Market-First Approach

Why is the public so stupid?

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Here’s an insightful comment George Lucas said after a bunch of critics (who have no feel for the outside world and the common man) gave the first Star Wars an awful review, calling it the “infantilization” of film.

One critic even said, “What happened with Star Wars was like when McDonald’s got a foothold; the taste for good food just disappeared.”

Lucas’s response:

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“Why do people go see these popcorn pictures when they’re not good? Why is the public so stupid? That’s not my fault. I just understand what people like to see”

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Which brings me to my point.

Don’t get angry if your audience doesn’t “get” what you’re doing. Or it doesn’t see the value in what you’re promoting. It’s not your job to convert them—not directly at least. See, the truth is that it doesn’t matter. At least, as long as you know the difference between what your audience wants and what it needs.

Sometimes you gotta treat them like dogs. Not the filthy type, but the type who needs to take their medicine, yet won’t have any of it.

So what do you do? You wrap it up in ham and feed it to them anyway.

You need to understand your audience. To know what they like to see. Then give them exactly that. And only then, can you give them what they actually need. By including the solution to their problem in the thing they wanted.

It’s the same with email marketing.

And I’ll teach you exactly how to do this in Email Valhalla so people will pay attention from start to finish and actually learn the things they need to learn.

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


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/


3 reason you might want to consider running classified ads

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I’ve run 2 ads in the past few weeks in my daily emails.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that last year.

Not because I didn’t think I could do so (everyone can) but simply because, at least back then, I told myself I’d do any ads because why would I advertise for someone else’s stuff if I could just sell my own and earn more?

I still believe that, at least to a certain extent, but, as with anything, there are exceptions.

First, sometimes you just don’t care, don’t want to offer, or simply can’t offer (either because of a lack of expertise, time, or other resources) a certain solution that would help your readers out.

Would it then be fair to withhold such an opportunity from your readers?

No, of course not.

My main goal, first and foremost, will always be to keep the customer and the market in mind, think about what they want (read: need—the customer doesn’t even know what they want, let alone what they truly need) and how I can offer it to them.

So in that case, I’ll gladly refer people to someone else to buy from or do business with—and if I can get paid for it in the meantime, then even better.

Another one.

There’s always unused capacity in everything you do—daily emails are no exception.

Yeah, I can write daily emails selling my own stuff all the time (and I mostly do), but I can’t be running promotions 24/7, and even when I’m not running promotions, there’s always a diminishing return from sending more emails (most people don’t send enough emails to notice it though, me including). So withholding one email here and there to write an affiliate email or do a sponsored post is making use of the unused capacity and filling the gap or “less optimized” email you would otherwise have sent.

Last but not least.

It’s simple to do and doesn’t require much (if any at all) investment on your part (not every reason has to be profound, right?).

Anyway.

This has been an important lesson for me (and one I found valuable enough to share with you) and marks another clear sign of personal growth in my entrepreneurial journey of email marketing.

That said.

If you’d like to pick up pace in your own journey and learn more about email marketing and building, growing, and selling to your list then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Do what you think is cool, even if no one else does

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But that goes with an important caveat.

One that many people (myself included) forget. And one that all but guarantees your business will fail and you won’t make any money.

Before I get into that, I do want to say that I absolutely, completely, undeniably, and with every cell of my body agree with the first statement I made.

You have to do what you think is cool, even if no one else does.

If you think dinosaurs are cool, then talk about dinosaurs, include dinosaurs in all of your designs, create a whole line of different offers, and name them all after different types of dinosaurs.

Truly bring your reader into their world and make it known how cool you think dinosaurs truly are.

But that said.

And this brings me to the fatal caveat.

You can’t forget the number one rule of business, selling something people want. If nobody cares about what you’re selling, then nobody is going to buy. And no, merely talking about what excites you won’t magically excite other people.

You have to do your homework and figure out what people are buying.

Then you build your version of that thing people are buying and sell it as your own.

I can build the coolest banana peeler the world has ever seen. But nobody is buying banana peelers and the kitchen gadget market is already filled with useless thrash nobody buys (and even they haven’t built a banana peeler—as far as I know).

So the rule would actually be:

Do what you think is cool, even if no one else does, but make sure what you do is also something people are already buying in some way, shape or form.

But that’s not as sexy, is it?

Anyway.

I teach more about building products that people want to buy—while doing it your way (the way you think is cool)—in Product Creation Made Easy.

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

Why I don’t sell to newbies

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Before I tell you, I have to share something with you first, so it makes sense.

A long-time reader and beloved customer, Henry, recently wrote me the following about Product Creation Made Easy:

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FYI – I finally have some time to focus on your product creation.

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.

Will let you know how it goes after I’m done..planning on finishing this weekend.

But so far – easy 5 star product.

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Am I sharing this to brag about my product and get you to consider purchasing it yourself?

Well, yes.

But more importantly, I’m sharing this to highlight the importance of knowing who your customer is—and who you WANT your customer to be.

In my case, that’s busy people.

Busy in the sense of actually doing stuff instead of merely sitting around and talking about how to do stuff—or even worse, talking about the possibility of maybe doing stuff in the future.

I don’t sell to people who have trouble sitting down and getting to work.

I don’t sell to people who don’t know left from right and are looking to learn some marketing and don’t even know what “copywriting” means.

Arguably, they probably couldn’t afford my products or services without having to worry about where their next meal was coming from.

Some people (successfully) sell to newbies and beginners—I’ve got many people on this list who do.

But not me.

And I build my products accordingly.

Not in the sense that they’re difficult to follow. But in the sense that they’re built for action-takers. There’s no checklist, no helping hand guiding you along, and there’s no “do this, then this, and finally this”.

I give you the entire tool belt to use and a shit ton of inspiration on how to use each tool, when you might consider it, and why it makes sense to do so.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to you to go through it and implement everything.

If you don’t implement my stuff, you won’t benefit from it.

And if you won’t benefit from it, I don’t want to sell to you.

Anyway.

Maybe you do fit that customer profile.

Maybe you are a go-getter, an action-taker, and someone who actually does the work, implements my products, and benefits from them.

In that case, go check out Product Creation Made Easy today and imagine what your life would be like if you could ideate, create, and launch profitable digital products in 21 days or less.

Click the link here and see for yourself: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme/