I’m learning to design fancy sales pages

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You may (or may not) have seen a couple of my sales pages already.

They all pretty much have the same 'look’ and feel to it, albeit personalized to the respective product it’s selling. It’s the same template, the same framework, the same structure.

It’s also pretty old-school. Those sales pages won’t be winning a design award any time soon, that’s for sure.

That said.

Things might very well change in the near future. See, I’ve started building a new “modern” salespage for a hobby product, aimed at a mass market audience. But not just any market. A visual and artsy marketing.

Meaning, a creative and visually pleasing design of my sales page can (it’s not guaranteed—nothing is) improve the performance of the sales page.

It’s been a lot of fun so far.

One thing I’ve noticed, for example, was how easy it comes to me. The underlying principles are all the same after all. So it the copy, the structure, and the psychology. All I really have to do is use my design skills to package it up nicely and make it look visually pleasing to the eye.

Luckily for me, I enjoy being creative and designing stuff.

Anyway, enough yapping about.

In case you haven’t picked up on the moral of the story yet. It’s that it pays to understand the fundamentals before you start tinkering about with the fancy stuff.

And when it comes to sales pages, it would be true marketing malpractice if I wasn’t going to mention one of my precious products I’m so very proud of, Sales Page Sorcery, which teaches you all the fundamentals of conjuring up brand new sales pages fast, easily, and effortlessly.

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


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

 


The fear of highschool presentations

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Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane.

If you’re anything like most people, chances are you still remember the time back in high school when the teacher would force you to stand in front of the class and give a presentation about some random topic.

You’d get all nervous and sweaty. Your mouth would dry up so quickly that no amount of water would help. You’d stumble and stutter over your words.

Even more.

You suddenly became aware of everything you were doing. Where should you rest your hands? By your side? No that feels weird, behind your back, safe and hidden from view? No, the teacher doesn’t like that. The classic “in front of the crotch”? No, no, you’re not some bodyguard. What about flailing them around all the time? No, you don’t want to seem nervous—even though you very much are. And what about your feet? Should you lean? Where should you look? Oh god, they’re all looking at you. What if you say something wrong? How would you ever recover from this???

And on and on it went.

Maybe you didn’t experience those occasions as badly, maybe you experienced them even worse, who knows.

All that’s to say, this isn’t an uncommon experience.

But why is that?

Now imagine that you, at a similar age as the example above, met up with one of your best childhood friends (or a group of friends) and just so happened to start talking about the same topic as the presentation you had to give.

Your friend sounds interested and wants to know more about it. You’ve researched the topic for a while (or at least read the Wikipedia page) so you can talk about it for a while, if not for hours.

How easy (and even enjoyable, regardless of whether you truly ‘love’ the topic that was given to you) would that conversation, that ‘presentation’, be?

Answer: it’d be the easiest thing in the world, wouldn’t it?

But why is that?

And more importantly, how can we apply this knowledge to our current everyday life (I’m assuming you’re no longer being forced to give presentations in your local high school).

Well, for the answer to that question, you’ll have to check chapter two of my self-published and already well-received book titled,

“The Art of Loving to Write“.

(Available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle format)

It’s an incredibly short, yet powerful, read. And one so inexpensive (as opposed to some of my other products) everyone can afford it.

No matter who you are or what market you’re in. If you do any type of writing in your life (professional or personal), I can guarantee this book can and will be useful to you—so useful in fact that you’re likely to see immediate improvements the same day after you finish reading the book.

Which, good news, the book is short enough for you to finish it in one sitting if that’s what you like

Anyway, here’s the link to get your hands on The Art of Loving to Write: https://alexvandromme.com/loving


Bubbles

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Newsletters (and email lists by extension) are undoubtedly a big bubble right now and have been for a while now.

In fact, I’d argue in a few year’s time about 80% of all newsletters will disappear, either on their own or because people get tired of them and unsubscribe.

Case in point: most people always start by subscribing to 10-20 newsletters but trim them down to a select 2-3 a year later.

So what's the takeaway?

You need to stand out and be memorable while you still can. The goal is to end up along those 2-3 email lists people stay subscribed to.

Meaning everything you do should be with the following thought in mind, "how do I become the most memorable in my reader’s mind?".

That means:

1) be original
2) go against the grain
3) send often, the more the merrier

And no, people won't get tired of seeing you in their inbox, I'm living proof of that. (sometimes send 20+ emails in a week and nobody complains)

That said.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it and write emails. Do it wrong and in the best-case scenario it’ll take you months, if not years to make any meaningful progress. Worst-case scenario, you’ll burn out, start blaming the system or the market, believe it’s all a scam, and give up before anything good happens.

Make sure you do it right by studying the fundamentals I teach in Email Valhalla.

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


There are only two parts to a sale

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Those are: opening the sale and closing it.

There’s nothing more to it. It really is that simple. And yet most people stay stuck on the closing part, while completely disregarding the opening.

There are, as with anything, many ways to open a sale, or more specifically in our case, an email. Anyone who claims there’s only one way to do something is full of shyte and undoubtedly trying to sell you something (often something subpar, if not straight trash).

But that doesn’t mean some ways aren’t better than others.

You could learn a few evergreen ways of opening an email (which I do teach in Email Valhalla) and solely rely on those. But that does keep your options limited and runs the danger of boring you out when writing emails (and if you don’t enjoy writing them, your readers won’t enjoy reading them).

So where does that leave you?

Well, in my case, there’s a simple litmus test I use every single time I write an email to determine whether an email opener is worth using.

Now, remember, I’m a simple man.

I like to do business in a simple way. I despise everything complex—complexity is often a smokescreen for incapableness—and never want anything to do with it. So beware that when I tell you my litmus test you’ll almost undoubtedly reply by saying that it’s super obvious, that everyone knows this, and that this couldn’t possibly be helpful or worth teaching people.

But to that I’ll have to ask you to remind yourself that knowing and doing are 2 very different things.

Many people will know this, yes. Almost nobody will think this is something new or revolutionary, really, it’s the most old and obvious thing there is. But then again, almost nobody actively reminds themselves of this litmus test, this simple question, when writing emails.

And it shows, because so many people fail at writing actual good, engaging, valuable emails that can sell.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn my simple litmus test (and how to actually implement it instead of merely “knowing” it), get your hands on the 7 evergreen ways to open an email or anything else related to building an absolute beast of an email (business) empire.

Then check out Email Valhalla today: https://alexvandromme.com/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


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/ 


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/