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Offering a ton of bonuses with a product is nothing new. It was done decades before the internet was even conceived. The rules that were learned by savvy direct marketers back then apply just as much on-line today. Since the on-line medium is fairly new, it is actually enlightening to study the materials from direct marketers before the internet. This is where I learn many of the techniques I then test to confirm they still apply on the internet.

The biggest secret I've learned about increasing sales by using bonuses was learned from mail-order direct marketers. It was validated on-line but it's time-tested in the off-line direct response world.

That secret... that point often not acknowledged by on-line neophytes....

In order for a bonus to help your sales, it has to be something that the customer would happily pay for if it were not free. It has to be something that causes the customer to salivate when he reads the description. It has to be something that the customer perceives has genuine high value.

Does this mean that you can't offer items as bonuses that have been around for a while? No... not as long as the customer perceives the item as current and still valuable. If the customer has seen the item advertised a thousand places, for five years, then he begins to wonder what else about your deal is out of date and virtually worthless.

You can also offer bonuses that have been around for a while IF serving a market that most likely hasn't seen the item before. Many who have been on-line for years often forget that many just coming on-line haven't seen many of the "classics." Some of these do offer valuable lessons for the new audience! The key there is to spend enough time describing the bonus to prove its genuine value.

That brings us to another point... nothing closes a sale like providing PROOF of your claims. That includes your claims of value. Even when offering a free bonus, throwing in a testimonial or two enhances the value of that bonus in the minds of your prospective customers.

Let's look at the reason for offering all of those bonuses in the first place. You do it because you want to convince your prospect, who is interested in the primary product or service, that he'd be CRAZY not to go for your offer. He should feel that he'd loose out big if he doesn't grab your product now!

Another lesson I learned from off-line direct marketers is that a customer will often buy a product just because he wants one of the bonus. The customer may not even want the primary product but buys because he really, really wants an unusual and valuable bonus.

When putting together your offer, the bonuses are just a small part of it. The thing is... you never know which part of your offer is going to push a prospects hot buttons. It could be a benefit of the main product or it could be a benefit of one of the bonuses. You'll miss those bonus-induced sales if you fail to adequately list the benefits of the bonuses!

A final issue... offering the wrong bonuses can definitely turn off a prospect. If the prospect perceives that you are just stacking up bonuses so that you can state the package has some outlandish value, he will begin to question the value of everything in the package... including the main product.

Make sure that the bonuses are relevent... or something that prospects for the primary product should be interested in. Then make sure that each bonus item is something that the prospect would purchase by itself. That is the key point missed by too many on-line marketers.

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Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author, seminar speaker and host, tele-seminar speaker and host, retired military officer, karate black belt, network marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He teaches how to actually generate substantial multiple streams of on-line income using very simple automated systems. An example is at: http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-621/mega.html

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