Today, mar­keters are scram­bling to find ways to increase cash­flow. Some will try to find new prod­ucts to sell. Oth­ers will try to drive more traf­fic to their exist­ing sales pages.

How­ever, one area most peo­ple tend to over­look is the abil­ity to increase their cur­rent sales by upselling their cus­tomers the moment they checkout.

But I’m not refer­ring to one-​​time offers or addi­tional prod­ucts offered in the same sales fun­nel. I’m talk­ing about offer­ing cus­tomers the abil­ity to upgrade their purchases.

I pre­fer “upgrade” rather than “upsell” because the lat­ter has received a bad rap of late due to a few overzeal­ous or unscrupu­lous marketers.

Sell­ing “upgrades” is an area that can become prof­itable for many busi­nesses in increas­ing their exist­ing sales. It’s by sell­ing extended ser­vices or ben­e­fits pack­ages before or at the time of check­out, also known as the “extended warranty.”

There are numer­ous ways to sell extended war­ranties (or what I pre­fer to call “extended ben­e­fits”). These silent profit cen­ters exist in almost any busi­ness, which can increase the size of a customer’s pur­chase by 50%, 100%, even 200% or more.

Very often, the sale of these extended ben­e­fits have higher profit mar­gins, too.

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A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

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One of the many tools avail­able that I absolutely love is Amem­ber from CGI-​​Central. Amem­ber not only man­ages my mem­ber­ship sites, it also han­dles dig­i­tal prod­uct sales, deliv­ery, and protection.

For instance, it pro­tects down­load pages, offers back­end sales and automa­tion, allows pro­tec­tion of “exter­nal” fold­ers and files, and it even comes with a built-​​in autore­spon­der. (And that’s just a par­tial list.)

I use Amem­ber with Word­Press for my mem­ber­ship sites, such as, for exam­ple, the all-​​new Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity, among many others.

But Amem­ber does have its flaws…

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EDITED: The spe­cial has been extended, pos­si­bly a day or so, since I made a mis­take. (Read below for the details.)

Did you miss out on the 10th anniver­sary spe­cial I did last year, where I offered life­time mem­ber­ships to my pri­vate copy­writ­ing how-​​to site, “The Copy Doc­tor,” for just a frac­tion of the cost?

Since that time (and even to this day), I get hun­dreds of emails from peo­ple who missed out and want to know if I’ll ever do it again. I wasn’t plan­ning on it since 10th anniver­saries don’t come often.

How­ever, with so many peo­ple clam­or­ing for it, I thought about it for a while and made a deci­sion. (If you missed out, then you’re going to like this!)

I’m ready to pro­mote Life­time Mem­ber­ships of Copy Doc­tor for just $397 to a few select peo­ple, one more time, until the end of March, 2008 (end­ing in a few days). And pos­si­bly for the last time, too.

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I have been crazy-​​busy get­ting our newest prod­uct ready. It’s an all-​​in-​​one mem­ber­ship site that shows you how to cre­ate a mon­ey­mak­ing busi­ness online in just four steps.

We call it “Suc­cess Chef University.”

It cov­ers every­thing. Every busi­ness model, traf­fic type, and mar­ket­ing strat­egy. But do you know which ones you really need and why? What about out­sourc­ing any of it?

Like fol­low­ing a recipe, you need to use the right ingre­di­ents in the right order. Suc­cess Chef sim­pli­fies it all for you with step-​​by-​​step video tutorials.

Suc­cess Chef is still in the pre-​​launch phase. How­ever, we decided to invite you to join right now — long before we do launch — with a mas­sive dis­count.

Lim­ited to the next 50 indi­vid­u­als only.

The saleslet­ter is also inter­ac­tive, too. We’ve also recorded a spe­cial hour-​​long video to help you. That video is an edu­ca­tion in itself! In it, we share those four sim­ple steps to gen­er­at­ing income on the Internet.

Check it out if just for the learn­ing experience.

At the begin­ning of my career, I spe­cial­ized in work­ing pri­mar­ily with cos­metic sur­geons. I wrote their direct mail copy, pro­duced their infomer­cials, trained their sales staff, and con­sulted them on marketing.

As a big believer in brand­ing and niche mar­ket­ing, I decided to focus pri­mar­ily on doc­tors. I dubbed myself as “The Suc­cess Doc­tor” since my aim was to help doc­tors become successful.

Up until a decade ago, how­ever, I was just a self-​​employed free­lancer. For years my clients came to me by word of mouth. But since my busi­ness was grow­ing quite rapidly, I decided to incorporate.

So on August 17, 1997, I reg­is­tered “The Suc­cess Doc­tor, Inc.” (In fact, it was only a few months later that I cre­ated a web­site and “hung out my dig­i­tal shin­gle” at Suc​cess​Doc​tor​.com! And the rest, as they say, is history.)

Nev­er­the­less, this means that, on August 17, 2007, it will be the 10th anniver­sary of my com­pany. And to cel­e­brate, I want to do some­thing spe­cial for you. Some­thing I’ve never done before. So here’s the deal…

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I have a chal­lenge, and I won­der if you have the anwswer — or can sim­ply direct me to where I can find it.

As many of you know, I have a mem­ber­ship site at The Copy Doc­tor, and use another soft­ware as a CMS (which is less than desirable).

The folks that sup­port the CMS are great guys and all, but I’ve have so many prob­lems with them — they’re slow, and their empty promises are start­ing to get the best of me… and my paid mem­bers, to say the least.

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