Do you have an email list with at least 500 to 1,000 subscribers?

And would you like to quickly and efficiently add a few hundred more—entirely free of charge and with no cost to you whatsoever?

Reply to this email, because I’ve got something for you.

Well, not literally of course.

See, I’ve previously spoken about “lighting a fire under your ass” and the benefits it brings.

In fact, I haven’t found any other way that’s better at effortlessly increasing your motivation, discipline, productivity, and everything else that goes along with it (including your enjoyment of the process) no matter what kind of work you do.

It’s like jumping out of an airplane and crafting yourself a self-made parachute while you’re falling.

Which sounds scary, and it can be, but it doesn’t have to be nearly as life-threatening or career-destroying as you might think (which, trust me, I know isn’t something you‘ll likely want to do)

No, instead, there’s a few methods you can use to light the proverbial fire under your ass to get you going and increase your productivity (and feeling of progression, aka, enjoyment) without risking your career to go to waste.

I use these methods all the times.

And I teach them to many of my students and clients alike, with great success.

In fact, one of these “strategies” is one of the foundations of the product creation framework I teach in “Product Creation Made Easy” where I teach people how to easily and effortlessly ideate, create, and launch digital products in 21 days or less.

And it works absolute miracles.

It works so well that even I, the self-proclaimed king of procrastination around town, am able to use it to actually get shit done on time.

So you better be sure that it’ll work for you as well.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn more about this strategy, you can do so by checking out Product Creation Made Easy here: https://alexvandromme.com/product

Some days ago my father stumbled upon a “guess the movie soundtrack” YouTube video.

In short, it’s a simple compilation full of all kinds of different themes and soundtracks from mostly famous (as well as some not-so-famous) movies. Every piece of music plays for 15 seconds—so you have some time to guess the movie it’s from—until it reveals the answer.

Anyway.

We just went with it and played the quiz, testing our movie theme knowledge.

Since I’m very much into film music and film composing, I knew most, if not all, of the soundtracks (at least for the movies I’ve actually seen or even heard about).

But not only that.

The other family members who played along also knew quite some soundtracks. Often as fast as only hearing it for a second or two.

Which goes to show you the power of creating something unique, memorable, and, often-times, emotional. Even with limited resources and/or many limitations (after all, every piece of music you hear only consists of 12 different building blocks called “notes”).

Luckily for you, the English language has 26 letters, more than double the amount of notes in western music.

Know I’m no mathematician, but it sounds like you can do a whole lot more with writing than music (and that’s coming from a film score fanatic and hobby film composer).

The best way to get started honing your (persuasive) writing abilities?

Email Valhalla.

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

I was scouring the interwebs today when I came across the following beauty.

For context: An artist (painter) asked for tips and tricks to grow their social media—hoping to increase their sales—on a “business for artists” forum.

One of the responses?

Read it here yourself:

===

“The best advice I can give is: forget about social media and online business – do real life exhibitions instead. It's easier to connect with your audience IRL, which makes selling easier as well (and you'll get a much better compensation for your work). I have been a full-time visual artist (mainly paintings) for 27 years now and I do one or two solo shows and a handful of group events every year, and that's more than enough to make a living.

Sure I have social media, but the time and effort it takes to first grow a following big enough to get some consistency in sales and then the time and effort it takes to make those sales is just not worth it IMHO – with a fraction of that effort I make a lot more sales IRL. If I have to calculate my earnings based on time spent for the sales I make online, I am better off flipping burgers.

For reference: I have about 10K followers on FB, IG and X combined – FB being the largest and if I make a sale, the buyers mostly come from there.”

===

Now listen up, I’m not here to tell you how to live your life…

BUT.

If you’ve got a combined follower count of 10k (that’s ten THOUSAND people) on social media, and you still struggle to make sales (or at least, find it not worth the effort, so much so that you’re discouraging others from even trying) then, and I say this with the utmost respect, the problem doesn’t lie with “social media and online business”, the problem, my dear friend, lies with you and your ability to be entertaining and persuasive (as opposed to manipulative—big difference) enough.

As the great late John E. Kennedy said, “Advertising is salesmanship in print”.

So if you’d know how to sell someone in-person, as the author of the post said he could, then you can use those very same principles to sell someone on social media—which ultimately is a form of advertising.

Except people nowadays don’t actively make the connection between social media, advertising, and salesmanship.

Such as shame, really.

Anyway.

For more information on how to improve the persuasive abilities of your writing, and especially in emails, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/

I did an oopsie yesterday.

But first, picture this:

You’ve been living at your home for years, if not decades, already. You know every inch, every nook, and every corner of every room. There’s not a secret in there you haven’t already figured out. If tomorrow someone breaks into your home (which I hope they don’t) and moves your refrigerator or your washing machine to the side, even by the slightest bit, you’ll probably notice.

That’s how good you know the place you live.

“Obviously!” I hear you thinking.

And yet, once upon a while, you’ll randomly just forget the fact that there’s a wall right, a door, or a piece of furniture somewhere, and you bump right into it.

You’ve walked through that door, that hallway, or around your bed a million times before.

In fact, you often walk through those exact same rooms even with the lights off.

And yet, sometimes you just randomly stumble into those very obstacles you know so well, as if someone actually did break into your room and move that entire wall half an inch to the right.

So even after so many years, you still fumble the ball once in a while.

But back to my oopsie.

Or more specifically, how I wrote an entire email, only to not include the CTA (call-to-action).

Which absolutely goes to show you that no matter how long you’ve been doing something, day after day, sometimes your brain stops… braining (?)

So here’s a question for you:

What’s one of your latest fumbles, mishaps, or mistakes you made? And more specifically, a mistake you really shouldn’t have made because it’s something you’ve done for god-only-knows how many times before.

I’ve got nothing to give you in return for this answer.

Except maybe a fun conversation.

A hypophora.

What’s a hypophora?

Well, it’s something you should do more often.

Why?

Because it makes people interested in what you have to say. It also keeps them engaged and curious to keep reading. It’s also one of the best ways to get information across—and make sure they remember it.

Even more.

All of the above makes it so you’re able to sell and get paid.

What’s the catch?

Nothing really. There’s literally nothing you can do wrong with this. It’s based on a psychological principle. One that’s been deeply rooted in people since the dawn of time.

And those are the types of principles you want to learn and use.

Not some trendy new tactic to cheat your way to making more money or getting more engagement that only last for a month until everyone starts using them and they stop giving results.

Not this. This works.

Always.

Alright, enough teasing.

What’s hypophora and how does it work?

Hypophora is where you ask a question and immediately answer it yourself—as opposed to a rhetorical question where you phrase the question in such a way that the answer sounds obvious (and doesn’t have to be said).

This works because it gives a conversational feel to your writing.

But even more, by asking a question you’ll also (temporarily) make people think. Perhaps even noticing that they don’t really know the answer to your question. This leads them to become interested and keep on reading.

Which brings me to the following:

I had a small back-and-forth with a long-time reader a short while days ago (not sure he wants me to name him).

To give some context:

He’s a passionate game dev and has been thinking about starting his own email list about game design.

Note: “thinking about starting”.

When I asked him what’s been holding him back he gave 2 reasons:

(This is how I summarized it based on his response

1) He doesn’t believe he’s “big/successful” enough to have something to offer. So why should people listen to him?

2) He prefers creating games more than writing about them, so why waste time with an email list when he could create more games instead?

Both of these are valid and popular, but ultimately flawed, responses—making this a great opportunity to share my answer publically.

So let’s talk about why those two reasons aren’t as important/valid as you might first expect.

First off, if only the biggest and most successful people could build an email list, then there’d only be a handful of lists and every market. Which simply isn’t the case.

The truth is…

People care more about people than anything else. Someone might be a lot more successful and have 10 more years of experience. But if you’re the more entertaining person while caring about your audience and actually, from the bottom of your heart, want to help your audience succeed as best as you can, then you’ll be the one they want to be around and listen to.

That’s just how it goes.

There’s no ifs, buts, or maybes about it.

Secondly, and this might not seem directly obvious when looking at it at first glance. But building your email list actually helps you free up more time (making it so he could create more games in this case).

Here’s how that works:

Instead of focusing all his effort on writing articles, social media marketing, reaching out to people, “networking”, taking on projects you don’t care about just to make ends meet, and god knows what else… You could instead focus solely on building and writing to your email list, which will take care of all your financial issues if done right, freeing up your schedule of all other things you had to do till now.

Now you’ve freed up so much time. Time you can choose to spend on creating more, writing emails (if you so choose), or just plain relaxing, whatever you choose.

Anyway.

If you haven’t started your email list yet, now’s the time.

And if you’d like some help figuring out how to get everything up and running, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I just read a Reddit post of a freelance artist complaining about the current state of the market, what she has to do to make a living, and how it there’s no solution in sight.

Especially since competition is at an all-time high thanks to services like Fiverr and Upwork.

The artist even called it “an never ending race of artists acting like sea gulls for crumbs for a 5$ job (or 5 bucks an hour)”. Just imagine that. Having to struggle and actively fight (figuratively at least) with other people just so you can be the one to get the project that pays you $5 for an art piece—some of which can easily take 10–20 hours to complete on occasion.

I’m amazed how these artists are even making a profit on these projects. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t. Artists working with actual paint and canvases can’t even buy their paint with that kind of money. I’m quite sure a digital artist wastes most of their hard-earned money on electricity to create their art.

Such a tragic sight to behold.

No wonder these kinds of people can’t shut up about AI and how they’ll need to use it to speed up their workflow or it’s going to steal their jobs. It’s only logical. They haven’t even figured out how to make their creations worth a damn.

Sure AI art is crap, but that doesn’t matter for people who can’t recognize the good from the bad and commission $5 art pieces.

The worst part?

All of this can be avoided if these types of artists, and any other type of creatives, simply knew how to create good products, ones that are actually worth something, while also knowing how to make the customer understand the worth of what they’re offering. Then all they needed to do is launch and talk about the damn thing and their $5-an-hour days would be long gone, a distant memory of times forgotten.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to ideate, create, and launch a new (digital) product in 21 days or less (whether it’s art, entertainment, or information), then check out Product Creation Made Easy here: https://alexvandromme.com/product

Once in a while, I’ll enter this period where I’ll write up some social media post guiding people to join my email list.

This, however, never lasts long.

Sometimes I’ll do it for 2-3 days. Sometimes I’ll keep it up for a few weeks. But eventually, I’ll disappear from the platform, without any notice. Only to pop up, unannounced and as if nothing happened, a short while later.

And it’s not because I can’t stay disciplined enough to keep it going. In fact, I used to write 5 post a day on Twitter for over a year, without missing a single day. That’s how I got started with all of this.

So it’s not that.

Simply said. I just got tired of playing the social media game and how fake and unfulfilling it is (ask anyone in the social media business who’s making real money—it’s shallow, its repetitive, it’s boring).

That’s just how it goes when social media is only good for top-of-funnel content (aka, aimed at the 95% of the population who are beginners in your market).

And it’s the same for the consumers as well.

Eventually that social media content gets boring—especially once you’ve read the same 10 beginner lessons a hundred times over and over again.

So for the entirety of 2024, I’ve been working on making my business work without requiring leads from social media—it helps a bit here and there, that’s why I write the occasional post, but I don’t rely on it.

How have I been doing this, you ask?

Many different ways. But one of them is through paid advertising—an incredible alternative source of guaranteed (and often high-quality) traffic that’s easily customizable to whatever you require.

It’s easy to keep going as well.

Far more rewarding and less shallow than social media content creation, at least.

Coincidentally, I’m also working on a new product that’ll teach my paid advertising framework so you can rely on a more stable and higher-quality form of traffic generation that, once you get it going, requires dramatically less time investment than anything else out there.

But that won’t be for now just yet.

In the meantime, if you already have traffic, but you don’t have a great product or service to do something worthwhile (aka, get paid) with that traffic, then I’d highly suggest you check out Product Creation Made Easy.

It ain’t cheap, but it’s damn worth it and you might find it to be just what you need.

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

Have you ever watched a movie or an episode of something that included a fight scene, yet found it extremely boring to watch?

I know I have.

One of the best well-known (and modern) examples I can give is the latest John Wick film. Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved the series. It’s a great movie, with top-tier moments, and I very much enjoyed watching it… but not because of the fighting/shooting scenes. Those scenes simply took too long and there were too many of them.

If you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen all of them.

More.

Even Chris Claremont, the famous comic book writer who single-handedly took it upon himself to take X-Men, one of Marvel’s worst-performing titles back then which nobody cared about, and was on the brink of cancellation, to one of the most recognized, well-known, and best-performing comic book series of all time, resulting in tons of storylines, dozens of media adaptions, hundreds of toy lines, video games, and so, so much more, once told an interviewer, “To me, the fights are bullshit”.

Yes, the creator of one of the most successful action-packed comic book series of all time thought the fights were bullshit. All he cared about were the emotional relationships between the characters, how they interacted with the world, and the consequences these emotions had.

And so it goes in almost every other form of fiction as well.

A good fight is nothing else but an opportunity to further the plot or the emotional relationship between characters, developing them as people in the process.

That’s also why the lightsaber fights in the Star Wars prequels are often criticized as being lackluster and much worse than the original trilogy, even though the prequels had better choreography with much more flashy moves and a more dramatic and exciting setting… but they didn’t carry the same emotional baggage as the original trilogy did, nor did they further the plot most of the time.

So the fights, were in fact, bullshit.

Even more.

This isn’t just about fiction.

It perfectly applies to business as well—with one slight difference. This time it’s not “the fights are bullshit” but instead, “the value is bullshit”.

Just as any beginner fiction writer makes the mistake of thinking the fights are the end-all-be-all, so does the beginner marketer make the mistake of thinking the value is all that matters.

Spoiler alert: is doesn’t.

In fact, it’s probably not even in the top 10 of things that matter. What matters more is the relationship you have with your reader/viewer/listener/customer, the relationship they have with your offers, the mindset (inherently different than pure “how-to value”) you bring, the motivation you give, the opportunity to think differently, the feeling of being understood, the community to be a part of, and the “World” you welcome them in with open arms (as well as the barriers you put up to keep the people you don’t want as far away from your world as you possibly can).

So the next time someone comes to you, shouting “Provide more value!!”, probably expecting you to give it all away for free as well, then know…

They don’t know what they’re talking about and you’re simply better than them.

As to how to get even better yourself and learn how to actually write content that gets you sales and keeps people reading every day (without resorting to “giving more value”), then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla