Marketing

Would it surprise you if I told you I already created a “business plan”—or at least a vision—for the next 50 to 70 years of my life, depending on how long I’ll be able to walk this wonderful planet?

Well, I have.

But before I dive any deeper into it, let me just tell you something… this isn’t meant to be practical advice. This isn’t meant to be used as a guideline or something to strive towards. If anything, I’d suggest you forget everything I talk about right now and pretend I never wrote this.

What I’m about to share with you doesn’t just walk the fine line between visionary and pure lunacy… It IS pure lunacy, no doubt about it. In fact, I’d even argue it should deserve a whole new category of its own.

Hard, relentless work likely won’t cut it. Burnouts are a given. The amount of patience, determination, and quite possibly luck, someone would need to pull this off is truly off the charts and out of this world. But as a wise man once told me, “You don’t know where the line is until you cross it.”

And I’m damn determined to figure out exactly where that line is.

See, it’s currently 2024.

Almost everything is digitalized in one way or another. There’s barely a person left who isn’t, in one way or another, plugged in and online at all times. You can reach a near-infinite number of people just by pressing a few buttons without even having to leave the comfort of your couch.

Technology is evolving at incredible speeds, allowing you to create everything you can imagine.

Yet, people’s vision isn’t evolving at even close to the same speed… and neither is their marketing…

Before I continue, let’s look at how current-day online marketing (for independent creators and entrepreneurs) is mostly done

First, you’ve got the usual options of joining and engaging in online communities (e.g., on Discord, Reddit, Skool, Circle, various forums, hobby or theme pages, …) that share your interests. Then you’ve got the general “building an audience” social media route (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, …) as well as more specific (market)places (Upwork, Fiverr, Etsy, Amazon KDP, Steam, Itch dot io, Soundcloud, Spotify, you name it).

All great tools on their own.

And that’s where many people stop.

But not you. You know better… you know if you stop there you’ll be entirely dependent on some algorithm or the whims of the next update to the platform—as well as its regulations—that may or may not break your entire business overnight. You’re essentially gambling for success this way (and gamblers tend to lose—big time).

If you’ve got any brain cells in you, then you should be in this for the long game.

That means, setting things up so you’re in control. You decide your own success… without having to pray that some algorithm shows your work to the right people at the right time, let alone consistently and reliably.

So you’ll want to think about building something you own, something you have absolute control over and where you don’t have to please an algorithm or fight an uphill battle to get your content in front of your audience… As well as somewhere you can focus on marketing not just your work, but yourself as the creator behind it… something like a personal blog, or, even better in my humble yet biased opinion, an email list.

When you realize your email list is the true base of operations and everything else is only a portal for people to come into your world (the email list) where you can entertain them and build a deeper relationship with them so they’ll stay for years to come (again, you’re playing the long game) and all but guaranteeing they’ll read, consume, and buy a lot more than they would’ve if you’d tried to get the one-time sale… that’s when the real game begins.

But there are as many of these portals to get people onto your email list as there are grains of sand on Earth (possibly, I didn’t count).

Just to give you some inspiration:

The first and foremost method people use (aside from the ones I mentioned earlier) is to use paid advertisement to get people interested in what you have to offer, maybe give them something for free which they can use (or that’s purely entertaining—this depends on the market you’re in) in return for signing up to your email list.

But what if you don’t want to spend any money?

No worries, there are plenty of other options as well.

Here we’re already entering a terrain that not many people (definitely not nearly enough) are thinking about using and abusing.

For example, going on podcasts or interviews with other people/channels/businesses in your market (or related markets)—the smaller ones especially are always happy to talk with anyone. Or writing articles and press releases for (online) magazines and blogs. As well as your local newspapers or radio stations—they love to interview local people who are doing something creative in their lives.

Everyone is looking for news and entertainment all the time. You just have to approach them and ask (make sure you’re allowed to plug your work or your email list at the end—most will allow you to do so, but it’s best to double-check).

Taking it yet another step further: unleash your inner Brandon Sanderson (to stay in theme as creatives) and grow your own all-around entertainment-focused podcast like he does with his “Intentionally Blank” podcast as a supplement to all the books he’s writing.

This is truly where most people stop.

Only the true devout, the maniacs, and the mentally insane in our world would dare to go beyond. Probably for the best because you’d need to be a special type of deranged to even dare thinking about taking it to this next level.

What level am I talking about?

The level of madness where people start thinking “Why build a business around one product, service, or offer when I could build a whole universe around one central narrative?”

That’s where you start thinking like a publisher.

This is where you start writing books, comics, and graphic novels, releasing video games, board games, or card games, recording songs, albums, and soundtracks, creating paintings, sculptures, or even action figures, directing animated series, films, and documentaries…

All with the intention of creating one coherent universe where everything’s interconnected, one thing leads to the next, the movie follows the book, the action figures follow the movie, the video games follow the action figures, the paintings follow the video games, the books then references the paintings in a later installment, which then again follows the albums, the documentaries, and everything else, all in unison, all living together in harmony, supporting one another and strengthening each other to the point where there are a bazillion gateways for people to come to discover, enjoy, and ultimately become obsessed with everything you’ve built…

And no matter where people are in your universe, they’ll always find themselves on a road that leads to your email list in exactly the same manner as every road would lead to Rome.

Yes, this is a lot.

If anything, this is too much. Especially for just one person to accomplish. No doubt about it. I warned you in the beginning…this takes work. It might not even be possible. I haven’t got the slightest clue. Probably nobody really does.

The least I can say is that this isn’t for the weak-willed, the weak-minded, and the lazy… not in the slightest.

I repeat, these are merely ideas meant to inspire you. I haven’t even started working on 10% of this. It will take years or even decades to do all of it. And nobody’s forcing you to do everything. But it’s great to have goals you can’t possibly reach. It’s good to be motivated and have something to drive you.

Nobody got anywhere without a vision.

And well, mine just happens to be… well, however extremely, more than likely, unattainable this is…

I can’t, in good conscience, suggest you try anything even close to this. No doubt many people who’d attempt such a thing would go insane or completely burn out, draining every single drop of life and creative expression they have left… even attempting to do just two or three different things on this list would probably mean the end to most people.

If anything, I recommend you NOT to do this.

But just in case you happen to be as crazy (and as overly optimistic and long-term-focused) as I am.

This might just get you inspired to make something happen.

Remind yourself that just because you barely see anyone else attempt something like this doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t do it. More often than not, you’ll become MORE, not less, successful by doing the things others don’t.

Circling back a bit…

Don’t forget, you’re not limited to solely talking about your projects from a creative perspective. In fact, it’d likely hurt you if you did. Realize that people won’t be solely interested in your work. If you’re attempting anything close to my crazy vision of the future I’ve laid out right here, and if done right, they’ll be interested in YOU (and everything you put out).

So share stories about the development, about how you came up with your ideas, what inspired you, even talk about the work of others and what you thought was missing from their creations—a common reason for making your own version—be bigger than life. Show them there’s a real person behind this universe you’re creating.

At the end of the day, people just want to be entertained, which opens up a whole new world of things to talk about.

No doubt this universe will become bigger than you. It will outlast you if you put everything you have into it (which also means someone else will cause its downfall when you’re no longer around—you either die a visionary or live long enough to see them kill off your babies).

But as long as that’s not the case, you’ll have to be the driving force of expansion—you and the characters that inhabit your universe and the many worlds it holds.

As we near the end of this article, let me restate the obvious one more time.

This is a lot of work. I have no idea whether this is even possible for a single person to accomplish. But then again, there’s only one way to find out, right?

And on that note, there is one piece of genuinely helpful advice I’d give anyone foolish enough to attempt turning this vision into a reality. This is at least how I’m currently working towards tackling the above. And that’s by starting things slow. Focusing on every aspect one at a time. And building the foundation first (you can’t build a skyscraper on a rushed foundation after all).

And that foundation is nothing less than learning to write and entertain, while simultaneously growing your email list. After all, that’s what’s at the center of this entire vision. It only make sense to start it early and keep working on it for decades to come.

Even more.

Do all of your learning in public.

Start new projects all the time. Share your progress. Give regular updates. Talk about what you’ve learned, where you made mistakes, and how you’d go about avoiding those same mistakes in the future.

When it’s time you can ever start educating other people on the skills you’ve learned and the experience you’ve gathered.

There are many places you can learn, record, and even build stuff in public.

Personal websites, portfolios, and blogs are good.

Building an audience on social media platforms is better.

Growing your own email list which you own, control, and gives you direct access to every single one of your readers is the best.

Remember, you’re playing a long-term game here.

You’re not in it to MAYBE go viral and MAYBE get a chance at becoming popular and extremely rich. You’re here to guarantee you’ll be seen and guarantee you’ll have a decent income.

You probably won’t get extremely rich, sure. But chances are you wouldn’t have gotten rich by enslaving yourself to a social media platform, hoping the algorithm works in your favor, always following whatever the latest trend or the latest update is, following the crowd wherever you go, and never truly being able to master something or to stick to one formula.

Instead, you find a format that works and stick to it for decades. You become a platform onto yourself by building an email list which you control.

Most importantly, you take your marketing into your own hands, doing things you can control, which guarantees a positive outcome.

Everyone who’s out there playing the algorithm game is gambling with their future—and gamblers always lose (and they lose hard).

Don’t be a gambler.

If you’d like more information on how to best take matters into your own hand by building yourself something you control and can guarantee a positive outcome, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

A question popped up in a self-publishing writer’s community:

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I published my memoir in late January of this year. I was able to get quite a few sales (I was amazed tbh because my previous book I had published barely even sold…).

I’ve been trying my best to promote it this last month because the sales are dropping and I think it’s simply because people have no idea it exists…? But I don’t think I’m catching people’s attention with it.

I published it on Amazon kdp. I can’t pay for ads currently so…am I SOL? I really want my story to be heard

===

Classic case of short-sightedness.

You see it everywhere. People trying to get others to buy their products or services so they start looking for ways to advertise that specific product… only to get a few one-time sales and then struggle to keep that momentum (if they even got any to begin with) going—never actually making a business out of what they’ve got.

Here’s the tl;dr of what I’d suggest to anyone in a similar situation:

• Step 1: Create an email list

• Step 2: Drive people to your opt-in page through content creation

• Step 3: Email them as often as you can about the common interests that connect you and them to whatever you’re selling.

• Step 4: Sit back and relax while growing a business that doesn’t rely on one-time sales because you’re not losing your customers. Instead you’re actively growing your customer list and building a better and tighter relationship with them, guaranteeing more sales (consistently) in the future as long as you keep giving people what they want.

Ain’t nothing complicated to it (and if you think this only works for authors, you couldn’t be more mistaken).

If you’d like a more in-depth view of this process, then check out Email Valhalla to learn all about building, growing, and monetizing your email list.

Click here to check it out: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I came across a post on a well-known forum from a musician who released his latest song the day before.

Apparently, he worked long and hard on the song, did everything he could to make it as good as he possibly could, then went on to try his hand at “marketing” it—clever guy—by convincing a couple of blog writers and a few popular Instagram music pages make a post about his latest song.

The guy was so excited thinking about the fame and riches he’d amass from this song he almost couldn’t sleep.

Yet when he woke up the next day… nothing happened. And I truly mean nothing. Nobody except probably a few friends listened to his latest song.

36 hours after release and all he got for it were 15 plays.

I can’t help but feel sorry for the man.

So here’s the issue:

He’s a nobody. Not as in the pessimistic “he doesn’t have any talent and will never amount to anything”. No, he clearly has some talent.

But right now, nobody knows him. Plain and simple as that.

It pays to be aware of the current situation instead of fighting or running from it.

To his credit, he tried doing some marketing and getting the song out there. But he did so in the wrong way.

See, nobody cares about your new song, your new book, your new product, your new game, your new cocaine addiction you developed because your mother never told you she loved you when were younger.

None of that.

People only care about two things: themselves and other people (in that order).

What does this mean for you?

Instead of trying to market your song a day before it releases, start by marketing YOURSELF all year-around. Build a fanbase of you, not your song. You’re more than just that one song. So show them.

Be interesting, be entertaining, and most importantly, make sure they see and hear you everywhere all the time—not just when you have something new to promote.

People who only market when they’ve got something new don’t really care about their audience, their fans, their followers, they just care about themselves and their new thing.

Be someone who’s there all the time, regardless whether or not you’ve got something new to promote.

Then, when the time comes and you actually have something new to promote, you’ll have an audience already established, it’ll immediately be liked, and you have the right to absolutely bombard them with promotion about your new thing—your audience likes you after all, and nobody gets tired of of getting MORE of something they like.

Long story short: Don’t stay a nobody.

Talking about not staying a nobody and keeping in touch with your audience every single day, check out Email Valhalla to learn more about how to do exactly that.

Here’s the link: 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:

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“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 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

So here’s a question for you.

If you’re anything like me—an avid enjoyer of fantasy—you might have noticed how almost all dwarves in popular media nowadays get portrayed as Scottish.

(Something that’s, as I’ve recently learned, not unique to just dwarves, Vikings often get the same treatment in modern media—just look at How To Train Your Dragon).

But why?

I thought about this just a few days ago when, for both educational and inspirational reasons, I started playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt for the first time ever (yes I know, shame on me, should’ve played it already a long time ago).

In the game, you’ll come across many species, including dwarves, which are all portrayed as Scots.

This isn’t the only case, far from it.

At first, you might rightly want to point fingers at Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings—like almost every fantasy trope out there.

Simply watch the films and you’ll confirm that idea.

Except, Dwarves were never mentioned or hinted to be Scottish in Tolkien’s original books. If anything, they appeared to be Jewish more than anything else.

So where do you go looking for historical fantasy influences if not for Tolkien’s works?

That’s right, Gary Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons.

And you’d be mostly correct.

It so turns out that the Scottish Dwarf can be traced back to early D&D novels. Some sources say Gary Gygax was influenced by yet another work of fiction a few decades before there was any mention of Dungeon & Dragons at all.

But that’s truly the end of our little rabbit hole.

Either way.

If someone mentions Dwarves in today’s day and age, chances are you’ll think of a short, red-headed, somewhat chubby, little fellow, going around, throwing out insults with his Scottish accent while wielding either an axe or a pickaxe in his hand.

Because as everyone knows…

If a dwarf ain’t a blacksmith or a miner, he ain’t no dwarf.

And that’s all because of one man who knew what he wanted to do, was passionate about his work, didn’t let anyone else tell them what he could or couldn’t do, and wouldn’t shut up about it until he was sure everyone knew what he was working on—and even then he’d keep on talking about it day after day, because that’s how much he enjoyed it.

Goes to show you the power of persistently sharing your work and talking about your interests.

As far as that goes nowadays, there’s simply no better way to do so than through daily email.

To learn more about how to go about writing daily emails, click here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

So says musical genius Jacob Collier.

“Every note can be played with every chord, as long as you find the right ideas and consequences to support it with.” (paraphrased)

He’s not just spouting BS either.

He proves the statement to be true time and time again.

Which goes against almost everything most people have ever been taught about music (if they’ve even been taught anything to begin with).

But this isn’t just for music. This goes for almost everything you do, every product you build, every service you launch, every art piece you create, every story you write, and even personal flaws you might have as a person or a business.

Nothing is ever “wrong”.

You just haven’t found the right ideas or scenarios to apply them to.

List all of your so-called “flaws” and find a way to turn them into a strength. Take away all of the ammunition your opposition might have, remove potential buyer’s objections, and better specify your target market (which includes repelling non-suitable buyers).

As for an example.

My flagship course, Email Valhalla, is an all-text, no video, no audio, no nothing other than plain-text course.

Some might call this a flaw.

I don’t agree.

I made the deliberate choice to keep it all text.

First, I simply don’t enjoy creating video or audio content. Writing is my bread and butter. And if I enjoy writing more, then you’ll enjoy reading it more as well (not to mention the fact that the content will simply be more valuable, more though-true, better put together, and of a much higher quality than it would be if it were in any other format).

Secondly, I find it hard and difficult to learn from video courses. They take too long to go through, it’s hard to stay focused since you’re easily deceived into believing you’re listening and studying while you’re mind is drifting off and not really focusing on the true meaning of what is being said.

Whereas text requires you to actively read (and think about) what is written.

This leads to me getting better results out of books and written courses than out of video courses or webinars.

And, assuming I do a good job of attracting like-minded and similar people, I’m guessing that’s the case for most of my readers, including you, as well (not to mention that my main form of communication, email, is a written medium).

So that’s that.

The flaw of it being only a written course isn’t so much of a flaw anymore, now is it?

Anyway, if you liked what I said, you might want to check out Email Valhalla and get it for yourself here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I once heard someone (who's a lot smarter than me) say "Every business is in the marketing business".

Well, so far I've never met a business, no matter how small or how big, where that's not the case.

No matter how good your work is, you need people to know about it or else you'll be doomed to remain a starving artist forever.

Another thing I discovered recently is that many people, my younger self included, have this wrong belief that marketing is 1) either something extremely difficult and requires talent or 2) something that takes a lot of time and distracts you from what you actually want to create or, worst of all, 3) believe marketing is wrong.

All of which couldn't be further from the truth.

I've never met anyone who wasn't "talented" enough to make it work. Hell, I'm confident I could take my entire framework and teach it to a 10-year-old in less than a week.

More.

I've worked with many people, some even single parents with 3 toddlers running around, who used my entire framework while only requiring 20 minutes a day to make it work.

And lastly…

If you truly have an amazing product, something that speaks to people on a whole different level, something everyone should know about because it'll improve their life, whether physically or mentally, then it's your duty to market it as hard as you possibly can.

If anything, it'd be unethical NOT to make other people aware of it.

That said, marketing isn’t for everyone—or at least not the way I do it.

See, how I go about things requires genuine curiosity and interest in your customers. You need to be able to sit down and truly think and empathize with your customers. If you're not passionate about what you do—if you can't talk about it for hours on end—this won't work out.

Why?

Because I don't work with copy-pastable templates or formulas. I work in a way that humanizes things and relies on your personal curiosity and genuine passion.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn more about how I approach marketing, especially email marketing, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla