How to Master the Upsell with 6 Profit-Pulling Funnel Ideas

As an online entrepreneur, your goal is not only to ensure you make money, but also to serve the needs of your customers and take care of your affiliates. Launching a product is one of the most fundamental ways to do this, but you need to embrace the concept of funnel creation if you want to generate more revenue.

Upsells are additional levels of your launch that the customer can add on to their purchase (or decline) that complement or are related to the original product in some way.

Many in the Internet marketing industry balk at the thought of getting stuck in an endless funnel, but when done correctly, the customer emerges with more value and the affiliates promote harder for you.

The key is in making sure the funnel is priced right (with each level increasing in price and value) and ensuring that all upsells somehow target a pain point or provide a solution for the buyer.

Below, you’ll find six ideas for strategically implementing a profitable funnel system for your future launches. Instead of just throwing random items in to see if anyone will bite, your launches will unfold as a tiered incentive for people to keep adding to their cart.

Advanced Versions of Your Products

One of the most basic, and welcomed upsells you can offer to your buyers of the front end product is an advanced upgrade of the original product. Whether it’s a more in-depth info product course or the ability to unlock advanced features on a tool, consumers love the idea of paying a little more for extras.

The one thing you never want to do is sell a front end product that only works when the upsell is purchased. This is a sticking point with many consumers who feel as if they have been scammed when they are forced to purchase an upsell.

Instead, you need to emphasize that the front end is valuable as a standalone product, but they can also achieve a higher level of quality and use with your product if they invest in the upsell.

Sometimes, you can be strategic with this by developing a product such as an info product course, and extracting a smaller portion of it as the front end. This should be just enough to whet the appetite of the buyer so that when they land on the upsell sales page, they will be excited to see that there is even more they can access.

In order to find out what you need to expand upon, you can conduct some basic market research to determine what your customers’ needs are. Anything that complements the original product and is something that is in demand by your target audience would be a good fit.

For example, if you are selling a front end product about how to build a list of subscribers, your upsell could be an additional course that advances on that idea by teaching your buyers how to master email marketing.

Sometimes the upsell will still be about the exact same topic. For example, your front end might be an eBook about how to can your own tomatoes for survival purposes. But the upsell could be another eBook about 21 vegetables that are perfect for canning and storing in your prepper cabinet.

Done-For-You Services to Shortcut the Process

Another thing that goes over well as an upsell in a funnel is when you offer a service to your buyers. Even though they are purchasing something they can use or learn from, many will pull the trigger on an offer to have things done for them.

For example, you might have a course that teaches people how to launch their own niche blog. While they may be happy to learn that information in the front end, if you offer a service in the upsell to do the install for them, many will take you up on that offer.

You can even have a variety of different levels of done for you services. For example, the first upsell might simply be the installation of WordPress onto their domain. Another level might be to install a page builder into their blog or to help them set up a search engine optimized strategy for their blog.

If you are selling something like private label rights as your front end product, you might offer a service to rewrite the content for your buyers as an upsell. Or, you could offer a service to publish the content on their blog for them.

Any type of customization, set up, installation, or even ongoing maintenance services are going to provide value to your buyers and give them peace of mind that serves as a valuable solution to them.

Many of them may not even realize that there is the option to have someone do the service for them. So when you offer to take your knowledge and make the entire process more convenient for them, they are more likely to purchase your upsell.

Sometimes, the done for you option is actually the front end of a funnel, and the upsells are courses that teach them how to take over themselves or more content that they can publish on their domain.

When offering done for you services, depending on your niche, you can offer a variety of options such as content creation, website design, social media posting, graphics or video creations, SEO (search engine optimization) services and more.

Make sure that you emphasize the timeline that the service will be performed on and that you can handle all of the orders that come through for the upsells. You don’t want to have to refund a bunch of orders and ruin your reputation with affiliates because you were unable to complete all of the service requests in a timely manner.

Software or Tools as Add-On Enhancements

Software and tools can be added on as upsells in a funnel easily. Just as the done for you services slant makes people want to enjoy convenience of having a hands off approach, a tool can make things much easier for the buyer.

For example, if you sell an info product about how to build an affiliate product review site, you might have a plug in that pulls information from Amazon and creates the foundation for their product review post.

If your front end product is not an info product, but instead is a software or tool, you can offer a premium version that has more features or capabilities as the add-on enhancement to your offer.

There are also some extensions that can enhance the functionality of certain products that you are selling. For example, if you were selling a video editing tool, your enhancement might be a tools that adds enhanced features like templates you can use to create short form videos for TikTok and Instagram.

Some people look at what kind of software has already been sold successfully on the market and make improvements on the idea for a product to sell as their own. For example, you might see many AI content, copywriting and chatbot tools being sold right now as front end or upsell products.

The upsell tool might be something that creates an entire online store in mere minutes. If the front end is a tool that creates the store, then one upsell might be the ability to create unlimited stores, which means the buyer could make them for clients.

In one example, a vendor had a second upsell that included a tool to translate the store into 100 languages, the ability to email your customers, and connect it all to social media platforms.

Moving up with the upsell was another feature to add more products other than books, such as audio, software, and more. Tools that give your customers the ability to send push notifications are also popular.

You can create advanced features, separate software the programs and plugins, and anything else that automates a process or improves a process for your front end buyers to use in their business.

Bundle Packages for Previous Products

When you have a new front end product to sell, you may want to use your previous launches of products as part of your upsells. Some people list them individually at a discounted price, and others will bundle them together at a discount.

In fact, you can do more than one of these bundle deals in your upsells for the funnel. It all depends on how many products that you have that are relevant to the front end offer. Some people do bundle deals like this for special holidays or events such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales.

But you can do the same thing as an upsell, packaging together two or more of your existing products and selling them at a discount, while still pricing it higher than the front end offer.

A good example of this can be found with info product courses as well as private label rights (PLR) content. If you have a PLR funnel where the front end is 35 brand new articles, your first upsell might be an additional 50 to 70 pages of content that is new.

However, as your upsells progress, you might be able to bundle up additional packages of content that are related to the main topic that were previously published or sold, that you are selling at a steep discount.

So let’s say you have a front end product of 35 articles about losing weight in a calorie deficit for the New Year. If your front end product is about nutrition, then you might want to make your first upsell a brand new package of content about something related, such as exercise programs that quicken the weight loss process.

Now if you had previously launched weight loss or fitness content, you could bundle that up for your second or third upsell. In fact, if you have multiple topics that are related, each one of those could be a bundle for an upsell.

In regards to the weight loss niche, you might have your second upsell be a bundle of existing content about nutrition topics for weight loss, such as sticking to a keto diet or undergoing a sugar detox.

Your second existing content upsell might be other packages you have created about fitness. For example, you might have a bundle all about body weight exercises or one about strength training in general.

You may even have a bundle of existing content about mindset when it comes to weight loss or different weight related topics such as emotional eating, mindful eating, and so on.

On-Going Membership Subscriptions

Another upsell idea that will quickly add up to increased revenue, and in fact result in residual, ongoing income, is to offer a membership subscription. Many people do this if they have something that can be released month after month.

For example, if you have a front end product with a content package of private label rights that includes an eBook, lead magnet report, email autoresponders, articles for your blog, social posts, graphics, and videos about list building, you can have an upsell that offers them a membership to receive an entirely new bundle for each subsequent month.

You want to make sure that everything is related to the main topic. So if you were offering private label rights, and your first front end bundle was about a marketing topic like list building comment you don’t want the second month to be about dog training or weight loss.

If you do want to go in that direction, you can give your buyers that option by selling a completely different front end product for that topic. One reason many people like to jump on a membership subscription during an upsell funnel offer is because they can get a better deal than if they go back and try to buy it at a later date.

And the more they buy at that moment, the better the deal is that they get. For example, if they purchase immediately after buying the front end, they might be given the choice of paying monthly for $17 a month or paying $147 up front for 12 months, which saves them $4.75 per month.

Everyone loves to save money, and the benefit for you and your affiliates is that you get a commitment of all 12 months right up front rather than hoping they don’t cancel their renewing membership during that time frame.

You can also have different levels of memberships, where the more they are willing to spend, the more they get in return. For example, if your front end is an info product course, you might have three tiers of upsell membership levels.

With the first tier, they might simply receive each additional installment of information on a regular, monthly basis. With the second tier, you might add in more lessons or value to the purchase, and with the third tier, you might even have a live webinar or one-on-one coaching event that they can enjoy per month.

Personalized or Group Coaching Consultations

Speaking of coaching, personalized or group coaching is a great upsell offer for your funnel. Even though it’s usually a high ticket item, many people are willing to invest in themselves and spend the money to get the dedicated help that they feel they need.

We all know that many people who purchase courses often download them, only to see them gathering dust on their hard drive. If your buyer knows they tend to do this, and they are given the option to have some handholding along the way, they will often be willing to spend more getting the help that you are offering.

It’s good to give people options between one-on-one coaching and group coaching. Not only does it allow them to save money if they go to a group coaching option, but many people feel less intimidated being coached in a group compared to being put on the spot in a one-on-one situation.

However, others have the opposite feeling about it and prefer the one-on-one coaching because they don’t want to be embarrassed in front of a group of people. That’s why giving people options is always the better move.

In your upsell, you can also present a bundle of coaching options to your buyers. For example, you can offer one, one time coaching session for $97. Or, you might offer a set or bundle of five coaching sessions for $400.

You need to make sure that you set some parameters around how your coaching will unfold. Do they have access to you via phone at all hours of the day? This is usually reserved for the most high ticket level of coaching.

Normally, you will have a set schedule that they can book themselves into when you are available to coach them via a Zoom call. Some people even restrict their coaching programs to email correspondence only.

This type of personalized guidance helps people understand what they need to learn more, and it also provides them with the accountability that they need to follow through on the action steps you give them an a course.

If you want to increase the amount of money you are earning, attract more affiliates, and create a rabid fan base of customers who appreciate the level of value and savings in your funnels, you can implement any or all of the above ideas the next time you have a product launch.

Keep in mind that every audience is different, and your list or target audience may respond better or worse to certain options than others. If you notice that your list converts very high for one of the above options, you may want to figure out how you can do more of those as your funnel unfolds.