Do You Go For The Upsell Before Or After They Buy?

Option C: one-click upsell.

Capture the initial order and process it. Immediately give them a OTO linked from the Thankyou page. This site has a number of posts on the concept of upsell tree.

If they don't want to buy the upsell, that's fine as I got their initial sale that locks them into a 3-year term and it's really their choice to pay me an extra $2000+ for not taking advantage of it .

Sell the main item. Then immediately give them upsell offer while they are still in the shopping mood and add an additional order to their cart. I am aware of 3 one-click upsell solutions from warriors and will be buying one of them.

Hmmm...my product is on Clickbank (SEO Help Videos - Click Here To Learn)

Can I still implement this "one-click" upsell as a vendor?

I see "gurus" in the field of IM using the same process I am using
on the salespage, which is when they click the ORDER button on
the salespage they're taken to an upsell page where they can
say "YES" to the upsell or "No thankyou - I'll just take the standard
offer" link.

What you're saying makes complete sense, but at the same time
I then wonder why some "big guys" use the 2-step format I'm
using with SEO Help Videos.

P.S. Thanks for your input!

Hi Emmanuel,
Technically an up-sell takes place before the prospect has purchased. They are given an A or B choice. Taking A means they accept your offer to add on to the product they just clicked to buy. Taking B means they decline your add-on product and click to just buy the original product.

An OTO takes place after their original offer has been processed for payment, with a page appearing saying--This is the only time you will see this offer--or something like that.

Both can be effective, the only thing I don't personally like is when I buy a product, the payment is processed, and the OTO comes on and makes me feel like the product is incomplete without the added product. A lot of vendors do something along those lines.

To my way of thinking, I just paid for a product and if it is incomplete in some way I should have been told that before the purchase was processed. It's a marketing thing, I realize, but in my book it's a bit on the shady side.

On the other hand, if it's an honest product that would have value ON TOP OF what I just bought, I would at least consider it.

One advantage to an OTO I guess is that the purchaser is sitting there, with credit card in hand, (possibly still smoldering from his first purchase) but he has demonstrated himself to be a ready, willing, and able buyer.

Vendors tend to make their up-sells less costly than their OTOs. If you try to hit a person who just clicked to by a $10 product and try to up-sell them on a $195 add-on you risk scaring the bejeebers out of them and making no sale.

On the other hand, with an OTO they have already made payment so vendors tend to throw a pricey membership or training program at them because they've already got payment in hand for the first product.

I prefer to do the upsell before.


I generally offer a complimentary product for a "package deal" of less than what it would retail for.


A good example of this can be seen on Become a Frequent Flyer Master (not my site, not affiliated). Click the buy button and you'll see an example of a very clean upsell/cross-sale that (i bet) converts like hell.



The difference is that he's offering a discount to get into both products for only slightly more than you were selling, NOT trying to get you into a course that costs 4X as much as the product they were initially buying.

Everyone loves a discount, and Chris plays on that by offering something complimentary to what they've already bought for cheaper than if they bought it separately.

The rule seems to be, if the upsell is more than 50% of the cost of your initial product... put it on the backend. People are more likely to add something up front if it is a relatively inexpensive item. If you want them to buy something that costs a lot more, you'll most likely have better success putting it on the backend.