll end up with higher conversions.

OK, now let’s look at some ways to optimise your site with some basic SEO settings and we’ll assume that you are using WordPress to build your blog or website.

Basic Search Engine Optimisation For Affiliate Blogs

Some affiliates set up a blog and create lots of content – without ever learning the ins and outs of search engine optimisation. As a site owner, whether you have your own products or promote someone else’s, it’s important that you know SEO.

Make sure the settings allow search engines to index you. Inside the dashboard, you have the option to block access to your site by the search engines. This is under Settings and Privacy, so do a quick check to see if it’s set up correctly.

Give your site a title and tagline. Under the Settings tab again, you want to go into the General section. Here it says Site Title and Tag Line, you want to fill these spots in with relevant, keyword-based content that tells people what your site is all about.

In the Writing category under Settings, go to the bottom where it says Update Services. Find a good up-to-date Ping list and paste those URLs into this area. That helps other sites know when you have new content.

Categorize your blogs and deliver a good navigation system. When a visitor lands on your website, you want it to be sticky. Sticky means they stay around for awhile, not clicking out after they read one blog post.

With good navigation, like a list of categories and recent or popular posts in your sidebar (all done with widgets), you can let the visitors know there’s more good content they might like.

Go to the Settings section again and click on Permalinks. You want this option to be Post Name. This means that after your domain and the word blog, the URL will have the name of the post, like this: yourdomain.com/blog/keyword-relevant-blog-title.

Use both broad and longtail keywords in your posts and pages. Some affiliates make the mistake of trying to rank for the broadest keywords in their niche, like “health” or “diet.” It’s much easier to rank well in search engines when you use longtail keywords.

A longtail keyword phrase would be something like this: “the best diet after pregnancy.” Over time, as your blog becomes an authority figure, you may find that you’re also ranking for the broad terms as well.

Use a Google sitemap plugin. This plugin helps Google have quick access to a sitemap, rather than you having to manually create a sitemap that helps guide their robots or spiders around your domain.

Consider an SEO optimiser plugin to give your blog a boost. There are many plugins that help you maximize your blog posts on autopilot. Do some research and see what works best for your needs.

Using Personalisation To Get Higher Conversions

It’s amazing what a little personalisation can do.

Quick example: You go into a store looking to buy something. A salesperson helps you, but you leave without making a purchase. You go back a week later, and the salesperson greets you by calling you by name.

How do you feel? Maybe respected, appreciated and memorable? And do you want to do business with someone who cares enough to remember your name? Of course you do; it makes you feel special doesn’t it?

When Coca-cola introduced Coke bottles personalised with people’s names, sales jumped 2%. Now I know 2% might not sound like much, but to a company as big as Coke, it’s huge.

Personalisation – when used properly – can double your conversions.

Here are 10 ideas on how to personalise not just words, but actual images – and how you might use these ideas in your own business…

1: Inactive Customers Or Subscribers

Re-engage with customers and even subscribers who are no longer active.

For example, for customers who haven’t made a purchase in 90 days, or subscribers who haven’t clinked a link in a month, send them a photo of you in front of a whiteboard looking sad.

The whiteboard has a simple mathematical equation with your business name, minus their name and a frowny face, like this:

Your Business Name – Your customer’s name = ☹

2: New Customers And Subscribers

Create life-long customers and communities by taking the time to welcome someone when they join you. For example, you might send them a picture of you holding a sign that says, “Welcome Paul!”

Many people know that emails (even with their first names) are hardly personal so by going out of your way to send them a picture like this will make you stand out.

Is it a little cheesy? Perhaps, but it does work so why not give it a go?

3: Product Sales

When your customers buy a product that you are shipping out, keep them engaged by sending them an email with a picture of their package.

This keeps them excited and tells them it’s on the way.

Bonus: Get a clear shot of the address label, and it will help them to confirm their shipping address before it’s too late.

You could even do this with a digital product such as a course. Most courses will have a generic welcome video but you could easily personalise this and welcome them to the course by name. How cool is that?

4: Webinar Attendance

Get people to show up for your webinars by sending them a personalised reminder email in the form of a photo of a handwritten note, or of you standing next to a whiteboard with the written words, “Are you coming to the webinar, Joan?”

This will capture their attention, be far more memorable and do more to get them on the webinar than the standard email that webinar services send out as reminders.

Once again, this takes a little effort (but not much) and it really does make a difference.

5: Cart Abandonment

If someone goes to buy one of your products or services but doesn’t check out, you should be following up with them as soon as possible to try to save the sale.

Send out a photo of an empty box with their name on it, such as, “Order for Bob Smith.”

This emphasizes the sense of loss in not ordering and will get some of your customers to come back and finalize their purchase.

Remember that you don’t know why they abandoned the cart; it could be that their internet connection dropped, doorbell rang, any number of reasons that had nothing to do with your product or service so you lose nothing by following up.

6: Text Messages

If you use text messages for following up with customers, how about adding an image of a newspaper that features their name and the reason for the follow up?

Guaranteed you’ll have their attention.

This may not be as easy to do as some of the other methods but that is why it can be so effective.

Also, text messages and instant messaging services just feel more personal than email so if you aren’t using them in your business, perhaps it’s time you looked into adding them to your arsenal.

7: Customer Anniversaries

Send out a personalised image that contains congratulations on their anniversary – perhaps the anniversary of purchasing a product, subscribing to your list, joining your membership site, etc.

You’ll make them feel special and important.

8: Upsells

This is a brilliant idea that can put serious money in your pocket almost immediately – send out an image letting your customer know they forgot something.

It might be a picture of the upsell they didn’t take, along with words such as, “You forgot something John! (It’s our best offer).

Remember it’s much easier to convince someone who has already bought from you once than it is to convince someone who hasn’t bought from you yet so it makes sense to try to increase the average order value as soon as possible.

9: Certificates

Do you offer any kind of courses or online training?

Send out personalised and official looking certificates of completion with their name, the training level achieved, the date, signatures and seal.

You could also use gamification in your courses too.

These may appear gimmicky, but they do work to encourage buyers to actually log in and consume your content.

If they do that, they are more likely to get results, and if they get results, they are much more likely to buy from you again!

10: Online Order Confirmation

When someone places an order, send them a photo of you and your team (if you have one) with a sign that welcomes them by name. It might say something like, “Welcome to the family, Aaron.” Make sure everyone in the photo looks especially happy.

Now then, you might be saying: “Sure, this is all well and good and I can see how it will help me to retain customers and make more sales, but who has time to do all this?”

Good question. The answer is, you do – if you get PicSnippets.

PicSnippets creates personalised images for marketing, sales and customer follow-up. You can create your PicSnippet and use it on nearly any platform such as ClickFunnels, ManyChat, Convertri and more.

Just go to PicSnippets.com and register today.

OK, so there are 10 ways you can use personalisation to boost conversions and if you want some other strategies to boost your conversion then grab a free Conversion Boost report by clicking on the “Featured Resource” below.