Case Study: How A Little Baseball Blog Grew +385% With Upsells

Hey, I'm Brian. That picture down there is me and my then-fiance, now-wife Aimee (like “Amy”, but better). I know, that hat makes me look like an idiot. It was 2009. I was 22. We were at the beach. Cut me a break. But this is the story about how that kid in the crazy hat turned a dead WordPress blog into a real business that cranks out $3,120 every single month, using one simple profit-boosting strategy called a "One Click Upsell".

The American Nightmare

Let's shoot back a few years to July 2009... I had just graduated college. I was engaged. Times were good, right? Well, sort of. After struggling to find a job for a few months (remember, it was 2009), I landed a desk-job at a “leave your phone in your car” type of secure facility. Pretty common around the Washington DC area.

My floor had no windows, no internet access, and about 30 minutes of real work each week. The embodiment of the American Dream... Needless to say, I hated everything. It was terrible. All I wanted was to be at home with my wife, take a trip together, maybe save up for a house. So like a lot of you reading this, I started a blog to get rich. An absolutely fool-proof strategy... I played baseball in college, so I figured I would create a bunch of my own training and sell it to young players and coaches. It was called Train Baseball.

How To Launch A Profitless Business

Like most people do, I wasted MONTHS trying to learn everything I thought I needed.

• Getting A Domain Name
• WordPress
• Web-design
• Hosting
• SEO
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Graphic Design
• Google AdWords
• This new fad called “Facebook Ads” (It was 2009)

All the usual suspects. And I use the word “wasted” for a good reason. After sinking countless hours of my own time and +$3,000 of my own money into this thing (money I definitely couldn't spare), all I accomplished wasbecoming an expert in running a business with no profit. And I was one of the lucky ones! I was even making a handful of sales here and there (mostly from spending around $5/week on Facebook Ads), but I was keeping NOTHING. Couple hundred bucks in sales, zero profits. Which really meant zero extra freedom, zero extra time with my wife, zero extra breathing room in my bank account. Now, there's something you should know about me...I hate losing. I was about ready to accept the reality that “the system” was rigged. Everyone talking about this online stuff was a liar. I was doomed to my window-less cubicle for the rest of my days. But just as my despair was getting the best of me, I stumbled onto an old email that would change my entire life.

Where Your Profits Are Hiding

It was another lonely, late night in our apartment. My wife had been in bed for a few hours already. Tanner (our dog) was passed out under my desk as I stared into the glow of my computer screen. Completely out of ideas, I kept skimming through old emails from Ryan Deiss. Ryan, now of Digital Marketer fame, was the reason Train Baseball had sold anything. His Video Sales Letter training took my sales from 'Zero' to 'Something'. So I went to see what else he had, and I found a course on One Click Upsells. Ryan talked about how this one strategy tripled his profits, howupsells turned a dead advertising campaign into a thriving profit-machine. He even shared a story from a guy who turn his hobby into a business, and upselling his customers finally let him quit his job....

That's all I needed to hear. I bought the product (Aimee wasn't happy with that one) and told myself if this didn't work, I was out.

Copy Amazon With A Click

The concept is pretty simple. Instead of sending your customers to a "Thank You" page after they place an order, offer them something else to buy right after they place an order. But here's where the “One Click" part comes in. You need to make it possible for your customers to buy more stuff WITHOUT having to re-enter their credit card info. So your customers can buy another product with a single click of their mouse. Think about how easy it is to buy more stuff from Amazon or Apple. That's the idea.

It was (and still is) complicated stuff to do on your own. But I dove right in. I grabbed an account with 1ShoppingCart (really wish I had SamCart back then). Then stayed up until 2 AM pretty much every night that week trying to get it working. But there was a problem...

Escape The 'One Product' Pitfall

What could I possibly upsell? I only had the one product. My precious 27-page e-book had take me MONTHS to create. Nowmy entire business was hinging on having something else to sell. It was time to get to work. So I called my brother, and we booked it to a batting cage bright and early that Saturday morning with one of those old “Flip HD” cameras (had to borrow it from my uncle) to create a new product.

Crazy stuff happens when you're under the gun. After a few hours of recording, Instant Hitting Drills was born. Boom. Just like that, I had something to upsell.

Profits On A Post-It

My first upsell page wasn't pretty. In fact, it was hideous. But it was done. Pretty simple stuff, right? Pretty sure anyone could have written this genius script. Remember, just because you are doing advanced stuff doesn't mean you have to complicate everything. My entire upsell page could fit on a post-it note.

After a lot of hard work to make sure my one click upsell was working, I took a deep breath and turned my Facebook Ads back on. It was make or break time. I budgeted a whopping $25 to test this out one last time (which felt like a fortune at the time). Here's the funnel that I went live with that day...

Exhausted, I stood up from my desk, woke up Tanner, and went to bed. Hoping that I would find a miracle when I got home from work later that day.

How To Run A Profitable Facebook Ad Campaign

At 4:45 that afternoon, I raced home from the office, sprinted up the steps, and jumped onto my computer. Facebook had spent $8.37, but no sales. I spent the next 3 days refreshing my sales stats every 4 seconds. And then, it happened...

I got a customer, and they bought my one click upsell. I spent a total of $24.67, and made $124 back. My first profitable Facebook Ad Campaign.

One Click Upsells Change The Equation

Here's what happened over the next 8 weeks... Those profits fueled more advertising. I kept things small at first, around $25/week. But every time an upsell came in, I had cash for another month worth of ads. I kept creating new products, and adding in new one click upsells. Every time a new upsell was added to the funnel, Train Baseball made more money. My average customer value DOUBLED, jumping from $27 to over $52 per customer.

My email list was exploding. Thanks to that one click upsell, I could run ads around the clock while making my money back (and then some). So I was getting all these new subscribers, basically for free.

"Just because you are doing advanced stuff doesn't mean you have to complicate everything."

Two months after that first one click upsell went live, Train Baseball made $3,120. Every dime of profit came directly from one click upsells. My little hobby blog had turned into a real business. Train Baseball grew from an $810/month time-suck to a $3,120/month profit center.

All my new subscribers made my product launches start exploding. That fall, the official product launch for Instant Hitting Drills sold 106 copies, netting $10,282 in pure profit. Other people in my market started to notice me. Big names in the baseball market started reaching out to me, setting up deals to promote my stuff. 8 months later, I quit my job and we bought a house. Aimee and I travel together (anyone else love skiing?). We have a beautiful daughter and a son on the way. My days in that cubicle are a distant memory.

Bring A Dead Business Back To Life

Since then, I've started a few other brands that have reached 7-figures in sales. One click upsells have been an essential piece of every single one of them. If I couldn't one click upsell my customers, none of those brands would have made it. I have never met another successful business owner who does NOT use one click upsells. That's how important this stuff is. One click upsells are so important, I invested well over $1 million of my own money into SamCart. A tool that makes it possible for anyone to add one click upsells into their checkout, without touching any of the complicated tech stuff I used to have to use. And now I get to read comments like these every day...

SamCart customers have sold over $126 million of their own products & services in the last 12 months. A whopping 58% of those sales were made from one click upsells.

If you are struggling with a profit problem. My prescription is one click upsells.

Get My Help With Your Upsells

I'm sure your mind is spinning right now. You've got questions, you want help, you're not sure where to start. Well let's start here. Take my 6 favorite upsell ideas... These are 6 fool-proof upsell offers that your customers will absolutely love. Doesn't matter if you're selling tennis rackets, baseball training, client services, or anything in between. Click below, and I'll send you a video I call "My 6 Ultimate Upsell Ideas" now...

Check out that video today, and get a roadmap to the same profit-boost I had when I made Instant Hitting Drills. This stuff will change your life. Thanks for reading, can't wait to hear about your one click upsell. Brian