Introduction

Welcome to 25 ways to Increase Your Internet Business Profits in 60 Minutes or Less!

There’s a goldmine hidden in your business. And you can tap into it any time you want.

Let me explain…

You’re probably already making some money with your business. Maybe you even make a pretty comfortable living, the kind that gets the neighbors wondering how it is that you can stay home all day and still live a good life.

But the truth is –

Whether you’re brand-spanking-new to business or
you’re successful business owner with years of experience,
there’s still a river of cash that you haven’t yet tapped.

Your eyes should have lit up just now. Maybe your heart even quickened a bit at the thought of pocketing more cash.

The good news is that you’re about to learn 25 ways to increase your business profits – and each proven method takes about 60 minutes or less.

Let’s get right to it…

1. Find Out What Your Customers REALLY Want

Have you done your market research… lately?

Most business owners do at least some market research during the start up phase of their business. But after that, it’s easy to get sidetracked. Sometimes you put out products and services without ever really seeing if the market desires them.

You see, some of the easiest money you’ll ever make is when you create products and services that your market is ALREADY buying. Then all you have to do is create a similar product (no copying!) and put it in front of your prospects.

So how do you find out what your market is already buying?

Like this: Run a search in the Amazon.com marketplace for your general keyword (like “gardening”), and sort by “bestselling” products. If you see a few similar products dominating the first few pages of results, that’s a pretty good sign that the product is popular.

Tip: Another way to find out what’s hot is to follow the money. Marketers don’t pour advertising dollars into products that aren’t selling. So look at pay per click ads on Google, ads in your local newspaper, ads in niche magazines, banner ads on big sites and similar paid advertisements to see what’s being sold.

2. Develop a USP

A USP is a “unique selling proposition”, and it’s the short statement that tells your prospects how your products are different and better than the competitors’ products.

Basically, it’s the statement that tells your prospects why they should buy from you.

Here are some factors around which you can base your USP:

A strong guarantee.
Durability.
Dependability.
Low price.
High price.
Customer service.
Product was made in a special way.
You’re specially qualified to offer the product or service.
Your business was first in some category.

And so on.

Point is, look for a benefit that appeals to your customers.

Example: The car rental company Enterprise has the USP, “We pick you up.” There may be other rental companies that pick their customers up, but Enterprise was the first one to advertise the fact and use it as their USP. And this USP is indeed a good reason for prospects to choose Enterprise over the other rental companies.

3. Create More Products

Pretty simple, right?

If you want to make more money, then you need to add more products to your sales funnel.

“Aha!” you say. “This may make more money, but it takes more than 60 minutes.”

Sure, some of your products will indeed take more than 60 minutes to complete. Indeed, some of them may take months to complete.

But here are five ways to create products in 60 minutes or less

Record a phone interview. Just ask a colleague in your niche to be a guest expert for about 30-45 minutes. Record the interview, edit it and sell it. Takes one hour or less!

Tip: Alternatively, you have someone interview you. Or you can simply create an audio book.

Create a report using a speech recognition software (like Dragon Naturally Speaking.) Outline a report, talk about it for 30 to 45 minutes and then edit it as needed. Bam, your text report is finished.
Use PLR (private label rights) content to create an ebook. Tweak it and your product is ready in minutes.
Repackage one of your existing products.

Example: Combine multiple small reports to create a home study package.

Outsource it. In one hour or less (with the time being spread out over several days), you can post a job on Elance.com, evaluate freelancers, hire the best one and send out a brief. Then sit back and let the freelancer take care of the rest!

4. Sell Affiliate Products

As you just learned, you can create your own products fast. But you can sell someone else’s products even more quickly.

What’s more, you can even choose products that are already proven winners, meaning your market is sure to buy.

So where do you find these products? Here:

Clickbank.com. The products at the top of each category or the top of your search results are the bestsellers.
Amazon.com. Again, just sort your search results by “bestsellers” to find the hot products.
CJ.com. This is a general affiliate site for some of the biggest companies on the internet.

Or, just search Google for the type of product you want to sell alongside a term like “affiliate” or “affiliate program.”

Example: “Gardening supplies affiliate program.”

5. Raise Your Prices

That’s right, you can make more money simply by raising the prices on some of your existing products.

Funny thing is, you may even discover that your conversion rate goes UP when you raise your prices. That’s because the perceived value of your product goes up, which makes people want it even more. Test it out for yourself!

6. Lower Your Prices

Wait, what? I just told you to raise your prices. Now I’m telling you to lower your prices?

Yes, you’re reading it right. But the key here is that you just need to lower your prices on a few key products – namely, your entry-level products. So if you’re selling something for $25, try testing a $10 price to see what happens.

Once you find the “sweet spot” price point on an entry-level product, your conversion rate goes up (often because the product is at a “no brainer” price). That means you get more customers. And when you have more customers, you can make more money simply by promoting additional products and services on the backend.

Simple, yet effective – and it just takes a couple minutes to implement!

7. Upsell on the Order Form

Generally, you’ll hear marketers talk about upselling as any practice where you get the customers to spend more money on their order. Indeed, I sometimes use terms like cross selling and upselling interchangeably, since it’s so widespread as to have become acceptable.

However, technically speaking, upselling is when you ask the customer to “upgrade” their order. That is, you ask them to consider a premium version of the product that they’re preparing to buy.

Examples:

A customer is about to buy the base model of a car, but the car dealer persuades the customer to buy a more-expensive model (e.g., Ford F150 base model versus Ford F150 Lariat package with leather seats and other luxury features).
A customer is about to buy a home study course. The order form includes an upsell to buy the “premium” or “platinum” version, which includes extras such as transcriptions of audio recordings and personal coaching.
You order a hamburger, medium fries and medium soft drink at a fast food restaurant. The clerk asks you if you’d like to “super size” your order for just 50 cents more, meaning you get a large fries and soft drink.

Now let’s compare that to cross selling…

8. Cross Sell on the Order Form

Cross selling is when you persuade the customer to increase their order price by buying products that are related to the product in their shopping cart.

Obviously, the products you’re cross selling should be closely related to the original product. Ideally, the cross sell suggestions should enhance or compliment the original purchase.

If you want to see a good example of this, just go to Amazon.com, put something in your cart and start going through the order process. You’ll see plenty of recommendations for related products, usually phrased something like this: “People who purchased [the product in your cart] also purchased these products…”

That’s social proof in action. Not only is Amazon actively cross selling, but they’re using social proof by telling you what others have done. It’s very powerful.

Here then are specific examples of cross selling…

You order a hamburger and soft drink at a fast food restaurant. The clerk asks, “Would you like fries with that?”
You sell computers. You cross sell monitors, keyboards, mice, microphones and software.
You sell a book about dog obedience training. You cross sell a housetraining guide.

9. Use One-Time Offers

These could be either cross sells or upsells. Either way, the key is to make the offer a true one-time-offer, meaning the customer can only take advantage of the offer if he orders it right now… as he’ll never see it again.

Tip: One way to do this is by showing the OTO as soon as the person clicks on the order button. The second way to do it is to show the OTO AFTER the customer has entered his credit card information and clicked the “submit” button. You can test it to see which method brings you the best results.

Usually, OTOs revolve around giving the customer a steep discount on a product. In other words, the customer will still be able to purchase the product at a later point, but never again will he be able to purchase it at this low price.

In other cases, you may simply offer an exclusive product – one that’s not available anywhere else, not even from you, except when a customer is purchasing this particular product.

Examples:

You sell a dog obedience guide. When the person clicks the order button, you offer a dog housetraining guide at half price.
You sell a marketing home study course. Customers see a one-time offer for “secret recordings” taped in a hotel room at a recent workshop. This product isn’t available anywhere else for any price.

Because it’s a one-time offer, in all cases the key to success is to stress the urgency of the offer. That is, make it clear that it truly is a one-time offer. And then be sure you’re true to your word, meaning the offer truly is a one-time offer, not available anywhere else.

10. Install Backend Offers on the Thank You Page

Yet another way to increase your business profits near the point of sale is by suggesting related products and services on the “thank you”/payment confirmation page (which is the page customers see after they’ve completed their order).

Now, these suggestions can be for your own products. But keep in mind that these offers can also be for affiliate products.

Either way, the key is to make sure that you’re recommending something that’s closely related to the product or service the customer just purchased.

Note: Be sure to put the important payment confirmation information – such as a download link – at the top of this page so that the customer gets what he paid for without becoming confused. Then at the bottom of the page you can have a large headline that says, “Before You Go, Check Out This Easy Way to [insert benefit]…” Then you can add in your backend offer.

Examples:

You sell gardening ebooks. You put an affiliate link for gardening supplies (like fertilizer and plant seeds) on your thank you page.
You sell a weight loss ebook. You offer your personal consulting services to buyers.

11. Promote Backend Offers to Customer Mailing List

We’ve been talking about how to increase the average order at the point of sale.

Another way to increase your profits is by getting your customer to order more products (as well as more products with higher ticket prices) AFTER their initial order.

Indeed, most of the profits in your business lie hidden in the backend!

One of the first places you can start tapping into these backend profits is via your customer mailing list.

You can send out a “thank you” email immediately after the sale. This email does four things:

Thanks the customer for their order.
Reduces buyer’s remorse by reminding them of the benefits of their purchase.
Gives them important ordering information, such as a download link or information about when a physical product will be shipped.
Promotes a similar product.

Examples:

You sell clothing online. In your thank you email you offer a coupon good for 25% off the customer’s next purchase. Ideally this offer should have a short expiration date, such as a week or two.
You sell a marketing home study course. You remind the customers that they can purchase personal coaching from you.

12. Promote Backend Offers Within the Product

If you sell digital products – such as videos, ebooks or software – then you can promote additional offers from within your actual product.

Examples:

Your weight-training ebook has links to bodybuilding supplements, such as whey protein and creatine.

Your “do it yourself” bathroom remodeling video includes links to supplies, like grout and tile.
Your “get out of debt” software includes links to a “get out of debt” home study course.

13. Send Backend Offers With Shipments

If you sell physical products that you need to ship, then you can include fliers, coupons and other marketing collateral that recommend additional products and services to your existing customers. These products and services can be your own – or they can be affiliate offers.

Examples:

Someone buys a dog collar from you. When you ship the package, you include a coupon for 10% off the customer’s next order from your dog supplies store.
Someone purchases a copywriting home study course from you. You include a flier in the order which promotes your upcoming copywriting workshop.

14. Use Postcards to Promote Backend Offers

Whether you sell digital products or physical products, you can send your backend offers through the mail.

You can send these offers through most any method you choose, including catalogs and direct-response sales letters. However, one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to do it is through a postcard.

Tip: As an added bonus, the format virtually forces your customers to read your copy. That’s because there’s no “work” involved, such as opening an envelope. So most people will let their eyes at least scan a postcard, looking for something that catches their interest.

Obviously, you’ll enjoy more success if you make your offer tightly related to the customer’s previous purchase.

Example: So if your customer just purchased a book about marketing with social media, then an in-depth book about marketing on Facebook is a good fit.

Secondly, your postcard offer will work even better if there’s some sort of urgency attached to the offer, such as a limited-time discount, an invitation to a workshop that starts in a couple weeks, etc.

Here is a sample postcard – which you can tweak to your needs:

——————————

“Discover the Secrets of Growing Your Customer List and Generating Extra Revenue Using Facebook!”

(But hurry, this offer ends in a few days…)

There’s a truckload of prospects waiting for you on Facebook. They want to join your mailing list. They want to buy your products. They want to stuff your bank account with cash! And they’ll do all of this and more, just as soon as you build a profitable Facebook Fan Page!

Not sure how? No problem! Because now you too can discover the secrets of building Fan Pages that get results. All you have to do is attend the “Mastering Facebook” teleseminar on [date]. Best of all, if you register today, you’ll get a 50% early bird discount!

Just go to [link] or call [number] to register – but do it now, because your prospects are waiting for you!

——————————

15. Call Your Customers

That’s right, pick up the phone and call your customers. You can employ the services of customer service reps to make these calls for you. Or you can even use robocalls (which automatically play a recorded message for the recipient).

The best time to call is shortly after someone has made a purchase (such as within a week of the customer receiving their order). You can first thank them for their purchase and ask them if they have any questions. Then you can cross sell related merchandise.

Here’s a sample script:

——————————

“Hi, this is [your name] from [your company]. First, I’d like to thank you for purchasing the domain name [insert domain name] two days ago. Do you have any questions about domain name servers, email forwarding or similar issues?”

[Answer the customer’s questions.]

“Finally, I’d like to tell you about a special offer we have running on webhosting. You can try us out for just $1 for the first three months. You get [insert specifics here]. Or you can take advantage of our premium hosting for just $3 for the first three months. [Share details and specifics here.] Would you like to try the basic or the premium package?”

——————————

Now let’s switch our focus and talk about ways to increase profits by saving a potentially lost sale…

16. Create a Discount Exit Offer

The vast majority of prospects who hit the “back” button won’t return.

One way to save the sale is to try to get them on a mailing list first. Another way to save the sale is by creating an exit pop-up offer.

This is just what it sounds like – you create a pop-up window on your sales page that only activates when someone is leaving the site. The general sentiment is, “Hey, don’t go – here’s a nice offer for you…

One type of offer is the discount offer. As the name implies, you simply offer a discount on the product that’s being advertised on the sales page.

Examples:

“Special offer! Order today and you’ll enjoy a $25 savings. Use coupon code SAVENOW.”
“Wait, don’t go! If you order now, you’ll get a special 30% discount. You’ll only see this offer once, so click here to take advantage of it!”

17. Offer a Special Bonus on Exit

Instead of (or in addition to) offering a discount in an exit pop-up window, you can offer a special bonus.

Examples:

“Wait! If you order now we’ll double your offer! Click here to take advantage of this exclusive offer…”
“Order now and you’ll get the ‘French Cooking Secrets’ bonus recipe book, absolutely free! Click here to claim your bonus…”

18. Down Sell on Exit

Money is often an objection, meaning the prospect doesn’t think he can afford your offer. This is especially true if you’re selling a product with a higher ticket price, such as one that’s $100 or more. (What is considered high depends on your market, of course.)

The solution to making sales even from those who genuinely can’t afford your offer?

Simple: Make a down sell offer via an exit pop-up window. This is where you offer a stripped down version of your product or offer at a reduced cost.

Examples:

You sell a home study package for $200. You make an offer to strip out all the bonuses and extras, leaving the main product for $100.

You sell software for $250. You offer a “lite” version of the software for $150, which doesn’t include all the bells, whistles and features.

19. Offer Digital Bonus on the Sales Page

Whether you’re selling a physical product or a digital product (like an ebook or software), you can offer a downloadable bonus. This bonus will make prospects the buying decision, thereby increasing your conversion rate (and your revenues).

Tip: Remember, it IS possible to create a product in 60 minutes or less, especially if you use audio, do an interview or start with PLR material. Refer back to method #3 in this report for details.

Examples:

You sell fishing poles. As a bonus, you can offer a report called “The Secrets of Catching Trophy-Winning Bass.”
You sell an Italian cookbook (either a physical or digital version). As a bonus, you toss in “Italian Cooking Made Easy, Volume 2.”

Tip: The benefit of offering a digital bonus alongside a physical product is that you end up creating a “hybrid” product. See method #47 to see why that’s so desirable!

20. Create a Physical Bonus for the Sales Page

Another option for creating extra revenue using bonuses is by offering a physical bonus. Again, it doesn’t matter whether the main product is a physical or downloadable product – you can still offer the physical bonus.

Tip: As an added benefit for you, you get to ship something even if the main product is downloadable. That means you can include a coupon, flier or other backend offer in the shipment!

Examples:

You sell a downloadable dog-training guide. You ship out a set of bonus training videos on DVD.
You sell a cookbook. You toss in a bonus set of oven mitts.

21. Giveaway Free Services

Instead of offering bonus products on your sales pages, you can boost conversions and revenue by offering bonus services.

Examples:

You sell resume-writing course online. You offer a free resume critique to customers.
You sell a “get out of debt” home study course. You offer a free 10 minute phone consultation, where buyers can ask you questions and get your opinions about their household budget plan.
You sell a blog theme design service. You offer a free blog installation as a bonus.

Take note: Don’t overbook yourself. It’s true, not everyone who buys your product or service will take you up on your bonus offer. In some cases, you may even find that the majority of buyers never contact you.

However, when you first make this offer, you should assume every buyer will take advantage of the service bonus, and then schedule your time accordingly. After you’ve made a few hundred sales, you’ll have some good data regarding how many people actually take you up on the bonus, no guesswork required.

22. Extend Time-Delayed Bonuses

Bonuses generally work to generate revenue by boosting conversion rates.

Now here’s a bonus that may boost conversion rates, but its primary purpose is to reduce refund rate: The time-delayed bonus.

Just as the name implies, you don’t give the bonus immediately after the purchase. Instead, you wait until your refund period expires. So if you have a 60 day refund period, then you offer the bonus a few days after that.

The key, of course, is to be really clear in your sales copy so that customers understand the bonus is time-delayed.

You can see how I handled it in my Profit From PLR class by offering a “Graduation Bonus.” Check it out: http://www.imstitute.com/ProfitFromPLR/.

23. Create Urgency With a Limited-Time Discount

Do you know one of the biggest factors that tends to get people clicking on your buy button? Fear. Or more specifically, fear of missing out on something good.

You can tap into this fear in a multitude of ways (which you’ll learn about over the next couple methods). But one of the most popular ways to do it is to simply offer a limited- time discount.

You see this all the time, both online and offline. For example, do you ever look at the weekly fliers you get from your local grocery stores and retail stores? Most of those specials run for just one week – so you’ll miss out if you don’t go shopping soon.

You can do the same thing online.

Examples:

“Special offer today only! Order now and enjoy a $100 savings off the regular price.”
“Use coupon code WOW to enjoy a 25% discount on your next order. But hurry, this offer ends Saturday!”

24. Limit the Number of Discounts Available

Instead of putting a time limit on the discount, you can limit the actual number of discounts available.

Examples:

“Fast-Action Discount: Be one of the next 145 people to order now and you’ll enjoy a 30% discount!”
“Order now – but hurry, because only the next 77 people who order now will get to take advantage of this introductory pricing!”

25. Offer Limited-Time Bonus

Yet another way to boost your conversion rate and increase profits is by offering a bonus that’s only available for a limited time.

Examples:

“Early Bird Special! If you order the “Good Dog” video training guide in the next 36 hours, you’ll get a copy of ‘Dog Training Made Easy’… absolutely free! That’s a $50 value, so order now.
“Heads up! Order by 11:59pm on Friday and you’ll get a free 8 gigabyte memory card with your purchase of any digital camera!”

Conclusion

Congratulations! You now know 25 ways to extract more profits out of your business. And best of all, each of these methods takes 60 minutes or less!

Now, maybe you knew about some of these methods. But let me ask you this: Are you using them? Have you ever tried them? Because there’s a big difference between simply knowing about a method and actually putting it to work for you every day.

So that’s why I’m going to encourage you to take action, starting right now.

Pick a method that appeals to you and apply it – TODAY. It will take 60 minutes or less. And I’m sure you’ll agree that the return on your investment of time is well worth the effort, so get started right now!