In this solo episode of the Doing It Online podcast, host Kate McGiven warns course creators and online entrepreneurs that building a business around low‑ticket offers can stall revenue growth and waste years of effort. She explains why low‑ticket products surge in popularity during economic downturns, but argues they are as labor‑intensive as high‑ticket offers while delivering far lower profit margins. Kate then outlines the four specific situations where a low‑ticket offer can be strategically useful: (1) as a training‑wheel for brand‑new entrepreneurs to test market fit and develop selling skills; (2) to fund rapid list growth when paired with a well‑designed backend funnel (her “million‑dollar micro‑funnel system”); (3) when the creator has a massive, engaged audience or ultra‑cheap ad costs; and (4) as a confidence‑boosting “quick win” when a business is struggling. She details the two viable roles low‑ticket offers can play – an entry point that feeds a backend offer, or a trust‑builder that primes buyers for higher‑ticket programs – and stresses that without a solid backend funnel, creators end up with a bloated, non‑spending email list. Kate critiques the common “low‑ticket‑only” model, exposing its flawed economics: typical ad spend ($50/day) yields a $27 sale at $30‑$100 CPA, resulting in minimal list growth and high ongoing costs. She contrasts this with her micro‑funnel approach, which can add 50+ qualified leads per day for the same spend. A brief case study of Maria Went illustrates how market conditions (cheaper ads in 2020‑21) and a dedicated full‑time ads specialist enabled her $600k/month low‑ticket empire, a model that is hard to replicate today. Finally, Kate urges listeners to treat low‑ticket offers as a component of a larger system, to implement a backend funnel, and to consider purchasing her micro‑funnel system for a step‑by‑step framework. She closes with a call to action to DM her on Instagram and share the episode.
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If you're thinking a low ticket offer is going to solve your revenue problems, I need to tell you something. You're about to waste the next six to 18 months of your life. I know that sounds harsh, but I've watched hundreds of course creators get seduced by the promise of easy sales and simple funnels, only to end up with a list full of freebie seekers, razor thin profit margins and zero momentum. Today, I'm breaking down exactly when a low ticket offer actually works and when they absolutely don't, and why trying to build a business around them is one of the fastest ways to stay stuck at inconsistent revenue. Let's dive in. Alrighty, guys. Welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. I'm Kate McGiven, your host and today we're talking about low ticket offers. Now, before you think I'm about to trash them entirely, I'm not. Low ticket offers have their place. But here's the problem. Most people are using them in completely the wrong way, at completely the wrong time and for completely the wrong reasons. And it's costing them years of growth. So let's talk about why low ticket offers are so popular right now. Look, every time the economy shifts, which it's doing a bit at the moment, every time people start tightening their wallets, freezing their spending, second guessing their investments, low ticket offers come roaring back into trend in the online space. And it makes sense, right? When people aren't buying or aren't buying as much, then selling something cheap just feels easier than selling nothing at all. It's a band aid, it's a quick fix. It's a way to keep revenue trickling in when everything else feels frozen. But here's what most people don't realize. Low ticket offers are just as much work as high ticket offers and they are absolutely way less profitable. So if you're thinking I'll just create a $27 course, run some ads and watch the sales roll in, I need you to pump the brakes because that's not how this works. And if you'd already fallen into the low ticket trap and you're looking at your numbers and wondering why everything's been going, then inside this episode, we're going to help you to unwind and show you how to really use low ticket offers to actually grow your business. Okay, so when do low ticket offers make sense? There are exactly four scenarios where I actually recommend them. And if you don't fall exactly into one of these categories, you may need to reconsider your strategy. So number one, you are brand new to business and you need to do your reps. So if you are just getting started, if you're still figuring out your messaging, your audience, what actually converts, if you don't have the skills yet to sell something at a higher price point, and that's totally fine, we all start there then. A low ticket offer lets you test the market, lets you get some wins, build your confidence and learn how to actually sell something. It's training wheels. And training wheels are useful until it's time to take them off. All right, number two, you're using it to fund your list growth. Now, if you've got one or two low ticket offers that are converting really well and you're running ads to them, they can help you to grow your email list fast while covering your ads costs. But and this is critical, you need the right funnel behind it. Something like our million dollar microfunnel system. If this is you and you want to make sure you're setting it up the right way, grab the link in the show notes. It walks you through everything. It's even got a template. Because here's what happens if you don't have a backend offer. All you're doing is building a list of people who bought your $27 course and may never buy again. Which means every month you're just adding to your expenses. You're actually paying kit or mail chip or activecampaign to host this giant bloated list of people who aren't spending any more money with you. Congratulations. You've just turned your business into an expensive hobby with an ever growing monthly bill. All right, number three, you have a massive audience or you know how to run dirt cheap ads. So if you've got a huge audience you can tap into, I'm talking like 50,000 or more engaged followers either on your email list or on socials. Or maybe your niche has incredibly cheap ads cost, then yes, the math can work okay, but let's be real, most people don't and that's okay. But it just means that the low ticket model isn't going to work the way that you think it will. And number four, your confidence is taking a hit and you really just need a win. Okay, Sometimes you just need to feel like you can still sell something, right? Maybe your launch flopped or your high ticket offer isn't converting, you're starting to spiral. In that case, go create a no brainer $7 offer and sell like 20 of them. Get that dopamine hit. Remind yourself that you can still make sales. Yes, those 20 sales are not Going to really affect your bank balance. But. But they will remind you that you can still make sales. They will help you to build your confidence. But don't confuse that with the business model. So these are the four times that I think low ticket offers actually make sense. If you're not in one of those categories, keep listening because I'm about to tell you why this strategy is probably sabotaging your growth and how you should really be doing it. All right, here's where most people get into trouble. They create a low ticket offer because they think it's going to be easier. Less work, less selling. Just set it up, run some ads and watch the money roll in. But that's not what happens. What actually happens is this. Unless you have a massive audience like we spoke about, your low ticket offer is going to play one of two roles in your business. Role number one, it's going to be an entry point to your offers. So you're going to use it to grow your list. As I said, you need to do that right. You need to have the right setup for that. And once people are on your list, you then are going to sell them something else. Or role number two, it's a trust builder. It's a gateway into your bigger offers. So people buy your $97 course, they love it, and then they're primed to invest in your $2,000 program, which you can usually do and sell much easier once they've had that initial bit of trust, that initial gateway. But in both cases, you need a backend. And this is where most people get stuck. They think you can just keep creating more low ticket offers. They think, okay, this one works, so I'll just make another one and another one and another one. And they waste years, literal years, trying to find a second low ticket offer that converts as well as the first. Meanwhile, because their attention is constantly being diverted, the things that do work drop off and they're kind of stuck in this spiral of always being stuck in beginner mode, trying to recreate the magic of that first offer. So here's the math that nobody talks about. If you're lucky, maybe 20% of your low ticket buyers will buy another low ticket offer from you. That's an extra. 20% of people spending an extra what, $27, $97. That's not moving the needle. But if that 20% of those buyers invested in a $2,000 program or a $5,000 program, now we're talking. Now you have a business model that's the difference between spinning your wheels and Actually scaling. Okay, next thing I need to talk about is the pastel pink elephant in the room. Okay, so a lot of people right now are trying to replicate Maria Went's business model. And look, Maria's incredible, right? I have so much respect for her. She's built a $600,000 a month plus business selling mostly low ticket offers. That's pretty incredible. But here's what people don't realize when they're trying to copy her model. Maria started when ads were cheaper and simpler and the market was less skeptical and less crowded. The landscape was completely different when she got her first reps in, when she started to scale, when she kind of busted through those first initial plateaus. So she got to scale during the 2020-2021 market, when the market was on fire. And here's the other thing, the thing that she did which was really smart, which made a huge difference and which most people don't do at that point. When she was see, when she could see the potential, she was wanting to grow, but things probably weren't going as fast as she wanted. You know what she did? She hired a full time Facebook ads person. And not just anyone, her sister. Someone who was deeply invested in making those ads work. Someone who really, really, really cared. Right? Most of us, most people listening here, you don't have that right. Who wouldn't want to have someone just as invested as them in their business, 100% dedicated to making their ads work? Maybe you're outsourcing to an ads agency that's managing 20 other clients, or maybe you're trying to DIY it while also running your entire business. Best case scenario, you're getting a couple of hours a week on your ads, not someone full time. And that is the difference. Because the truth about the low ticket ads only model is that it requires constant optimization, constant content creation. And you need someone who is in there every single day, tweaking, testing, optimizing, someone who cares as much about your business as you do. If you don't have that, then you're just never going to get the same kind of growth. Now if you don't have that and most people don't, that is when the model falls apart. Yes, you may get some initial runs on the board, but it's not sustainable and it's really hard to grow. All right, next up, let's talk numbers for a second. Okay, so if you're running ads right now, if this is, if you're following that, that kind of model where you're running ads straight to a sales page for a low ticket offer. Maybe like 5% of people who click through are going to buy if you've, you know, if you've done a good job. That means 95% of the people who saw your ad who clicked through, who showed interest and didn't buy, now you've got no way of contacting them. The only way to keep talking to them is to keep spending more money on more ads that retarget them. Right? So you're constantly spending more and more money just to stay in front of people. Now that's one reason why I don't like this model. The next is one that I think a lot of people don't realize. So let's now say again, you're starting to run ads to your low ticket offer. And let's say that your initial budget is $50 a day, okay? Which is, you know, pretty standard for most people kind of getting started. Now here's what a lot of people don't realize. Unless of course, you fall into one of those unicorn niches that have crazy cheap leads. The average cost to make a like $27 sale when you're adding runs directly to to a low ticket offer is between 30 to $100. So from your $50 a day ad spend, you're getting maybe one new lead a day. One new lead every two days. That's 15 to 30 new people on your email list per month total. And if you're sending a bunch of emails to that tiny list, then you're probably getting more unsubscribes than new signups. So your list isn't even growing, it's stagnant. Or worse, it's going backwards. So compare that to the way that we teach low ticket funnels inside our million dollar microfunnel system. With the same ad spend, you can add 50 plus per day to your list. And that's 50 plus quality people to your list. By the way, you're still going to make those same initial sales quite often, actually, you'll make even more of them. But now you've got all these extra people flowing into your other offers. You're building velocity, you're building momentum, you're actually growing. And that's the difference. That's the key tweak in the low ticket office strategy that's going to make it work for more people, not just unicorns. Look, I'm not saying that low ticket offers are evil. What I'm saying is they need to play a specific role in your business. If you're going to create One, make sure you set up the funnel around it so that it's going to work for you, for your business, not just for the unicorns. And then make sure you have a plan for what happens after someone buys. Are they going into an email sequence that sells them into your signature program? Are they getting invited to a challenge or a webinar? Are they being nurtured towards your higher ticket offer? If the answer is I don't know, then you don't have a funnel. You have a one off sale and one off sales don't build a business. So here's what I want you to take away from today's episode. Low ticket offers aren't the problem. The problem is trying to build your entire business around them without a backend, without a plan for what happens next. If you're going to create a low ticket offer, make sure it's playing the right role. Make sure it's feeding you something bigger. Make sure you're building a funnel, not just a one off sale. And if you want the exact framework for how to set up a low ticket offer the right way, one that grows your list, covers your ads, costs and funnels 10 times more people into your bigger offers. Grab the million dollar microfunnel system below. Right now you can save a hundred dollars off. Grab the link in the show notes below and let's get your funnel working the way it's supposed to be. Because the course creators who are going to win in the next 12 months, they're not the ones chasing more low ticket offers. They're the ones building foundations and systems that actually scale with profit. All right, that's it for today guys. If this one's hit home, send me a DM on Instagram hellofunnels or share it with someone that you know. I love hearing from you and it means when you help us to get the word out there. And remember, low ticket offers aren't the problem. Trying to build your entire business around them based on a 2020 model is. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.
