Email Valhalla Archives - Alex Van Dromme

Said is dead

February 17, 2025February 16, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

If you’ve ever dabbled in writing, especially in fiction, you might have heard someone say “Said is dead” before.

Now, in case you haven’t, all you have to know is that it refers to dialogue attribution. Think of something like the following:

===

“What time is the store closing?” said Bob.
“Normally around 8 pm,” said the bartender, pouring Bob’s seventh whiskey of the evening, “although, sometimes they stay open past 10 pm for special occasions.”
“That’s just perfect,” said Bob. “knowing my luck there’ll be some random special occasion just today, for no apparent reason whatsoever, forcing me to remain here in this god-forsaken town of a dump and wait until the store’s all empty.”
“But, you know,” Bob said, “if it wasn’t for you here, I might have had to wait all that time entirely sober. So I’m sure glad you’re still here, buddy.”
“Thanks.” said the bartender.

===

You may (or may not) have noticed all the abundance of “said” used in the above text. Truth is, that’s how writing has almost always been done. And it worked.

In fact, most people don’t even notice the amount of times “said” is being written. So nothing to worry about, right?

Except, because people can’t stand doing the same thing over and over again, especially from a writing perspective where it becomes painstakingly obvious, they have to reinvent the wheel and switch it up all the time.

That might lead to something like this:

===

“What time is the store closing?” Bob cried out.
“Normally around 8 pm,” groaned the bartender, pouring Bob’s seventh whiskey of the evening, “although, sometimes they stay open past 11 pm for special occasions.”
“That’s just perfect,” bellowed Bob. “knowing my luck there’ll be some random special occasion just today, for no apparent reason whatsoever, forcing me to remain here in this god-forsaken town of a dump and wait until the store’s all empty.”
“But, you know,” Bob smirked drunkenly, “if it wasn’t for you here, I might have had to wait all that time entirely sober. So I’m sure glad you’re still here, buddy.”
“Thanks.” groaned the bartender again.

===

Hopefully you realize how terrible this is.

Yet, I can guarantee you, this happens… A LOT. Especially with new self-published authors who think they’re the second coming of Shakespeare.

How many times have you heard someone “smirk drunkenly”?

Now, that’s not to say the first text with all the saids scattered in it couldn’t be improved (it can). But by using attribution such as “he replied”, “he added”, “he asked”, “he explained”.

But anyway, enough about that—you probably didn’t sign up to this list to get lectured about dialogue attribution.

The point I’m trying to make is that people will gladly choose an objectively worse option over a better and long-established one, simply because they crave something new.

And so it goes when people decide to put all their trust in social media and say some absurd lines such as, “email is dead”.

It’s not.

It never was. And it likely never will be.

So until then, I highly suggest you practice and hone your email writing skills for the entire medium is a longstanding and objectively better, safer, and even more forgiving, option.

And on that note, check out Email Valhalla right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/

I lost 4 hours of my life going with the flow

February 17, 2025February 13, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

Yesterday, I found myself designing some graphics for one of the new projects I’m working on.

My process is simple.

I first look online for some inspiration. This could be designs I’ve made in the past, designs used by (indirect) competitors, or general art I remember from somewhere or came across while browsing online for a particular style or imagery.

Then, once I have a vague idea of what I want to do, I fire up my graphic design software of choice, most of the time that’s good old trusty Photoshop, although sometimes I’ll use another for a particular purpose, and I slap together a bunch of stuff, trust in the creative process, and just keep going until I have something I’m relatively proud of.

The crazy part, however, is what happens to my perception of time during this entire process, more specifically when working on the design itself.

I might open up Photoshop at 2 pm, play around with it for what feels like half an hour, save my progress, close the program, only to look at the time and realize it’s suddenly 6 pm!

Whenever this happens, I just smile.

Not because I might have “wasted” a ton of time, potentially even missing some appointments and having to reorganize my schedule—which doesn’t happen a lot, but it happens. But because I realize I just got out of a 4-hour long flow state, as it’s called. A state in which you’re so transfixed, so focused on what you’re doing, you lose all track of time, you have no distractions whatsoever, and almost stop perceiving your surroundings altogether.

You’re truly “locked in” as the youngsters would say.

That’s a good sign. It’s a sign you’ve found something that truly moves you, something that engages you to your core, and more importantly, something you should do a lot more of, because that activity, whatever just got you into the flow state, is something you were, in some way or another, meant to be doing.

Almost as if you were made for it.

Now, the difficult part is realizing when you’re in that flow state because you’re not thinking about anything else except what you’re doing, so let alone thinking about recognizing whether you’re in a flow state or not.

But once you find something, remember it.

Think about it and find a way to incorporate more of that into your schedule, your work, your responsibilities, or whatever else you’re doing.

I’m utterly convinced that thriving, whatever that means to you personally, only really occurs when you design your life in such a way that optimizes your time spent in a flow state, or “flowing” as I like to call it.

So find what engages you, and incorporate more of it into your life.

Which, coincidentally, is a good reason to learn how to write short engaging emails that keep people reading day after day, so you have more flexibility in how you spend your time, and how much creativity, something that’s highly linked to getting into a flow state, you’re able to put into your workday.

If you’d like to learn more about that, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

This email talks about simple and effective writing

February 17, 2025February 12, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

Everyone talks about simple, clear, and effective writing.

Yet so many people, including those who preach the way of simplicity, hardly ever write ‘simply’.

Why is that?

Well, for one, I’m guessing, many people have this image of ‘A writer’ as someone capable of writing this elaborate, literary, almost heaven-like, prose that shall be remembered for decades, if not centuries.

Just look at one of the most prominent figures in English literature, even to those who don’t know anything about literature at all, Shakespeare. Nobody ever said, “Oh I just love how simple, clear, and effective Shakespeare’s writing is!”

It’s almost always the beautiful poetry-like prose that gets quoted, remembered, and revered in everyday circles.

Or at least, that’s what most people think…

After all, we still highly revere and remember the writing of Ernest Hemingway who wrote simple prose, almost too simple on some occasions. Just look at this little gem:

“He came to the river. The river was there.”

Now, isn’t that just wonderful?

I don’t know about you, but I love that type of writing. People often overcomplicate literature and its prose. See, most people couldn’t care less about the literary merits, the outstanding poetic prose, or even the grammatical correctness of a novel. Instead all they care about is being told an entertaining story, something that will fascinate them for hours in a way that almost makes them forget they’re reading a story, all while they’re passing time on their way to work, on a flight, in the waiting room at the dentist, or even when just for winding down at the end of the day while getting ready to go to sleep.

Good writing, fiction or non-fiction alike, engages people.

That’s all it has to do.

And more often than not, simple and effective writing is the way to go about it.

Speaking of using simple writing to engage and entertain people. Check out Email Valhalla to learn all about it. Chances are, you’ll get paid for it as well.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/

How to grow your list (without social media)

February 6, 2025February 5, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

Social media is a new thing.

Marketing and sales aren’t.

There have been plenty of ultra-successful marketers selling all sorts of products, services, and even experiences for far longer than social media has been around.

Don’t get trapped in this mindset that social media is the end-all-be-all. The only people who want you to believe that are the ones who want to sell you their social media course.

I’m not saying social media doesn’t work—it does.

But it’s not for everyone and it isn’t your only option.

Realize that, while powerful and useful, social proofis far lower on the ladder of necessity than you might think.

90% of all the ads you see (if not more) don’t use any kind of social proof. They simply make you aware of a problem you might be having, and then offer you a potential solution to said problem.

If the advertiser did his homework, aka he knows what keeps his market up at night, then the problem will be so close to home you can’t help but pay attention to whatever solution the ad might be offering. And if the solution is positioned correctly then you, the customer seeing the ad, will end up buying it.

Regardless of whether you’ve heard of the product before or your next-door neighbor Nancy also happened to have used that same product.

Once your realize this, that’s when countless doors will open for you.

You’ll realize all you have to do is get your product, service, or better yet, yourself (and a plug to your email list—the most valuable asset you’ll ever build and which allows you to create repeat buyers and die-hard fans instead of having to survive on one-time sales) in front of your target audience while talking about their problems or their interests—regardless of what market you’re in (every single product in the entertainment industry solves the “problem” of boredom—which just so happens to be at an all-time high right now; making it the best time ever to grow your entertainment business if you know what you’re doing).

Some possibilities:

Run ads on Google, Facebook, Amazon, popular forums, or wherever your target audience hangs out (simple yet effective)
Get on podcasts as a guest speaker: start small and build your way up. You won’t get on Joe Rogan’s podcast as a no-name but there are thousands of people with dreams of building a big-name podcasts who just so happen to always have a need for guests to interview. Mention what you’re working on and how that could interest their audience and chances are most, if not everyone, would like to talk to you.
Write blog posts, articles, or press releases for online newspapers, other people’s blogs and email lists, internet magazines, or any of the tens of thousands of media outlets all scattered around the internet (most of which are owned by people who dislike writing articles but want to publish as much content as possible so they can make a living off the ad revenue)
Message local newspapers, radio shows, or television channels: Most people lead boring lives. So just by building a business or doing something artsy or creative, you instantly become so much more interesting—which is more than entertaining enough for every local media outlet to want to interview you (what’s a better story than the “local celebrity”?)
Meet new people and keep an eye out for potential joint-ventures: You’re not alone in your market. Use this to your advantage. Work together with other creatives or entrepreneurs. Ask if they’d be interested in recommending you or your products to their audience if you’d do the same for them (or simply pay them to recommend you).

There’s a lot more where that came from, but this should be more than enough to keep anyone busy for quite a while already.

After all, no amount of information will save you if you never get to implementing things.

So get to it.

Start implementing at least one or two of these and build yourself a big email list.

At that point, you might want to master how to write engaging, entertaining, and persuasive emails that’ll help sell your products while keeping your readers reading day after day as well.

For that, consider checking out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

The purpose of entertainment

February 6, 2025February 4, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

Henry David Thoreau, the American essayist, poet, and philosopher once wrote:

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“For books are not to teach us how to live,” writes Frederic Gros in his book A Philosophy of Walking, “but to make us want to live, to live differently: to find in ourselves the possibility of life, its principle.”

Both Thoreau and Gros argue that true, valuable, and insightful books can only be written when combined with lots and lots of walking.

True walking.

Not the kind you do when you’re out shopping, rushing to get to the train station, or going to the hairdresser around the corner.

True walking is when you’re out in nature without a destination or goal to achieve, with no purpose whatsoever. It’s just you, Mother Nature, and your thoughts. Often for hours on end—even though it’ll only feel like a few minutes at most after you’re done. That’s how time functions when out in the open, connected to the world around you, and without a care in your mind; the flow gets all tangled up and you have no idea how many seconds, minutes, or even hours have passed.

“What’s the point of telling me all this?” you might ask.

Well, it’s simple really.

First, it might be a worthwhile idea to go on more walks, experience life more clearly, and inspire you to write your next masterpiece.

Second, and this is where today’s marketing lesson comes in, the first Thoreau quote I shared helps you answer the question of “What problem does an author solve?”.

To clarify what I mean, take a look at the following quote by famous comic book writer, publisher, and producer, Stan Lee, who single-handedly grew one of the biggest multimedia enterprises to date:

===

“Entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.”

===

Or in other words, you’re helping people want to live (and live differently).

You can prove this to yourself by looking at people’s expenditures during difficult economic times, filled with doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety. You’d expect people to start saving more and only spending their hard-earned money on basic needs for survival such as food, shelter, hygiene, and transportation.

Instead what you’ll find is, yes people will spend more of their budget on those things (relatively speaking), yet they’ll also start spending a lot more money on entertainment as well.

After all, what good is mere survival without the will to live?

Now, you might nod your head while reading this and think “okay that’s cool”, but not so fast. Because this is truly important news for you to keep in mind as long as you work in the entertainment industry—which, at this point, almost everyone does to a certain extent.

Why?

Because that’s the key to all your marketing!

The big question people always have is “what can you do for me?”, no matter if they’re buying new clothes, booking a vacation, taking a language course, or shopping for new books in their local Barnes & Noble.

You simply cannot succeed in your marketing endeavor if you’re unaware of ‘what you can do for them’, or in other words, ‘what problem you’re solving’—a question that is a lot easier to answer in non-entertainment-related markets.

Speaking of marketing, and more specifically email marketing…

You might want to check out Email Valhalla if that’s something you want to learn more about.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

The marketing world is changed, I feel it in the water

February 4, 2025February 3, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

Recent trends in people’s beliefs, skepticism levels, and general outlook at life are changing how to play the game of marketing.

For instance, people have been bombarded with hype, impossible-to-keep promises, ridiculous guarantees, and over-the-top aggressive copy shouting in people’s faces for years now. That would be fine if those marketers could, somehow, keep these otherworldly promises, except, they obviously couldn’t.

And so people have been burned one too many times, and they better know what to expect. In fact, it’s generally true that the more hype, promises, guarantees, aggressive copy, and crazy boasts a sales message has, the worse the end product (or service) is.

Almost no exception.

I’ve been guilty of this myself. I won’t pretend otherwise. Everyone starts somewhere, after all. And proper learning happens through imitation of those that went before you—often in a different time, playing by different rules.

Does this mean there’s nothing to be learned from the old-school marketing legends?

No of course not, after all, we’re all building on top of one another, standing on the shoulder of giants as they say. It’d be stupid to reinvent the wheel every few decades just because the playing field has changed.

You don’t dive straight into the teachings of Schopenhauer without first familiarizing yourself with David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Doing so would be missing the bigger picture, unable to follow along with Schopenhauer and only ‘understanding' superficial arguments and statements, if any.

No, you start from the beginning and build your way up.

There’s a reason why Plato’s Replubic is still widely, although lessening at a sad and alarming rate, read as is Homer’s Oddysey and Iliad. It’s because those are the foundations almost everything else, even centuries later, to this day, is still built upon.

Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent here, again…

The point remains, study your classics, even in today’s digitally dominated field of marketing, and ease up on the aggressiveness of your claims and your copy.

And after that, maybe check out Email Valhalla to learn how to get paid writing entertaining emails that keep your readers reading day after day, without having to rely on the usage of overtly aggressive marketing language.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

How fair is the game you’re playing?

February 2, 2025February 2, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

“No one is more convinced of the fairness of a game than the man who won.”

Let that thought sit in your mind. Let it simmer. Let it marinate. Take it all in. Truly think about what it means to you and how it may (or may not) affect your life.

Now, I haven’t given you any context to work with.

I just gave you a quote. I didn’t even mention who the quote is from just to give as little context as possible (you receiving this email from me already has context included based on your perception of me and what I write about, so no context is, quite literally, impossible).

Just to give praise where praise is due, I found the above quote in an old blog post from historian Bret Devereaux, talking about the Spartan agoge, their infamous training regime which is oddly similar (in some, or sadly many, cases exactly alike) to indoctrination regimes terrorist organizations use for the creation of child soldiers—except these organizations have the decency to only abduct young boys from the age of 15 and up, compared to Sparta who takes boys aged 7 and up.

Anyway, I’m getting off track.

See, even though I didn’t give you any context, I’m quite certain you immediately thought of something when reading the above quote. It’s a perfect example of survivorship bias, after all, and can be applied to many, many different cases.

For one, the seemingly overabundance of people who preach about the magic powers of social media marketing (or any other marketing trend for that matter), preaching how everyone should become a creator and if you’re not creating dancing videos on TikTok (or whatever the current trend is), you’re just not serious enough.

And, while they’re not totally wrong about the power of social media, they’re not entirely correct either.

For one, not how I italicized the word “seemingly” in the previous paragraph.

That’s precisely because of this survivorship bias, the phenomenon where, in our case, only the most successful people who just so happened to succeed at social media have the ability to make noise, get the algorithm’s attention, and appear on everyone’s timeline. Everyone else, including people who might have done the exact same things as the “successful” people, showing how it might not be entirely black and white in the talent vs luck department, aren’t able to be heard and thus have no way to warn people about the dangers, obstacles, risk, or any other important reasons explaining why the grass in social media marketing land maybe isn’t as green as it first might appear.

And sure, I love talking down on people’s overreliance on social media, and how they don’t own their audience, are relying on the whims of the algorithm gods, or even the U.S. government as we’ve now clearly seen with the TikTok ban, and could randomly lose their entire business one day; and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Except there is:

It’s called taking accountability for your business, being prepared, not relying on anything you can’t control, and making sure you build your email list—one you own completely and back-up regularly so even if your current Email Service Provider decides to lock you out for any reason whatsoever, you still have your list and didn’t lose a single thing (except perhaphs a few hours of frustration moving over to another ESP).

And sure, the rule of survivorship bias works for people who preach about email, taking accountability, and self-reliance as well.

But I’m guessing, if you just think about it for a moment, even though there might be some survivorship bias happening around here, the arguments still stand, the reasoning is solid, and the suggestions only ever improve and secure your situation, without putting you at any risk whatsoever.

With that said, check out Email Valhalla here to learn more about how to build yourself an email-centered business, including how to write entertaining emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Never show weakness

February 2, 2025February 1, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

For some reason, the so-called “social media experts” love circle jerking about how important it is to show vulnerability and to share your mistakes.

This would create relatability with your reader and better your engagement, increasing your success. Or so they say at least…

Yet sharing your mistakes, showing vulnerability, and being open and “authentic”, as they call it, which is the complete opposite of true authenticity if you think about it… The only thing that would do is create doubt, distrust, and possibly even disgust in the minds of your readers.

Sure, some people might end up “relating”, whatever the hell that means, or even sympathizing with you. But people don’t buy out of sympathy—and those that do often feel awful about it afterward, most often even cheated.

You don’t build a business out of sympathy.

“But Alex, I’ve seen some of my favorite creators share their flaws, their mistakes, and their misfortune before and it got great results, I even loved it myself!”, you might complain.

Ah yes. These types of stories do happen. Often part of their infamous “origin story”, which includes, but is not limited to, having to sleep on the couch, or worse, “the floor!”, in a crappy office they’ve hired, losing all of their social connections, thinking everything is over, only to just then, at that almost poetic timing, meet an unknown mentor, pick up an obscure book, or figure out some crazy method that suddenly catapulted them into riches and success.

Or something along those lines.

Anyway, the point remains. Those are carefully, even more carefully than a bomb squad might approach a suspicious backpack in the middle of the town’s square, crafted stories with attention to specific details and especially specific outcomes.

Namely.

Those stories all share a happy ending. An overcoming of the obstacles in front of them. A true underdog story.

These (often made-up, or at least highly altered to fit the necessary message) stories aren’t a rich collection of their mistakes, their flaws, and vulnerabilities. These stories are, in fact, a manifesto of their ideology, a tale to show their extreme perseverance, untapped potential, can-do attitude, otherwordly creative thinking prowess, and everything else necessary to show how incredible of a human being they just so happen to be.

After all, a flaw isn’t a flaw if it can be turned into a positive outcome.

Because let’s be honest.

Nobody buys from a homeless nutjob preaching the healing powers of moon-infused special rocks that hold the body to shape your body like that of Arnold Schwarzenegger without so much as lifting your butt off the couch. But if that same nutjob, preaching those same scientifically dubious rocks, just so happened to have overcome immense odds, built their dreamlife, and appears to be successful solely due to the discovery of these life-altering rocks, then maybe, just maybe, possibly even more than maybe, maybe even quite certainly, you’d be willing to make the leap of faith and trade your hard-earned pocket money in favor for some rocks infused with metaphysical powers, and quite certainly a weird but soothing smell that comes along with it.

Anyway, I don’t know what these special rocks have to do with anything, or even where my imagination came from.

But I hope the point is clear.

People want to believe in someone they can look up to. Someone who seems so far ahead of them, almost blessed by holy powers, someone they can put on a pedestal, carefully listen to, learn from, and be told what to do and how to do it, hoping they can perhaps achieve a similar level of success— or even a sliver of theirs would be enough.

These people don’t “make mistakes”.

Now, if this message doesn’t suit you, if it doesn’t sound “authentic”, then that’s fine. I’m just sharing a message. Don’t shoot the messenger, even though that’s what happens most of the time historically speaking—quite a strange saying then, huh?

But just know and be aware of the dangers that lie behind the ever-so-common piece of advice of “sharing your flaws”.

If you still want to come across as “real” and “authentic”, whatever that means to you, then I’d suggest you check out Email Valhalla, where I give you actual sound and tested advice on how to do so through your writing, without resorting to sharing your flaws or coming up with weird, often shrewd and ill-intentioned, origin stories.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

What’s the point of a blog anyway?

February 1, 2025January 31, 2025 by Alex Van Dromme

Came a question from an interested reader:

===

“I noticed a while back you don’t post every email of yours on your blog. Why not? Is there a strategy or bigger picture reasoning behind not doing so?

Been wondering about that for a while now.”

===

Great question.

But before I can answer that directly, I have to clarify something first, just be sure everyone’s on the same page.

See, the purpose of any single blog out there is always the same: to attract readers.

Forget where they come from, what they’re looking for, how they got here, or anything else that might confuse you. For now, the only thing that matters is that every single blog shares the same purpose of getting attention and attracting readers.

Now, that’s only the first degree purpose.

Behind wanting to “attract readers” there’s another purpose, always. Even people who write for the joy or art of it such as fanfics or what have you still have the second-degree purpose of feeling a sense of accomplishment and, most importantly, approval from others when they see other people are reading their stuff.

This “second-degree purpose” might differ from business to business.

In my case, that’s to build my email list. After all, my email list has been, and will forever remain so however long I continue doing what I do, at the center of my business. It’s what powers everything else and makes everything I do possible.

So, naturally, the only reason for me to even host my blog is for people to stumble upon it one way or another, check it out, enjoy what they read, and, this is the crucial bit, ultimately decide to opt-in to my list.

At that point my blog effectively loses its functionality for that specific person… but that’s ok because the only purpose of my blog was to get people to opt-in to my list, which it, at that point, did successfuly.

This brings me back to the original question.

Why don’t I publish all of my emails on my blog?

Well, think about it yourself. If I did publish every single email on my site, why would anyone even bother subscribing to my list? All they’d gain would be the “convenience” of not having to check my site manually. At most they’d lose out on some gift or a lead magnet I give to people who opt-in. But none of that is making much of a case, at least not a strong one.

No, there needs to be an air of mystery, intrigue.

People need to be excited and curious to want to find out more, to discover everything there is to discover, to get all of the privileges, known and unknown, of being an actual subscriber to my list, not just an incognito reader on my website.

There are other reasons, of course, but this is definitely one of the most important ones to realize.

As for best practices of what to do when people finally opt-in to your list, you might want to check out my flagship course, Email Valhalla, to get an answer to that question: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/