OTO's and Upsells

Here's my analogy on an appropriate upsell:

Let's say I need to solve a problem.

2,376,186,799,586,847 divided by 45736.

I look in the WSO section for a solution.

Scenario 1:

I buy a report that teaches me long division. It goes through all the steps and is very well presented.

The OTO is an online calculator.

Can I use the original report on its own? Absolutely.

But the OTO makes my life easier and saves me time.

I have no problem with this.

Scenario 2:

I buy a report on long division.

It teaches me how to do long division, step by step - but only for numbers that will divide evenly.

If I want to learn how to do long division with numbers that have a remainder, I need to buy the upsell.

It's an online calculator. It does everything quicker and faster - which is great - but without it, I can't make the original product work.

This is a problem.

"Well, why not just package everything together and sell it? Why make there be an upsell?"

There can be a few reasons for this.

1. Some people can't afford the whole package. They still need the solution, but until they can get the money together to get the fancy upsell, they can make do with the old-fashioned solution and do it by hand.

Keyword research is a good example of this. You can teach someone how to do keyword research manually, and it's great for beginners because it gives them a solid foundation for how to do keyword research and you can show them how to do it using free tools.

By doing this, you not only show them how to do it for free but by having them go through the process manually and having them understand the basic concepts, when they do go to purchase a keyword research tool they will be able to evaluate how good the software is because they understand the basic principles behind what the software does.

2. Until someone goes through a process the hard way, they won't really understand how beneficial the upsell is. Using our example above, once someone has gone through long division a few times, they will gladly purchase an online calculator in order to speed up the process.

However, if the marketer had simply packaged up an online calculator and sold it just that way and not separately, you have a lot of people that said "I don't need that" or "I don't want to pay that much money" and they would lose sales.

By doing it in a two-step process a good marketer can make more people happy, provide a solution to a greater audience, and have people return to him or her in the future.

Love them or hate them, upsells and OTOs really DO have a valid place in the marketplace, when done correctly.

JMHO and YMMV