Product Creation Made Easy

People are naturally anti-cheap, despite what everyone claims

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I remember when I last went shopping for some new climbing shoes.

As most people do when buying something, especially when it’s your first time and you have no idea what to look for, I did some research on the different types of climbing shoes, what makes each shoe different, what a good shoe should have (and what it shouldn’t), and some other tips and tricks to know whether a shoe fits me and my climbing style.

So, armed with my newfound knowledge, I went to my local sports equipment store to find myself a new pair of shoes.

There were so, so many different shoes, but eventually I narrowed it down to three pairs of shoes that had all the qualities I was looking for (and which I found visually appealing, an importance that can’t be understated, of course)

Out of those three, one had a price way above what I was willing to spend at that time.

So only two remained…

As far as I could tell, the features were the same. They both looked equally nice. They both fit my feet (and my climbing style) equally well. And they were almost identical when it came to the specific attributes that mattered.

The only difference was the price…

One of them was about $50 and the other was $80. (this happened quite a while ago, so the real figures could differ, but the relative difference was more or less the same)

Now, seeing as both shoes were more or less the same, you would think I, or any other rational, thinking human being, would have chosen the $50 pair of shoes and continued with their day, right? Right??

Well, that’s not what happened.

Instead my mind, even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, went “Huh, why is this one almost half the price of the other one? There must be something wrong with it.”Of course, I had no idea what that something was. And I’m not even sure if there actually was something wrong with it in the first place. But this, seemingly odd, behavior isn’t all that weird when you look at how people make buying decisions.

In fact, that’s how most, if not all, people think—or at least in circumstances where money isn’t a major issue and people actually have a choice to make instead of being forced into one.

This is why merely “competing on price” isn’t a viable strategy.

There are, of course, many reasons for that. One of them is that, as Dan Kennedy said, “There’s no strategic advantage to being the second cheapest…”, and I can guarantee you there are always dozens of others who will compete with you to be the cheapest of all, resulting in an arms race to going out out business.

Another, which neatly ties up my shopping adventure, is that, to the consumer, price is an indicator of quality and people simply won’t trust something that’s cheap… unless there’s a narrative around it as to where the cost savings are made.

That’s why Ikea can afford to be “cheap”, you have to build the damn thing yourself, after all.

Funnily enough, that’s why Ryanair not only has to be cheap, it has to look and sound cheap as well. If they acted like any other normal airline, people wouldn’t trust their prices and decide not to fly with them. Instead, Ryanair does everything it can to uphold its reputation of “cheapness” so there’s a surrounding narrative as to why tickets are so cheap compared to other airlines.

Moral of the story: if you want to compete on price, you better create a narrative as to why that’s the case. Otherwise, just increase your prices, increase the perceived quality, and call it a day.

Speaking of quality.

It might not be cheap, but one of my best-selling courses, Product Creation Made Easy will teach you how to easily ideate, create, and launch profitable digital products in 21 days or less.

There’s even an entire module on pricing strategies!

Seriously, check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme/


What are your flaws?

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Every product has flaws.

So does every service, every piece of content, every work of art, every person, every institution, and everything you see all around you has flaws. There’s nothing exempt from this rule.

But that doesn’t mean everything is bad.

It’s the contrary.

Flaws give meaning and value to everything you use and consume. Perfection is another word for meaningless.

The things in life that don’t have flaws, don’t upset some group of people, or don’t work or function exactly as some group of people would hope, those are all meaningless and have nothing to offer.

People differ by nature.

Everyone has different needs and requirements, different interests and passions, different tastes as well as dislikes. Something that’s perfect for everyone, by definition, has to be so bland, so generic, so stripped of everything that gives it meaning, that it becomes all but useless, obsolete, and devoid of meaning.

Give me one valuable product, one great work of art, one anything really that does everything perfectly for everyone all around the world.

But let’s get back to why I’m yapping on about this.

What I wanted to make clear is that whatever it is you’re creating, it has to have a flaw.

And wherever there’s a flaw, there’s an opportunity.

More precisely, there’s an opportunity to highlight, not belittle, but highlight, maybe even exaggerate, your flaw. Talk about all of the flaws you can find about your product, then talk about why your creation has that flaw, what that flaw allows it to do or why it needs to have that certain flaw for it to work as you intended to do.

Every flaw gives meaning to a creation.

Highlighting the flaw turns it into a strength for the right group of people your creation is made for while automatically disqualifying and repelling everyone it doesn’t benefit (which would’ve been awful customers to deal with anyway).

A high-powered industrial vacuum cleaner will make a lot of noise—that’s considered a flaw. So highlight how much noise it makes by clarifying the noise is exactly because of the extremely high suction capability the vacuum cleaner has (something your ideal customer wants).

On the other hand.

A compact vacuum cleaner made for at-home use will obviously be a lot less powerful because it has to be a lot smaller, and more compact, maybe even with a pretty design, to fit in with the interior or be easy to hide away in a closet or a shelf. Highlighting the flaw of it being less powerful than an industrial one by explaining how a less powerful one allows it to be as small as possible while also being completely silent during its use.

Now, you might find this to be a stupid example, but either way you get the point.

Highlighting your flaws and turning them into sales angles is an extremely powerful copywriting tool that could singlehandedly ‘disarm’ your, oftentimes wary, customer from most (if not all) his objections—or at the least it won’t cause your customer to dismiss your product if he has to learn about your product’s flaws on his own without your explanation as to why that’s the case.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn more about how to talk about, promote, and sell a great product (or even how to create one) then you might want to check out my Product Creation Made Easy framework.

It definitely ain’t cheap, but that gives you an indication of how high of a quality you can expect from it.

The product wouldn’t have been nearly as good, nor would I have been able to create a high-quality one, if it hadn’t supplied me with the resources I needed to support myself while I kept working on it to make it as good as it could humanly be.

Not to mention the amount of praise and kind words I get from people who bought the product at the current price.

Anyway.

Enough time talking.

Check out Product Creation Made Easy here: https://alexvandromme.com/product

 


Sharks, Saturn, and something else

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Here’s a fun fact for you:

Sharks have been around longer than the rings of Saturn.

In fact, sharks first emerged on our planet 450 million years ago. Saturn’s rings, on the other hand, have only been around for a measly 400 million years. Now I don’t know about you but this baffles me. Especially because you don’t think about stuff like this in your everyday life. Most of us aren’t even aware of how old sharks actually are.

We see them on TV or social media once in a while and say “Oh yeah a shark, cool”. But that’s it. We don’t appreciate the fact that they are literally 450 million years old.

Jurassic Park is all the rage because those are dinosaurs. And dinosaurs are so cool because they’re ancient, pre-historic, animals…

Do you realize a Tyrannosaurus rex lived at the end of the Late Cretaceous? A time period that dates back to 90 million years ago. Not even close to the ancientness of our finned friends. And before you ask. I didn’t know this shark-saturn fact either. A friend brought up this fact and a quick internet search expanded and confirmed it.

But I get it.

I know why this crazy fact isn’t common knowledge. And why the “ancient” dead animals are cooler and more ‘appreciated’ than sharks.

It all boils down to human psychology.

We have sharks. We know all about them. Sharks are still around, dinosaurs aren’t.

We’re fascinated by everything that isn’t instead of everything that is. We love thinking about what it would be like to have lived together with dinosaurs. While we can’t fantasize about living with sharks. Because that’s normal everyday life.

We know what that’s like.

We want what we can’t have. You’ve experienced this many times in your life before as well. Ever wanted something so badly? Only to end up not caring about it once you got it. Or maybe it was the other way around. You didn’t care about something before you lost it. And that’s when it suddenly dawned on you just how much you actually had.

How important it was and how grateful you should’ve been.

Now think about how you can adapt this to work to your advantage. In your business perhaps. Think about how limiting the people you work with or qualifying people before you work with them can actually increase the value of your service.

Even though it’s still the exact same offer. Nothing changed. But people will want it more once they realize not everyone can get it. It’s a rare thing to be seen working with you.

In fact, I dive deeper into the psychology behind what makes an offer, or a product in this case, even more exciting than it would’ve been otherwise, just by changing a few simple details in my course Product Creation Made Easy.

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


In which business are you, really?

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After the initial success of Episode IV: A New Hope (then simply titled “Star Wars”) in 1977, George Lucas decided to create the next Star Wars his way.

That meant controlling as much as possible: filming, editing, merchandizing, sequel rights, and even the funding—which he could now afford.

He wanted to control pretty much everything except for the distribution. For that, he still had to work with a bigger studio—something he always despised. Standard studio negotiations would almost always favor the studio. Often giving them as much as 50% to 80% of the profits.

But not this time.

First, George Lucas already secured his own funding with his prior profits as collateral for a loan. Secondly, pretty much every big studio wanted to get their hands on the next Star Wars release… meaning the negotiations would look a lot different than studios were used to.

Ultimately Lucas closed a deal with 20th Century Fox, giving them only a 22.5% share of the profits in return for handling the distribution (and putting the Fox logo before the opening credits).

In a later quote, Steven Spielberg said:

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“If you’re an executive, suddenly you realize that if you’re going into business with George Lucas, you are no longer in the 20th Century-Fox business, you are in the George Lucas business.”

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Read that quote again. Take it in. Then pause and think about it. Try to truly understand the implications. Because if you understand what’s going on here. Which forces are at play. And if you do everything in your power to build your business in a similar manner—to create your own business universe in a way. Then I can guarantee this will be one of the most profitable lessons you’ll ever learn.

Don’t think of yourself as being in the “personal-branding”, “copywriting”, “life-coaching”, “web-design”, or even the “marketing” business.

You’re in the you-business.

Just as everyone who works with me is in the Alex Van Dromme business.

There was no competing with Star Wars back in the day because of that. They weren’t in the movie business, nor were they in the fantasy or science-fiction business. They were in the George Lucas business.

Luckily for you, one of the fastest and easiest ways I know to start building your own business universe is to build your own unique, world-driven, and valuable (and profitable) collection of (digital) products and services that you and you alone could offer.

I urge you to try this—I even dare you to try and not be successful after thinking this through and building your own business universe step by step.

Anyway.

If you want to learn how to get started building your collection of products.

Then click the link here: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme


Get shit done

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I’ve always been a big procrastinator.

I never got anything done unless it was absolutely necessary. This has put me in a lot of trouble in the past. But it didn’t need to.

It was only last year that I realized I could fix this problem.

How?

By setting deadlines. In fact, while I’ve always been a big procrastinator, for some reason, whenever there was a deadline, nobody could ever outwork me (go ask my classmates in uni who saw my producitivy skyrocket to infinity and beyond 2 days before we had to upload our assignment).

So yes, setting deadlines was the secret to getting things done.

But there’s one problem.

What if there is no deadline?

Imagine you wanted to launch your newsletter, create a product, or write a new email sequence. In this case, it’s very much your own project. You don’t have a boss to tell you when something is due.

So what do you do to get shit done?

Well, to learn the answer to that question you’ll have to check out Product Creation Made Easy—one of my best-selling courses, to date, which will teach you how to ideate, create, and launch profitable digital products in 21 days or less.

And believe me. There’s almost no room for procrastination if you want to accomplish that goal.

Check out Product Creation Made Easy here: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme


The secret to unlimited drive and motivation

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For the past week or so I’ve been completing daily programming puzzles as a part of the yearly Advent of Code leading up to Christmas.

It’s going well so far—better than it ever has compared to my previous track records, at least.

But there’s a curious thing happening.

You see, most days, I finish the puzzle in under an hour, sometimes two. But once every few days, like yesterday, it easily takes me up to five or six (6!) hours to finish this one puzzle.

That’s six hours of non-stop staring at my screen, trying to think of potential solutions, translating it into code, checking for errors, endless debugging, discovering new edge cases, and going over the processes once again.

And yet, it feels like a breeze.

The hours fly by. I stay focused, hyperfocused, in fact, and would easily be able to keep this up for another six hours (and probably ever following day as well).

You might think this sounds miserable, and maybe for you, it would be.

But man, I can’t tell you how almost “natural” this comes to me. How ‘motivated’ and excited I am to finally get it to work, and ultimately how ‘happy’ and ‘at peace’ I am during the entire process.

Sure I might bang my head on the keyboard once in a while, but that’s part of the process. And even that is enjoyable in its own way.

This reminded me of some lessons I learned while reading Psycho-Cybernetics.

Just take the following excerpt taken straight out of the preface:

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“Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations, and talents (and not the symbols which the “Joneses” expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function.

Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is “built that way,” he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function—as a goal striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.”

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This excerpt gives a new and helpful explanation as to why I experience these coding puzzles the way I do.

I picked up a new goal—one I’m genuinely interested in and determined to achieve.

The process of doing what man is “built to do”—striving towards a goal—is where you’ll find true happiness and success is to be found.

That’s why it’s so important to have goals, projects, dreams and aspirations.

What kind of goals?

The type where you’re creating something new.

This doesn’t have to be something completely new, that’s nowhere to be found in the whole wide world. But it has to be new to you. To bring to life a book you write, a song you composed, a painting you created, even a promotion you worked for, a deal you closed, a certificate or degree you studied for, a fish you caught, or something as simple as a sweater you knitted.

Creation is what we, as human beings, were meant to do.

And creation is what will keep you healthy, sane, and even thriving if done correctly, for decades to come.

Speaking of which…

If you’d like to learn my entire process for ideating, creating, and launching profitable digital products in 21 days or less, then I’d highly suggest you check out my course Product Creation Made Easy.

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


Know who your customers are

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Once upon a time, I received the following email from a long-time reader who got his hands on my Product Creation Made Easy framework (and who prefers not to share his full name):

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I have a couple more items to go but just wanted to let you know that I've had a number of 'a-ha!' moments.

Favorites include: Prevalidation and minimal viable product and ideation.

Another thing that I personally appreciate is that it's not spread out in 50 modules. This hits the important things and gets me started – great for busy folks like me.

So far – easy 5-star product.

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I’m partly sharing this to boost my ego and tell you about my confirmed 5-star-worthy product and how it helps people create profitable digital products in 21 days or less from start to finish—that is, from ideation, all the way to launch and beyond.

But that’s not all.

More importantly, I’m sharing this to show the importance of knowing who your customers are. In my case, that’s, more often than not, busy folk working a job, taking care of their kids or other family members, while using almost all of their remaining hours to work on their creative passions and build something that’s uniquely theirs.

More.

Whether you’re writing a book, recording an album, working on a video game, running a fitness business, tending to your garden, improving your cake-baking skills, or getting your digital marketing agency up and running (all of which are real examples of people I spoke with on my list)… When creating a product, any type of product, a written digital course, a mentorship program, poetry, a card game, or a limited-time small-scale rollercoaster experience in your backyard, when creating such a product, all the principles are—and will always remain—the same.

Now, some gurus or experts you follow might not like to say or hear this.

But that’s only so they can feed (and sell) you the same crap over and over again by disguising it as somehow “being different” or “only working in this market”.

Which is nothing more than a pile of crap.

Everything inside Product Creation Made Easy is as evergreen as it gets. It’s always been useful, it will always remain useful, and it’s as applicable in your market as it is in the next guy’s.

The only downside?

There’s no hand-holding or spoon-feeding.

I give you the tools, the reasoning, the examples, and the know-how to create your next (or even your first) profitable digital product in 21 days or less. But I can’t create it for you. That’s something you’ll have to do yourself.

It’s as they say, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Anyway.

Here’s the water, go and drink some: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme/


The counter-intuitive way to approach product creation

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Normal wisdom makes you think you should:

  • Do months of useless market research

  • Settle on a problem you think your market wants to solve

  • Look at your competitors for inspiration on what solutions they’re offering

  • Slightly alter their solution to make yours seem unique

  • Create a minimum viable product

  • Test & validate the product extensively behind the scenes

  • Waste months building the final sellable product

  • Only once everything is finished can you launch the product and put it on sale

But what if I told you that it’s entirely possible to do all of the above at the same time, or better yet, skip all of these steps entirely?

Yeah that’s right.

Imagine an approach that allows you to go from idea to getting paid in only 7 days. No matter what market or industry you’re in. No matter what your prior history or experience is.

And aside from the obvious benefit of going through the process at lightning speed compared to traditional product building. You’re also getting paid plenty, with more guaranteed on the way, and you’ve even got a finished asset with unlimited leverage you can use to keep earning a steady income for years to come.

Even more.

It’s the same approach I’ve used repeatedly in the last couple of months to create multiple profitable product launches.

An approach that’s supported by the ideas and principles taught by leading figures such as Ben Settle, Dan Kennedy, Eugene Schwartz, Dan Koe, JK Molina, and many, many more.

Even more.

It allows everyone who uses it to safeguard their resources. Never again will you spend time and money on a project that didn’t deliver any results.

I bet this sounds impossible.

But I can guarantee you that it works. Not only will you almost guarantee every creation you make to be an instant banger for your market. But in the slight off-chance, since people aren’t always as rational as you’d like, that you’re idea isn’t the life-changing opportunity you thought it was, even in that case, you have access to a unique and almost unspoken about mechanism that makes sure you never ever spend more resources on something than it’s going to return to you.

All but guaranteeing you always win with every choice you make.

At first, I didn’t believe it either. But since then I’ve used it on a few rare occasions and it totally amazed me. In fact, I used the mechanism not too long ago and I ended up still getting paid while literally putting in no work at all.

What’s more?

My customers loved me for doing this and they now trust me even more!

Anyway, that’s enough teasing for now.

I’ll share all of my secrets and tell you everything you want to know about this topic in Product Creation Made Easy.

Click here to find out more: https://alexvandromme.com/product


So good you have to do it twice

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Once upon a time, I received the following message from Gaurav, a long-time reader, after he bought my Abundant-Client System course (not currently for sale):

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I saw there was a sale on your Abundant Client Acquisition System and had to get it.

The course didn't disappoint. It's so good I went through it a second time in 2 weeks.

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Now, I don’t know about you. But that’s one of the best compliments I could ever receive.

Most people lead busy lives.

So for someone to go through my course twice in short succession means it’s definitely well-received and a high-quality course.

In fact, I can guarantee the majority of people who buy online courses never completely go through most of the stuff they buy.

So this is saying something.

Secondly.

He also casually saw that I was running a promotion on the product and he immediately grabbed it—just like that.

Which goes to show you the power of mailing every day and building a relationship of trust with your reader (and proving you know what you’re talking about).

But obviously that’s only to get people to buy your stuff.

You’ll have to make quality products if you want to get messages similar to the one above.

After all, nobody runs a business on the first sale—it’s what you sell people next that earns you 80% of your income.

Which is no different when it comes to writing.

No author gets rich off of one book. Everyone who makes a living writing does so because of an entire series they’ve written, which they can sell to people who found, read, and enjoyed the first book in the collection.

The problem?

Most people only have one product, one book, or one offer to sell to people. And those that don’t often rush the process, giving up quality for quantity in the process.

And while I’m definitely no expert and will never claim to be one.

I have picked up my fair share of product-creation experience (even to the point where I can produce high-quality products in an extremely short time).

So if you’d like to learn my ways, then definitely check out Product Creation Made Easy where I’ll show you how to ideate, create, and launch profitable products in 21 days or less.

Click here to learn more: https://alexvandromme.com/product


George Lucas bled on the page every time he had to write

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As a young lad and still widely unknown director, George Lucas didn’t have the luxury of hiring screenwriters—or any other writer, for that matter.

So he had to go and write everything himself.

Which turned out to be an absolute nightmare for him. In fact, the writing has always been a disaster for him. From the first time he ever tried to write a screenplay up until the last and most recent word he ever wrote down.

He even mentioned as much himself by once having said in an interview, “I can be chained to my desk and I still can’t write it.”

This obviously didn’t make his life any easier.

But, there was hope.

In fact, one of his early friends and mentors was Francis Ford Coppola himself. At one point Lucas and Coppola were touring around, driving to all sorts of locations, filming together for Coppola’s latest project at that time.

At the same time, however, Lucas was working on writing the script of what would become THX 1138.

He wasn’t making any progress at all.

Rewriting scene after scene, never getting any proper ideas, always getting stuck on certain parts, and just never seeming to have the creativity or even the motivation to create a good, well-written, thought-out, and coherent script.

That’s until Coppola gave him the following piece of advice (referring to writing the first draft): “

Don’t ever read what you’ve written. Try to get it done in a week or two, then go back and fix it.. you just keep fixing it.”

This meant, just picking up his pen, writing everything that came to mind, never looking back, never making adjustments, just keep on going, keep on writing, and whatever comes out of out, comes out of it.

Only after you have created a first draft, that’s when you’re allowed to go back and start improving or changing things you’ve written.

That said.

The same principle applies to everything else that needs creating.

For example, that new digital product you’d like to create.

Honestly, I’ve seen countless of people trying to create a product only to spend months, sometimes years on the product, only to create a sub-par deliverable that could’ve been made in a few weeks (if they even finish it in the first place).

The worst part?

It could’ve been easily avoided by having (and following) a proper framework that guides you on how to easily ideate, create, and launch a digital product in 21 days or less.

A framework like I teach in Product Creation Made Easy for example.

In fact, I’ve dedicated one whole module to this exact issue (and the solution to actually getting more work done in less time when it comes to creating your product).

If you’d like to learn more about it, then check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/product