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Chapter 1:
Why Bonuses?
Vendor Bonuses
If you are a product vendor, then you probably already know why you need bonuses. Bonuses are an excellent way to increase the perceived value of your product or offer. They also can significantly increase your conversion rates. Many of your buyers, no matter how good your product is, are sitting on the fence waiting for one last nudge towards becoming a customer. Bonuses can often be this difference between a buyer and a page abandoner. Then there are also those people who absolutely love the bonuses for the bonuses’ sake and will actually judge your product based on the number of bonuses. So, making sure you have a good amount of attractive bonuses can go a long way towards maximizing your sales.
Finally, there is another, much less talked about, advantage of bonuses. They act as an excellent form of “collateral” that you can offer in your guarantee statement. Very few sellers do this, but it is incredibly effective and maximizes the amount of trust you can gain with potential buyers. Basically, what you do is you offer your standard guarantee, such as a 30-day money back guarantee, but then you state that you are going to “go above and beyond” and “reverse the risk”. In this second part of your guarantee you are going to promise that the buyers, upon requesting a refund, will even get to keep the bonuses. If you have appraised the dollar value of these bonuses at, for example, $500, then you can pitch it as a “100% money back PLUS $500 value back guarantee”. You might be asking “won’t that just encourage people to buy with the full intention of requesting a refund just to get the bonuses for free?” The answer is YES. But, more importantly, the amount of people who will now buy the product, and otherwise would not have, far outweighs the number of “professional refunders” you will attract.
Affiliate Bonuses
You may be asking yourself, why should affiliates bother with bonuses at all? Isn’t that the vendor’s responsibility?
Well, that might make sense if you want to be on the same even ground as all the other affiliates competing to make the sale with their affiliate link. But is that really what you want? Of course not! You want to be way out in the front. And it’s been proven that offering bonuses as an affiliate can 5X your affiliate sales.
You need to give your audience a reason to use YOUR affiliate link instead of somebody else’s. This is especially the case these days when people’s inboxes are full of dozens of marketers pitching the same product to them. What is there to set you apart from the rest? Bonuses. That’s literally it. Unless the buyer is your best buddy, all they really care about is which option gives them the most value. And rightfully so!
So the way this works is you create a quick and easy landing page, add bonuses to it and right at the top you tell them, grab all the bonuses on this page when you purchase “product x” via my link.
But you can’t just slap a bunch of bonuses on that page and expect them to buy through your link. You’ve got to do it in a way that makes sense in relation to the product you’re promoting and that is what we’ll be covering next.
Chapter 2: Keys to a Good Bonus
As mentioned previously, when you’re offering bonuses as an affiliate you can’t just do so with no rhyme or reason. The same goes for offering bonuses as a vendor. There has got to be some context and logical sense to the bonuses. Specifically, they need to have relevance, utility, and value. Not one or two of those. All three. Let’s take a closer look at each of those.
Relevance
You have to keep in mind you’re dealing with real, intelligent human beings here. When a buyer is considering a product, the buyer is aware of the category and type of product and their thoughts are aligned with a specific “sphere”. If the product is a list building product, they’re mentally in the sphere of list building or lead generation. If you slap a bonus down that is way outside of that sphere, like a course on product creation, they’ll notice a lack of relevance and they’ll likely dismiss what you’re offering. In fact, they might think you’re just plain dumb.
On the other hand, if you offer them bonuses like landing page editors or a course on increasing their opt-in rate or a pack of lead magnets to use for list building, they’ll immediately recognize that as something relevant to the list building product.
If necessary, you can stretch or “force” relevance for a category that is just “one step removed” from the category of the product. An example of this would be, “hey after you start building your list, you’ll need to start marketing to them, so here’s a course on email marketing”. With that statement, you’ve established relevance. It’s indirect, but it’s only removed from the product category by one logical step. Buyers will notice the truthfulness of that relevance claim and it’ll likely jive with them. If you try to go to many steps away from that original product category though, like “if you build a list you’ll need email marketing (1 step) and if you do email marketing you’ll need to do product creation to sell them something (2 steps),” then you’ll create a logical disconnect and your bonus will seem irrelevant (because it is).