Two powerful tactics to increase revenue are upselling and cross-selling. You may boost your sales while giving your audience more value by providing your subscribers with other goods or services that go along with their first purchase. Let’s see how to do that, and what’s in it for you.

Did you know that upselling, on average, increases a business’s revenue by up to 30%?

H2: What Are Upselling and Cross-selling?

Let’s first establish what we mean by upselling and cross-selling before moving on to the tactics. Offering a more expensive item or service to a client who has already made a purchase is known as upselling. Contrarily, cross-selling refers to the practice of recommending an additional good or service to a client who has previously made a purchase.

For firms, especially those with subscription-based business models, upselling and cross-selling may be effective revenue-generating strategies. By utilizing these techniques, you can easily improve client interactions and raise the lifetime value of your subscriptions.

Imagine having 1000 subscribers with a subscription of $3.99. That’s $3,990 USD, make a small upsell to half of them, and motivate them to change their plan to $7.99, and you’ll increase your monthly cash flow from subscriptions by $2000.

Upselling is simply one of the best ways to increase revenue. Especially when you’ve already got the client base, and it’s just waiting for you to act.

A good cross-selling example, on the other hand, would be a person subscribing to you and then offering them something at a discounted price because of their purchase. 

H2: Understanding Your Audience

Understanding your audience is the first step to mastering upselling and cross-selling. A good idea is to segment your subscribers based on their interests and behavior by evaluating subscriber data and learning as much as possible about them.

If you have a set of subscribers, for instance, who consistently buy fitness-related products, you may offer them supplementary items like exercise gear or vitamins. If you don’t know where to get those, or to source them, becoming an affiliate of a large company like Amazon, might be ideal for you.

You enhance the possibility of a successful upsell or cross-sell by customizing your offerings to each category and forging closer bonds with your subscribers. Therefore, the closer the products and services you offer are to you personally, the bigger the chance of a cross or upsell.

H2: Create Different Offers

Once you have an understanding of your audience, the ways to increase revenue are countless. However, it’s of utmost importance to develop unique offerings that go beyond what your members initially purchased. 

Search for goods or services that improve the subscriber’s experience and make their subscription more valuable. Developing exclusive deals for members is a successful strategy for producing a variety of offerings. You might, for instance, grant subscribers early access to new goods or services or give them a discount on subsequent purchases.

Make sure to draw attention to the advantages of the upsell or cross-sell while presenting your offerings. Describe how the extra item or service will improve the subscriber’s experience and increase the subscription’s value and give it at a much-discounted price, compared to what its standalone cost would be.

What is the Best Time and Place to Offer Subscriptions?

Cross-selling and upselling are highly dependent on location and timing. To optimize the impact of your offers, present them at the ideal moment and location.

Make the appropriate time decision while presenting your offers. Consider offering an upsell to a subscriber group, for instance, if they commonly buy a certain product or service, just after they’ve made a purchase. The same thing you can do with certain articles or pieces of content. Make your offers relevant.

Think about where you’ll display your offerings when it comes to placement. Will you put them in a pop-up window or the sidebar of your website? Will you include them in your email marketing campaigns? Try out several placement strategies to determine which ones your audience responds to the best.

H2: Ramp Up Subscription Tiers

Another great idea is utilizing subscription tier upsells to increase income from current customers. You may entice users to upgrade to a higher tier membership by providing more features, advantages, or content. Understanding your members’ requirements and preferences is crucial for upselling subscription packages. Analyzing and segmenting subscriber data can help with this.

You may design tiered subscription plans that suit your members’ tastes if you have a thorough grasp of their demands. Promoting the distinct advantages and worth of each tier helps persuade subscribers to move up a tier. Additionally, it’s crucial to make the upsell procedure simple and hassle-free for subscribers.

The Next Step in Your Subscription Game

Instead of relying on affiliate marketing alone, great websites have merchandise and products of their own. Creating a small online store to complement your website is easier than ever. Check out Publir’s Quickshop solution that can be seamlessly integrated with your website in minutes.

The post Maximizing Revenue: How to Upsell and Cross-Sell to Your Website Subscribers first appeared on Publir.

Michael Aldrich, an English inventor, and entrepreneur created online shopping in 1979. He connected a modified TV set to a real-time transaction processing computer via a telephone line. This enabled a closed information system to be used and shared for the secure transmission of data. Aldrich’s technology then became the foundation for modern e-commerce.

Earliest E-Commerce Experiences and Practices

In 1982, the French Online service Minitel offered free services to telephone subscribers using the Videotex terminal machine,  accessed through telephone lines.  It amassed over 7 million customers by 1997, before falling in favor as the Internet gained traction. Compuserve is yet another effort that introduced the earliest forms of email and internet connectivity by 1980 to the public and dominated the e-Commerce landscape throughout the mid-1990s. Boston Computer Services was the first e-Commerce company to sell used computers online and Books Stack Unlimited was the first online bookstore. While the Web browsing tool came into being by the early 90s, the World Wide Web was open for the general public by August 1994. Until 1991, the Internet was not open for wide commercial use. Security protocol, an encryption certificate was developed by 1994. E-commerce was a B2B experience till early 90s due to low internet penetration and PCs were not widespread during this period.  

 Amazon and The Emergence Of Online Marketplaces

In 1994, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon, an online bookstore that would later expand its offering to include CDs and other media products. That same year, Pierre Omidyar launched AuctionWeb, an auction platform where enthusiasts could bid on and sell various collectibles. The platform was later renamed eBay.

Today, Amazon is the largest online marketplace in the world, offering a huge variety of both physical and digital products. eBay, on the other hand, is the largest online auction platform in existence. 

Now we have companies like Etsy (platform for vintage and handmade crafts), Alibaba, Shopify, Miva (catalog-based e-commerce site), BigCommerce (e-Platform for merchants), etc.,that have made their appearance in quick succession.  –

Expansion and Growth of Retail E-Commerce Industry

Advanced tech hardware and software have exponentially impacted the global e-commerce industry. Today, 76% of retail shops are aiming to operate online and are finding it convenient to deliver friction-free, cross-device e-Commerce experiences. Several drop shipping companies that have started operation since 2006, and are redirecting leads  to wholesale or retail businesses . Without  having to go through the hassles of maintaining inventory and packaging, drop shipping companies have helped many companies to enter into the world of online retail business.  

The growth of the e-commerce industry is evident from the volume of revenue it generates globally; the global retail industry was projected to grow by 4.4% to $26 trillion in 2020 and e-commerce was expected to grow by 18.4%, reaching $4 trillion in sales. US shoppers have spent $72.46 billion on retail e-commerce in 2020, registering 106.9% growth over 2019. Click and collect sales leaped from 5.8% to 9.1%, increasing the total number of buyers from 127.4 million to 143.8 million, denoting a 12.9% increase.

Though Amazon  remained on top of the online retail industry, representing 31.4% of all U.S. ecommerce sales growth in 2020 in North America, crossing $296 billion revenue, there is a significant decline in its share. The top 100 retailers had a striking 74.1% share of ecommerce growth in 2020 as the pandemic pushed many more consumers online from suburban and rural areas that have shopped with other large online retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Kroger that increased  their online sales more than 85% in 2020. 

Future of E-commerce

The future of e-commerce appears very bright with the onset of trends like the explosion of Mobile Commerce And improved marketing and advertising strategies companies adapting to keep pace with the ever-growing competition. 

As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide, marking 59.5% of the global population. 92.6% (4.32 billion) of these users have accessed the internet via mobile devices. Four out of five Americans are shopping online and 55% of the consumers are exploring shopping opportunities through social media.  In 2021 mobile commerce dominates online sales, driving 54% (or $659 billion) in sales. Mobile apps are particularly driving the users to purchase after hours of digital window shopping. Automation has an equal role in providing a rich and personalized shopping experience to the customers online. In 2020, 85% of customer interactions were managed without a human, using Artificial Intelligence and technologies like machine learning, augmented reality, voice-based search, and virtual realities have completely transformed the user experience online using desktops and mobiles. With more personalized product insights, services, and incentives for buying online, the future of e-commerce appears very promising. 

How To Create A Good Merchandising Campaign?

There are some vital steps that have to be taken into consideration while creating a good merchandising campaign.

1.     The first step towards creating a successful merchandising campaign is to reach the customer with personalized product information, creating a feeling that ‘it is meant for you’.

2.     Newsletters offer customized information instead of addressing the customer with generic email letters.

3.     The next big step in this process is segmentation of the customer data and reaching them with preferred information only, using automation.

4.     Applying machine learning technologies like AI help marketers build customer’s profiles based on their preferences, including their preferred device to access merchandising information and transaction, social media behavior, browsing, and purchasing history.

5.     By promoting the information on discounts, offers and coupons with unified cross channel communication strategy, across platforms, it is possible to reach the target group.

6.     Many studies have established the influence of reviews in social media apps and platforms in driving customers towards purchase.

7.     Apart from these measures, marketers must focus on building a customized and appealing website that facilitates unique user experiences, including enriched product experience online through images, easy navigation, product information, interactive (chatbot) and voice-based search.

8.     Company websites and social media platforms are useful resources for the marketers in building successful ‘online merchandising campaigns’ to announce discounts, coupons, season-wise offers (Christmas), using pop-up messages, and site-wide promotions. 

About Publir’s QuickShop

There is no right or wrong way to do this. It all comes down to personal desire. Creating an e-commerce website that travellers can enjoy and buy from, on the other hand, is a little more difficult. That necessitates a combination of good architecture, strong marketing, and tenacity.

You do not need to know how to code or have any advanced knowledge. Publir’s QuickShop enables everyone to quickly and easily build a stunning and fully usable e-commerce site from the ground up. Right from reserving a coffee space for their audience, to booking tickets, to register for events and workshops, one can do it all with this platform. Publir’s QuickShop can help anyone build an e-commerce platform to get a slice of the $10 trillion e-commerce market.  To experience the platform, and to begin your e-commerce journey, sign up here!

The post Mapping the Growth and Future of the Global E-Commerce Industry first appeared on Publir.

Once they gained popularity on the internet, they adopted an ad-supported model. Advertising remains by far the most important source of revenue for digital news media. 

Changes in Online Viewership with Subscription

This ad-supported model was soon monopolized by tech giants like Google and Facebook that had accumulated massive scale and vast data on audience behaviors. 

The Growth of Subscription Models

Financial newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, have often used a subscription model, with only a few stories available for free. People were required to pay for financial content but not for general news such as politics, sports, and news. However, as ad sales fell, the New York Times and other national publications followed suit.

Subscription Growth of Major Newspapers

Digital subscriptions are now an important revenue source for many major news outlets. The New York Times had over 6 million paying subscribers at the end of 2020. This number was up 3x from 2016.

For the same time period Washington Post’s subscriber base was estimated to be nearing 3 million, up nearly 50% from the end of 2019.

Encouraged by the impressive growth reported by large media outlets, many smaller publications have also adopted the digital subscription model. .

Although charging for content may decrease site traffic and result in lower ad revenue, for some publishers the trade-off may be worthwhile. Audience engagement and brand value improves because readers have shown enough interest in your material to pay for it.

Strategies for a Successful Subscription Offering

Subscription-based websites should concentrate on increasing long-term consumer satisfaction rather than focusing on just attracting a larger audience with click-bait headlines.

For smaller websites just venturing into subscriptions it may be useful to have a soft paywall that allows users to read a few articles for free. For instance, you can allow non-paying members to read 5 free articles a month. But once they reach that threshold, they would have to pay to read more articles.

Another successful tactic is to keep the articles free but offer meaningful perks to subscribers such as ad-free access, the ability to comment on articles, or the ability to contact the author directly.

A big factor in any recurring-revenue model is subscriber churn. Proactively engaging with subscribers via polls/surveys, keeping them informed of site changes, and offering value-added services are good ways to reduce churn. Offering the opportunity to pause rather than cancel subscriptions is another useful tactic.

Major Subscription Service Providers

Some of the top subscription management software are Podia, Payhip, Subbly, 2Checkout, Aria Systems, Salesforce Billing, SaaSOptics, Cleverbridge, Chargify, SAP Commerce Cloud, Elastic Path, Zuora, FastSpring, OneBill, NetSuite SuiteCommerce, Ericsson ECB, goTransverse TRACT platform, Vindicia, Reilly, Recurly, Pabbly, Chargebee, and ChikPea O2B.

Publir’s Subscription Offering

Publir subscriptions encourage your readers to pay a small monthly fee for a clean, ad-free experience. Our tool automates all essential aspects of a subscription management program, from authenticating customer addresses to handling credit card purchases and replacing expired credit cards. Furthermore, our product combines lessons from popular subscription offerings on a daily basis, maintaining fast growth and low churn.

Dozens of publications use Publir’s subscription tool, which has an established track record of driving growth and reducing turnover. In order to maximize sales, we also use our ad industry experience to advise clients on optimal pricing and Zero-party data techniques.

Conclusion

In an era where issues surrounding ad tracking and data security are gaining traction, many online news consumers realize that “free” content has a price – their privacy. Not surprisingly, the demand for subscription and billing management is projected to rise from USD 2.90 billion in 2016 to USD 6.01 billion by 2021. This number will only increase as there is a growing number of readers who are willing to pay for good content.

The post Adding Digital Subscriptions to Your Revenue Stream first appeared on Publir.

The internet has created many new and innovative ways for content creators to promote and showcase their talent in the form of websites, videos, and images. But one of the best things about the web is the way it has democratized access to revenue for small and medium publishers – particularly with online advertisements. Now any publisher with good content and a decent audience could put up ads and start monetizing their work. 

As online advertising got more prevalent and publishers started to cram more ads into their websites, a consumer backlash began to develop. At first, it was because the ads were too intrusive – with loud audio that could not be muted, pop-ups that blocked content, and auto-play video ads that sucked up bandwidth and slowed browsers. To its credit, the ad industry as a group mitigated many of these earlier problems via self-regulation and better monitoring of ads. But of late the focus has shifted to data privacy and user security. The concern is that the ad industry has too much information on users gathered without their knowledge or permission. While the wider tech industry is starting to address some of these privacy concerns, many consumers have started to take matters into their own hands by installing tools that prevent the ads from being displayed, known as collectively as AdBlockers. 

Different Types of AdBlockers

Browser Feature 

Almost all desktop and mobile browsers offer tools that block certain kinds of ads like popups and block user tracking. Some like The Brave Browser have gone further by blocking ads by default. Though Brave still has a tiny market share compared to browsers like Chrome and Safari, it is growing and offers many innovative features that could see wider adoption in the future. 

Browser Extensions 

Many AdBlock vendors offer browser extensions for implementing rules that the users can customize as per their requirements. These browser extensions are easy to install and user-friendly. Browser extensions are the biggest contributor to the growth of Adblock users on the web. 

Desktop Applications 

These prevent advertisements on a per-device basis. Although they are not very popular,  they are quite useful as many users have more than one browser and these desktop applications can block ads on all these browsers at once. They are not free, rather they tend to be resource-heavy.

VPN with AdBlockers

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) with AdBlockers are quite convenient but are also costly as they require a paid subscription. VPNs have the ability to hide the activity of the users on the internet, hence it is very important when it comes to online privacy. 

DNS Level AdBlocking 

Adblocking can be added at Domain Name System (DNS) level in order to manage all devices at the location while stopping all advertisements from loading. It requires some fine technical knowledge to set up but it yields the biggest results. It maximizes performance when one prevents the advertisements from loading at the DNS level.

AdBlockers Vs Tracking Blockers Vs Privacy Blockers

While all these three terms have completely different meanings, sometimes the lines start to blur as the feature sets are growing and the users are getting more information about these three.

AdBlockers are specifically used to block advertisements that we can find while browsing through a website.

On the other hand, tracking blockers prevent programmatic trackers from recording any kind of online activity of a user. Most online users are not even aware that they are being tracked or their online activities are being recorded.

Privacy blockers encompass features of both of the previous blockers. It is a set of features designed to protect the privacy of the user. The basic focus of privacy blockers is to prevent third-party requests, cookies, and scripts. 

Concerns Over AdBlock 

Adblock Plus is one of the most popular ad blockers on the web nowadays and is available on 100 million+ web browsers. But there are dozens of alternatives to AdBlock Plus and by some estimates, these AdBlockers combined reach 600 million devices or 11% of the world’s internet-connected population. In 2015, a study by Adobe and PageFair estimated that in that year alone AdBlocking cost publishers nearly $22 billion.  

News like this has created a lot of panic among the online publishers who worry that AdBlockers will cut into their revenues. The problem also calls into question the very business model of digital publishing because it creates a misalignment of incentives between publishers and their end-user. AdBlockers are good for many consumers of digital content, but they can be devastating for content creators who rely on advertisements for revenue.

AdBlock Recovery

In order to protect their businesses and value exchange for access control to their content, thousands of publishers around the globe use some form of AdBlock revenue mitigation. The recovery process typically involves the following steps: 

• Measuring the percent of ad block users on a website and estimating the lost revenue.
• Removing negative ad experiences whose value might be offset by pushing users to install AdBlockers.
• Displaying friendly messages nudging users to whitelist the site on AdBlockers. 
• Blocking the access to an AdBlocker user who chooses not to whitelist a site despite many notices or showing fewer, less annoying ads to AdBlock users.
• Recommending an alternative value exchange between the visitor and publisher, which may include donation, email signup, site registration, paid subscription, participation in the user panel, and other such recommendations.

Website Whitelisting

Visitors use a whitelist where they add certain websites that are exempted from AdBlocking functions. This list can be easily controlled by the user with a click or two on a site-to-site basis. 

The whitelist, also known as the allowlist, is a rundown of elements endorsed for approved admittance or privileged membership in order to enter a particular region in the computing world. These elements include electronic groups and organizations, privileged websites, and even email addresses. 

Studies have shown that many users are unaware of the fact that adblocker is running on their systems blocking the ads. Many of those visitors are also willing to turn off the SAdBlocker in order to get access to their favorite websites. Moreover, users want to block annoying ads on clickbait websites while whitelisting sites that give them a more responsible ad experience. 

Helpful Tools To Recover Lost Revenue

The first step in solving any problem is to measure it. There are many technological solutions to measure AdBlock users on site. One of them is to use services like DataUnlocker that are specifically designed to allow a website traffic measurement tool like Google Analytics to bypass AdBlockers.  For organizations that have more tech resources, a self-hosted tool like Fathom might be worth taking a look at. 

The next step is to show a message to AdBlock users asking them to whitelist the site. There are a number of plugins for popular CMS like WordPress. Most are free, easy to customize, and do a good job of encouraging loyal users to whitelist the site. Google has also recently launched a Google Funding Choice program that makes it easy to message AdBlock users.

For users who still persist in using AdBlock, it is still possible to show them light-weight ads. Adtech vendors like Block through and Admiral have built easy-to-integrate tools that accomplish these goals.

Takeaway

The good news is that there are signs that AdBlock usage is dropping, thanks to many publishers adopting measures similar to the ones outlined in this article. However, publishers cannot afford to let their guard down. The fact is that AdBlockers will always be present as long as we have online ads, hence any time spent in AdBlock recovery strategies is definitely worth it. 

The post Updated AdBlock Revenue Solutions For Publishers first appeared on Publir.

Publir has launched a homegrown sticky ad unit solution that gives publishers the ability to customize their ad unit, allowing for flexibility as to what the ad unit looks like, where on the page it renders and how often the ad refreshes.

Publir’s sticky ad units complement any publisher’s current ad layout. We offer two types of sticky ad units – horizontal units and vertical units. Each type comes in a range of sizes. Horizontal sticky units span the bottom of the webpage in a landscape format. In contrast to horizontal units, vertical units stick to the sides of the webpage in a portrait format.

Our sticky units are intelligent. The ads only display/refresh if they are in viewport and the user is actively engaging with the page. 

Sticky ad units generate higher yield than a standard banner units because of increased viewability – advertisers will pay more for a placement that has a higher likelihood of being seen by a user. Banner blindness, a term describing a website visitor’s behavior to consciously or unconsciously ignore placements that they perceive to be ads, is largely overcome by sticky ads that tend to catch the attention of the reader and maintain in view for longer periods of time. 

Publir also has the ability to target our header bidding and programmatic ad stacks. This results in more competition amongst buyers, creating greater auction pressure. For Publir clients, implementing our homegrown solution eliminates the need for third-party vendors, resulting in higher net revenue to the publisher. 

Check out Publir’s sticky ad units in action. If you’re interested in learning more, inquire directly at inquire@publir.com.

The post Publir Sticky Ad Units Are Live! first appeared on Publir.

Publir’s comprehensive ad block recovery tool gives publishers the power to understand their ad block traffic, such as what percentage of their site’s traffic is composed of unmonetized users and what devices and locations these users are coming from. 

Once identified, Publir’s ad block recovery tool allows publishers to display a message to ad block users, requesting that they whitelist the site and allow ads to be displayed.  

The customization of the tool gives each publisher complete control over the parameters of their message and how it’s delivered to each individual ad block user. 

For the message itself publishers can:

• Choose the location of the message on the page
• Set fonts and coloring to match with the sites aesthetics
• Create customized copy for you appeal 

When the message appears publishers can:

• Set it to show up on an ad block user’s first visit to the site, or on their second, third, etc.
• Blur site content behind the ad-block message
• Set a time-based cap that dictates when a user will see the message appear again

This technology is unlocked by deploying a few simple lines of code. 

By appealing directly to users who have an ad blocker enabled, publishers are able to establish a relationship with those readers by communicating a specific message – that message being that ads support the editors and journalists, and keep the operation as a whole up and running. 

The post We Launched A Comprehensive Adblock Recovery Tool first appeared on Publir.