It's become a frequently used tactic by ecommerce stores and other types of transactional site but it's important to make sure cross-selling and up-selling offers your customer something of real value.
Cross-selling
Offering your customers 'perfect partners' is a great form of cross-sell marketing. It's particularly useful when your customer will need another item to effectively use their purchase. Think of someone buying a digital camera - they're going to need a memory card and probably a case too, these types of complementary packages may even earn you brownie points.
More advanced systems will allow you to make cross-sell recommendations based on data acquired from tracking customer community purchasing patterns though this really does require large volumes of traffic and purchases to be effective. Combining cross-selling with 'special offers' is another way of offering customers better value if they are willing to spend more.
Up-selling
Trickier than cross-selling but can still be very effective if done properly. The moment after your customer has decided to buy they arrive at a 'sweet spot'; they've decided to purchase and have overcome a significant number of barriers to get there, for a few moments they will remain in this place and will want to review whether or not they really are making the right purchase. In this window of opportunity you can offer alternative products or services that may better suit their needs.
Present the choice well and you may increase the value of the transaction, do it badly and you may well lose the original purchase too.
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