Who doesn’t want to earn a passive income. What many people don’t realize is while this is possible for anyone willing to put in the foundational work, it won’t happen quickly! Having an evergreen tripwire funnel in place can certainly help speed up the process!

The key to financial freedom and great wealth is a person’s ability or skill to convert earned income into passive income…

Robert Kiyosaki

We’d all love to make money while we sleep – and fortunately, through passive income, that is a possibility! There are many different ways to generate passive income, but in this post, I’ll share how you can specifically use tripwire funnels to create passive income. This approach is particularly focused on affiliate marketing and sales funnels. 

First – what is the difference between a lead magnet funnel and a tripwire funnel?

If you’re entering the world of marketing, odds are you’ve heard of a lead magnet. With these kinds of funnels, the marketer typically offers something free in exchange for an email address. For example, I might offer a free report on how more than one hundred online millionaires are making over $80,000 a month in passive income. If someone wishes to see this report, they sign up for my email list and I automatically send it to them. 

In contrast, with a tripwire funnel, you are still collecting email addresses – but you are ALSO seeing who is willing to pull out a credit card. This is a lead with more “buying power”. You still offer a free product – for example, a free book – but the customer pays something. In the case of the book, the customer would pay shipping. Media products are a great offering in this scenario because they don’t cost a significant sum to ship or to produce. With this, the business is still making a profit off of shipping. 

Offer An Upgrade

Another form of funnel involves an “upgrade”. For example, a photography site might offer 50 free prints, with the option to upgrade and with the customer paying shipping. Once you’ve made a purchase, that business adds you to its email list and can begin showing you additional products you might be interested in as well. 

The business may not *always* make a profit in these scenarios – but they’ve encouraged you to purchase from them, and they now have your email address. In the same way, your business can leverage tripwire funnels to encourage your audience to purchase from you, and to bring in additional leads. 

In the same way, your business can leverage tripwire funnels to encourage your audience to purchase from you, and to bring in additional leads. 

What is your business? What can you give away? Can you provide a flash drive with training on it and have your customer pay shipping? Be willing to think outside the box. 

When to use a Tripwire Funnel

For example, one company provides a credit card reader free of charge – but to use it, the customer has to pay a membership for the associated program. Here the business is piquing its audience’s interest with a free offer, but requiring them to “prove” their interest by paying for something.

Another company might offer a $1 trial to a membership group or coaching session, with the option to stay for a monthly payment. This gives the audience a chance to test out different features and decide what they think. They are already somewhat invested in the idea since they were willing to pay for the trial. 

If you’re interested in testing this out, you can access a free funnel here (for example a lead magnet funnel) and personalize them however you’d like. My example is for a free book, but you can customize your tripwire funnel by hovering over the “Send Me the Free Book!” button and clicking on the Settings gear. This will allow you to put in your own personal links to your own site and product. 

In conclusion, be willing to think creatively about your tripwire funnel. Eventually you can develop your funnel into something more complicated. As an example, moving those leads into a follow-up sales funnel – but for now, try out the free funnels and just explore! Practice and test out your different ideas and see what works. You might just surprise yourself…

There are several free funnel templates here…check them out!

Mack Anderson does a great job of giving you 10 more examples of awesome Tripwire Funnels.

You’ve got this!