There are many ways to generate income in your business; the most powerful of these however is through correct marketing to your list – and this applies to ANY business, not just online. “Correct” marketing however does not mean blast-out-an-ad-every-day every time there is some super-special offer by some other person or program. “Correct” marketing means choosing select offers to send to your customers at appropriate times and appropriate intervals! Here’s a great article from guest author Chris Kent on a simple idea you can easily implement time and time again for greater profit.

Enjoy!

We have all heard the various lines about how much the average subscriber is worth. Some say 50 cents per subscriber per month and some believe it can be as high as $2. But why wait weeks and months to monetise your subscribers when you can do it immediately? You can do this with an one time offer (OTO).

What Is A One Time Offer?

An OTO is an offer to your subscribers to buy a product or service at a very good price and for a limited time only. The idea behind making the offer limited and only available “now” is a scarcity play and is designed to encourage them to buy now instead of deliberating their decision and possibly deciding not to go ahead.

The best way to present a one time offer is to do it after the subscriber has been confirmed on your list. If you are using single opt-in then you can redirect to the OTO page immediately. If you are using double opt-in then the subscriber should first be prompted to click on the link in the confirmation email and only when this is done should you present the OTO to them. The idea behind this is that you are still building a list and the OTO is of secondary importance compared to getting new subscribers.

The Best Way To Present The OTO

Most of the time you will be offering an incentive or similar in return for someone subscribing to your list. The way I like to confirm subscription, give access to the incentive and present the OTO is to take the sales page/pitch for my OTO and append a small section at the top that tells the new subscriber that their email has been confirmed and the link to the free report (or other incentive) will be in an email in their inbox within a couple of minutes. This gives them reassurance that they can go and check for it later and there is no need for any further action there.

Now they can rest assured that all is well and I can get their full attention to check out an amazing deal that I am offering them for today only. So long as this top section is kept quite short, their eyes will soon lower to the main headline of the sales pitch which will hopefully draw them into the rest of the pitch and eventually convince them to buy.

Downsell

Some marketers have a system where if someone closes the OTO sales page they are then presented with the OTO for half price or some other similar heavy discount. Alternatively, they may be offered a watered down product for a cheaper price. This method of “saving the sale” should, in theory, boost profits.

How far you want to take this is up to you. I have seen some marketers operate up to three downsells in a desperate attempt to save the sale! The downside of this is that you are already destroying trust with the subscriber, right at the beginning of your relationship. Personally speaking, I don’t like to use downsells.

How To Create An OTO

The best OTOs are your own products but if you have yet to create one you can use a PLR (private label rights) product instead. Just be sure to scrutinise a product before you buy it as many PLR products are of very poor quality and you do not want to gain a reputation for peddling junk with your new subscribers.

If you cannot even find a good enough PLR product yet, you can even just set your autoresponder service to redirect your confirmed subscribers to an affiliate link instead. Although this is a bit abrupt and there are nicer ways to do it (like using an animation graphic and setting a confirmation page to auto-redirect after 5 seconds), you can actually make very good front-end profits this way.

About the author: Chris Kent is a power list building marketer with large lists in several different niches. He teaches new or failed list builders how to build their first profitable list of at least 1,000 subscribers and start enjoying thousand dollar paydays. Get his free list building secrets report now at Easy List Building.