A reader's take

I have a small beauty brand. Skincare, mostly. I started it because I love creams and serums and the whole ritual of taking care of yourself, not because I knew anything about selling online. And for the first year, that was fine—friends bought, friends told friends, and I felt like I was doing something real.

Then I hit a wall. People would visit my site, add things to their cart, and just… leave. I'd get the occasional email asking about a product, but I never knew how to turn that into an actual sale. I thought I just needed more traffic. More Instagram posts. More followers.

I didn't even know the word upsell existed until I picked up this book.

I'm not kidding. I read the title and thought, "Okay, this is probably about convincing people to buy more stuff." And I was nervous because I hate that feeling—when you're checking out and suddenly there's a pop-up trying to get you to spend extra, and you're like, please just let me pay. I didn't want to become that.

But then I started reading and I realized pretty quickly that this wasn't about tricks. It was about understanding why people say yes, and why they say no, and how the little things—the way a price is written, the button you click, the order of the steps—can change everything. I never thought about any of that before. I just put my products up and hoped for the best.

The book doesn't assume you know anything. It explains things in a way that actually makes sense, with stories and real numbers that I could follow even though I'm not a numbers person. There were moments where I'd stop and go, oh, that's why people keep abandoning their cart at the shipping page. And then I'd go fix it.

I've learned so much from this book. Not in a "now I'm an expert" way—I'm definitely not—but in a way that makes me feel like I finally have a map. I know what to look at now. I know what questions to ask myself when I'm setting up a bundle or deciding how to present my products. I'm still figuring things out, but I'm figuring them out with better tools.

What surprised me most was that the book works for someone like me, who's just starting, but I can also tell it would be useful for someone who's been doing this for years. It's not shallow. It goes deep into how people think and how systems work, but it never feels heavy or academic. It feels like someone walking next to you, pointing at things and saying, "see that? That matters."

I've already started applying little things I learned. Nothing dramatic—just moving a few things around, changing how I talk about my sets, testing different add-ons at checkout. And people are actually buying them. Not because I pushed, but because I made it easier for them to see what made sense.

I still don't consider myself a business person. I'm someone who makes nice creams and wants people to enjoy them. But this book made me realize that selling doesn't have to feel gross. It can feel like helping. And that's a huge relief.

If you're like me—curious, a little overwhelmed, and just trying to build something that works—I think you'll find a lot in here. It's not about having all the answers. It's about starting to see the patterns that were always there, and finally knowing what to do with them.

— Valentina Belmonte, A reader who found this book just in time.