What Is A Tripwire + How It Can Diversify Your Income & Grow Your Customer Base.
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What Is A Tripwire + How It Can Diversify Your Income & Grow Your Customer Base.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase.

Social media graphic with image of journal, dish with clips, pen and text What is a Tripwire and How It Can Increase Your Blogging Income

If you are reading this post there is a good chance that you want to make money from your blog.

Am I right?

There are lots of ways to make money blogging, but today I want to focus on how you can create a high converting tripwire to diversify your income.

So, first, what is a tripwire?

A tripwire is a super discounted offer that is given after someone opts-in for one of your freebies or content upgrades. The offer is usually a one-time-offer (OTO) that can only be accessed on that page or is a timed offer that is only available for a few minutes or hours.

Why are tripwires so dang effective? 

They tap into one of the most effective ways to increase conversions. Urgency.

If you have products, but you aren’t giving your potential customer a reason to buy now, chances are that they won’t. With a tripwire, they have to choose in that moment if they are going to act.

Your tripwire should be an irresistible offer. Something that is so good that the person wouldn’t want to miss out on it (remember we all have the fear of missing out).

Your offer can be irresistible for a few different reasons, 

1. It is a product that isn’t available anywhere else. If they want the product this is their one and only chance to get it. They literally can only buy it on that specific page.

2. It is incredibly discounted – Usually, a tripwire is a product that is either inexpensive or heavily discounted. Most tripwires are at least 50% off. I currently am running mine at about 63% off.

Now I want to walk you through my process for creating my tripwire and some of the statistics from its first week it was live.

Creating a tripwire is really a two-part process, 

1st – You need to create an enticing freebie that will get a lot of opt-ins. This can be an ebook, email course, or really anything that you think your audience would feel is very valuable.

The topic of your freebie should be highly relevant to your tripwire product. This way you know that those that are opting in are interested in that subject.

For example, the freebie that I created is called Traffic Tactics. It is a twenty-five-page ebook on how to create and share your content so your blog will get tons of traffic. Most of my readers are newer mom bloggers and after listening to my audience, generating traffic was one of their biggest issues.

 

Graphic with sheets from ebook with text Traffic Tactics Free Twenty-Five Page Blog Traffic Ebook

2nd – You will create the actual product. Remember this a product that is super valuable and should be a “no-brainer” purchase for your audience.

For my product, I created the ultimate collection of resources to help my subscriber grow their traffic fast. My tripwire is called Traffic Trajectory and it is,

  • A spreadsheet with over 150 group boards
  • Fifty of the best Facebook groups + their thread/promo schedule
  • Over 200 blog that accept guest posts
  • And 100+ blog to comment on so you can get your name out there.

Screenshot of spreadsheets

Traffic Trajectory is seriously a gold mine and will save the reader so much time. The $7 price tag for everything that is included makes it an “irresistible offer.”

What made this convert so well is that usually, Traffic Trajectory sells for $19, but on this one page for a limited time they are able to snag it for only $7 which is more than half off.

Once the reader hits “submit” on the opt-in page they are immediately redirected to this page that says that their freebie is on its way and give the subscriber the chance to buy Tripwire product. 

The sales page is short. It describes what is included + the main benefits as well as a preview of what is inside when they purchase. At the bottom of the screen, there is a countdown timer that explains that they have fifteen minutes to get a huge discount. This nudges the reader to act now, so they don’t miss out.

Once the fifteen minutes is up if they don’t purchase they are redirected to the main sales page and will not be able to get back to tripwire page and get the discount.

I use a tool called Deadline Funnel which powers the timer and creates the automatic redirect when the time runs out. Implementing this one tool in my business has dramatically increased my conversions on my products. If you want to check it out you can get a free one-month trial here. 

In the first few weeks of testing my tripwire product, it has been converting at approximately 20%. So for every five people that opt-in for that freebie one person will go on to purchase Traffic Trajectory. Pretty cool, right?

Screenshot of purchases made

How do you deliver your tripwire product?

There are multiple ways to send your product,

  1. Use a tool like SendOwl or Digital Product Delivery (DPD) to complete the purchase and deliver the digital product (for the tripwire I used DPD, but SendOwl is phenomenal too).
  2. If it is an online course you can easily give them access if you use a site like Teachable.
  3. Set up an automation in ConvertKit so when the purchase is made they are sent an email with instructions on how to access or download the product. (This option would require you to have another platform where you accept payments that can integrate with your email service provider.

So what are the options with the revenue from your Tripwire product? 

You can,

1. Enjoy the small profit on the product and work to organically get more people into your funnel and increase the conversions, or

2. You can use the profits from your tripwire to offset your advertising costs. Let’s say for example your Tripwire product is $7 and you decide to run a promoted pin for your opt-in. Now, let’s estimate that you spend $.50 per opt-in and of those subscribers they are still converting for your tripwire at 20%.

That means if you are spending $.50 per lead and it is even only converting at 10% you need ten people to opt-in in order to sell your $7 product. That means that you are paying $5.00 in advertising ($.50 x 10) in order to make $2.00 in profit.

Now, are you mmay bethinking, “Two dollars? What am I supposed to do with two dollars, that is like a candy bar.” 

But the beauty of it is you just essentially made $2 and got 10 new subscribers FOR FREE!

Do you recognize how powerful that is? When you leverage a tripwire effectively you can increase your ad spend (or start advertising) in order to quickly scale up your email list and customer base. 

This is an amazing opportunity to scale up your business quickly.

In addition to growing your email list and making a small profit, you can include an “upsell” for those that purchase your Tripwire product. This is an offer that is a bit more expensive but is still very valuable.

This could be a paid course, more expensive physical product, coaching program or even a service you offer and typically this will convert better than if you went straight to this after the opt-in. 

Why?

Because this individual has now changed their mindset from expecting only free things from you to becoming a buyer. Even if it is only a $7 tripwire product they have already committed to the belief that you provide value and you are worth the investment.

Isn’t the psychology of marketing fascinating?!

If you want to check out my tripwire you can opt-in below. Right now it is the $7 tripwire, but I am thinking about adding an upsell. What product do you think I should add as the upsell?

McKinzie Bean
McKinzie is a mom of two, and a personal finance enthusiast. She loves teaching other moms how to save money, make money, and take control of their financial situation. She has started five profitable businesses and in college, she double-majored in Financial Planning and Psychology. You may have seen her in publications like Forbes, The US Chamber of Commerce, Yahoo Finance, Money.com, The Penny Hoarder, & more.

2 thoughts on “What Is A Tripwire + How It Can Diversify Your Income & Grow Your Customer Base.”

    1. A lot of people use a tripwire product to offset the cost of ads. You can run ads on Facebook or on Pinterest to drive traffic if you do not have an audience yet and want to scale your email list quickly.

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