# Playbook — Tripwire / Self-Liquidating Offer (SLO)

**Derives from:** Perry Belcher & Ryan Deiss (popularized the term and mechanics); Russell Brunson (codified into ClickFunnels vocabulary). See MANUAL §4.3.

## Thesis

A sub-$50 impulse buy converts a lead into a **buyer** — the point is the identity shift (Freedman & Fraser consistency, MANUAL §2.12), not the revenue. Priced to break even (or better) against ad spend, so acquisition self-funds; the actual profit is captured on the back end via ascension. The zero/near-zero price pull is Ariely's power-of-FREE effect (MANUAL §2.8) doing the work at the top.

## When to use it

- You run **paid traffic** and need acquisition that doesn't bleed cash while you build the list.
- You have a genuine back end to ascend buyers into (core offer, premium, continuity) — the tripwire's entire economic logic depends on this existing.
- The audience is cold-to-cool (Problem-Aware or colder) and a full-price offer would be too big an ask on first contact.

## When NOT to use it

- There's no back end. If the tripwire is the only thing you sell, you're just selling a cheap product at a loss with extra steps — MANUAL §4.3's named failure mode.
- The tripwire attracts bargain-hunters who never intend to buy anything else — check this against actual ascension data before scaling spend on it (a "buyer" who never buys again isn't the identity-shift Freedman & Fraser describes, it's a one-off).
- Your core offer is already sub-$50 — there's no room below it for a tripwire; go straight to the front-end offer.

## Step-by-step build

1. **Confirm the back end exists first.** Name the specific core/premium offer this tripwire buyer will be ascended into, and its price, before writing a word of tripwire copy.
2. **Price the tripwire to approximate break-even** against known or estimated CAC — this is the SLO math: `tripwire revenue ≈ ad spend to acquire the lead`.
3. **Design the offer as a complete, standalone win** at the tripwire price — not a teaser or a stripped-down core offer. It needs to deliver a real result so the buyer trusts the next ask.
4. **Stage Map:** ad/organic → tripwire sales page (ONE job: buy now) → order bump (Abraham AOV lever, §2.5) → OTO upsell page (ONE job: accept/decline) → thank-you/onboarding (installs the first habit-loop touch, see `flywheel`).
5. **Conversion Math**: click→page view, page view→tripwire purchase, purchase→order-bump attach rate, purchase→OTO attach rate — every number tagged.
6. **Instrumentation**: `tripwire_viewed`, `tripwire_purchased`, `bump_attached`, `oto_accepted`, `oto_declined`.
7. **Failure Exits**: cart-abandon on the tripwire page → retarget/abandon-cart email within 24h (Zeigarnik open loop, §2.11: "you were this close"); OTO decline → still receive onboarding into the standard ascension track, not dropped.
8. **Economic guardrail check (MANUAL §7.2):** confirm front-end revenue (tripwire + bump + OTO) is projected at or above ad spend before scaling traffic.

## Worked mini-example

- **Product:** $27 "ZIION Readiness Starter Guide" (PDF + 15-min video walkthrough).
- **Back end confirmed:** ascends into the $497 Core Passport unlock (see `value-ladder`).
- **Order bump:** +$17 "Readiness Scorecard Template" at 30% `[guess]` attach rate.
- **OTO:** $97 "1:1 Readiness Review call" at 8% `[guess]` attach rate.
- **Economics:** target CPA on cold traffic ~$15 `[benchmark, paid social lead-gen norms]`; tripwire+bump+OTO blended revenue per buyer ~$34 `[guess]` — comfortably self-liquidating if the $15 CPA holds.
- **Ascension:** every tripwire buyer enters a 5-email sequence (open-loop chained) toward the Core Passport offer within 14 days.

## How the verify gate applies

`funnel-blueprint` linter (MANUAL §8.1): the Offer Stack section must explicitly name the back-end rung this tripwire funds — a tripwire blueprint with no named ascension target fails the "no back end" check from §4.3 before the linter even reaches the numbers. Every conversion number (click, purchase, bump, OTO) needs its source tag; hype language like "guaranteed results" on the sales page copy brief is a banned-word hit under §8.6 item 3. The order-bump and OTO are Offer Stack lines, priced and justified individually per Hormozi's value equation (§8.3), not bundled into one vague "upsells" line.