What Is A Tripwire & Do I Need One?
Are you leaving money on the table if you don’t have a tripwire?
Dear Josephine,
I keep hearing about 'tripwires'. Particularly as a way to drive passive income in an 'easy-ish' way. (Is that right?)
At the same time, the term 'tripwire' doesn't sit that well with me!
What actually is a tripwire, and should I have one if I want to bring in some passive income?
Dear what-actually-is-a-tripwire,
Goooood question. I completely understand why the term 'tripwire' isn't filling you with joy. 👀
It sounds ick, it sounds manipulative.
It sounds like it's literally there to trip people up...
... 🙅 not what you'd associate with your soulful, authentic, aligned business is it?
Let's change the name!
In the last round of my Freedom Friendly Marketing course one of the students cleverly came up with an alternative name - a taster offer.
Sound better doesn't it?
Because there's really what it's there to do, among other things. Not trip people up.
Let me explain...
This post was first shared with my email community. Subscribe below to
💌 ASK JOSEPHINE 💌
My agony-aunt style wisdom & guidance on growing a sustainable, flourishing business - delivered to your inbox every Monday.
What is a 'tripwire'?
A tripwire is a low cost, digital product that acts as a 'no brainer' introductory, or 'taster' offer, available ONLY to your new subscribers.
A tripwire is always a 100% passive product ~ ie. YOU don't need to show up or do any extra work to deliver this product.
Hence why a tripwire can be a great way to drive passive income without a huge input.
How does it work?
Your tripwire offer is only available to new subscribers, as it sits on the Thank You page that new subscribers land on once they've submitted their details to join your mailing list.
It's an exclusive offer that isn't available anywhere else on your website.
Either the product is only available on the tripwire page...
... OR the discount applied to the product is only available on the tripwire page ~ to create a sense of exclusivity and urgency.
Here's the process:
Someone goes to your mailing list opt-in form
They add their name and email
They hit subscribe
And the page they're on then immediately gets redirected to the thank you page - that's the ONLY place this offer is available (giving it a sense of exclusivity and urgency).
To create a tripwire you just need 3 things:
A tripwire offer (I'll get into that in a sec)
A tripwire sales page (the thank you page)
A lead page (page where people sign up to your mailing list or lead magnet) - that redirects to your tripwire page.
Should you have a tripwire?
TBH I don't really see ANY negatives to having a tripwire.
As we've already covered, your tripwire (if done well) does the job of...
Introducing people to the type of quality they can expect from buying from you or working with you.
Giving them an opportunity to get to know your brand better as a low-risk, low-cost price.
And therefore, as a result of the above - strengthens that know-like-trust factor with your tripwire buyers. Making them more likely to go on and buy something else with you or work with you.
And on your side, there are some additional benefits to having a tripwire:
1 | Passive income
A good tripwire sales page should convert at around 8-10%. That means for every 100 new subscribers to your mailing list you can expect to drive 8-10 tripwire sales.
Let's say your tripwire offer is the classic £27. That = £270 in passive income.
Yes it's not going to be your rags to riches story...
...but if people are joining your mailing list anyway, but you don't have a tripwire offer... you've leaving money on the table.
2 | A mailing list of BUYERS
Your tripwire also helps to get BUYERS on to your mailing list - who are more likely to buy again.
3 | Easeful income
Unlike creating an online course from scratch, a tripwire is relatively easy to create.
A lot of my clients already have a suitable offer they could be selling as a tripwire - in this case it's super quick and easy to get up and running.
What makes a good tripwire product?
A good tripwire will:
Cost no more than £45 (it needs to be a 'no-brainer')
Be exclusive. It's only for sale, OR the discount is only available on the tripwire page.
100% passive - requires no input from you to deliver it
Deliver a transformation or result for buyers within 90-minutes. OR even better - save them time.
Think of your tripwire offer as just a bit more valuable than your lead magnet. You might even have some old lead magnets you could sell as a tripwire.
The types of things that work well are:
Recorded trainings
Templates & dashboards
Audio files/ trainings
SHORT ebooks, workbooks or guides.
AVOID the temptation to over-give.
I know you're generous, but you don't want to give so much away in your tripwire that your buyers get overwhelmed and never finish or implement it. 🤦
Over-giving just means your buyers aren't going to reach that repeat-buyer stage where they think ~ 'that was great, what's NEXT?'.
What makes a good tripwire sales page?
At the top of the page ~ confirm your subscriber has joined your mailing list - so they know they're in the right place.
Then you want some kind of attention grabbing call out - wait, before you go... do you need XYZ, struggling with XYZ, wouldn't an extras XYZ help you XYZ.
Then, unlike a normal sales page you want to sell your offer immediately.You'll need:
An attention grabbing name
A tagline that immediately explains how your offer is going to help your new subscriber
3 bullet points with the key benefits or features
Image of your offer or headshot or you
The price point
Buy now button
The remainder of the page continues as a 'normal' sales page would.
Oh, one last thing
In the UK (and I think EU but do your own checks) if you sell a totally passive offer you may need to consider ASBOF - a kind of VAT that's required to pay on any passive digital product regardless of whether you're VAT registered or not.
Yup, I know. Total pain in the arse.
Feels like an annoying way to penalise digital content and product creators 😡 but speak to your accountant about this one.
So what are you thinking? Are you leaving money on the table by NOT having a tripwire running?
Josephine 🤎
Wanna tuck this in your pocket for later? Pin it to Pinterest:
