How to always keep your audience engaged

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Here’s a valuable persuasive writing tip (or any kind of writing for that matter) I learned from a screenwriter somewhere (can’t remember who or where I learned it from):

“Plot and character are the two main ingredients to keep the audience engaged.”

Or in other words, at any point in time, if you want to keep the attention of your viewer (or reader more likely), you either need to be advancing the plot one way or another, or you need to be developing the characters.

Fail to do either of those and you’ll end up losing the attention you fought so very hard to get.

One of the best examples I know of to see this in action is the 1987 film Lethal Weapon starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.

It’s a one hour and 49 minutes long masterpiece perfectly giving the audience 15 minutes of plot (lots of action, attention-grabbing scenes, discoveries, and plot twists) followed by 10 minutes of character development (more mundane, day-to-day stuff, conversations, relationship forming, getting to know the various people) only to jump straight into non-stop action and plot-developing cinema and rinse and repeat.

At no point does either one become too much, or too little, and at no point does the film lose the attention of the audience by failing to do either.

A powerful lesson to bring into your own writing—especially when it comes to persuasive writing.

There’s many ways to go about doing so.

If you’d like to get a taste of a few of them, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


They Laughed When I Made An Email List – But When The Sales Started Coming In!

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There are two types of people in life:

Those who recognized the subject line and those who didn’t.

Let me explain:

See, one of the most famous ads ever written was the historic masterpiece written by John Caples and its headline was “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano – But When I Started to Play!”

Caples then goes on to tell a (made up—which is dubious in its own right and quite possibly illegal nowadays) story about a man who sat down to play piano at a gathering with his friends.

The good friends they are all started laughing because this man had (as far as they were aware) never played a single note in his life.

But then, suddenly the man started playing the most magnificent music anyone had ever heard.

He earned admiration and respect from every single person in the room.

He then tells the story of how he learned to play piano from some music institutes across the country which would send him these lesson bundles to practice on your own (the product the ad is about).

The ad made a shit ton of money and with it easily became one of the most swiped and copied ads ever.

Which is laughably stupid.

Not the money-making part, it’s a good ad. But the swiping part.

The only thing you’re doing with swiping, well, anything, is shooting yourself in the foot. You’re not original, your audience will realize, you will look stupid, nobody will buy your stupid stuff, and you lose all credibility you had as a marketer—which probably wasn’t a lot to begin with since if you’re down to copy someone else’s work, you’re probably also doing a lot of other dubious stuff that hurts your credibility.

Am I calling swipe files stupid? No.

I’m calling the act of swiping stupid.

Swipe files are great for idea generation, to learn what makes something “good” and to improve your own ability.

I have a swipe file full of old-school ads (before 1990) which I open every morning when I hand copy an entire ad—a practice Gary Bencivenga, the world’s greatest living copywriter, and many other top players recommend.

But the stuff you write?

No, that needs to be original.

Your thoughts, your ideas, your interests, your style, and your structure.

You’ll never see me talk about swiping inside my courses. I simply don’t teach you how to copy, how to mindlessly follow some checklist that will undoubtedly end up with bad results, nor how to be a fraud and destroy your entire reputation and credibility.

I give you the tools and principles you need to succeed together with the freedom to experiment and grow on your own personal journey.

I created my courses as more of a guiding hand in the right direction than a step-by-step template on how to do something.

Anyway.

If this didn’t scare you off (which I hope it didn’t because you shouldn’t be on my list in that case) then go check out Email Valhalla today.

Why?

Because I said so. (how’s that for persuasive communication, huh?)

Here’s the link: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Build yourself a base of operations

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Every building needs a foundation. Every project needs a base of operations. Every business needs a central place everything leads to.

The bigger the building, project, or business, the more vital the foundational layer is. You can build a crappy wooden shack on a crappy foundation but good luck trying that with a skyscraper.

Your business is no different.

In my case, the core of my business is direct marketing, or more specifically a central email list where I grow, keep, entertain, and sell to my audience.

The aim is to open as many “portals” (aka, entryways to my ‘world’ of business) as I can and have them all leading to my email list.

Whether this remains one single email list with fancy segmentation where needed or split up my email lists into multiple different ones depends on the context and the market you’re in.

All that matters is that everyone who comes into contact with my work, my offers, and my world should at one point (preferably sooner rather than later) end up in my email list. That’s how you effectively grow as a business.

Not by making one-time sales and never seeing the customer ever again. But by keeping the customer—the most important element of any business—around increasing the chance to turn them into repeat and even lifelong customers instead.

So now that you understand all of this. Do yourself a favor and check out my flagship course Email Valhalla, which will teach you all about how to write entertaining emails your readers want to read to build (and sustain) your base of operations.

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


The case for positive bullying

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A few days ago I saw a video that went somewhat viral on social media.

In that video, someone was recording a young woman in the gym, who, at first, was doing wrist curls with a 1kg weight. After a few reps of normal wrist curls the woman turned her hand 90 degrees and started doing similar curls, except this time with the 1kg dumbell held vertically instead of horizontally.

That video was then shared with the caption “What’s she training for?” (talk about entertainment huh)

This, naturally, seemed to appeal to the “incel red pill sigma manosphere chronically online, never having touched a woman in their life, living in their mom’s basement, and projecting their own failures and insecurities onto everyone else to cope with their sad reality of a life” community who could think of nothing else but to sexualize a young woman doing wrist exercises that seemed similar in movement to what one might do with a cylindrical shape often attached to a person of a certain gender famous for growing beards (go figure).

There are many things to be said about this.

Firstly, that exercise is an extremely common and effective exercise prescribed by physiotherapists around the globe for all types of wrist injuries—something I’m no stranger to myself. In fact, I’ve had to do these very exercises myself (with equally “embarrassing” weights).

But even then.

It shouldn’t matter whether it’s an effective exercise or not. You shouldn’t be recording strangers in the gym (or anywhere else for that matter) and putting them on the internet to begin with.

How hard can it be not to record people without their permission?

But people will do everything to get some “social media street cred” and get their daily dose of dopamine when they see their likes coming in it seems (nobody’s safe from the addictiveness of social media—another great reason to get as far away from it as you possibly can).

There is, however, one exception where it’s ok, even recommended, to record people without their permission.

That’s if they’re actively committing a crime… and no, hurting your feelings isn’t a crime so stop recording people whenever you’re having an argument, Karen.

More.

Hurting people’s feelings is actually a tremendously effective method to 1) get attention 2) get people thinking about you (also called "living in their head rent free” as the young’uns call it nowadays) and 3) potentially making a positive impact in someone’s life.

The amount of times people have been “bullied” into bettering their lives is unbelievable.

As an example, I know many people, under- and overweight alike, who have been bullied into the gym and are eternally grateful for it (even though most of them will never admit it like that).

Now, don’t go around saying I told you to bully everyone about everything just because you can. No, definitely don’t do that. But do learn how to effectively utilize bullying when and only when done for a right and just cause (such as getting people to dramatically improve their health and quality of life).

With that said.

I also know from talking to people, that so many people out their dream of writing for a living. Even going as far as having made plans about what they’ll be writing about, how they’ll market their work, and how they’ll monetize everything.

Even more specifically.

The amount of emails I’ve received from people telling me they “will create an email list sometime soon” but never actually get around to doing so is staggering to say the least.

I can only conclude those people are failures at life, probably will never amount to anything, and should better give up sooner rather than later and accept the fact walk of life simply isn’t meant for them.

You simply won’t get anywhere without the discipline to follow through with the plans you made.

If, however, you don’t want to identify with someone like that, I can only suggest you start writing and building your email list today (your email list will make your marketing and monetization process so much easier it’s unbelievable).

And if you’re finally motivated and disciplined enough to start, then be sure to check out my flagship email course Email Valhalla which will teach you how to write simple entertaining emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day.

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


How to come out on top by being wrong

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The 2024 American elections are over.

Trump got elected—even going as far as winning the popular vote (the last Republican who won the popular vote was George W. Bush back in 2004).

But you’ve probably been bombarded with all of this information already.

So I won’t bother you with it.

What I will mention is how, earlier this week, I was thinking of writing a “my 2024 election prediction” email where I would’ve predicted Trump to be the winner (yes, yes, easily said after the fact I know, but that isn’t the point here).

Ultimately I decided not to write such an email.

I don’t have any specific reasons as to why I didn’t write one, but neither did I have a good reason why I shouldn’t have written one.

Frankly said, I simply couldn’t care less to share my prediction with the world (neither did I actually pay a lot of attention to the election itself, in fact). But this did remind me of an incredibly useful insight (something which could potentially earn you a lot of money—or help you in many different non-monetary ways).

In fact, it’s something I recently got reminded of (again) after reading Lawrence Bernstein’s newsletter about writing copy in financial markets.

The insight in question?

It's better to be wrong than wishy-washy.

Everyone likes predictions, it’s in our human nature. Also in our human nature is the need to want to follow and listen to people who dare to speak their minds (yes, even people who say they don’t like following others, do still have people they enjoy reading or listening to because of this very reason).

So it pays to be bold and make predictions.

At the same time, nobody remembers, much less cares about, you if you get something wrong. People simply move on with their life and act as if your predictions never happened.

The result?

An almost unlimited upside to making bold predictions without almost any downside whatsoever.

Don’t believe me?

Look at the most well-known analysts in their fields, whether it’s finance, politics, or sports, and check out their track records.

On the flip side, if you try to sound educated, explain the pros and cons or probabilities of each option, and ultimately conclude that “it depends” or “it can go either way,” then simply nobody would give you a single sliver of attention.

So to repeat: It's better to be wrong than wishy-washy.

And the best way to make such predictions and share them with your readers, as you should probably know by now if you’ve been following me for any length of time, is by writing simple entertaining emails people love to read (while also getting you paid).

For more information on how to write emails just like that, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


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


Why positive thinking marketers have skinny kids

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Or so said the great, late Zig Ziglar.

(That’s “underfed and even starving” skinny—for clarification)

See, with today’s cancel culture, inclusion marketing, greenwashing, LGBTQ123+ and other diversity movements, there’s simply no shortage of people, companies, and big-figure enterprises trying to play it safe, pleasing their customers, and acting as if everything is always sunshine and rainbows.

Yet that’s the exact opposite of what you as a marketer, salesman, copywriter, coach, consultant, or other product seller/service provider, should do.

People (and by extension the world) run on problems.

The only reason people take action is to solve a problem. Everyone has problems, all the time—even Buddhists trying to reach a state of a problemless (not sure if this is a word) nirvana still have the problem of having problems.

And that’s a good thing too.

Otherwise nothing would happen, nothing would get done, you and I wouldn’t get paid, and there’d be nothing to life as a whole.

Life is a permanent conquest of solving problem after problem.

With that said.

What are people trying to achieve by pretending everything is ok? By “sharing happiness” everywhere they go and encouraging everyone that they’re perfect just the way they are, they can do whatever they dream of, and they shouldn’t let anything get in their way.

First.

They’re not getting paid that way.

But even more important.

They’re not helping people either.

Most people aren’t perfect the way they are. Acting as if that’s the case is ignoring the potential inside of everyone waiting to be released and become a better person day after day.

In fact.

If you’d really care about people, really want to help your customers, clients, readers, listeners, followers, and everyone else you meet. Then you’d tell them the hard and difficult stuff. You’d show them their imperfections, their flaws, their faults, and even make them feel the pain and shame that comes along with it.

But…

At the same time, you’d also present them with a solution to help them solve their problems.

That’s where your product or service comes into play.

And that’s how you get paid while actually helping your customers improve their quality of life—not by being all happy dandy all the time, acting as if everything’s fine all the time, when people are clearly in need and suffering.

As an example:

Many people are working jobs they don’t like, following orders they don’t want to follow, listening to people they can’t stand, all to please people they don’t even know, just so they can live a below-average life.

At the same time, modern technology allows for you to explore, share, and even profit from your hobbies and curiosities (seriously, the hobby market is a total goldmine).

Or in other words, it allows for “Sensible people to get paid doing what they love” as Alan Watts famously preached.

What’s the best medium to use to get started doing so?

You guessed it: Email.

At least, if you know what you’re doing, that is. That’s why I’d like to direct your attention towards my flagship course, Email Valhalla, where I’ll teach you how to write entertaining emails about the stuff you love that get you paid and your readers will love to read day after day.

Sounds interesting?

Then click here to find out more: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Everything is slowly turning into a subscription model

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From your daily entertainment to your groceries, the clothes you wear, the books you read, the music you listen to, the hobbies you practice, the perfumes and fragrances you use, the cars you drive (if that market won’t completely turn into a subscription-based Uber-like “get driven by autonomous vehicles" service eventually), the traveling you might want to do, hell, chances are even the phones you’ll buy and every other gadget or consumable you can think of will become subscription based.

It might not be this year.

It might not even be next year.

But I promise you, based on how things are currently going, everything will and shall turn into a subscription model—even the things you couldn’t believe were possible.

So what should you do when it comes to subscriptions?

Should you follow? Should you be different just because you can?

Well, that’s not something I can answer for you. As with anything, it depends. I don’t know what you do, what you sell, who you sell it to, how much you’re charging for it, how much it costs you to sell it, how easy it is to deliver, how often people use it, how many people want it, and a lot more other vital pieces of information you’d need to make a decision like this (anyone telling you there’s a one-size-fits-all answer is trying to sell you horsecrap).

What I do know is that a lot more people are trying to jump into the subscription business (as will I eventually, not going to hide it).

And with that there’s also many people who are making the big mistake (unless they’re already a big industry name, then they can do whatever they want) of trying to sell the continuity as the first thing the customer sees.

In case you didn’t know, it’s a difficult sell to get someone to hand you money every single month.

A better way to do things (as far as my personal experience goes)?

Sell something low-ticket first (alongside selling yourself). Build up trust. Show them you know your stuff. Help them get a feeling of satisfaction.

Only after that, offer them a subscription to get more of the same (with more convenience and/or a better price) or offer them more (and better/more in-depth) complimentary stuff.

Something to think about and take into consideration.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to sell, whether it’s a continuity or not, and more specifically, learn to sell it through email, then check out Email Valhalla where I share all the tips, tricks, deets, and secret sauce.

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


Not to be a Dan Kennedy fanboy but…

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Here’s a golden piece of advice from the great Dan Kennedy that everyone in business, no exceptions, should read, print out, tape to their wall, remind themselves of every day, and seek to apply to their business as much as possible:

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"Everybody who makes a lot of money defies industry norms. Everybody who makes average money conforms to them."

===

Now think about this:

What do most people do?

They all follow in some random gurus’ footsteps, almost blindly copying whatever he and the rest of the market do. Always doing the thing that seems right and playing the game as most would expect. They follow the rules without knowing why the rules are there in the first place, let alone questioning whether those rules are actual rules you should be following.

They’ll say stuff such as:

"Oh everyone attaches a random picture of themself to their LinkedIn post (one that has nothing to do with the post whatsoever). Let's do the same!"

"Oh everyone is praising "value" (even though most don't know what it means) and giving everything away for free (i.e. not getting paid). Let's do the same!"

"Oh everyone is using ChatGPT to come up with topics to talk about and writing awful hooks that ooze 'emotionless and templates writing'. Let's do the same!"

I hope you can see how that’s a problem.

It’s a problem that’s easily solved if you simply think for yourself one second.

Think about what (and why) you’re doing something. Then stop merely copying other people just because they're doing it. They might be successful with it, even because of it, but that still doesn't mean anything. You won't become successful merely by being a copycat of someone else.

And yes this includes the above piece of advice by Dan Kennedy himself as well as every other thing he said or wrote.

Do your due diligence. Defy the norms (or don’t if defying the norm is the norm—there’s a paradox for you). And see what happens.

To give you something more practical to work with.

Here's the exercise Dan Kennedy recommended:

Take out a piece of paper (or whatever you use to write on) and make a list of everything that's an industry norm in your business — how things are prices, how things are sold, how they are deliverd, how they are advertised, how they are marketed, what kind of content gets created, how contracts are made up.

Idenfity and isolate every single thing you can think about that's an industry norm people in your business conform to. (This should be a list of over 100 different items).

Then try and figure out how you can defy as many of them as humanly possible.

"You will transform your income in direct proportion to the number you manage to violate," Dan Kennedy adds.

I've been doing this slowly but surely from the start with how I approach social media, how I write my emails, and how I create and sell my courses. And I call tell you that my income increased in direct proportion with the norms I defied.

I urge you to try it yourself.

Don't delay.

Pick up a piece of paper today and do the exercise.

Then send me a message in a few days sharing how much results you're already seeing that quickly.

On another note.

The best and easiest way to define the norms is to build an email list of your own so you can define the rules of what you do, how you work, who gets to join, and everything else within your very own corner of the internet.

This truly allows you to defy the norms—and even define your own.

To learn more about how to grow and monetize your email list, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I shaved my head

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If you followed me back in my Twitter days, you might remember how long my hair used to be whenever I shared a picture or some video of me bouldering for example.

In case you don’t, you’ll just have to believe me for now.

In fact, I once let my sister straighten my hair with some sort of steam-powered hair straightener (I think she called it a steam pod but don’t ask me about that type of stuff, I know nothing about it at all). Anyway, I still have a picture of how I looked back then and I’m not joking when I say my hair was so long it went all the way to my nipples and beyond (you’re welcome for making you think about my nipples by the way).

That said, this was when my hair was at my longest—I also exclusively walked around with a low-hanging man bun at that time (strange times those years were).

As of late, my hair was quite a bit shorter, but still quite long for men's standards.

Anyway, that’s a lot of context just to make you understand the drastic difference when I tell you I completely shaved my head to the point of almost going bald (my mother would probably have gotten a heart attack if I did, in fact, go completely bald).

The running joke used to be that my everyday “style” was that of an intellectual hobo—whatever that looks like in your mind.

Nowadays, I’ve been told I resemble Justin Timberlake's appearance in the movie ‘In Time’.

A drastic change to say the least.

And yet, it took me no longer than a few hours to go “Oh that’s what I look like almost bald, alright that’s nice.” and roll with it as if nothing even happened.

But that’s not at all how the events leading up to me getting an incredibly short buzz cut went.

You see, while not that serious and somewhat half-jokingly, I’ve had the idea to get a buzz cut for probably over 6 months, potentially even longer than a year (I can’t remember when I first thought about it, but it’s been a while).

Whether it’s fear, uncertainty, doubt, or something else that kept me from doing so, I can’t actually tell (probably a combination of all of the above), but the most important part is realizing how much I ‘suffered’ (constantly thinking about it, doubting the decision, and never going through with it) and how much time I wasted that way.

And for what?

Worst case scenario, I don’t like it and it just grows back, no big deal really.

Now, this might just be a silly little story for you, however it’s about much more than just “some hair”.

In fact, I’m guessing that this story will hit close to home to you in some way, shape, or form. I can almost guarantee there’s been something in your life or something on your mind that you’ve been thinking about, wondering whether to go through with it or not. Something you have many, many doubts about, even though, when it comes down to it, relatively little bad can ever happen (especially considering nothing bad ever happens to a writer), and in most cases, something you’ll be immediately glad you did afterward, yet you’ve been making yourself suffer immensely for far too long.

Something else.

How often have you procrastinated doing a task you really didn’t want to do for days, weeks, or potentially even months, yet when you finally got to it didn’t take longer than 5 to 10 minutes to complete and be done with for good?

Yeah…

Nothing to feel bad about though. We’ve all been there. Nobody is special when it comes to these types of experiences. Sometimes it’s as if we’re all living the same lives just in different times and places.

If there’s one thing to take away from this email, it’s to just get on with it and shave your head, because who knows, you might really end up enjoying it…

Speaking of which, if you’ve been on the fence about building an email and writing daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day (which I know many people are) then this might just be the one thing you needed to hear to get you going.

Even more.

Check out Email Valhalla here to shave your figurative head and learn everything there is to know about writing simple and entertaining daily emails just like this one.

For more information, click here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/