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I love tripwires.

I don’t love the name.

The word ‘tripwire’ sounds kind of aggressive. A way of tripping up your audience – which is NOT the case.

I prefer to think of tripwire funnels as one-time-only offers designed to create a too-good-to-miss opportunity for your new subscribers.

They are a win-win for you AND your audience.

That said, most people are familiar with the term tripwire and so throughout this article, you will hear these magical offers referred to as both tripwires, one-time-only offers and OTO’s.

In this article we will cover

1. What a tripwire (or OTO) actually is (and why you need one.)
2. What makes a good tripwire
3. The many reasons I love tripwires and think they could be beneficial in your business too
4. The tools you need to get started
5. Where to learn more about creating tripwire offers and setting up the tech.

What is a tripwire funnel?

A funnel is a journey you guide a potential customer or subscriber through with the goal to sell a product or service.

A tripwire offer (or one-time-only offer) is a heavily discounted offer on a product or service delivered on a thank you page.

It is time-sensitive (with a countdown timer) which helps to create a decision container that drives high conversion rates, even with cold traffic.

A tripwire funnel is the journey someone goes on from landing on your website to being shown your tripwire offer. It looks a little like this:

1. The reader lands on a blog post/landing page and decide to opt in for a freebie or lead magnet
2. They leave their name and email address and then get redirected to a thank you page
3. The thank you page show cases the time-sensitive offer (usually at a heavy discount e.g. 50% off)
4. If they don’t purchase within the time window, they get redirected to another page explaining the offer has expired (or the original sales page at full price.)
5. They may or may not have another opportunity to purchase the product once they have joined the newsletter, sometimes later on in the funnel. This may be at a sale price or full price but never as low as the tripwire offer price. The tripwire price is always the lowest price they can get it for.

What makes a good tripwire?

The best tripwires are digital products and are completely passive. Be careful offering services or physical products in case suddenly a blog post goes viral and suddenly you have an influx of tripwire sales that you can’t keep up with!

A tripwire offer is delivered after someone opts into your email list usually as the result of signing up for a freebie or lead magnet.

Therefore the best tripwire offers will fall into one of two categories

1. Products that help to solve an extra part of the puzzle that the lead magnet is helping to partially solve.

For example, if you are a photographer your lead magnet might be a photography cheat sheet but the tripwire offer is a set of Lightroom presets.

They both help to solve a tiny part of a bigger puzzle (e.g. how to become a better photographer.)

The important thing here is that they need to be clearly different and solve different parts of the puzzle.

If the tripwire product is very similar to the lead magnet, the reader may feel they have already got the solution they need and won’t purchase your tripwire.

Here are a few more examples…

Niche	Lead magnet idea	Tripwire idea
Travel blogger	Printable PDF city walking tour	Ebook about visiting the same city
Virtual assistant	Checklist for hiring a VA	Mini course about prepping to work with a VA
Copywriter	Welcome email template	Sales email templates
Vegan food blogger	PDF list of vegan food swaps	Vegan cook book
Pinterest strategist	Pinterest audit checklist	Pinterest templates

2. Products that solve a completely different problem that the reader is likely to also have.

For example, if you teach bloggers how to work with brands, your lead magnet could be a PDF guide about growing your Instagram following but your tripwire product could be a template for pitching to brands.

See how these solve different problems that the same reader is likely to have including

• growing their social media following
• working with brands

Let’s look at the same niches listed above and how they could choose a tripwire that solves a different problem the same person is likely to have…

Niche	Lead magnet idea	Tripwire idea
Travel blogger	Printable PDF city walking tour	Travel photography presets
Virtual assistant	Checklist for hiring a VA	Business goal planner
Copywriter	Welcome email template	Sales page templates
Vegan food blogger	PDF list of vegan food swaps	Mini course about living more sustainably
Pinterest strategist	Pinterest audit checklist	Mini course about promoted pins

I have used both types of tripwire with similar success rates.

It’s always beneficial to test these things out so if you have more than one product that you can use as a tripwire, try using one for a few months then switching and comparing stats!

9 Reasons why you should have a tripwire for your online business too

1. You can set and forget tripwire funnels

If you are familiar with my brand you will know that I am a big fan of passive income and anything that you can set and forget, knowing it’s earning you money on an ongoing basis!

Tripwires are a great way to earn passive income via a very simple evergreen sales funnel.

Once you have created the product, set up your thank you page with your tripwire offer, all you need to do is drive traffic to your lead magnet.

If you are promoting it on SEO optimised blog posts then chances are that driving the traffic there will also be passive.

Traffic from paid ads on social media is fairly passive too though you will need to monitor and tweak your ads occasionally.

2. You don’t have to sound like a broken record promoting your products to your newsletter

What usually happens when you launch your first digital product is that you get a little flurry of sales during your launch but crickets after that.

You start to feel like a broken record mentioning your product in every newsletter or via social media.

And because there’s no incentive to purchase soon, people think ‘I’ll get that later…’

… and then of course they forget.

Putting your sales process on autopilot by showing all new subscribers your tripwire offer at the point of signing up means that you can relax a little with the promotion.

3. One time only offers help to raise product awareness

By showing your tripwire product to every new subscriber, you are increasing your audiences awareness of your offers.

Whilst they might not choose to purchase the product right then, it will remain lodged in their mind and when they are ready to invest in a solution that your product offers, they may remember and return to your site, possibly buying the product at full price.

4. Tripwires help to set audience expectations

If all you ever do is give out free information (free blog posts, free lead magnets, free downloads, free tips,) then your audience will become conditioned to expect only free stuff from you.

But your skills and knowledge are worth paying for.

By showing that you offer both free AND paid products, your audience will start to understand that if they want to go deeper and get more of your brain, they will need to pay you fairly for it.

5. Makes your products more affordable to a section of your audience

If you are selling medium-high ticket products/courses or services, some of your audience may not be able to afford to become customers.

By offering them a too-good-to-miss offer on a fairly low priced product, you are making your products more accessible to more people.

And who knows, that person may tell a friend about your low cost product who then goes on to work with you one-on-one or buy your higher ticket product.

6. Tripwires help to showcase your paid product value

You have an opportunity with your tripwire product to wow your customers.

If your product over delivers, you will have turned a subscriber into a fan. This means they are far more likely to purchase your other (possibly more expensive) products or recommend you to their friends and peers.

Tripwires are a great opportunity to build trust with your audience.

7. It conditions your reader to become a customer

Conditioning refers to a psychological phenomenon where lots of mini actions leads to a higher chance of someone taking a larger action.

So for example, asking someone to follow you on social media or sign up to your email list makes it more likely they will click on your email links and buy a low-cost product from you. And if they buy multiple low cost products, it’s more likely they will later buy a higher cost product.

8. You can use the tripwire funnel funds to offset ad costs

As your business grows, you may want to invest in paid Facebook ads or promoted pins to help reach a new audience and grow your email list faster.

The costs for this can add up quickly but if you have a tripwire that converts well, you may be able to partially or fully offset your ad costs with your tripwire funds therefore essentially getting ads for free or very cheap.

This will allow you to scale your ads budget and grow your email list with your ideal audience very quickly.

9. You may acquire more testimonials and affiliates

By offering your products at a low price to new subscribers, you are likely to make a lot more sales.

Also, because the offer was priced so well, your readers may be far more likely to offer testimonials or ask to become affiliates.

This will help you to get more eyes on your full priced product and help you to improve your sales page conversion rates.

Tripwire tools you will need to get started with your OTO

Creating a tripwire doesn’t have to cost you much money upfront and you can mostly use free tools. Here are the 5 essential tools you will need to create a tripwire funnel.

An email service provider

The goal of a tripwire funnel is to grow and monetise your email list simultaneously and so you’ll need an email service provider.

This will allow you to set up automated sales funnels for your products (or even affiliate offers) as well as send out a regular newsletter.

Having experienced several email service providers (ESPs,) Convertkit has been by far the best and most powerful. For anyone looking to take email marketing seriously, I can’t recommend Convertkit more highly.

There is also a free option with Convertkit (although without the option to create automations) and Mailerlite and Flodesk are other budget-friendly ESP’s (worth including but not my favourites.)

Read more…

• Which email service provider is best for you? Take the quiz.
• Mailerlite vs Convertkit
• Convertkit vs Flodesk

A tool to create your OTO product

Next you need a tool to create your digital product if you don’t already have one.

This will vary depending on your niche and offer but Canva is a great place to strat and will allow you to create professional looking PDF printables, planners and ebooks.

Remember you cannot use free Canva templates if you are selling your product.

However, you can purchase these templates below and use them to create products to sell.

• 50 printable templates
• Ebook template

You can use Canva for free but there are lots of additional features with Canva Pro that you may find useful to create your products.

Read more about upgrading to Canva Pro.

If you want to create Canva templates, you will need the pro version.

Read my full Canva Pro review here.

A page builder to create your mini sales page

You will need to create a thank you/sales page for your tripwire offer.

This is the page that you direct someone to once they subscribe to your email list.

Usually the page starts by informing the reader that their freebie is on it’s way to their inbox but in the meantime they have unlocked a special offer.

You can create this page using a free page builder like Elementor.

There are both free and paid versions of Elementor depending on how fancy you wish to go!

A countdown timer

A tripwire offer is usually time-sensitive so the reader has to make a decision within a set time frame. After that time frame, the offer disappears.

To achieve this you can use a free countdown timer plugin which creates a shortcode that you can insert into your thank you/sales page.

For a free option I recommend Hurry Timer

If you don’t want to use a plugin, there is also a countdown option with the pro version of Elementor.

For those looking to get all fancy with your funnels, I recommend

Deadline Funnel – works well for evergreen sales funnels if you are planning to use these as well.

Convertbox – my all time favourite marketing tool that also works well for growing your email list and presenting offers on your website. Learn more about the ways I use Convertbox here.

A way to take money for your tripwire and deliver it to your customer

Finally, you will need a way to take money for your product and to deliver it to your new customer.

If your product is a ebook, planner or printable, you might want to consider these options

• Payhip (free version but with hefty transaction fees.)
• Sendowl (low cost & suitable for those with a few small digital downloadable products only.)
• Convertkit (yes it’s an ESP but you can also sell products on a transaction fee model.)

If your product is a course or membership or if you plan to have multiple products that you want to cross promote/have affiliates for then consider

• Podia (primarily a course platform but well priced if you wan’t a monthly subscription option)
• Thrivecart (an all singing all dancing cart platform AND course/product platform. One time only fee. Make sure you check out my Thrivecart bonus first!)

Where to learn more about creating successful tripwire offers

Come join us on April 6th for a workshop called ‘Tripwire in a day’ designed to remove the overwhelm and teach you a tried-and-tested process to create tripwires quickly and get results.

Inside I will be teaching

• How tripwires work
• The difference between tripwires and bumps/upsells/downsells
• What products to choose
• How to price your tripwire
• How to create a tripwire offer page that converts
• How the tech works e.g. making the page secret, adding a countdown timer, redirecting pages etc
• How to take payment and set up product delivery
• Tripwire mistakes to avoid
• How to stay organised with your tripwires
• How to get more visibility for your lead magnets and therefore tripwire offers too!

Click below for more details…