Upselling - It Works
Shoemoney has an awesome guest post over on his blog from a 13 year-old affilite marketing whiz, David Wilkinson. It’s called “Upselling - The why, the where, the how” and it talks about how upselling is a great way to increase revenues on affiliate offers.
It’s best to push your offer to someone IMMEDIATELY after they order. Not inside the members area. Not on your blog. Not through an AdWords ad, but after they click that order button, have their credit card out and their wallet in hand. It’s simple psychology - and as a 13-year old affiliate marketer, if I can manage - you certainly can too.
While David’s article focuses specifically on affiliate offers, this strategy also works wonders for ecom. By suggesting additional products, services, and ‘exclusive’ offers - I’ve personally seen some clients realize a HUGE increase in average order size. Amounts that dwarf any ROI they were getting anywhere else.
It’s not a new strategy by any means either. As David mentions we see this everywhere. How often do you see the ‘other customers also purchased these’ or the ‘this shirt would look great with those shorts’? It works, and all the big players do it. Even things as small as ‘related links’ at the bottom of blog posts. Just don’t get to pushy like some people *cough* GoDaddy.
The point is that you should always remember your ABCs - always be upselling. It’s not always about increasing traffic. Things like improving conversion rates and upselling can go a long ways and provide far better returns.
Sidenote: Where are all these young pros coming from? Harrison, I’m looking at you to one-up this post.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
I’ll get to work cameron
GoDaddy upsells before, during, and after their sale. I have backed out of orders because I was afraid I didn’t uncheck all the boxes for 300 years worth of services.
I think Amazon and Barnes & Nobles do a good job of upselling with suggestions from other purchases similar to mine.
13?! You’re like an old fart in comparison, Cam.
Cam - long time reader, first time responder - this is interesting article. It plays into people’s subconscious spending habits. I’m sure there are more.
I read an article this weekend about our “Mental Accounting”. The philosophy here is that we have certain accounts in our head that we allot certain amounts of money to. For example: You go to the movies, and on the way to the theater, you lose your ticket. Now, most people would be willing to buy another ticket, but after much contemplation. Now suppose you lose $10 on the way to the theater. Just about everyone would have no problem buying a ticket. In both instances, we’ve lost the $10, but we are less likely to purchase the ticket after we think we’ve already deducted $10 from the ‘entertainment’ account. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_accounting
I would be interested to see a compilation of all these mental techniques that are easy to do, but could make a world of difference in the end.
Nice post and have to say seo is going the money way….