How to use Bonuses Completely Wrong

[Colin Theriot]

I see so many affiliate emails coming out now, even from big names backing big launches - all of them are using bonuses WRONG.

A BONUS should be just that - a little something extra to sweeten the deal. A bonus should be designed to move a prospect from a "Yes" state to a "Now" state, if that makes sense.

A perfect example of how to correctly use a bonus is in the PS of Martin Conroy's famous "two young men" letter for the Wall Street Journal. The "bonus" is that your subscription is tax deductible for your business. If you were already at "yes" or "maybe", it gives you a nudge into "may as well get this right now while I'm thinking about it".

What I see now are people framing bonuses as the primary reason for buying the product. This leads to two terrible problems that I know are causing havoc for these marketers' lists.

First, it leads to this sort of insane bonus proliferation and escalation. While you may think that kind of "stack" (or whatever you call it) is helping make the sale, you're probably right. But there's a cost (and I'll get to it in a minute).

But when you give away the farm, it causes the next guy to have to outdo you. And then the next guy has to outdo that. And pretty soon, you have this really silly situation where the bonuses exceed the actual value (not just the price) of the primary product.

This WILL (and already HAS) lead to market fatigue. Remember, when you sell information there's got to be a consideration for the CONSUMPTION of said materials. When you offer that kind of barrage, the only person you appeal to is the collector, and the collector is a DANGEROUS kind of customer to have. I'll tell you why in a second.

But before I do, let me talk about the 2nd big problem with using bonuses this way. Devaluation of product. And the terrible thing is, it happens on both sides of that affiliate equation. When you GIVE AWAY all your stuff to float someone else's product, what do you think happens to the perception of VALUE of your stuff?

HINT: Putting a dollar value in the copy won't stop the prospect perception from PLUMMETING. You can say it's worth whatever you like, but that's a tempest in a teakettle with most of these bonus bonanzas.

But not only does it devalue YOUR stuff, but it also devalues the product you're promoting as an affiliate. Think about it - if you have to throw in all this garbage just to make the offer worthwhile, the product in question must be garbage.

It makes me think you owe the guy a favor or something. That reinforces that "guru good-old-boy" assumption that the market has about how people with big lists just pass their subs around to milk them dry.

Now when you have that skewed kind of offer, I mentioned it will draw people who are "collectors". Let me tell you something about the "collector" mentality:

1. They only want the free stuff.

2. They only want the free stuff.

3. They only want the free stuff.

You can have a list of a bajillion "collectors" on it. They're easy to attract with freebies. But that's ALL THEY EVER WANT. They'll buy things to get the bonuses then cancel after downloading, or refund, or chargeback.

And when you send those kinds of customers to your affiliate partners, you're not really doing him (or yourself) any favors.

The bonus is not a sledgehammer which which you pound the sale into someone's head. If you're using the Bonus offer to get a prospect from "No" to "Yes" then frankly, you suck at marketing, copywriting, whatever you want to call it.

That's just bribery, and I'll tell you what. A bribe always feels like a bribe. It's an unpleasant feeling to participate, and the folks that don't mind taking heaps of bribes are not actually good customers anyway.

Anyway, end of rant.

If you don't believe any of this, that's fine. You may do great on a few affiliate promotions with this method, but watch your response rate go way down. Watch sales on the products you "bonus" go way way down. You're resigning yourself to "churn and burn" marketing when you do it. You'll always be having to chase that new lead.

If you have JUST ONE solid bonus with REAL value, it's all you ever have to use. And if you actually spend the time SELLING the affiliate product, the bonus actually becomes even MORE VALUABLE because the prospect already wanted the product in question.

Customers who get real VALUE for their dollar will spend more with you, and stay with you longer. Period.

When you only offer "phantom" value people catch on, get bored, get burned out, or even just start ignoring you. They can't even be bothered to unsubscribe, because they don't even want to open your emails.

P.S. This is how you get a list of a million subscribers with less than a 1% response rate. I'll take a list 1/10 that size with a 25% response rate any day. But you only get that by building trust over time, and by laying off the bonus hammer.

OK. I know I said "end of rant" before, but now I mean it. Hope this helps some folks, particularly beginners who are looking around at what's happening in the current market and thinking "this is how it's done". Cuz, it's not. Not if you want long-term.

[JohnMcCabe]

Colin, you make a great point. I'm on enough lists that I get all the bonus offers for each launch. And when the person launching the product puts up something cool for a prize in the affiliate contest, you get a second round of the same phenomena.

Couple the competitive nature of the old boy network with a prize they all covet, and when all the dick-measuring is done you end up with a market loaded with bonus shoppers.

Watch the WF around the time of a big launch, and count the number of "who has the best bonus for product X" posts.

[actionplanbiz]

wow intereseting topic,

Were can i build copy writing skills?

where did you learn how to copy write?

[MisterMunch]

I got one of those emails today. Basically it was a video showing how fast his sales went and how fast the bonuses went.

After the video was done I had no Idea what the product was even going to help me do. So I clicked further.

Here is the list of bonuses. Wow. Seminars. Phone calls emails, PLR of the top (I have never been interrested in PLR) + how to do all sorts of things. I did not bother to check further to see if the product could help me.

A product should be about getting something done effective or easy. It should not be "Here is how you can spend the next month reading all sorts of things from all sorts of categories in the IM niche". We got the WF for that.

Maybe I should have bougth it after all. It was an average persons yearly income in free bonuses. I could have taken the year of for only 97 bucks....

[markshields]

I did and still do have ewan chia guaranteed copywriting I think it was called however never found alot of value in it

[imacamper]

Thanks for your post. You've written what I've been thinking for a while.

Cheers,

Drew

[JennSpencerIM]

Thanks, Colin...very good points. Although all the big time internet marketing gurus seem to do this ALL the time with bonuses so I'm torn as to what really works. Does anyone know any guru that doesn't do this? It seems I always get emails with the gurus providing bonuses to purchase other people's products (when they are affiliates...especially during a contest!) and they win the contest! So for me, when I'm trying to compete again them in an affiliate contest, if I don't offer a super cool bonus too, I can't even begin to compete with all the sales they'll grab from their bonus offer! What should we do then??!

[TheRichJerksNet]

I don't always list my bonuses, those that know me know I normally always over-deliver anyways but I do see your point.. Very well created post ..

James

[Zanti]

There is much that can be learned from this post. Thanks Colin.

I have held similar thoughts for many years on this subject.

James above actually touches on an interesting subject, at least for me. When I have purchased a product with little or no bonuses offered and find out after receiving the product that there are one or two unadvertised products that came with the original purchase that are extremely useful and thought out, not just some stuff thrown in. I become a loyal customer to that marketer.

Not because of the unadvertised bonus, but because that person didn't try to bribe me to buy their product, but gave me much more in value than what I was expecting.

Again, great information here.

Z

[Colin Theriot]

Originally Posted by actionplanbiz

wow intereseting topic,

Were can i build copy writing skills?

where did you learn how to copy write?

I wish I could point you to a course that can teach it, but there isn't one or I would have bought it. The best way to "get it" on your own is to study persuasion and the biological and psychological mechanisms that underlie it. Then study known, effective pieces of copy and try to figure out WHY they work using what you know about human nature.

Kind of like "reverse engineering".

Check out that Martin Conroy piece I mentioned in the first post. I've identified at least a dozen extremely effective brain-bending "tricks" in that piece alone, and I've figured out how to use all of them in my own copy using the process I just described.

Once you've got some ideas, test your theories in the marketplaces you're in. And it can be about almost anything. What's good about studying persuasion over copywriting is that it's universally applicable, across all types of industries and markets. Heck, you can even use it in your personal life. Persuasion is a very useful craft, indeed.

However, what we as marketers refer to as "copywriting" hasn't been much innovated in something like 75 years. That's when the last "good" books about copywriting came out. Anything anyone's said since then has just been repeating something that was said WAY back then.

Another helpful thing I can recommend is when you DO find copy to analyze, you should try actually writing it out longhand while you're thinking about how and why it works. It seems weird, I know, but there's something about how it connects in your brain when you're producing the writing yourself while thinking about the intent. Typing doesn't work either. At least not for me, I type faster than I think. When I write it longhand, it just *clicks* for me.

Honestly, that's my only trick for how I've ghost-written effectively for so many people in their own voices. People always ask me how I could write as the people I have. It's not hard. I just pick their best stuff, see how they talk, take a few notes and then re-write their pieces a few times. The brain can actually just learn to pick stuff up like this, believe it or not.

At least mine does. Oh, and credit where credit is due: I first tried that "re-write pieces you want to learn from" trick from the late great Gary Halbert. I can't say I learned a whole lot about how to think about writing from him, but I've picked up a lot of good stuff about how to actually go about getting writing done. If that makes sense.

In fact, while I'm rambling, I'll give you that as a helpful tip also. You want to study under writers that will show you how they actually get work done - PROCESS stuff, and how they approach the problems of persuasion in print. Often, being able to model their work process can be drastically more valuable than anything they can try to explain to you in words.

You will subconsciously pick up on a lot, and it will actually work inside of YOUR brain and incorporate into your own process when you do this.

Remember, anything someone tries to teach you about copywriting will only be them trying to explain externally a very internal and individualistic, deeply personal process. Not only that, I don't think people who are good at it can even really quantify or explain how it is they actually do what they do. It just happens.

Moreso for something like persuasion, because it's not something that we're ever "taught". Persuasion is a process that all humans understand at a primal, almost pre-conscious level. We pick it up at the exact same time we're learning to speak, actually. Children are among the most persuasive people I know and they do it intuitively.

In fact, I bet you can make the case that the whole reason babies learn to talk in the first place is to aid in manipulating mommy and daddy into giving them what they want, when they want it.

So try to "learn" everything about copywriting and persuasion at that same kind of visceral level. Train your "gut" by actually doing the work, and you'll pick it up in way that it becomes a second nature.

At least, that's how it worked for me, as best as I can describe it. Hope it helps.

Originally Posted by MisterMunch

A product should be about getting something done effective or easy. It should not be "Here is how you can spend the next month reading all sorts of things from all sorts of categories in the IM niche". We got the WF for that.

Maybe I should have bougth it after all. It was an average persons yearly income in free bonuses. I could have taken the year of for only 97 bucks....

Yeah, you really bring out one of my points. As a marketer, I'm fully aware that one of the defenses that people have against my persuasive weaponry is being able to connect guilt with disappointment over previous purchases.

What I mean is :they literally feel pangs of guilt when considering buying something new if they have not used or benefitted from previous investments.

Now, it doesn't matter one bit to the prospect if they didn't get any value because the product sucked, or if they were just too lazy or busy to use it. All they know is that existing "sunk" cost. This is a VERY HARD block to overcome in any market.

Can you imagine how hard it is when even $99 purchases come with $5000 of bonuses at XX hours of video and XXX pages of PDFs? The "guilt nugget" stuck in that guy's throat after that sale is big enough to choke an elephant. I pity the next marketer in line who's going to try to Heimlich that out of the way to try to get that guy to swallow anything more.

(Sorry for some of the metaphors there, but I want to reinforce that not just figuratively, these mega-bonuses actually choke up and gag the whole buying public.)

Originally Posted by markshields

I did and still do have ewan chia guaranteed copywriting I think it was called however never found alot of value in it

I never heard of that one. Guaranteed to what, I wonder? :P

Originally Posted by JennSpencerIM

Thanks, Colin...very good points. Although all the big time internet marketing gurus seem to do this ALL the time with bonuses so I'm torn as to what really works. Does anyone know any guru that doesn't do this? It seems I always get emails with the gurus providing bonuses to purchase other people's products (when they are affiliates...especially during a contest!) and they win the contest! So for me, when I'm trying to compete again them in an affiliate contest, if I don't offer a super cool bonus too, I can't even begin to compete with all the sales they'll grab from their bonus offer! What should we do then??!

StomperNet used to not do it (when I was the one writing the promotions). I'm not saying they do it now, I'm saying I don't write their stuff now, so I can't say. While I was there anyway, lots of people told me that ours was one of the only newsletters people stayed subscribed to. Here's a secret: we did that on purpose, lol.

For the longest time we had one primary bonus that was a physical DVD set and we used it over and over for nearly every launch we mailed for as affiliates. But ONLY after running at least 2 full-length content-only pieces on the blog and in email to fully "sell" the prospect on the existence and possession of the given problem.

We'd build up to the launch with free, but topically relevant content. Then when it came time to make the offer, we'd get out of the way of the people that wanted it already, and then push the bonus offer at the very tail end. We'd give that same standard DVD set, and then offer attendance to whatever next most recent event we were having anyway.

Allowing extra folks into seminars or live events that we were going to do anyway had ZERO COST for us, and only had REAL VALUE for people who actually wanted to buy the affiliate product anyway. It wasn't a bribe to get them to buy something they didn't want. It was a reward for trusting me enough to buy on my word.

Again, all conditioning.

But to your question, when you're starting out, you don't have all the massive repositories of back-products that you can toss out there to bribe people with. Like I said, even if you did, it's not a good idea. But I'll give you a good one right here:

Offer personal time, consulting, or coaching. If you've got the goods enough to have people paying attention to you and looking for recommendations, then I guarantee some portion of that audience will be willing to pay a premium for some more personal attention and hand-holding. This is something that bigger marketers don't have the resources to do, but smaller operators do.

The relationships, connections, testimonials, and CONTENT you can get by doing case studies, interviews, brainstorming etc. is invaluable to you. Not to mention the experience. I won't front - I'm only going through this myself right now. I've been a marketing "employee" my whole life working on people's staffs. Now that I'm in it for myself, I'm personally following this advice because it's the fastest way I can think of to accomplish my goal: early retirement.

Once you do that kind of thing for a while and have all kinds of kick-ass content recorded of you coaching and teaching, guess what you can offer as a bonus for your next affiliate promotion?

Originally Posted by Zanti

James above actually touches on an interesting subject, at least for me. When I have purchased a product with little or no bonuses offered and find out after receiving the product that there are one or two unadvertised products that came with the original purchase that are extremely useful and thought out, not just some stuff thrown in. I become a loyal customer to that marketer.

Not because of the unadvertised bonus, but because that person didn't try to bribe me to buy their product, but gave me much more in value than what I was expecting.

I was going to thank James for exactly this and you beat me to it. When you do this - REWARD after ACTION rather than BRIBE BEFORE, you get such a responsive and appreciative list, it's unbelievable. I'd tell people our responses on some of our promos and people would think I was lying.

People would just buy and buy and buy and we were pulling down top 5 finishes on MEGA launches against the guys who are known for having these mega-massive uber lists. We did with a much smaller, much more loyal and SATISFIED audience. Our prospects did what we told them because they were rewarded for doing so continually.

(Of course I never TELL anyone to DO anything - I invite them to participate, and they think it was their own idea to do so. Subtle, but effective difference there.)

Here's another way to think of it:

Do you know what measure I use when writing an affiliate promotion to tell if it's "good enough"? I want the copy to be SO GOOD that if I put two links in my promo, one affiliated and one not - and EXPLAINED THE DIFFERENCE, people would click the affiliated link anyway because they'd feel I EARNED it.

Now I'm not saying to do that. You COULD pull it off but that would be an advanced ninja marketing move, definitely not for beginners. For now, just PRETEND you were going to link both ways, and make sure your copy's good enough that they want to click your link BECAUSE it's your link.

Not because your bonus is the biggest, not because you emailed first that day... but because it was from YOU - and you take care of them so good they don't even want to LISTEN to anyone else.

It's not even that HARD to do it the way I describe vs. clobbering people with your cluster-bonus-bombs. I think of all of that massive collection of content just being wasted as a THUD for an up-front bonus bribe. That stuff could be made exponentially more valuable by being drawn out over time.

Remember that if you sell information, no matter what you may think, a major component of that industry is novelty and entertainment value. Regardless of the "surface" problem you're solving, you're also being used by your prospects and customers as an ad-hoc remedy for the biggest frustration in 21st century life: BOREDOM.

The longer and more effectively you can keep people from being bored, the better and more profitable for you. So if you give prospects everything you've got all at once, you lose them almost instantly.

Think of a small child at Christmas time. How fast is that kid sick of the whole pile of loot he or she just got? Now imagine how long you could sustain that same kid's interest if you gave them one gift at a time, one per month, over the whole year.

I think the same principle is at work here in this very industry. All the bonsususususes are making it like Christmas morning every single day. And that just sucks all the specialness and fun out of the whole endeavor, and you can never keep topping it.

NOTE: I can't update my blog on a regular basis, but I can write THIS MUCH here on a forum when I'm "goofing off" - why? Because I was b-o-r-e-d. Kind of proving my own point.

If I could somehow harness all the energy I expend while avoiding doing work, and then apply it to actually doing work, I'd live in a golden fortress on the moon and all of you would work for ME. Good thing for all of you that I'm such an underachiever I guess, lol!

[jborjaperez]

great post Colin... Gives me interesting ideas..

[Zanti]

ActionPlanBiz,

This doesn't answer your question directly, but you may find it to be very help.

"Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, PH.d.

I've learned a great deal from this book.

Z

[sal64]

Thanks Colin.

A very insightful perspective. As someone who's been around online for 6 years, I must admit that I now tend to delete all launch emails... simply because it's all been "over done".

My thoughts are simply "if the offer is that good, why the need for the bribe?"

To the more cynical like myself, one can quickly read between the lines and see that there is some sort of competition going on behind the scenes.

There's is nothing worse than getting 5 or 6 emails for a product where the affiliates are saying "wait: buy from me coz...".

As you say, you'll go far better if you build that cred and respect with your list.

Good work!

Sal64

[Colin Theriot]

Originally Posted by Zanti

ActionPlanBiz,

This doesn't answer your question directly, but you may find it to be very help.

"Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, PH.d.

I've learned a great deal from this book.

Z

This book is a MUST. Not SHOULD. If you trick people into buying things for a living, you MUST have and read this book. More than once even.

Another - "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. MUST read. Buy now, and buy two copies of each, because when someone asks you how you got so awesome at writing copy all of a sudden, you'll have copies you can share.

You'll be their hero.