Bonuses

Bonuses

This is one of the areas where most product creators make their mistake. Unfortunately, as a copywriter, there isn’t a lot you can do about this.

The mistake that they make is that they include bonuses that add absolutely no value to the main product. As a matter of fact, some of the bonuses are so bad that you’d be better off not offering a bonus at all.

Except that’s not really an option…not anymore.

The bonus has become expected. Every person going to a sales page expects to see a ton of extras offered in addition to the main product. If they don’t see these bonuses, their impression is that the merchant is cheap. It may not be a fair assessment, but that is the overall impression that people get when they don’t see a bonus.

If you take a look at my Honest Income Program package, the bonuses are so good, some of them may actually be better than the main book.

For starters, I offer 10 books in the package, which means 9 bonus books. That’s quite a lot. But again, if they were crap, it wouldn’t matter.

But they’re not.

The first bonus is my Honest Income Program Advanced book which actually takes the main book to the next level. This alone would have made the package worth the price.

The second bonus is Killer Content In 30 Minutes, which is a whole book on how to write articles. I actually sell this book separately for 75% of the price of this whole package.

The third bonus is Complete Internet Advertising Guide, which covers every form of advertising on the Internet. This is one of the most important things to learn when marketing online.

The fourth bonus is Complete Guide To Affiliate Marketing. This is a book dedicated solely to affiliate marketing, even including a formula for how to determine if an affiliate program commission structure is any good.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I’ve had numerous emails from people claiming that the bonuses were even better than the main book.

These are the kind of bonuses that merchants should be giving people. As I said, as a copywriter, you have no control over this.

However, whatever bonuses you do get, you’re going to have to write copy on it. The copy you write is going to be along the same lines as the copy you will write for the main product. You will explain what you get with the bonus as to features and benefits. If you have any testimonials on the bonuses, you will include them as well.

You can imagine that the sales copy for my Honest Income Program package was quite long, having 9 bonuses.

The sales copy for my Honest Income Program sales page was over 60 pages long. The average “long” copy is about 40 pages. So as you can see, this was quite a project, and most of it was because of the bonuses.

I can’t stress enough how important bonuses are. The reason is because bonuses increase perceived value of what the customer is getting.

Maybe I should touch on the concept of perceived value here, since it is very important.

Let’s say you go to a store and see a bag of lifesavers going for $1.99. Across the way you see a bag of another hard candy going for $1.79. Now, you do like the other candy, but you like lifesavers better. However, the other bag comes with a buy one get one free offer for one day only. Aren’t you going to grab that offer, since you like the candy anyway?

You’re getting more perceived value for the money. Now if lifesavers was also offering a buy one get one free sale, even though it is 20 cents more, because you like lifesavers more, you’ll go with that offer. The 20 cents is worth it because NOW the perceived value is in the fact that you like the lifesavers more and you’re getting the same amount of candy for just 20 cents more.

This is just one of many examples I can give you. It all translates to this one statement.

“We all want as much as we can get for the money we spend.”

So if we’re unsure of purchasing a certain product and really on the fence, sometimes being offered a number of bonuses, if they’re good bonuses, will push us over the edge.

I can’t tell you how many sales I’ve made of a very old ebook just because I offered two of my books as bonuses.

So what do you do if you’re presented with a product that includes bonuses that are just not up to par?

Well, you have 3 options.

1. Refuse to do the sales copy.

2. Do the sales copy but only if the bonuses are not included.

3. Agree to do the sales copy for the main product and the bonuses

 

If you decide to write the copy for the bonuses, just like with the main product, you will have to review all the bonuses so that you understand just what is in them. You’ll need to make a list of bullet points so that you can write about what the customer gets with each bonus.

This is why writing the copy for the Honest Income Program took me so long. I had to read through 10 books and make notes on 10 books.

So as you can see, while fees for sales pages may seem very high, trust me, you’ll earn every penny.

In the next chapter, we’ll go over the price.