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On today’s episode of the Rebel Boss Ladies Podcast, we’re talking about Tripwires. And how these products that are usually pretty easy to make, quick to set up, and require almost no maintenance can make you effortless income.
This episode came about after I posted on my Instagram and asked if anyone was making money from tripwire products. Today’s guest replied that she was making a significant income, and here we are.
Elle Drouin is a total powerhouse who was able to make $31,000 in 2019 just by setting up a small tripwire product. She’s going to spill the beans all about her product, strategy, and share with you about her tripwire success.
Elle is a product stylist, photographer and crazy dog mom (seriously, her dog is Instagram famous and has over 100k followers). She’s the founder of the Styled Stock Society, a stylish stock photography membership for women entrepreneurs. Elle is also the host of the Revenue on Repeat Summit.
Not only that, Elle works with other women to create, launch and grow subscription businesses so they can spend less time working and more time living. That sounds pretty awesome to me.
Elle’s Business Background
Elle officially started her business four years ago after making an Instagram account for her dog.
“She had around 30000 followers when I started my business. The first thing I did was teach a course on Instagram for people who have dogs.”
After working with people to help them get their Instagram accounts started, Elle realized that people would go through lessons and understand the strategy, but they weren’t actually implementing it because they didn’t have photos or money for a professional photographer.
She says, “I pitched them this idea of having a stock photography subscription where I would just take photos for them every single month for a monthly fee. I had about 150 people sign up in the beginning so that was like June 2016. And it's kind of grown from there.”
How Elle Got Started with Her Tripwire Product
When Elle first learned what a tripwire was, she realized that she had seen them all over the place and had even bought some before.
But even though she knew what they were, and knew first-hand how successful they could be when selling to people, it took her a couple years to actually implement one in her own business.
Her tripwire is a set of 365 Instagram caption prompts, which flows perfectly from her freebie, which is a set of free stock photos. Initially she was offering another set of stock photos as a tripwire, but she realized that it made less sense to offer that because people didn’t know how to use them.
The captions, on the other hand, were a natural next step in the progression of her funnel.
“I thought that a way to better use those photos would be giving people ideas for how to use them on Instagram. So it's like caption ideas that you could use with the freebies, but also like any other photos you're using for your business.”
Her tripwire product is priced at $17, which is a little higher than the usual tripwire price of $9 or $12. But the higher price is working really well for her.
She says, “We get an average of 5 tripwire sales a day. So like 450-ish in a quarter is kind of what we’re looking at.”
I’ll crunch those numbers for you: if Elle is selling 5 tripwire products a day, that’s about $85 per day just with the tripwire. That’s about $7,650 a quarter, which are pretty amazing results.
The best part is Elle didn’t even need to put in a lot of work to make the product, so it’s mostly pure profit. She originally created the captions as a bonus for her membership site, which took her a few hours to create. But when she decided to turn that already-made product her tripwire, it maybe only took 20 minutes for her to set it up.
Elle says that the success of her tripwire completely blew her mind – she had no idea that it would end up doing so well.
She wasn’t paying for traffic to it up until the end of 2019. For the first 10 months of the year, it was all organic traffic that she was able to monetize. She says “this is the easiest money. Everyone should do this.”
Conversion Rates: Elle’s Tripwire Conversion Numbers Versus Industry standard
Industry standard conversion rates for typical products are usually between 1 to 7 percent. For tripwires, which are a lower price, usually the rate is a bit higher.
Elle ran her numbers for the last 90 days and her numbers are pretty impressive. During those 90 days, she had 92,000 visitors to her free stock photo landing page. Of those, 2,500 opted in to her email list, and 450 actually purchased the tripwire. That’s about a 17% conversion rate.
She also had another 689 opt-ins from an exit intent pop-up that goes to the same tripwire. From that pop-up, she had about a 13% conversion rate.
Elle’s super happy with these numbers. “Until the last month or so, I really looked at it as more as just like extra free money. People were coming to my website, downloading my freebies anyway. This is just like a little extra income stream.”
Around the end of 2019, Elle’s mindset towards her tripwire started to shift. Since her sales have been pretty consistent quarter to quarter, she’s decided to think more about the income from her tripwire offsetting ad spend.
“I’m a lot more comfortable with investing in paid traffic because I know that I can offset that expense, which requires sales.”
Technology for Tripwire Setup
What makes Elle’s tripwire have such a high conversion rate? Aside from the natural funnel flow and quality of the product she’s offering, she’s also got a great landing page.
Elle uses the landing page template from Bluechic, which was designed by a professional designer. She’s also customized it with a mockup, prompt examples, and more.
Elle uses the 20-minute countdown timer that is built into Elementor, a benefit of having a sophisticated WordPress theme. But there are lots of options out there and available, like Deadline Funnel or Evergreen Countdown timer.
Elle’s Future Tripwire Plans to Sell More Digital Products
Elle says that she has big plans for the future of her tripwire. She’s updating it now in the beginning of 2020, and will also try to find other places where it may make sense to add a tripwire.
Right now, Elle says that she has the one main funnel leading to her membership, which is working really well. But she wants to make it better, refine it, and make small adjustments to see if she can squeeze in a few more conversion percentage points.
Elle’s Advice for Digital Product Sellers that Are Considering Setting Up Their First Tripwire
Elle has one big piece of advice for anyone considering setting up a tripwire: “just do it, and what are you waiting for?”
It’s really easy to set up a tripwire product using something that you’ve already created, even if you’re not currently selling it. If you used to offer a product previously that you don’t anymore, or have a bonus or training that you created for a one-off event.
“There’s so many things that we create for our businesses and don’t even think about, like the value they have, once we’ve kind of moved onto something else. So I really feel like it’s so easy to just take something that you’ve already created and set it up in less than an hour.”
//LINKS IN THE SHOW//
Find Elle online on her website and her membership site, Styled Stock Society
Check out Elle’s Freebie, a bundle of 20 feminine stock photos for your business and social media
Follow Elle on Instagram
Want to learn more about tripwires? Listen to Rebel Boss Ladies Podcast 045, where we talk to Elizabeth Falcigno of the Clean Eating Couple all about setting up a successful tripwire product.