Comments on: How to Instantly Bump Your Income 25-50% With Cross-sells

By: BillinDetroit

BillinDetroit — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:01:30 +0000

Seems like the cross-sales could be much less offensively done if those additional clicks (in the story I counted 3 after already agreeing to buy the base item) took you to just ONE intermediary page of related items … possibly scripted to show the graphic already on the item … and then to the checkout proper.

By: jim

jim — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:49:27 +0000

I think cross-selling is great but when it’s to that excessive/aggressive level, it’s irritating. I don’t mind it as long as there is, as in GoDaddy’s case, a “skip to checkout” button so I can skip it and subsequent offers if I’m not interested. Plus, it has to be related… if you’re ordering a t-shirt, don’t try to sell phone service.

By: Eivind Ingebrigtsen

Eivind Ingebrigtsen — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:58:39 +0000

@Vistaprint - For a good online print buying experience check out http://www.optimalprint.com -
no point in going through 4 levels of cross-sales before getting your businesscards.

By: theGoose

theGoose — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:02:32 +0000

so I am going to be pitching a creative artist site tomorrow and i think ill try to cross sell a merch site is the pitch goes well… seems like it will fit

By: Geoff

Geoff — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:17:29 +0000

@Eliffo: I understand that, my point I was trying to get across is that you could take the title: “How to Instantly Bump Your Income 25-50% With Cross-sells” take out a few words so it reads “Instantly Bump Your Income With Cross-sells” and you would have just as much information as the entire article does. If you are going to write a “how to” article, it should have the “how to” part in it. I clicked to read this article because the title peeked my interest and it didn’t deliver.

By: Eliffio

Eliffio — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:20:45 +0000

@Geoff: I think that applying the cross-sell strategy that the post author remarks, eventually you could raise your income in those percentages.

In fact, imagine you quote for a logotype, and in your quote you tell the client that you also make websites (and the client didn´t know that). If he is interested your income could be increased much more than 25-50%.

I don´t include cross-sells in my quotes, but I apply them when talking to clients, and the above example has happened to me.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:02:10 +0000

This article is titled “How to Instantly Bump Your Income 25-50% With Cross-sells”. A total of 2 sentences are dedicated to that title while the rest is dedicated to reviewing a checkout process of a website. How are you justifying the 25 to 50% increase? Throwing out numbers and reviewing a website doesn’t make for a very informative article.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:48:34 +0000

Thanks for the article, excellent piece!

By: eric

eric — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:13:40 +0000

Vistaprint cross-sells the crap out of you to try to recoup for their cheap prices. They also have a very unmoderated affiliate program. I get at least half a dozen emails a day from affiliates trying to sell Vistaprint… they’re just as bad http://www.entertainment.com/ . If you try contacting them, you’ll end up talking to someone in support who knows nothing about their marketing or affiliate program, won’t forward you to anyone and will tell you just ‘unsubscribe’ to the annoying emails, not understanding that each one is coming from a different affiliate (or one using different emails/aliases) so unsubscribing is a losing battle.

Flickr lets you do all kinds of stuff with the photos you upload
http://flickr.com/do/more/ and they’re 100x less annoying.

By: Mert

Mert — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:03:35 +0000

You don’t actually have to cross-sell your own services. You probably have some friends that work as freelancers as well and bringing them in at the right moment can really make your clients happy. And then you can expect the favor back and get some jobs from your friend.

I’m a designer, specifically a product designer, and although I can manage when it comes to graphic design or web development, I never claim to be a guru in the in those. What I do best is product design. So what did I do when my client for whom I designed a liquor bottle needed a label for the bottle? I brought in my sister who is a graphic designer. The client now has the bottle and the label in one package, both done nicely. Works much better than me designing a label and losing focus on the bottle.