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When (not to) run ads

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As with everything, the answer to “Should I run ads?” is “It depends”.

It all comes down to your current situation and what you’re trying to achieve.

For one, if you don’t have anything to sell yet, it wouldn’t make sense to run any ads. Sure, some people argue running ads can be beneficial to grow your list—which it is. But simply having a list filled with people without having anything to sell to them is a recipe for disaster—let alone the fact that you can’t possibly target your ad towards qualified buyers if you don’t even have anything to sell.

See, business has to be done in the right order.

First, you look at the market you want to sell to. Next, you discover the problems that plague that market. After you made a list of problems, it’s time to pick one or more (preferably one) and build a solution for that problem.

Then, and only then, can it be beneficial to run ads.

A specialized ad speaking to people in your market who struggle with your chosen problem AND want to solve said problem.

Notice how I explicitly mentioned people who want to solve that problem. There’s no point selling people something they don’t want. You won’t convince people that they have a problem. You can only make them aware of just how big a problem is if they’ve already experienced minor issues relating to that problem.

In this short amount of time I’ve already covered multiple mistakes many people make when it comes to running ads—major problems as well, the kind that could cost you thousands every single month if you’re not careful.

And this is sadly just the beginning.

I’ll dive deeper into the many, many mistakes people tend to make over and over again in my upcoming paid ads course for independent creatives.

More information about the course and its release coming soon.

In the meantime, reply back to me with any and all advertising-related questions you’d like me to cover in the course and I’ll make sure to include them as best as I can.


What’s the purpose of entertainment?

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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:

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“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.”

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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 not aware 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…

I’ve been busy working on a paid ad course, specifically for independent creatives active in the entertainment industry, which will help you create profitable ads, built upon age-old direct marketing knowledge, in such a simple and streamlined way that you don’t have to waste years of your life getting a PhD in advertising, so you have more to do what you love most.

It’s not quite here yet, but it will be soon…

So keep an eye out for that.


The Great Paid Ads Revolution

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These past few days I occasionally mentioned the new paid ads course I’m working on.

While doing so I’ve gotten a good amount of replies from people.

Some were eager to know when they could expect the course to be finished, others wanted to share their experiences running paid ads and ask for my advice about what I would do in their situation.

Either way, it seems quite some people are enthusiastic about running paid ads (now or in the future).

This got me wondering.

What are your thoughts about using paid traffic to consistently and predictably grow your email list, build a stable income stream, and free up more time which you can spend writing, drawing, fishing, raiding along the shores of Madagascar, or doing whatever your heart desires?

Are you currently running paid ads by any chance? Have you experimented with them in the past but couldn’t make it work? Or are simply planning on playing around with paid traffic in the future but haven’t gotten around to it yet?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then I’d love to hear more about you and your situation.

What you like about it, what you struggle with, what you’re afraid of, and especially what you’re hoping to accomplish with your paid ads endeavors.

Simply hit reply and let me know.


Do not run ads if you’re not getting paid

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Imagine if I’d ask 100 people the following question:

“Should you run ads if those ads aren’t making you any money?”

Now, I’d imagine all 100 of those people would answer “no”. You’d probably give me the same answer (at least I hope you would).

But then you look at what people are doing, and boy it’s a mess out there.

The amount of people who are running ads to their free lead magnets, straight to their opt-in page asking people to join their (free) email list—without making any upsells or qualifying their readers—or, and this is the worst of all, asking them to follow their social media page.

See, I get it.

The thought process goes something like this: “Me want make money. Guru says build following with big numbers. Me run ads for big numbers. Big numbers give me money.”

Although I might have explained the thought process in too much detail and made it too complex to follow—especially for the types of people who follow that type of thought process.

That said.

I hope you can see the issue. If not, let me explain it to you step-by-step.

Let’s say you are in fact running ads straight to your free lead magnet. You probably already understand the importance of building a list and good for you. But you clearly misunderstand what it means for a list to be “high-quality” (spoiler alert: big numbers isn’t it).

In this case, you’d be building a list filled with people who only joined your list because of the free stuff you were giving away.

The result?

You’ve got a list full of freeloaders and tire kickers, none of who will ever pay you a single penny, no matter how good of an offer you make them. They simply won’t pay and they won’t care.

(This is the same reason why you never run “Engagement” Facebook ads if you’re hoping to get some sales—you’ll only get people who like, comment, and follow everything they see, but never, ever buy something. But that’s another story for another time.)

“But Alex, I’ve seen plenty of famous and well-known entrepreneurs such as Russel Brunson, or big multinationals run ads “selling” free stuff”.

Do you have the same budget they do? Do you know your numbers as well as they do? Have you been in the game for as long as they have?

No?

Then stop comparing yourself to them. They’re quite literally playing a whole other game than you are.

The point is this.

Ads are an incredibly powerful (and surprisingly simple) tool you can use to build an effective, consistent, and reliable business. As long as you’re using them to to get clients or sell your offers.

In fact, I find them so useful myself that I’m building an entire course teaching you how to write, run, and profit from ads in a simple and straightforward manner—specifically focused on creatives and those who work in the entertainment industry.

I’ll let you know more about this course later, so definitely keep an eye out for this one.

It’s going to be worth it, I guarantee it.


When 2+2 doesn’t equal 4

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A while back I came across a Ted Talk by famous film director, screenwriter, and producer, Andrew Stanton, who worked on films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up, Cars, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Coco, and many, many more.

Long story short: he knows what’s up. He’s a master of his craft.

One of the storytelling devices he spoke about is, what he calls, The Unifying Theory of 2+2—where, when telling stories, you don’t simply give the audience the answer.

So instead of giving them 4. You give them 2+2. The audience wants to work for their meal; they just don’t want to know they’re doing it.

Basically, don’t tell the audience everything that’s going on.

Give them just enough information that they’re able to put the pieces together themselves.

If you’re writing a character in a story who’s running late for a job interview and has to wait for the bus.

Don’t make him say, “That damn bus is always late. I’m never going to get to my job interview in time.”

Make him pace around nervously. Have him look at his watch repeatedly and wipe some sweat off his face while adjusting his tie.

He’s in the same scenario, but it’s so much more enticing to watch. The audience has all the necessary information to deduct what’s going on.

Make your audience invested.

Now, you might be thinking. “That’s great, Alex. But I’m not a screenwriter. I just want people to buy my products.”

And that’s great.

See, this simple Unifying Theory of 2+2 works for everyone, even for you (regardless of what you’re selling or which market you’re in).

You might expect me to give you an example right now as to how I’m using it or how you could be using it for your own business. But I’m not going to give it to you.

You’ve already got all the pieces to figure it out for yourself.

So why don’t you simply head on over to the following link and, do whatever makes sense: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


My extremely unattainable vision for the next 50 to 70 years of my life

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Would it surprise you if I told you I already created a “business plan”—or at least a vision—for the next 50 to 70 years of my life, depending on how long I’ll be able to walk this wonderful planet?

Well, I have.

But before I dive any deeper into it, let me just tell you something… this isn’t meant to be practical advice. This isn’t meant to be used as a guideline or something to strive towards. If anything, I’d suggest you forget everything I talk about right now and pretend I never wrote this.

What I’m about to share with you doesn’t just walk the fine line between visionary and pure lunacy… It IS pure lunacy, no doubt about it. In fact, I’d even argue it should deserve a whole new category of its own.

Hard, relentless work likely won’t cut it. Burnouts are a given. The amount of patience, determination, and quite possibly luck, someone would need to pull this off is truly off the charts and out of this world. But as a wise man once told me, “You don’t know where the line is until you cross it.”

And I’m damn determined to figure out exactly where that line is.

See, it’s currently 2024.

Almost everything is digitalized in one way or another. There’s barely a person left who isn’t, in one way or another, plugged in and online at all times. You can reach a near-infinite number of people just by pressing a few buttons without even having to leave the comfort of your couch.

Technology is evolving at incredible speeds, allowing you to create everything you can imagine.

Yet, people’s vision isn’t evolving at even close to the same speed… and neither is their marketing…

Before I continue, let’s look at how current-day online marketing (for independent creators and entrepreneurs) is mostly done

First, you’ve got the usual options of joining and engaging in online communities (e.g., on Discord, Reddit, Skool, Circle, various forums, hobby or theme pages, …) that share your interests. Then you’ve got the general “building an audience” social media route (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, …) as well as more specific (market)places (Upwork, Fiverr, Etsy, Amazon KDP, Steam, Itch dot io, Soundcloud, Spotify, you name it).

All great tools on their own.

And that’s where many people stop.

But not you. You know better… you know if you stop there you’ll be entirely dependent on some algorithm or the whims of the next update to the platform—as well as its regulations—that may or may not break your entire business overnight. You’re essentially gambling for success this way (and gamblers tend to lose—big time).

If you’ve got any brain cells in you, then you should be in this for the long game.

That means, setting things up so you’re in control. You decide your own success… without having to pray that some algorithm shows your work to the right people at the right time, let alone consistently and reliably.

So you’ll want to think about building something you own, something you have absolute control over and where you don’t have to please an algorithm or fight an uphill battle to get your content in front of your audience… As well as somewhere you can focus on marketing not just your work, but yourself as the creator behind it… something like a personal blog, or, even better in my humble yet biased opinion, an email list.

When you realize your email list is the true base of operations and everything else is only a portal for people to come into your world (the email list) where you can entertain them and build a deeper relationship with them so they’ll stay for years to come (again, you’re playing the long game) and all but guaranteeing they’ll read, consume, and buy a lot more than they would’ve if you’d tried to get the one-time sale… that’s when the real game begins.

But there are as many of these portals to get people onto your email list as there are grains of sand on Earth (possibly, I didn’t count).

Just to give you some inspiration:

The first and foremost method people use (aside from the ones I mentioned earlier) is to use paid advertisement to get people interested in what you have to offer, maybe give them something for free which they can use (or that’s purely entertaining—this depends on the market you’re in) in return for signing up to your email list.

But what if you don’t want to spend any money?

No worries, there are plenty of other options as well.

Here we’re already entering a terrain that not many people (definitely not nearly enough) are thinking about using and abusing.

For example, going on podcasts or interviews with other people/channels/businesses in your market (or related markets)—the smaller ones especially are always happy to talk with anyone. Or writing articles and press releases for (online) magazines and blogs. As well as your local newspapers or radio stations—they love to interview local people who are doing something creative in their lives.

Everyone is looking for news and entertainment all the time. You just have to approach them and ask (make sure you’re allowed to plug your work or your email list at the end—most will allow you to do so, but it’s best to double-check).

Taking it yet another step further: unleash your inner Brandon Sanderson (to stay in theme as creatives) and grow your own all-around entertainment-focused podcast like he does with his “Intentionally Blank” podcast as a supplement to all the books he’s writing.

This is truly where most people stop.

Only the true devout, the maniacs, and the mentally insane in our world would dare to go beyond. Probably for the best because you’d need to be a special type of deranged to even dare thinking about taking it to this next level.

What level am I talking about?

The level of madness where people start thinking “Why build a business around one product, service, or offer when I could build a whole universe around one central narrative?”

That’s where you start thinking like a publisher.

This is where you start writing books, comics, and graphic novels, releasing video games, board games, or card games, recording songs, albums, and soundtracks, creating paintings, sculptures, or even action figures, directing animated series, films, and documentaries…

All with the intention of creating one coherent universe where everything’s interconnected, one thing leads to the next, the movie follows the book, the action figures follow the movie, the video games follow the action figures, the paintings follow the video games, the books then references the paintings in a later installment, which then again follows the albums, the documentaries, and everything else, all in unison, all living together in harmony, supporting one another and strengthening each other to the point where there are a bazillion gateways for people to come to discover, enjoy, and ultimately become obsessed with everything you’ve built…

And no matter where people are in your universe, they’ll always find themselves on a road that leads to your email list in exactly the same manner as every road would lead to Rome.

Yes, this is a lot.

If anything, this is too much. Especially for just one person to accomplish. No doubt about it. I warned you in the beginning…this takes work. It might not even be possible. I haven’t got the slightest clue. Probably nobody really does.

The least I can say is that this isn’t for the weak-willed, the weak-minded, and the lazy… not in the slightest.

I repeat, these are merely ideas meant to inspire you. I haven’t even started working on 10% of this. It will take years or even decades to do all of it. And nobody’s forcing you to do everything. But it’s great to have goals you can’t possibly reach. It’s good to be motivated and have something to drive you.

Nobody got anywhere without a vision.

And well, mine just happens to be… well, however extremely, more than likely, unattainable this is…

I can’t, in good conscience, suggest you try anything even close to this. No doubt many people who’d attempt such a thing would go insane or completely burn out, draining every single drop of life and creative expression they have left… even attempting to do just two or three different things on this list would probably mean the end to most people.

If anything, I recommend you NOT to do this.

But just in case you happen to be as crazy (and as overly optimistic and long-term-focused) as I am.

This might just get you inspired to make something happen.

Remind yourself that just because you barely see anyone else attempt something like this doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t do it. More often than not, you’ll become MORE, not less, successful by doing the things others don’t.

Circling back a bit…

Don’t forget, you’re not limited to solely talking about your projects from a creative perspective. In fact, it’d likely hurt you if you did. Realize that people won’t be solely interested in your work. If you’re attempting anything close to my crazy vision of the future I’ve laid out right here, and if done right, they’ll be interested in YOU (and everything you put out).

So share stories about the development, about how you came up with your ideas, what inspired you, even talk about the work of others and what you thought was missing from their creations—a common reason for making your own version—be bigger than life. Show them there’s a real person behind this universe you’re creating.

At the end of the day, people just want to be entertained, which opens up a whole new world of things to talk about.

No doubt this universe will become bigger than you. It will outlast you if you put everything you have into it (which also means someone else will cause its downfall when you’re no longer around—you either die a visionary or live long enough to see them kill off your babies).

But as long as that’s not the case, you’ll have to be the driving force of expansion—you and the characters that inhabit your universe and the many worlds it holds.

As we near the end of this article, let me restate the obvious one more time.

This is a lot of work. I have no idea whether this is even possible for a single person to accomplish. But then again, there’s only one way to find out, right?

And on that note, there is one piece of genuinely helpful advice I’d give anyone foolish enough to attempt turning this vision into a reality. This is at least how I’m currently working towards tackling the above. And that’s by starting things slow. Focusing on every aspect one at a time. And building the foundation first (you can’t build a skyscraper on a rushed foundation after all).

And that foundation is nothing less than learning to write and entertain, while simultaneously growing your email list. After all, that’s what’s at the center of this entire vision. It only make sense to start it early and keep working on it for decades to come.