In online marketing we often hear these terms – upsell, downsell and front end. Most newbies get confused by these jargons. I have found many of my leads even fail to skip an optional upsell to get into the free offer I have presented to them…

When I asked why you didn’t take the free offer, they usually reply like the following:

Newbies Often Fail to Understand Upsell

I see this is a very common and frequent case in unaware segment. Now how to make it so clear that a 10 year kid can understand?

Let’s try…

What’s a Front End?

A front end is an offer by which businesses aquire new customers. That is the front facing part of the whole business. In real life example, relate it with an amusement park where there usually have an offer like you can enter free with your kids ticket for free or with 50% discount ticket. That is the front end offer. But you know or should know that inside the amusement park there are many rides and each requires individual ticket.

What’s an Upsell?

An upsell and downsells are two ways to monetize customers. Upsell is usually another complementary or supplementary offer presented to a new customer once they take the front end offer. All those rides tickets in the previous example can be considered as upsells from the point of view of an amusement park.

What’s a down-sell?

A downsell is a striped down version of an offer presented to a customer who rejects an upsell. For example, if an amusement park finds customers showing reluctancy to get every ride for $10 each then the park may find it good to offer them a package of 10 ride for $50 instead. Then it will be considered as downsell.

What Front End, Upsells and Downsells Look Like in Online Marketing?

The concepts of front end, upsells and downsells are more prevalent online marketing than any other businesses we see around. Say for example, the offer I’m promoting to my audience which is a Comprehensive Affiliate Marketing Training Course that you can enroll for FREE. Now when you enroll in, you will be presented 3 upsells one after the another. By purchasing the 1st Upsell, you will get access to some Done For Your stuff like Email Swipes, Optin or Splash Pages etc.. It will cost $7 to purchase. You can add it to your cart or skip it, but you will be given another offer as 2nd upsell. The 2nd upsell is a Secret Affilaite Marketing Insiders community where you will get more support and accountability to implement the strategy given in FREE course. It will cost $9.95/m or $97/one time. You can add the 2nd upsell to your cart or skip it but you will be given a 3rd offer. The 3rd offer/upsell is for you if you want to promote the whole Funnel (Free Front End + 3 Upsells) with 100% commission right. If you purchase the 3rd offer (it will again cost $97 one time), your affiliate compensation plan for the product funnel will be raised to 100%. So, this is how the upsells are structured for my offer. As you’ll see there will be 3 upsells but no downsells. So if you skip one it will just show the other upsell one after the another and they are totally optional for you to purchase. I think front end, upsells and downsells are great ways to aquire new customer and monetize offers.

And that’s all I had today to write. If you find value from the post, feel free to share it with your known circles.