List-Building

What’s the point of a blog anyway?

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Came a question from an interested reader:

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“I noticed a while back you don’t post every email of yours on your blog. Why not? Is there a strategy or bigger picture reasoning behind not doing so?

Been wondering about that for a while now.”

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Great question.

But before I can answer that directly, I have to clarify something first, just be sure everyone’s on the same page.

See, the purpose of any single blog out there is always the same: to attract readers.

Forget where they come from, what they’re looking for, how they got here, or anything else that might confuse you. For now, the only thing that matters is that every single blog shares the same purpose of getting attention and attracting readers.

Now, that’s only the first degree purpose.

Behind wanting to “attract readers” there’s another purpose, always. Even people who write for the joy or art of it such as fanfics or what have you still have the second-degree purpose of feeling a sense of accomplishment and, most importantly, approval from others when they see other people are reading their stuff.

This “second-degree purpose” might differ from business to business.

In my case, that’s to build my email list. After all, my email list has been, and will forever remain so however long I continue doing what I do, at the center of my business. It’s what powers everything else and makes everything I do possible.

So, naturally, the only reason for me to even host my blog is for people to stumble upon it one way or another, check it out, enjoy what they read, and, this is the crucial bit, ultimately decide to opt-in to my list.

At that point my blog effectively loses its functionality for that specific person… but that’s ok because the only purpose of my blog was to get people to opt-in to my list, which it, at that point, did successfuly.

This brings me back to the original question.

Why don’t I publish all of my emails on my blog?

Well, think about it yourself. If I did publish every single email on my site, why would anyone even bother subscribing to my list? All they’d gain would be the “convenience” of not having to check my site manually. At most they’d lose out on some gift or a lead magnet I give to people who opt-in. But none of that is making much of a case, at least not a strong one.

No, there needs to be an air of mystery, intrigue.

People need to be excited and curious to want to find out more, to discover everything there is to discover, to get all of the privileges, known and unknown, of being an actual subscriber to my list, not just an incognito reader on my website.

There are other reasons, of course, but this is definitely one of the most important ones to realize.

As for best practices of what to do when people finally opt-in to your list, you might want to check out my flagship course, Email Valhalla, to get an answer to that question: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


Improving your email growth

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Once upon a time, I received a message from a daily reader (not sure if he wants me to name him):

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Hey Alex! How can I grow my email list faster?

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You’d think this would be a simple and straightforward question, right?

Well, yes and no.

Here’s my response:

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Short answer?

You promote it more

Long answer?

Depends on where your bottleneck is.

Might be social media growth [in this case, the person who asked was getting most of his leads from social media], the link click-through rate on your promotion posts, or your sign-up conversion on your landing page.

Might be something else or a mix of those 3.

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After all, an email list consists of many moving parts.

Some are more important than others, sure. But there’s a lot going on. And it can become confusing if you don’t know where to start or what to focus on.

The good news is you control everything.

You can change whatever you want, however you want. You can make it work together in perfect harmony to create the best-performing list mankind has ever seen. Or you can create an absolute mess that doesn’t produce any results whatsoever.

Either way, it’s in your control.

And that’s a good thing because it means you can learn, adapt, and improve.

This brings me to my flagship course, Email Valhalla, which, in my not-so-humble and extremely biased opinion, is the best and most effective resource you can get your hands on to learn how to build a well-functioning email list.

One where all the parts work together in harmony. And one that’ll help you earn a lot of money.

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


Do not run ads if you’re not getting paid

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

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

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

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

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

See, I get it.

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

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

That said.

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

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

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

The result?

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

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

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

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

No?

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

The point is this.

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

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

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

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


Why I don’t use lead magnets (for now)

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First and foremost: I just plain don’t like them.

Not just as in "I don't like using them to build my list" But as in "I don't like other people's lead magnets".

Meaning.

I might like certain people's content and would happily opt-in to their list. But often the only way to opt-in is to first download their lead magnet—which is extra friction and makes me less inclined to opt-in.

Why?

First, I simply don't care about your lead magnet and have no need for whatever it’s trying to teach me.

So forcing me to download it?

Nah.

Second, most lead magnet landing pages don't talk about what happens afterward.

How many emails will you send me? What are they like? What will you talk about?

Are you even going to send me regular emails?

And god forbid if the only way to read their emails is to go through a "10-day email course" I don't care about, forcing me to wait 10 days before I can read your (daily) emails and actually keep up with what you're doing on a daily basis (which more often than not is a lot more entertaining and interesting than the email course itself).

And yes, yes, maybe I might just be a special snowflake in this regard

Obviously, every market, niche, and person is different.

But these are mine.

And because I plain don’t like lead magnets, it would make negative sense if I made my (future) readers go through the same process I dislike.

On another note.

Most lead magnets only attract broke people and freeloaders—you don’t want those on your list. You want people willing to invest, willing to buy what you offer, and willing to engage with your stuff and work towards a better future.

That’s a high-quality list and one that’ll get you paid by selling products, landing clients, or both.

Speaking of getting paid.

Consider checking out Email Valhalla if you’d like to learn how to write daily emails that get you paid Alex Style.

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


How to grow your email list (without the use of social media)

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A few days ago I wrote an email ranting about the current state of social media and the boring, unfulfilling, and downright soul-wrenching game you have to play if you want to achieve any kind of ‘success’ according to most “social media gurus” out there.

That message seemed to have struck a chord somewhere because I received quite some responses.

One of those responses was from a long-time reader (whose name I won’t share for obvious reasons) who felt exactly what I was talking about.

He mentioned how he felt like he “had to” play this social media game to build social proof and authority to get started as a beginner in his market.

Obviously, that didn’t please him. So he asked me, yours truly, what I would do if I were in his shoes instead and wanted to build my business from the ground up when nobody knows my name.

So here goes:

First, realize that social media is a new thing.

Marketing and sales aren’t.

There have been plenty of ultra-successful marketers selling all sorts of products, services, and even experiences for far longer than social media has been around.

Don’t get trapped in this mindset that social media is the end-all-be-all. The only people who want you to believe that are the ones who want to sell you their social media course.

I’m not saying social media doesn’t work—it clearly does.

But it’s not for everyone and it definitely isn’t your only option.

Second caveat:

Realize that social proof, while definitely being powerful and useful, is far lower on the ladder of necessity than you might think.

90% of all the ads you see (if not more) don’t use any kind of social proof. They simply make you aware of a problem you might be having, and then offer you a potential solution to said problem.

If the advertiser did his homework, aka he knows what keeps his market up at night, then the problem will be so close to home you can’t help but pay attention to whatever solution the ad might be offering. And if the solution is positioned correctly then you, the customer seeing the ad, will end up buying it.

Regardless of whether you’ve heard of the product before or your next-door neighbor Nancy also happened to have used that same product.

Once your realize this, that’s when countless doors will open for you.

You’ll realize all you have to do is get your product, service, or better yet, yourself (and a plug to your email list—the most valuable asset you’ll ever build and which allows you to create repeat buyers and die-hard fans instead of having to survive on one-time sales) in front of your target audience while talking about their problems or their interests—regardless of what market you’re in (every single product in the entertainment industry solves the “problem” of boredom—which just so happens to be at an all-time high right now; making it the best time ever to grow your entertainment business if you know what you’re doing).

Some possibilities:

  • Run ads on Google, Facebook, Amazon, popular forums, or wherever your target audience hangs out (simple yet effective)

  • Get on podcasts as a guest speaker: start small and build your way up. You won’t get on Joe Rogan’s podcast as a no-name but there are thousands of people with dreams of building a big-name podcasts who just so happen to always have a need for guests to interview. Mention what you’re working on and how that could interest their audience and chances are most, if not everyone, would like to talk to you.

  • Write blog posts, articles, or press releases for online newspapers, other people’s blogs and email lists, internet magazines, or any of the tens of thousands of media outlets all scattered around the internet (most of which are owned by people who dislike writing articles but want to publish as much content as possible so they can make a living off the ad revenue)

  • Message local newspapers, radio shows, or television channels: Most people lead boring lives. So just by building a business or doing something artsy or creative, you instantly become so much more interesting—which is more than entertaining enough for every local media outlet to want to interview you (what’s a better story than the “local celebrity”?)

  • Meet new people and keep an eye out for potential joint-ventures: You’re not alone in your market. Use this to your advantage. Work together with other creatives or entrepreneurs. Ask if they’d be interested in recommending you or your products to their audience if you’d do the same for them (or simply pay them to recommend you).

There’s a lot more where that came from, but this should be more than enough to keep anyone busy for quite a while already.

After all, no amount of information will save you if you never get to implementing things.

So get to it.

Start implementing at least one or two of these and build yourself a big email list.

At that point, you might want to master how to write engaging, entertaining, and persuasive emails that’ll help sell your products while keeping your readers reading day after day as well.

For that, consider checking out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


A simpler and more passive list-growing method than social media

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I’ve been gradually getting more passive email subscribers the past few days.

All because I took the time to create and host my very own WordPress site, publish all of my emails online, and learn some of the basics of SEO and making it so my emails (or “posts” as WordPress calls them) show up in search engines.

This combined with Beehiiv’s Boost function, and me teasing my Email Valhalla course on sign-up also means I’m semi-passively (I still have to write the emails after all) earning an income because of it.

Not only that, but I’ll keep earning based on past emails I’ve written—emails that will only grow in numbers and get better in quality the more I write.

To me there’s truly no better business model out there.

Find me another business where you can earn a living by writing whenever you want, from wherever you want, all the while helping people accomplish their own dreams, getting thank-you emails on the regular, and, last but not least, do all of this without a income ceiling limited by any one resource such as time, distribution, money, or costs.

I applaud anyone building a coaching business, working as a freelancer, owning their own agency, or any other service-based business for that matter—let alone selling physical products.

But that’s not for me (at least not yet, who knows when the Banana Viking merchandise might be released?)

I like to keep it simple, efficient, and with a freedom-first aspect.

Anyway.

If you’re only using social media to get leads, you’re seriously missing out.

Go get your online real estate up and running.

And if you’re not even building your own email list yet, what are you waiting for?

Check out Email Valhalla today and get started right away: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla