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The inflation of product values

by Tyson Faulkner
3 replies
So I got this email the other day, and it said that when you order the product advertised within x amount of time, you would get $2000 in bonuses.

I thought to myself, "Only worth $2000?"

Then I had another thought...

$2000 is a lot of money (at least it is to me). So why would I be so quick to discount that much worth of bonuses?

It seems that I am suffering from the effects of the inflation of product prices, namely bonuses that are added in. It seems that so often a product is sold for $47 or $97, and then bonuses worth $3000, $6000 or more are added to it. In fact, I recently saw a sales page that was selling $10,000+ of products for $7!

Whenever I see big numbers like that I automatically discount them because it is so outrageous. I realize that sometimes it's true, but when it is it just seems to get lost in the shuffle.

Now this is just my opinion, but if all those products were really worth thousands of dollars, why wouldn't the seller actually sell them instead of giving them away for free? It seems to me that it's usually just a bunch of junk or OK items with high price values stuck on them to inflate the "value" of the bonus.

I think if you're going to add a bonus to your sales page you should keep it realistic. The truth is, if those products were actually sold for that much everyday, nobody would be giving them all away just to sell a $47 book. I'm actually getting to the point where I don't like seeing bonuses on sales pages.

I'm not saying that all bonuses are bad, there are some that do add value. For example, when it's a bonus that you can't get anywhere else, or something that adds to the offer, like bonus videos teaching how to use the product or something like that.

I am just getting tired of seeing such high figures when it's obviously not true, honest people seem to be few and far between these days!

Does this bother anyone else?

-Tyson
#inflation #product #values
  • Profile picture of the author rick.dearman
    i totall agree.The first time I saw this I was laughing so hard.
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    • Profile picture of the author floodrod
      Classic Sales logic gone wrong..

      Offering a few valuable bonuses is good practice, but to stuff tons of crap in devalues the site
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  • Profile picture of the author artwebster
    This is one of the big contradictions in Internet Marketing.

    Create a product, give it away to make more profit on the back end.

    Just so that your free product has more value, add bonuses of OTHER free products but give them a notional value of, say $100s.

    On the back end sell a product for $7, $17,$27, $37 and, to make this seem a real bargain, load it up with bonuses of MORE free products but give them a notional value of $1000s.

    The competition to give away FREE products with attached notional value is very intense. How many times do you see emails with subject lines like "Don't buy Fred's Yellow Widgets!" or even "Get the biggest bonus with Fred's Yellow Widgets!"

    You must also have seen invitations to visit sales pages where the FREE products are being sold for the value indicated but with no indication of when the price on the sales page was set.

    The impression seems to be that nothing can be sold to internet marketers without the addition of FREE bonuses. What does that REALLY tell you about the value of the product?

    In the real world, you know, the place where you and I live, if a bonus is given with a purchase it is always understood that the cost of the bonus, which is usually a physical product, is absorbed by the retailer. It is also a general rule that the bonus offer is only valid when the full market price of the original purchase is paid (so that the retailer can use part of his mark up to cover the cost of the bonus). It is also a general rule that if you don't want the bonus, you can have a cash discount instead (but not as well as!).

    Smoke and mirrors create foggy vision online.
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    Some old school smarts would help - and here's to Rob Toth for his help. Bloody good stuff, even the freebies!

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