Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. When you buy through my affiliate links I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure here.
What Is a Tripwire Offer?
First things first, you might be wondering what a tripwire offer even is.
A tripwire is a small yet valuable product that you offer to new email subscribers right after they sign up for your list. Instead of being redirected to a thank you page, they are redirected to a sales page for your tripwire.
The purpose of a tripwire is not to make a ton of money, but to go ahead and turn your new subscribers into customers right away. That way, they will be more open to purchasing your higher-priced offers later on.
A tripwire is a low-priced product that is usually super discounted. It’s also usually available for a limited time only (like 15 minutes.)
The low price combined with the sense of urgency make it an irresistible offer because none of us like to miss out on a great deal!
The benefit of a tripwire is that you can make some extra money while growing your email list and converting new subscribers into happy customers right away!
What Kind of Tripwire Should I Offer?
The first thing you need to think about when creating a tripwire product is making it relevant to your opt-in incentive.
An opt-in incentive is a little free thing you give your email subscribers in exchange for signing up for your list. It’s one of the most effective ways to grow your email list, because people love getting things for free.
For example, let’s say you blog about weddings. Your opt-in incentive might be a free wedding planning checklist for brides-to-be.
Your tripwire should be something related to your opt-in, and even more valuable. Going with the same example from above, maybe you could create a printable wedding planning binder with 15+ pages as your tripwire.
Your tripwire doesn’t have to be anything huge, but it does need to be valuable and high-quality so your new subscriber becomes a happy customer.
Some examples of products that make great tripwires are:
- Short ebooks
- Templates
- Printables
- Helpful guides
You can come up with a tripwire offer for any blogging niche. If you blog about healthy living, your tripwire might be an ebook of 10 healthy green smoothie recipes. Or if you’re a travel blogger, your tripwire could be an in-depth travel guide to your favorite destination. The options are endless!
Examples of Tripwires
Suzi from Start a Mom Blog offers her Blog by Number ebook as a tripwire:
Maddie at Lovely Planner has a bundle of hand lettering workbooks:
Sophie from By Sophia Lee offers a discounted planner for college students:
Caroline from Caroline Vencil has a budget binder tripwire for her subscribers:
Try not to overthink your tripwire too much. It should be something that you can create and start selling within a matter of hours. Don’t get hung up on it and dedicate as much time to it as you would creating a larger product!
How Should I Price My Tripwire?
A tripwire should always be priced pretty low and I have never seen one go for more than $20. $7, $9, $11 are all price points that I see often.
If your tripwire product is a product that you normally sell on your blog for a higher price, be sure to mention that on the tripwire page. (Ex. “Grab this ebook for 70% off its regular price in the next 15 minutes!”)
How to Set Up a Tripwire
If you’ve been reading this and thinking that creating a tripwire sounds like a great idea, but have no idea how to set one up, this section is for you!
First of all, let’s take a look at the pages you will need to create:
- Opt-in page where your reader can subscribe to your email list
- Tripwire offer page that your reader is redirected to after subscribing
- Optional: Offer expired page that your reader is redirected to once the timer runs down on the tripwire offer
You can design these pages on your own in WordPress, or you can use templates which is what I did to save time and make everything look more professional! I personally use the Bluchic Landing Page Templates. These can be set up so easily and it comes with templates for an opt-in page, tripwire offer page, and offer expired page. (Plus many other templates you can use!)
Opt-in Page
On your opt-in page, you will want to embed a subscription form so your reader can subscribe to get their opt-in incentive
Once you have created your tripwire offer page too, you will need to go into your email marketing service and set your subscription form to redirect to the tripwire offer page after someone subscribes.
In ConvertKit (the service I use) you just go to the form, then go to settings, then check “Redirect to another page” where it asks “What should happen when a visitor subscribes?” Then you just enter the URL of your tripwire offer page!
If you use a different email marketing service, these steps might be a little different but the concept is still the same.
Note: You can sign up for ConvertKit’s free plan here.
I highly recommend using them for your email marketing service!
I have a full guide on how to start an email list with ConvertKit if you haven’t already done that. (You’ll need to do this before creating a tripwire!)
Tripwire Offer Page
This is the sales page for your tripwire product. You should include some details about your product and a purchase button so your new subscriber can buy it.
Here’s an example of one of my tripwire offer pages.
(Note: After 15 minutes the timer will run down and you won’t be able to access the page again unless you open a new incognito browsing window.)
For your tripwire offer page, you will need a countdown timer that automatically redirects the reader once the offer expires. (I have mine set to 15 minutes.)
Many people use Deadline Funnels for this, which costs $37/month, I use a totally free plugin called Evergreen Countdown Timer instead.
When you set up your timer, you need to select a page for it to redirect to, such as an offer expired page or your blog homepage. Then just grab the timer code snippet and insert it into your tripwire offer page.
The Bluchic Landing Page Templates walks you through all of this, which is another reason I recommend using them.
Offer Expired Page
If you are using Evergreen Countdown Timer, you will need to input a URL for your tripwire page to redirect to once the timer runs down to zero.
At this point, you could redirect to a separate offer expired page on your blog, or just redirect to your blog’s homepage which is what I do.
How to Deliver Your Opt-In and Tripwire Product
If you haven’t created an opt-in incentive or a digital product before, then you might be wondering how you actually get those things to your subscriber!
For your opt-in, you can just upload the file to Dropbox or Google Drive and then send out the download link in a welcome email to your new subscribers.
For your tripwire product, it’s a somewhat different process. You will need an ecommerce platform to sell and deliver your product. I use SendOwl to sell my digital products and I am a HUGE fan of them!
It only costs $9/month to use (but you can get a free month trial first) so you only need to sell one or two tripwire products a month to cover your costs.
In SendOwl, you simply upload your product, put in a price, and then they generate a link that leads to a check-out page.
Then just paste that link into a purchase button on your tripwire offer page and you’re good to go! (Another reason I love the Bluchic Landing Page Templates is because their tripwire offer page template already has all of this in place.)
Revenue from a Tripwire Offer
As I said at the beginning of this blog post, the purpose of a tripwire product is not to make a ton of money. The goal is to turn new email subscribers into customers right away, so that they will be eager to buy from you again later on when you pitch higher-priced offers to them.
That being said, you can earn a nice amount from tripwire products! I regularly earn a few hundred a month from my tripwires which is an added bonus on top of my regular product income and affiliate income.
If you want to run paid ads to your opt-in page, the earnings from your tripwire can also cover advertising costs. A lot of people do this and they essentially grow their list for free because while they are paying for ads to get new subscribers, they are earning enough from tripwire sales to break even or profit.
How to Make Money with a Tripwire Offer
I hope that you enjoyed this guide to setting up a tripwire offer and are ready to get started with your own. If you found this post helpful, please share it!