Bonuses - Getting Out Of Control?
I am sure you have heard about them… I am sure you have been offered them… and I am sure many of you have received them. Are bonuses getting out of control?
In the Internet marketing industry, giving a bonus to a customer who purchases a product from your affiliate link is a common practice. What I am saying below is not that we should not offer bonuses, but that I think we should look at how and when we use bonuses.
Over the past week I have had two interesting bonus experiences…
#1 - There was a product launch for a $x,xxx product, and of course there were bonuses being offered. On the launch day, I received two different emails from two good marketers, both of them offering almost exactly the same $xxx bonus. I received the second email from marketer “B” shortly after the marketer “A” sent their email.
I have no problem with being offered a bonus, especially for a $x,xxx product. But then the following happened.
About an hour or so after marketer “B” sent their email, I then received a second email from marketer “A” stating that they forgot to mention a second bonus to go along with their first bonus. Now I have no “proof” of this, but it did cross my mind. This is what I think may have happened…
Marketer “A” decides on their bonus offer and emails their list. Then marketer “B” receives “A”’s email, or may have previously known what bonus “A” is giving, so “B” sends their offer out as well, with an almost identical bonus gift. Then marketer “A” receives “B”’s email and decides that he now has to give something more to have a higher priced bonus then “B”. So “A” sends a second email with an added bonus.
This is all speculation, but I personally would not have sent a second email in the same day just to announce an added bonus, I would have just updated my bonus page. This is unless I knew that I had to “beat” someone else’s bonus, to try to get their potential buys to come to me instead.
#2 My second little encounter with bonuses this week was an email from a subscriber of mine. I recently sent a promotional email about a product that was launching, and it was selling for $70. (I had not included a bonus for this product)
A day after I sent that email, I received an email from a subscriber of mine, who asked what my bonus offer was if they purchased this item from my affiliate link.
When I saw this email, to tell you the truth, I was kind of shocked… and this is when I thought that I should write a blog post about bonuses. Here are a few thoughts that went through my head at that time;
- - I didn’t know others were offering a bonus for this.
- - Should I just offer a bonus to this person, since they did ask?
- - This person seems to assume that I will offer a bonus and I must have forgotten to mention it.
- - Wait… why should I offer a bonus to this product anyways?
- - Are people expecting me to offer a bonus to almost all products that I sell? (over $50?)
So this all got me thinking about bonus offers, and if we have become accustomed to receiving bonuses for everything these days?
I can totally understand offering bonuses for high priced products, I have done that before, and probably will in the future.
But as for low to mid cost products… can’t a product stand on it’s own without the need for a bonus?
What do you think? Have bonuses become to much of a common occurrence online? Should bonuses be offered for every product?
November 5th, 2007 18:18
Agree entirely, bonuses are waaay out of control and I happen not to buy a product if massive bonuses are offered as it makes me suspicious of the actual value and/or quality when bonuses are being offered to such great extent.
Of course, if you go to any standard “package” sales site more often than not the package is split in two. First you get the supposed “real” products and then you get the supposed “bonuses”.
Folk go into a bricks and mortar store and pick up the latest software on CD and pay the price on the sales ticket. They go home, log onto the net and expect a perceived value of $200 bonuses for a product a fraction of the price they just paid out earlier.
Strange phenomenon the internet!
Al
November 9th, 2007 00:55
I’ve had the experience where many bonuses were promised but few were delivered. I think to make bonuses work, you really have to make them unique and they ought to have REAL value. People can usually sense the ridiculous bonuses like “1 hour telephone consultation - worth $1995)” - well, you know what I mean.
December 6th, 2007 11:05
Yes, I DO think this bonus thingy has gone way to far!
How silly is it to offer $2,324,320.32 worth of bonuses for a $19.97 product? Come on! Okay, my example stretches reality but not by much.
The fact is overbonusing stuff seems to have the opposite effect sometimes. It makes the product seem… inadequate.
And, yes, bonuses DO sometimes help. I know I’ve justifed a purchase or two by reasoning “such and such” bonus alone is worth the price of admission but this gone too far.
It seems to me one way to stand out is to offer NO bonus at all. I know James Bruasch does this with most, if not all of his products. He makes a point of not offering bonuses with his Nemeas (domain name choosing) software.
I think that may be much more effective than offering bonus upon bonus because it cuts out a lot of clutter in addition to saying “this product can make it on it’s own merits”.
The thing is, to avoid situations like Joel’s, you may be forced to point out no bonus will be ofered.
Regards,
Chet
December 9th, 2007 17:31
Sometimes you can’t even find the price because of all the dang bonus items at the end of the sales letter! If I’m shelling out my money for something, I want to know what it costs.
Another pet peeve is seeing the SAME bonuses over and over. You all have seen that before. And seeing an HTML editor as a bonus (or something similar) leads me to believe like Chet above. Am I buying something that can stand on its own for this price??
When you go to a page for James Brausch products, though, Chet’s right. From Artemis Pro to Glyphius to Nemeas to the Freedom Business System and more, each page is simple and uncluttered. You KNOW what the price is and that James is confident that the product offered is worth the price.
It’s not the loooooooong page that infinite “gurus” have told us were the holy grail of internet marketing, but it works for me!
December 11th, 2007 18:16
Yes bonuses make me very suspicious of the product! I do like to see products with money back guarantees though. Artemis Pro for example doesn’t have hundreds of free bonuses, but it does have a money back guarantee and really does work!
December 14th, 2007 13:52
Very nicely written Joel,
I do agree that bonus war is getting out of hand … and let’s not forget a controversy we seen when one marketer offers to clear cookie of possible competitors and then purchase through his link or even ask for refund and then buy through his link because product without bonus is only half of what they need …. not even a year since I seen that
I think a product MUST be able to stand on its own but obviously as long as this trend continues - we will see them being offered … I do agree that product below $100 shouldn’t require a bonus. As long as the product worth the payment, that is.
January 16th, 2008 02:37
The bonus thing is out of hand 117 chrismas gifts is now climbing past 250, but that is one of these “One time offer” things. I saw a site that was refreshing. nemeas.com has at the bottom of the sales page
” I hope you weren’t expecting me to include dozens of “free” bonuses and postscripts and tell you that you can only order it at this price today. Yuck! I hate that crap.”
Discounting and bonusing just leads to always having to offer bonuses, because your stuff must be overpriced or the bonuses are cheap garbage.
January 29th, 2008 21:58
According to James Brausch’s blog today, you need a headline and testimonials, not a bunch of bonuses to sell a product. I have wonder why a product needs so many bonuses if it is good? What are they compensating for? I think every “But Wait…!” type bonus devalues the original product, not to mention obscuring the price as previously mentioned (a likely reason for said bonuses).