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● In this section we’ll be taking the concept of adding value further, when we look at directly influencing your sales through the addition of value, ranging from specifically crafted offers, JV deals, consultations, bonuses and others to demonstrate perceived value or intangible goods is as good as monetary value with tangible goods.

● There are many ways to add value to your product, and the means and methods are forever changing through new and innovative twists on current techniques. It’s worth looking out for these the next time you read a powerful sales letter from a trusted marketer, and asking yourself, how are they adding value to their products? Watching how others do things on their sites is one of the most valuable cost free and pretty much effort free way of research that you have in your arsenal, but it works extremely well. Keep that in mind all the time, not just throughout this section.

● A good place to start here is cut off dates and limited numbers for your sales letters. Probably the most used and widely known aside from testimonials, this one really gets the sales flowing if done correctly.

● All the cut off dates require is notification that a special offer is ending on a particular day, giving the impression that the reader will miss out if they don’t buy now, an age-old and well-used, but effective, means of pushing home additional sales.

● If using this method, use the language that shows that your low price and your special offer is only guaranteed until a particular date, this way if you decide to continue to a later date it doesn’t cause a stir, and you can avoid using those little java codes that push the date forwards each day relating to the computer clock time at the visitors end.

● Second, think about limited numbers, only allowing a limited number of people into your site a particular point in time. Again, quite widely used, and both catering to impulse buys and adding value. One of my previous sites has this system set up, and still to this day, I have people asking if there’s a space open yet, and even offering more money than he standard fee to get in.

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The Standard Bonus

Right, I think we’ve done about as much as we can with those testimonials, so moving on a little to bonuses. Standard bonuses. Nothing fancy really, all you’re doing is offering up some sort of bonus with the purchase of the product, again adding value. Generally these are known as something directly related to your product, or even better, something that will benefit you as well as the customer getting it for free.

How about putting together a small training series that allows the customer to give it away, building your reputation, as well as adding value on the initial sale? Or if you’re really on a brainy one that day, how about putting something together that will make you money through educating the buyer? For example, give away an affiliate marketing course to your customers, helping them become better affiliates, allowing them to promote your stuff and make you money at the same time.

Bonuses - But Smarter

It’s links like this that make up really clever bonuses, where on the surface they might just seem standard to other people that don’t understand where you’re coming from. Always try to put something together that will benefit you as well as the customer, whether it’s increased sales, a re-branded book packed with affiliate links or links to your product they can give away, or an educational tool that will assist your customer, and put money in your pocket at the same time.

In fact, while we’re talking about giving away bonuses to enhance your product, I’ve even seen some really effective products that are just made up of a bunch of bonuses, with no real central product. Of course they have a central theme, and are all related in some way, but this is something to keep in mind for when you’ve been going a while and having a slow day. As long as all the products compliment each other, and are relevant, they can come together to make a whole new product and income stream for yourself.

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Avoid free trials unless you’re aiming for lead generation. The problem with free trials is that you’ll attract all sorts of freebie seekers, and just like I don’t want anyone here that doesn’t want to make a successful business of themselves, I’m sure you don’t want people wasting your time either, taking up valuable resources and just picking something up because it’s free.

As I learned with my big experiment site back in the day, it’s far better to charge a small amount for a short trial, say one to three dollars for the first week simply to sort those people out that are coming to you just because they can, and those that are coming to you because they’re serious.

I’ve got a great example for you here too. Now a good friend of mine set up a site when we were in our early days on the scene. He had a pretty good product backed up by a multi level affiliate system, or a matrix of sorts. Anyway, he started promoting and all was going well, until word started spreading around some of his affiliates about some guaranteed signups site that sold signups to anything free, for a fee.

Now unfortunately I’m sure you can see what’s coming. Not only did the affiliates go for this one, which wasn’t much help to them, because of course most of these untargeted people were just freebie seekers signing up because they were getting something in return from the guaranteed signups sites, and only a tiny percentage were actually going for his hosting package or the pay plan he had in place. What he ended up with was a system clogged full of people that had no idea what they were subscribing to, weren’t making him or themselves or the people that referred them any money, and had no interest in doing so. A real resource disaster case, that one, because it rendered the pay plan almost useless. Make sure you do this one right and offer a trial for a small fee if your product permits. You could be looking at a similar costly situation otherwise.

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