If you don’t control the sales funnel, you are at the mercy of the one who is in making profits online. This is why most Internet marketers say that you must sell your own digital products and, essentially, control the sales funnel to really profit online.
Thus, you need to control the sales funnel by creating your own digital product and setting up the funnel. When creating a sales funnel, you really are creating two or more offers, since you need to be able to offer your prospect or customer another offer on top of the original or main offer. This is usually considered an upsell or one-time offer (commonly referred to as an OTO).
However, it is now quite common to have a sales funnel where you have far more than just two offers. You can have anywhere from three to ten or more offers in one funnel, composed of upsells (advanced or more enhanced versions of the main product) and downsells (advanced or more enhanced versions of the main product, but not as advanced or enhanced as the corresponding upsell).
There are really only two rules regarding sales funnels and corresponding upsells and downsells: The one-time offers (i.e. upsells and downsells) relate to the main product offer in some way so that you add more value to the main product offer, and the one-time offers are optional purchases and NOT necessary to enable the main product offer to fulfill the value it is supposed to as described in the product’s sales letter.
Thus, you can create a sales funnel composed of several different offers that will enable you to earn profits with each purchase.
Not every customer who buys the main offer will buy any of the upsells, but it’s likely some will, as it has been shown through research that people are more willing to buy cross-sells and upsells right after they have purchased a main offer. This is the same buying principle that leads a person to buy fries and a soft drink along with a hamburger (i.e. cross-sell) or to buy a more advanced version of a gardening tool to get more value from it (i.e. upsell).
The more people you can get to buy your main offer, the greater the chance that they will buy one or more of your one-time offers, since they have already purchased your main offer.
This is especially true if you provide a “downsell” to the corresponding “upsell,” as it’s also been proven through research that if you present a similar offer to a previous offer for a lower price, many consumers will purchase it, thinking they are getting a great deal.
This is all the more reason why you need to take control of your sales funnel and start getting qualified traffic to it today. The sooner you start doing this, the sooner you will start building up your online income, not only via more sales from your sales funnel, but also via the increased number of customers to your buyers’ list.
