Nick James

As you know it can be very expensive to attract new customers into an online business.

And in any case even if you aren't spending money on 'paid advertising' and simply just receiving traffic (via organic search engine rankings), you'd still have to agree that it would be daft not fine tune your website to the point where you are making the most amount of profit possible per visitor/sale.

You can maximize your profits and the number of "widgets" you sell by "up selling" your customers with an offer to buy more from you than they originally intended.

For example, let's say you're selling a DVD set with a manual for £57.00 at the point of purchase you inform your customers they can 'upgrade' to a package that also includes a 'personal phone consult' or perhaps 'a months membership to your website' for just a mere £10 more. That's called up selling!

Your goal is to entice your customer to spend a little bit more money with you than they were originally intending to spend.

In the offline world, MacDonald's have been masters at this with questions like & "do you want fries with that?" or "is that a meal" & and finally "is that a large meal?" .&

Why do they ask these questions? Simply because customers keep saying YES!

You see, once a customer is "in your shop" and "at the till" they have ALREADY decided to spend money with you. So, requesting they spend just a little bit more with you is NOT as hard as you might first think.

WHSMITH also employ these tactics by way of what they call "Till Point Conversation" .& Go and buy a magazine in WHSmiths and see for yourself, the staff are "trained" to try and up sell you chocolates, bottles of water, (or whatever else they seem to have on clearance that particular day).

So, how can we add up sells to our website?

Here are 10 ways you can get cracking with this technique THIS WEEK.

1. Deluxe Up sell - You could sell a basic product and tell people for a little more money they can receive the deluxe edition.

2. Money Up sell - You could offer people the rights to sell the product they are buying from your business. You could charge an extra £30 dollars to get the licensing rights.

3. Discount Up sell - If you're selling a product people may order again in the future (consumables) like shaving gel etc, you could offer them a second can of shaving gel at a discount.

4. Time Up sell - If you're selling a product or service people subscribe to, like a magazine, you could tell them if they subscribe for two years instead of one, they can receive it for half off the cover price.

5. Quantity Up sell - This is similar to the discount upsell. The only difference is you increase the discount by how many products they order. If they order 3 it's a 10% discount, if they order 5 it's a 15% discount. Etc.

6. Package Up sell - When you're selling a product you could offer similar products in a package deal. Tell the people the other products are cheaper with the package deal versus purchasing them separately. (very popular)

7. Because your ordering today Up sell - When you're selling a product you could offer a semi-related product you believe he customer may also find useful. The only reason you have found to make the offer is "because you're ordering today&"

8. Free Up sell - You could offer a free sample or trial of your product (your first sale would be free) and then tell people if they order the full version right now they will get a discount. (spamarrest.com do this really well)

9. Extra Up sell - There is many things you could charge extra for at the time of sale. It could be gift-wrapping, imprinting, custom designs, etc.

10. Extended up sell - If your product comes with a warranty, you could ask people if they would like to extend the warranty one more year for only £30.

In conclusion, you can use one or all these strategies to increase your profits at the point of sale. Don't be afraid to use your imagination to come up with other upsell strategies. (And if you are wondering how "up selling is working for me. I now manage to close 35% of my online customers say "yes" to my up-sell offer. Great for my bottom line).

To see exactly how it works try clicking the link below to by the Midas Method book and see exactly how I do it.