You've heard a million times that you can increase your profits by asking customers the equivalent of McDonald's' "Would you like fries with that?" But what should your upsell be, and how should you price and pitch it?

Terry Dean offered some good advice on the subject today:

A pre-purchase upsell is when you mention just like Amazon, "Customers purchasing this were also interested in"¦"

I've found these products often work best priced 25% to 50% of the original product price. So a $40 product may have a $10 to $20 upsell. Again you need to test it, but you won't have much space to recommend a product here. It's mostly sold on title alone.

There's a wealth of insight in those few sentences: 25-50% of the main product price, and something that captures interest based just on its title. It's an impulse purchase, like candy at the supermarket check out stand.

So you don't want it to be too expensive.

And you don't want to talk them out of it by talking too much. If your upsell requires a sales pitch to convince the customer, they'll think not only about why they want it, but why they don't want to buy. And if you really muff it up, they might start thinking about why they don't want to buy the main product either.

Think about the upsell examples mentioned here are presented to you: "would you like fries with that?"; "customers purchasing this were also interested in..."; candy just sitting there, easy to grab and toss in with the rest of your food. That's the model your aiming for with pre-purchase upsells.