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How to Set-up a Tripwire For Your Online Business

In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through the steps so that you can set-up your own tripwire for your business. 

First of all, I want to tell you a little bit about how I got started with my first tripwire. Feel free to scroll down to the how-to below.

When I first launched Fleurir Online (previously Fleurir Creative), I thought the only way I could serve my audience and make money was via 1:1 work.

However, there comes a time in business when we find ourselves at or near capacity. Whilst this is a great position to be in, I wanted to help more people to build their brands online. 

I knew that I couldn’t carry on only trading time for money and that in order to grow my business and impact a wider range of people, I needed to implement some streams of income that didn’t involve me always needing to be available. 

The first way I started making money other than my 1:1 services was via a tripwire. Whilst I’m not a fan of the name, a tripwire means that you are tripping people over the wire from being a follower to a customer. 

Now a tripwire isn’t necessarily designed to make you big money but it’s a great way to get started with making passive income.

If you want to see the tripwire journey in action, you can sign-up to my How to Build a Flourishing Online Brand Roadmap below.

Free Guide - How to Build Your Brand Roadmap | Fleurir Online

My first foray into tripwires

I’d created a workbook that was going to be my free opt-in and I was working with a business coach at the time. I sent it to her to look over and she quickly told me that there was far too much information in it to be a freebie and suggested I add it as a tripwire. 

I’d heard of a tripwire before then but never really considered it for my business. Once I’d looked into it, I realised it was definitely something I wanted to add to my email funnel.

I quickly got to work setting it all up and soon started making money whilst I slept quite literally. Not only was I making money, I was helping more people to build their brands and also creating a quicker connection with those who had signed up for my opt-in.

The idea for a tripwire is to have your audience make a small investment in something that you offer. This is the quickest way to gain trust with your audience and it’s far easier to sell to people who have previously purchased from you. You can also use the money that you make to pay for Facebook advertising meaning that depending on your budget and how many tripwires you sell, this income could cover it. 

Follow these steps below and get started with creating your own tripwire!

Step One – Create a freebie for your ideal clients to download

Hopefully, you will already have an opt-in available on your website but if you don’t, this is the first step to setting up your tripwire. 

Once someone has signed up to your freebie, they will then land on your thank you page which is where you are going to place your tripwire offer. 

Step Two – Decide on and create your product

This could be a workbook, discounted trial to your membership, the first module of a course you have created – the possibilities are endless. 

If you have products already, then you may want to take the biggest selling product and create a miniature version of it to sell at a reduced price. 

If you already have an audience, then I’d recommend asking them what they would like to see from you and use this market research to create your product. 

Step Three – Decide on how much to sell it for

Tripwires are offered at a reduced rate for a limited time only. This is called scarcity marketing. My putting a time limit on your offer, it prompts people to make a purchase rather than deliberating over it. For example, my tripwire is my Flourishing Brand Workbook. This workbook is available in my online shop for $47 however if you purchase via my tripwire, you get it for $17 for 15 minutes only. 

Step Four – Create the landing pages that you need

You will need three pages for your tripwire set-up – the first being the page where your audience can sign-up for your freebie. You can see an example of mine here

The second page that you need is a page for your tripwire. This acts in place of the thank you page that you have in place after someone signs up to your email list. 

The third is a thank you page that your customers are redirected to after they have purchased your tripwire. 

For those of you reading this who are on the Showit platform or are thinking about moving over to Showit, I have a sales and landing page template bundle available in my shop

Step Five – Add scarcity by using a Countdown Timer

I use the Evergreen Countdown WordPress plugin on my website but there are many countdown timers available. A popular one is Deadline funnel but this comes with a monthly cost so if you are on a budget and are using WordPress for your website or blog then I recommend Evergreen Countdown Timer. 

Step Six – Set-up a system to take payments

When I first added my tripwire to my business, I used a platform called E-Junkie. This cost me $5 a month and meant that I could take payment and have my workbook delivered all automatically.

Now I’ve added an online shop to my business and I am using SendOwl, I’ve moved my tripwire over to SendOwl

If you are just starting out, then I’d recommend E-Junkie or another one I’ve found recently is Payhip. You could also use something like the Easy Digital Downloads plugin if you are on WordPress.

Step Seven – Create your welcome sequences

The final piece of the puzzle is to create a series of emails called a welcome sequence. These emails need to be set-up to be automatically sent after someone signs up to your list. 

Depending on what payment system and email system you use, I’d recommend having a different welcome sequence for the people that purchase your tripwire. I do this by linking SendOwl and ActiveCampaign. When a customer purchases a product from me, they get a tag added to their customer details and these details are inputted in ActiveCampaign which I use for my emails. 

I will do another post on welcome sequences soon but essentially they are a series of emails – usually around 5 but they can be as little as 3 or as many as 7. The first will be the email that delivers your freebie. You then want to use the following emails to warm up your new subscribers and to build trust with them. You can do this by telling them about your story, linking to popular blog posts that they might find useful and providing more valuable tips that follow-on from the opt-in. 

So there you have it, the steps you need to take to set-up your first tripwire for your online business. I hope you found this post useful! I love connecting with my community so please do feel free to send me a DM over on Instagram.

As I said above, tripwires are a great way to quickly convert your audience into customers as well as offset the cost of using paid advertising to grow your email list.

I recommend that all online businesses have a tripwire offer. To get these pages set-up quickly, I would definitely recommend that you check out the sales and landing pages for Showit in my shop. This bundle has all the pages you need to set-up your tripwire and are easily customisable to your brand. 

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How to set-up a tripwire for your online business

*This blog post contains affiliate links but I would not recommend anything that I haven’t used myself.

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