I was just reading an article that seemed to say this was one of the best tactics for increasing your business earning. Do you practice upselling? Offer cheap basic services, but the add on for "upgrades" for more emails, larger space allocations, etc? I have upgrades listed on my site, and they ask you again when you register electronically. I'm thinking of adding something to my rebilling notices, like "Running out of space? Click here to double the size of your hosting package for a fraction of the cost." or something like that.

I have found that we get a lot of income from up selling. A lot of times we run special offers for our current customers to upgrade or add another account.

Aside from that, current customers just like to upgrade and purchase additional accounts or services on a regular basis. If you offer good service they will ten to come to you asking for the upgrades or if you have them setup in your billing that is even better and they will just automatically upgrade.

All in all if you provide good services you are bound to get more out of your current customers at one point or another.

upselling is the only way to succeed in the long run
offer services others dont - determine your ideal customer and then build a solution around that ideal customer and look for more customers like that one

with my company our ideal customer is a small business with 5 - 25 employees.

we build our hosting solutions around them and to date it is working

Up selling can make a huge difference in any service business. One of the reasons is that no matter how much you have advertised your products so many of your customers don't know everything you offer or the value of other products you have. When you get that contact and serve them well that is the time they are the most receptive to hearing about what else you have and how it can benefit them.

I am totally agree. Earn lots in the upgrade part. I started out with small plans. Once they exceed the limit, they start to buy more. It's fun the watch new purchases.

great topic -

I'm wondering how often do you contact your customers?

and when you do contact them do you try to promote or upsell one product or does the email contain various offers that may not relate to one another directly?

cheers

I wouldn't contact them too often. Every few months would be the max as far as I'm concerned. Granted it would depend somewhat on what you're offering. Anything more I find is annoying. If they contact me for anything though at any time they are game for the upsell.

Reoccuring revenue is the best kind of revenue. If they are in the mood for buying than helpful related extras are certainly welcome.