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Google Domination | Illuminating SEO
- By Illuminating SEO
- Published 03/4/2009
- Search Engine Optimization
- Unrated
In this report I am going to teach you how to create a killer bonus that will have floods of people wanting to purchase through your link. Because I have received questions on delivering the bonuses, I will also discuss that near the end as well.
Every smart affiliate marketer knows that in order to make a lot of sales, you have to offer a bonus to people who purchase through your link. People LOVE bonuses! They especially love bonuses that compliment the product and make the product even more effective for them. If you can offer the perfect bonus, and get that bonus in front of the right people, you will make sales!
I know I am always looking for bonuses. I have signed up to over 20 lists, so that if a good product comes out I can compare all of their bonuses and look for bonuses on Google, and then I can choose the best one and get the most out of the product. I am sure there are many others like me who look for the best bonus they can possibly find.
So the goal with creating a bonus is to offer something that completes the product, something that is better than what everyone else is offering and to get that offer in front of as many people as possible. The better the bonus, the more likely people are to buy. I will let you in on a secret…I have purchased products just to get the bonuses people were offering, not because I even wanted the product. People offer entire courses that they have created that usually sell for way more than the price of the product, and then they give it as a bonus for purchasing some cheap $15 product! I have purchased a few products with no intention of ever looking at the product.
I am not normal, so I do not know how many other people have purchased products just for the bonuses, but it just proves the point that a bonus can sell the product. You are told that if you write a good review of a product then it is likely to sell, but if you write a good review and then offer an incredible bonus, your conversion rates will become supercharged and you will begin to see the real money.
Creating A Bonus
So how do you determine what makes a good bonus? Well, in order to offer the best possible bonus, it is best if you have a copy of the product so that you know what it contains and what it doesn’t contain. Otherwise you will end up simply offering the same material that is in the product, or you will offer something completely unrelated. If you are promoting a product launch you can often get at least a review copy of the course, if not the full version. If the merchant does not already offer it, you can request a review copy of the product or just a copy of the product. If you cannot get a copy of the product, then read over the sales page very carefully and then you can see what you could offer as a bonus. If you do not have a copy of the product, you can think up an idea for the bonus, then contact the merchant and ask if what you are offering is already included in the course.
This is only if you actually care how good the bonus really is. I personally want to help people to succeed, so I want to offer a bonus that will truly benefit people, which is why I often contact the merchants and run my bonuses by them to see what they think and ask if they compliment the program (But not always).
So, let’s walk through picking a bonus. I will go through the how I determined the bonuses for the Google Slapper product that I am promoting. First of all, I got a free copy of the course and I went through it. I saw what the course was about and what it covered, and then I tried to think of what would complement the product. To get a little bit of an idea I went and looked at what other people were offering as bonuses.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like what they were offering. Most of the bonuses I came across all stunk. Most of them were courses on Web 2.0 and using Web 2.0 properties to gain traffic, which is exactly what Google Slapper is about! They are just crappy versions of the course being offered as a bonus! Do you know what the worst part is? Most people will see those bonuses and think they fit perfectly with the course and that they are obviously the best bonuses because they are both on Web 2.0! I didn’t want to offer another Web 2.0 course, so I decided to come up with my own bonuses, ones that I thought would be more beneficial and more valuable for those who purchase through my link.
These are the bonuses I came up with:
1. “Getting Clickbank Products Free” report. This report I wrote is about how you can get Clickbank products for free, or for a discount, and how to get the most out of your Clickbank purchases. I chose to add this report because people in the IM niche generally purchase A LOT of Clickbank products, and this report helps them save on the other products they purchase. Because they will potentially purchase many other products, this report is worth a lot to them.
2. “118 Most Useful Wordpress Plugins” report. This is basically a list of great plugins to help you get the most out of your Wordpress blog. It is a product I got MRR to as an apology because I was having issues with a product I purchased. This goes well with Google Slapper because many people will have a Wordpress blog as their main site that they are promoting, and they will want it to be as efficient as possible.
3. “Blogging for Profits” course. This course teaches how to make money from a blog. It is another product that was part of the apology. This is a perfect addition to Google Slapper, because it teaches how to make money from your blog, and Google Slapper teaches how to get traffic to your blog and how to get it to rank highly in the search engines.
4. “Celebrity Blogging” course. This course shows how to become a well-known blogger, or essentially a celebrity blogger. It teaches how to position yourself as an expert and get people to pay attention to you when you blog. This was another part of the apology, and it goes perfectly with Google Slapper for the same reason above, making your main blog more effective.
5. 9,000 PLR articles. I have a huge pile of different PLR packs that I have purchased and obtained from membership sites, and this package of 9,000 I am giving away as a bonus because it gives content, which is something that is desperately needed in order to get good rankings and to keep people coming to their websites. It is not difficult to find PLR articles, and there are many PLR membership sites where you can get piles of PLR articles that you can offer as bonuses.
6. 14 Wordpress themes. I designed some of these Wordpress themes myself, and some of them I just picked up and got rights to. I am giving these away because everyone loves to have more themes for their Wordpress blogs, which many people use for their main website.
7. “My Favorite Web 2.0 Properties”. This is just a list of all of my favorite Web 2.0 properties. Would you like to know how I found out about these? I went to multiple IM forums and said I was looking into doing certain things and asked what they thought the best ones were, and then I went and started using them. I also found lists on Google, and I just compiled them all, tried them out and kept the ones that I liked. Most of these I didn’t even have to go find. I had people in forums telling me what the best properties were, and then I just spent a little bit of time making sure they were easy to use and they actually worked. Then I put them in a list and offered them as a bonus!
8. “Mystery Bonus”. This one is just another bonus, but I like to have a mystery bonus because it keeps people intrigued. Many people will purchase through my link just because they want to know what the bonus is, even if it’s a piece of junk (which it’s not). I am sorry, but I am not going to tell you what it is. If you want to know, you are going to have to purchase Google Slapper through my link.
Now you will notice that I have an extra bonus here that is just for the one time offer. I am offering over 100,000 PLR articles. Again, I have picked up a lot of PLR articles, so I compiled them all as a bonus if they
purchase the OTO. Now, I have never seen anyone offer a bonus for the OTO, and I have never done it before.
The reason I decided to offer a bonus for the OTO is because it is a fact that generally 50% of people who purchase a product do not even look at the OTO. Most people don’t care, and think that the merchant is just trying to make extra money, which they often are. By offering a massive bonus of 110,000 PLR articles, then it gives people a reason to at least look at the OTO and hopefully a huge incentive to purchase it. I have no idea how well this works, but I will find out after the launch occurs. I have actually NEVER had anyone purchase a OTO through my link. NEVER. I have no idea why this is, but I have not ever seen a sale from a one-time offer. I have also not sold tons of copies of the same product (yet), but I still have sold enough that I would have thought that someone would have purchased.
However, from my testing OTO are not purchased very often. I am hoping that by offering a bonus for the OTO that I will start to make some sales of the OTO.
So as you can see, I have chosen bonuses that fit well with Google Slapper and compliment the course. They are also quite valuable and give great incentive to purchase through my link.
One thing you that always helps is to state the value of the bonuses. You can see that I state the value after each bonus, so they know what they are getting. I also explain why it is worth that much, so that they can see what value they are getting. If you do not tell people what the value of the course is, then they are left wondering what on earth the value is and they have to GUESS, which is not good. Always state the value of a bonus.
Ok, so how did I get these bonuses? Well, I have a pile of RR, MRR and PLR products that I can use for bonuses. They are mostly for the IM niche, so that is where I can offer the best bonuses. You noticed that many of my bonuses are just MRR and PLR products. These products are easy to get a hold of, and many of them are quite cheap, or even free. The funny thing is, they can sell for $47, but you can also find them on the internet for free if you do some searches. Some of these products just take a little bit of looking.
Some of these bonuses I created myself, using forums. I do not usually spend a lot of time in forums (except the SEnuke forum), because for the most part they are a waste of time. However, I have found them quite beneficial for getting bonuses. All you have to do is think of a bonus, and ask questions in popular forums in your niche and compile people’s answers into a special report or a list or product. Then suddenly you have a great bonus. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort.
One of the bonuses is a report that I wrote, based on a little bit of information I discovered that not many people know. Anyone can do this, so long as you know something. Just write something you know down and put it into a small report. As long as it is relevant and beneficial to other people, it will make a good bonus. If you are not good at writing, or you do not know a lot about the subject that you want to create a bonus on, then you can easily outsource the report and have someone else write it for you.
That is how I got all of my bonuses for this product, and there are some other ways to get bonuses/create bonuses for your product. One of THE best ways to get a bonus for the product is to ask the merchant for one. Contact the merchant and ask him/her for ideas for a bonus or if they have anything lying around that you can offer as a bonus. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. You can also ask to do an interview with them. I have seen many marketers do this successfully. Simply contact the merchant and set up an interview with them. Most of them are delighted to do an interview with you, as it may increase their sales. Merchants are often very helpful, and if they aren’t then you probably don’t even want to be working with them anyway.
Another method of creating bonuses is to take PLR articles, alter them slightly and compile them into a short eBook or report and offer it as a bonus. It is easy to do for any niche, because there are thousands upon thousands of PLR articles that you can get and find the subject you want and create a report. It really is not difficult at all.
There is one last type of bonus that I have seen people offer, but I don’t personally like using it and that is rebates. Many people offer to give people money back if they purchase through that affiliate link. This is basically just a discount on the product, and convinces the cheap people to purchase through you, as they don’t want to spend as much money. I don’t personally like to do this, as it basically costs me money, whereas offering all the other bonuses might cost me a little bit of time.
I also do not like to offer rebates because you have to wait until the refund period is up to give them their bonus. This is a little more complicated, and it means that anyone who wants the bonuses immediately will not purchase through you. It also means that people who are unsure of the product will not purchase through you because if the product ends up being a piece of garbage then they don’t get a bonus. You may think that this is a good thing, but if you are promoting a quality product, which you should be, then you should not be worried about refunds. If they are unsure, then they are more likely to purchase through your link, and then when they see the product they will most likely not want a refund because they will realize the value of the product, especially when combined you’re your bonuses. However, if for whatever reason you don’t want to give out other bonuses, you can offer a rebate.
Delivering the Bonuses
So now that you hopefully know what to offer as a bonus or at least how to get a bonus to offer, what about actually delivering the bonuses to the people who make the purchase through your link? Let me first describe the things you must do in order for this to work.
You need to tell them that in order to make sure they can get the bonuses they must CLEAR THEIR COOKIES before clicking through your link. This makes sure that the credit for the sale goes to you, and therefore they get their bonuses. Then inform them that they need to forward the receipt to your email address. Create an email address specifically for getting the bonuses for that product. For instance, create a Gmail account called productnamebonus@gmail.com and tell the customers to forward their receipts to that email address.
Once you receive the email, you verify that they did in fact purchase through your link. If they indeed did purchase through your link, then you send them a link to a webpage with all the download links for the bonuses. If you do not have a domain, or you do not want to bother setting up a page with the links, you can also attach them in an email. You want to make sure you respond as soon as possible, generally within the next 24 hours.
If you are offering rebates it works a little differently. You must ask them to forward the receipt to your email address, just like stated above, but you must also ask them for their PayPal email address so you can send them their rebate. However, you must NOT send it to them right away. If you are offering a rebate you must wait until after the refund period (60 days with Clickbank products) has expired, so you know the customer will not be able to get a refund.
If you send them their rebate before the refund period is up, they will often request a refund on the product, and then they have just made money off of you! This is definitely not something that you want to happen. Make sure you explain on their webpage that they will have to wait for the refund period to finish before they obtain their bonuses.
I have had questions about how to automate this process of delivering bonuses, but I hate to tell you that there is no way to do it. Because you have to verify that they purchased through your link, you cannot just have something set up to auto reply. If you don’t care whether or not they actually did purchase through your link, then it is possible to set up an automatic response email. However, if someone even sends an email to ask questions then they will suddenly get their bonuses, and if they hadn’t yet purchased through your link, then they no longer have an incentive to purchase through your link. (And people do sometimes send questions).
The closest thing you can do to automation is to outsource. Have someone check the emails and reply to them all for you. It is pretty cheap to outsource a task like this, so it can be worth it depending on how many copies of the product you end up selling.
That is all I have for you regarding bonuses. I trust that now you have the knowledge you need to create killer bonuses that will have boatloads of people purchasing through your links.
To Your Success,
Every smart affiliate marketer knows that in order to make a lot of sales, you have to offer a bonus to people who purchase through your link. People LOVE bonuses! They especially love bonuses that compliment the product and make the product even more effective for them. If you can offer the perfect bonus, and get that bonus in front of the right people, you will make sales!
I know I am always looking for bonuses. I have signed up to over 20 lists, so that if a good product comes out I can compare all of their bonuses and look for bonuses on Google, and then I can choose the best one and get the most out of the product. I am sure there are many others like me who look for the best bonus they can possibly find.
So the goal with creating a bonus is to offer something that completes the product, something that is better than what everyone else is offering and to get that offer in front of as many people as possible. The better the bonus, the more likely people are to buy. I will let you in on a secret…I have purchased products just to get the bonuses people were offering, not because I even wanted the product. People offer entire courses that they have created that usually sell for way more than the price of the product, and then they give it as a bonus for purchasing some cheap $15 product! I have purchased a few products with no intention of ever looking at the product.
I am not normal, so I do not know how many other people have purchased products just for the bonuses, but it just proves the point that a bonus can sell the product. You are told that if you write a good review of a product then it is likely to sell, but if you write a good review and then offer an incredible bonus, your conversion rates will become supercharged and you will begin to see the real money.
Creating A Bonus
So how do you determine what makes a good bonus? Well, in order to offer the best possible bonus, it is best if you have a copy of the product so that you know what it contains and what it doesn’t contain. Otherwise you will end up simply offering the same material that is in the product, or you will offer something completely unrelated. If you are promoting a product launch you can often get at least a review copy of the course, if not the full version. If the merchant does not already offer it, you can request a review copy of the product or just a copy of the product. If you cannot get a copy of the product, then read over the sales page very carefully and then you can see what you could offer as a bonus. If you do not have a copy of the product, you can think up an idea for the bonus, then contact the merchant and ask if what you are offering is already included in the course.
This is only if you actually care how good the bonus really is. I personally want to help people to succeed, so I want to offer a bonus that will truly benefit people, which is why I often contact the merchants and run my bonuses by them to see what they think and ask if they compliment the program (But not always).
So, let’s walk through picking a bonus. I will go through the how I determined the bonuses for the Google Slapper product that I am promoting. First of all, I got a free copy of the course and I went through it. I saw what the course was about and what it covered, and then I tried to think of what would complement the product. To get a little bit of an idea I went and looked at what other people were offering as bonuses.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like what they were offering. Most of the bonuses I came across all stunk. Most of them were courses on Web 2.0 and using Web 2.0 properties to gain traffic, which is exactly what Google Slapper is about! They are just crappy versions of the course being offered as a bonus! Do you know what the worst part is? Most people will see those bonuses and think they fit perfectly with the course and that they are obviously the best bonuses because they are both on Web 2.0! I didn’t want to offer another Web 2.0 course, so I decided to come up with my own bonuses, ones that I thought would be more beneficial and more valuable for those who purchase through my link.
These are the bonuses I came up with:
1. “Getting Clickbank Products Free” report. This report I wrote is about how you can get Clickbank products for free, or for a discount, and how to get the most out of your Clickbank purchases. I chose to add this report because people in the IM niche generally purchase A LOT of Clickbank products, and this report helps them save on the other products they purchase. Because they will potentially purchase many other products, this report is worth a lot to them.
2. “118 Most Useful Wordpress Plugins” report. This is basically a list of great plugins to help you get the most out of your Wordpress blog. It is a product I got MRR to as an apology because I was having issues with a product I purchased. This goes well with Google Slapper because many people will have a Wordpress blog as their main site that they are promoting, and they will want it to be as efficient as possible.
3. “Blogging for Profits” course. This course teaches how to make money from a blog. It is another product that was part of the apology. This is a perfect addition to Google Slapper, because it teaches how to make money from your blog, and Google Slapper teaches how to get traffic to your blog and how to get it to rank highly in the search engines.
4. “Celebrity Blogging” course. This course shows how to become a well-known blogger, or essentially a celebrity blogger. It teaches how to position yourself as an expert and get people to pay attention to you when you blog. This was another part of the apology, and it goes perfectly with Google Slapper for the same reason above, making your main blog more effective.
5. 9,000 PLR articles. I have a huge pile of different PLR packs that I have purchased and obtained from membership sites, and this package of 9,000 I am giving away as a bonus because it gives content, which is something that is desperately needed in order to get good rankings and to keep people coming to their websites. It is not difficult to find PLR articles, and there are many PLR membership sites where you can get piles of PLR articles that you can offer as bonuses.
6. 14 Wordpress themes. I designed some of these Wordpress themes myself, and some of them I just picked up and got rights to. I am giving these away because everyone loves to have more themes for their Wordpress blogs, which many people use for their main website.
7. “My Favorite Web 2.0 Properties”. This is just a list of all of my favorite Web 2.0 properties. Would you like to know how I found out about these? I went to multiple IM forums and said I was looking into doing certain things and asked what they thought the best ones were, and then I went and started using them. I also found lists on Google, and I just compiled them all, tried them out and kept the ones that I liked. Most of these I didn’t even have to go find. I had people in forums telling me what the best properties were, and then I just spent a little bit of time making sure they were easy to use and they actually worked. Then I put them in a list and offered them as a bonus!
8. “Mystery Bonus”. This one is just another bonus, but I like to have a mystery bonus because it keeps people intrigued. Many people will purchase through my link just because they want to know what the bonus is, even if it’s a piece of junk (which it’s not). I am sorry, but I am not going to tell you what it is. If you want to know, you are going to have to purchase Google Slapper through my link.
Now you will notice that I have an extra bonus here that is just for the one time offer. I am offering over 100,000 PLR articles. Again, I have picked up a lot of PLR articles, so I compiled them all as a bonus if they
The reason I decided to offer a bonus for the OTO is because it is a fact that generally 50% of people who purchase a product do not even look at the OTO. Most people don’t care, and think that the merchant is just trying to make extra money, which they often are. By offering a massive bonus of 110,000 PLR articles, then it gives people a reason to at least look at the OTO and hopefully a huge incentive to purchase it. I have no idea how well this works, but I will find out after the launch occurs. I have actually NEVER had anyone purchase a OTO through my link. NEVER. I have no idea why this is, but I have not ever seen a sale from a one-time offer. I have also not sold tons of copies of the same product (yet), but I still have sold enough that I would have thought that someone would have purchased.
However, from my testing OTO are not purchased very often. I am hoping that by offering a bonus for the OTO that I will start to make some sales of the OTO.
So as you can see, I have chosen bonuses that fit well with Google Slapper and compliment the course. They are also quite valuable and give great incentive to purchase through my link.
One thing you that always helps is to state the value of the bonuses. You can see that I state the value after each bonus, so they know what they are getting. I also explain why it is worth that much, so that they can see what value they are getting. If you do not tell people what the value of the course is, then they are left wondering what on earth the value is and they have to GUESS, which is not good. Always state the value of a bonus.
Ok, so how did I get these bonuses? Well, I have a pile of RR, MRR and PLR products that I can use for bonuses. They are mostly for the IM niche, so that is where I can offer the best bonuses. You noticed that many of my bonuses are just MRR and PLR products. These products are easy to get a hold of, and many of them are quite cheap, or even free. The funny thing is, they can sell for $47, but you can also find them on the internet for free if you do some searches. Some of these products just take a little bit of looking.
Some of these bonuses I created myself, using forums. I do not usually spend a lot of time in forums (except the SEnuke forum), because for the most part they are a waste of time. However, I have found them quite beneficial for getting bonuses. All you have to do is think of a bonus, and ask questions in popular forums in your niche and compile people’s answers into a special report or a list or product. Then suddenly you have a great bonus. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort.
One of the bonuses is a report that I wrote, based on a little bit of information I discovered that not many people know. Anyone can do this, so long as you know something. Just write something you know down and put it into a small report. As long as it is relevant and beneficial to other people, it will make a good bonus. If you are not good at writing, or you do not know a lot about the subject that you want to create a bonus on, then you can easily outsource the report and have someone else write it for you.
That is how I got all of my bonuses for this product, and there are some other ways to get bonuses/create bonuses for your product. One of THE best ways to get a bonus for the product is to ask the merchant for one. Contact the merchant and ask him/her for ideas for a bonus or if they have anything lying around that you can offer as a bonus. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. You can also ask to do an interview with them. I have seen many marketers do this successfully. Simply contact the merchant and set up an interview with them. Most of them are delighted to do an interview with you, as it may increase their sales. Merchants are often very helpful, and if they aren’t then you probably don’t even want to be working with them anyway.
Another method of creating bonuses is to take PLR articles, alter them slightly and compile them into a short eBook or report and offer it as a bonus. It is easy to do for any niche, because there are thousands upon thousands of PLR articles that you can get and find the subject you want and create a report. It really is not difficult at all.
There is one last type of bonus that I have seen people offer, but I don’t personally like using it and that is rebates. Many people offer to give people money back if they purchase through that affiliate link. This is basically just a discount on the product, and convinces the cheap people to purchase through you, as they don’t want to spend as much money. I don’t personally like to do this, as it basically costs me money, whereas offering all the other bonuses might cost me a little bit of time.
I also do not like to offer rebates because you have to wait until the refund period is up to give them their bonus. This is a little more complicated, and it means that anyone who wants the bonuses immediately will not purchase through you. It also means that people who are unsure of the product will not purchase through you because if the product ends up being a piece of garbage then they don’t get a bonus. You may think that this is a good thing, but if you are promoting a quality product, which you should be, then you should not be worried about refunds. If they are unsure, then they are more likely to purchase through your link, and then when they see the product they will most likely not want a refund because they will realize the value of the product, especially when combined you’re your bonuses. However, if for whatever reason you don’t want to give out other bonuses, you can offer a rebate.
Delivering the Bonuses
So now that you hopefully know what to offer as a bonus or at least how to get a bonus to offer, what about actually delivering the bonuses to the people who make the purchase through your link? Let me first describe the things you must do in order for this to work.
You need to tell them that in order to make sure they can get the bonuses they must CLEAR THEIR COOKIES before clicking through your link. This makes sure that the credit for the sale goes to you, and therefore they get their bonuses. Then inform them that they need to forward the receipt to your email address. Create an email address specifically for getting the bonuses for that product. For instance, create a Gmail account called productnamebonus@gmail.com and tell the customers to forward their receipts to that email address.
Once you receive the email, you verify that they did in fact purchase through your link. If they indeed did purchase through your link, then you send them a link to a webpage with all the download links for the bonuses. If you do not have a domain, or you do not want to bother setting up a page with the links, you can also attach them in an email. You want to make sure you respond as soon as possible, generally within the next 24 hours.
If you are offering rebates it works a little differently. You must ask them to forward the receipt to your email address, just like stated above, but you must also ask them for their PayPal email address so you can send them their rebate. However, you must NOT send it to them right away. If you are offering a rebate you must wait until after the refund period (60 days with Clickbank products) has expired, so you know the customer will not be able to get a refund.
If you send them their rebate before the refund period is up, they will often request a refund on the product, and then they have just made money off of you! This is definitely not something that you want to happen. Make sure you explain on their webpage that they will have to wait for the refund period to finish before they obtain their bonuses.
I have had questions about how to automate this process of delivering bonuses, but I hate to tell you that there is no way to do it. Because you have to verify that they purchased through your link, you cannot just have something set up to auto reply. If you don’t care whether or not they actually did purchase through your link, then it is possible to set up an automatic response email. However, if someone even sends an email to ask questions then they will suddenly get their bonuses, and if they hadn’t yet purchased through your link, then they no longer have an incentive to purchase through your link. (And people do sometimes send questions).
The closest thing you can do to automation is to outsource. Have someone check the emails and reply to them all for you. It is pretty cheap to outsource a task like this, so it can be worth it depending on how many copies of the product you end up selling.
That is all I have for you regarding bonuses. I trust that now you have the knowledge you need to create killer bonuses that will have boatloads of people purchasing through your links.
To Your Success,
