Email Valhalla

The first “online” money I ever made

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I still remember when I received my first $1 (it was actually $5) from a donation I received on a free Gumroad product.

Oh how happy and excited I was. Truly I can’t even begin to explain it.

While a single dollar might seem insignificant, the meaning is tremendously powerful. It’s the sign of possibility. The sign of my first victory. The sign of a future.

“If I can make $1, I can make $1,000,000,” I said to myself.

And while I’m nowhere close to making a million dollars. That’s still a belief I hold. Something only made possible thanks to the unlimited amount of leverage the internet gives you—digital leverage.

I’ve also been writing emails for about 2 years now. And it still amazes me time and time again how powerful of a tool this is. Sending out an email and getting paid a nice $100 for more or less 15 minutes of work is always a wonderful feeling. Not to mention the long-term value of building a customer list and a collection of sellable (and scalable) products.

Imagine what the future would look like if you had 5x the list/audience size and double the number of products and value to offer—which are extremely conservative estimations.

Then imagine new launches, promotions, upsells, crossells, all very much repeatable and easily scalable without breaking a sweat.

Yeah.

Long story short: I truly can’t think of a better business model designed and optimized for longevity, autonomy, and freedom.

So my best piece of advice? Start building your email list.

And if you want to learn more about how to send simple emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day, then click here right now: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I lighted my jeans on fire

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Back when I was 15 I overheard this fun fact about denim.

Apparently standard denim jeans would be fire resistant or fireproof. (I don’t know the difference) This sounded crazy to 15-year-old Alex. See I used to wear jeans only. Nothing else. I had filled my closet with jeans. Which is funny if you think about it because I barely wear any jeans today.

But still.

Jeans? Fireproof? I couldn’t just believe that without testing it out myself, could I?

So little old me devised a genius master plan. Or something like it. Me and some friends from school at the time wanted to do a ‘scientific’ experiment and test the hypothesis that jeans are fireproof.

This was our plan:

I would take my jeans, spray them full of deodorant, and light them on fire with a lighter. Sounds simple enough right?

But here’s the thing. I was at school. This was during our lunch break. I obviously didn’t bring separate jeans with me. I was wearing THOSE jeans. So there I was. Spraying my jeans with deodorant. How else would we light it after all? We had to REALLY test it. So here it went, I had my lighter ready. 3. 2. 1…

Fire!

Immediately my jeans lit on fire. Everyone looked at me and we were all equally amazed, “Wow! Fire!”. So cool I thought.

But then it got hot. REALLY HOT!

My legs were burning, obviously. Why didn’t I think of that? I panicked because I was literally on fire. So I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled down my pants and got out of them as fast as I could. There I was. In the middle of my school, in my underwear because my jeans were on fire.

After taking off my pants, we immediately stopped the fire and that was that.

I had some burns on my legs, but not much. Just first-degree burns. My jeans had blackened in some spots, but that was about it. They weren’t really damaged. So in the end, it turns out: my jeans were fireproof…but my legs weren’t.

I did, however, learn something valuable that day. I learned experiments can cause harm.

Especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Sometimes it’s better to learn and accept the lessons others have discovered before you. In this case, I burned my legs.

But in business?

Imagine the damage you could do by not learning from others and having to discover everything for yourself? How much money would you miss out on over a month? A year? 10 years? How much, really? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? $10,000,000?? I’m not quite sure. But it’s a lot, let me tell you that.

Luckily for you, you don’t have to discover everything for yourself.

I did the testing and experimenting for you. I’ve been writing emails for over 2 years months now. I’ve written plenty of emails that made sales. And so many more that didn’t. I now know which ones bring results, which ones don’t, and most importantly, I know why.

And if you want to learn what works and what doesn’t, then check out Email Valhalla right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


How to get better at telling stories

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One of the biggest improvements I made in my email and business career was when I started telling more stories everywhere I went.

In my emails, in my (back when I did all of these) X or LinkedIn posts, during X spaces, during consultation calls, in the DMs to explain concepts and close prospects, or simply outside of business when talking with friends or family members. No matter when or where. It’s always a good time to tell stories—not to mention how good of a practice it is to develop your storytelling and, in turn, your copywriting abilities.

I've never encountered a situation in which sharing a well-told and relevant story didn’t help me out in some way, shape, or form.

And I don’t want you to read this and think you have to become a guru who doesn’t shut up about storytelling tips, tricks, tactics, or god forbid, teaches you how to use ChatGPT to tell better stories, yet never actually tells any stories. Seriously, there’s a direct inverse relation between how often someone shares storytelling tips and how often someone tells relevant stories.

Don’t listen to the person doing the most teaching. Listen to the person doing the most doing. (take that grammar nazis)

And talking about people doing a lot of doing—I happen to do a lot of doing, especially when it comes to sending emails, they get a lot of doing from me.

So much doing.

I sometimes even do the doing multiple times a day, as you may have noticed during my last promotion.

That’s a lot of doing.

Anyway.

If you want to learn how to do the doing as well, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Don’t be cheap

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Here’s an important thing many people forget when selling to creative people in creative markets:

It’s not just about “solving problems”.

More often than not, it’s simply about giving people joy, a lot of fulfillment, and something exciting to do. Whether that’s a cool design to quilt, an exciting writing prompt, or an original idea for a terrarium.

Even more importantly…

When selling creative markets, it’s almost never about being cheap or inexpensive. If anything, people will purposefully spend more money on their art or hobby, rather than less.

So with that said.

If you’d like to learn a new and exciting way I use every day to write highly entertaining emails which give me a lot of joy, fulfillment, and a whole lot of self-expression, then check out my course Email Valhalla.

Just be aware.

It ain’t cheap.

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


Why is the public so stupid?

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Here’s an insightful comment George Lucas said after a bunch of critics (who have no feel for the outside world and the common man) gave the first Star Wars an awful review, calling it the “infantilization” of film.

One critic even said, “What happened with Star Wars was like when McDonald’s got a foothold; the taste for good food just disappeared.”

Lucas’s response:

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“Why do people go see these popcorn pictures when they’re not good? Why is the public so stupid? That’s not my fault. I just understand what people like to see”

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Which brings me to my point.

Don’t get angry if your audience doesn’t “get” what you’re doing. Or it doesn’t see the value in what you’re promoting. It’s not your job to convert them—not directly at least. See, the truth is that it doesn’t matter. At least, as long as you know the difference between what your audience wants and what it needs.

Sometimes you gotta treat them like dogs. Not the filthy type, but the type who needs to take their medicine, yet won’t have any of it.

So what do you do? You wrap it up in ham and feed it to them anyway.

You need to understand your audience. To know what they like to see. Then give them exactly that. And only then, can you give them what they actually need. By including the solution to their problem in the thing they wanted.

It’s the same with email marketing.

And I’ll teach you exactly how to do this in Email Valhalla so people will pay attention from start to finish and actually learn the things they need to learn.

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


Fail fast, fail often

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You may (or may not) know that I’ve been working on competing (as far as there is any real competition lol) in new niches; more specifically hobby niches.

Doing so requires research—lots of research. Especially when it’s a niche I know almost nothing about—as is mostly the case for me.

So for the past few days I’ve been doing nothing but scrolling through tons of Reddit posts, reading hundreds of YouTube comments under dozens of videos, checking out every single course available about the subject on sites such as Domestika, Udemy, SkillShare, Coursera, going through the entire Facebook ad library trying to find every single ad ever written in the niches, and writing down every single detail I come across that might potentially be useful to me in one way or another.

Needless to say, I’ve spent quite a while researching (far too many) topics.

Is all of this research necessary?

Well, it might surprise you, but actually, no.

See, while doing some research is vital—you simply can’t expect to enter a market you know nothing about just like that and watch the money come flooding in. But you don’t have to do nearly as much market research as I’ve done over the past few days.

So why did I do all of this research?

Simply said, I was indecisive and afraid to fail. It was mental procrastination, to say the least.

In reality, it’s often better to do “just enough” research (or create a product that’s “good enough” in that case) and go with it. See what happens. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, now you can analyze the situation and figure out what went wrong. This allows you to move forward faster, rather than slower as some people might think, by learning from your mistakes and building your experience.

One of the best things you can do in business (and probably in life as well, although I’m probably not qualified to talk about that, yet) is to “fail fast”—as long as you analyze your mistakes, pick up the pieces, get back up, and try again almost immediately.

Anyway.

Another way to approach market research, which I also employed at the very beginning, is to use your email list, either to simply ask the questions you have to your list or by making offers, testing out new ideas, and seeing how people react.

To do that, it helps to write highly entertaining emails people love to open and read day after day.

Luckily, that’s something I can help you with.

Check out Email Valhalla here to learn more about just that: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


The obvious thing to do would be to read this email

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A few days ago I found myself receiving, reading, and finishing a small pamphlet-sized book titled “Obvious Adams” in under an hour.

The book tells the story of a young man, who wasn’t particularly creative or quick-witted, yet, but still entered the advertising world, quickly made a name for himself, rose up to become vice-president of the biggest advertising agency, and surprised everyone with his incredibly successful, very profitable, yet all the while extremely simple and ‘obvious’ solutions, resulting in some of the biggest and best advertising campaigns of all time.

It’s not so much a “teaching you what to do” book, but much more a how to do it and, more importantly, how NOT to do it.

The message of the book itself is quite boring, somewhat logical, and completely “obvious” when said out loud. Yet still so very often forgotten, especially in the sales, marketing, and advertising industries.

I.e. analyze the situation, think about it, and do the obvious thing—don’t make it any more difficult than it has to be.

Speaking of.

The obvious thing to do for me would be to tell you to check out Email Valhalla.

After all, it’s only obvious that learning how to write better and more entertaining emails that get you paid is the best thing almost anyone in business can do.

So check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


A letter from your future self

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Dear past me,

Let me tell you something about achieving your dreams. Because god knows you have them. So many, that you’re barely able to sit down, focus, and work toward any of them. Some of those dreams are so big, so scary, and look so ridiculous you barely even talk about them to others, let alone yourself.

Oh, what big mistakes you’re making.

Believe me when I say that one day, you’ll look back at this moment and laugh. All those fears you thought you had? All those obstacles you thought were standing in your way? Those doubts and uncertainties? All of them, one by one, are not even worth worrying about.

You’ll figure things out. You always do.

But that’s only under a specific condition. The condition is that you dare to visualize those dreams, create a plan to reach them, and commit to sticking to the plan, no matter what happens.

And before you lose focus of the bigger picture…

The ‘plan’ isn’t the important part here. Yes it’s necessary. But your plan will fail. It will crumble. And it will change.

What matters is that you have one, no matter how badly it reflects reality or how differently things will pan out. What matters is that you tell yourself what to do and actually commit to doing them.

Not thinking about them. Not writing them out. Not telling other people about it.

Do all of those things if it eases you.

But make sure, above all else, you commit to actually doing the things you tell yourself you’re going to do.

As Dan Kennedy wrote in his book, “No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs”:

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“In the end, your success depends on how much of what you need to get done gets done when you want it done, the way you want it done.”

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Don’t be an “idea guy”.

Be the guy who implements a lot of ideas.

And on that note, a major part of implementing those ideas will involve lots and lots of persuasive writing. Email writing more specifically. I can’t tell you how much developing this incredibly valuable skill has benefited me (your future self) in my (your future) life already.

So you might want to check out this amazing course called Email Valhalla.

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


What’s the worst that could happen?

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Many moons ago I went for leisurely stroll of about 30 km.

At one point, in a forest, Google Maps told me to turn right, over the bridge to cross the river and continue walking in the same direction.

Except…

There wasn’t a bridge in sight.

I went back and forth a few times, thinking I must have passed it somewhere and it might be hidden in between some bushes.

But no luck.

The river, however, was small enough for me to consider just jumping over it. It was a big enough river to make it a challenging jump, but the ground where I was walking was also a bit higher than the ground on the other side, so I had some luck there.

After an embarrassingly short time of thinking, I decided to just go for it and jump. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

Anyway.

I got ready, took a step back to get myself a running start, and went for it.

The good news?

I made it over the river, all in one piece, and without getting wet.

The bad news?

I now found myself a foot deep in what turned out to be a wet and barely solid underground of mud (which wasn’t clear just by looking at it). So much so that I lost my shoe right after I jumped and tried to continue walking.

So there I was, happy that I made it and didn’t get wet, yet my feet, shoes, and bottom of my trousers were covered in mud.

Now, I’m not trying to dissuade you from jumping over rivers—I’d happily do it again. But this experience did bring up a good point…

No matter how much you prepare, or how well you plan everything out, there will always be stuff you didn’t (or couldn’t) account for that’ll mess up your plan and alter the course you’ll have to take.

Luckily, as I’ve heard the great Matt Furey say “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer”.

And that’s why I highly recommend you to check out Email Valhalla so you can learn how to write better emails that’ll get you paid ( so nothing bad will ever happen to you).

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


Make writing sales pages fun again

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It’s that time of the year again.

Today, during a tutoring call with a client, I mentioned how much fun I was having writing a new sales page—especially coming up with the headline.

I explained to him my process of coming up with attention-grabbing AND entertaining headlines.

Namely, I write an entire list of different headlines in rapid succession, not caring about the quality of any of them. In fact, I only have one goal during this process: to write the most absurd, often unhinged and unorthodox as can be, having as much fun as I can have, trying to jam in a bunch of wordplay, making outrageous statements, being an absolute lunatic, and doing whatever else I can possibly think of without any mental restrictions whatsoever.

Next, I let them simmer for a day or two before I come back to look at them again with a fresh mind.

Then, and only then, do I pick the best variations and decide the winner—and the final headline that will end up on the live sales page.

I do this because, as every good writer ought to know, if you have fun writing it, others will have fun reading it.

It also has to grab the attention of the right audience, no doubt about that. But that takes care of itself if you do the necessary research.

As for the headline in question, the one I wrote today and told the client of mine (and the one I’m quite proud of if I do say so myself)?

You’ll find it soon enough

In the meantime, check out Email Valhalla right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/