There’s a planet out there called WASP-76b where it rains iron in the evenings.
(I’m not making this up.)
One side of WASP-76b always faces its star. This side is super hot — 2400 degrees Celsius — and iron melts there and rises into the air as vapor.
The other side of WASP-76b is always in the dark. It’s a balmy 1500 Celsius there.
In between the light side and the dark side, there’s a shadow area, or you might call it the evening area, where the iron vapor condenses and comes raining down.
Like I said, I didn’t make any of this up. Scientists reported it in a new paper published in Nature just a few days ago.
But what if I did make it up?
Well, I might be on to something profitable in that case.
Because as Ben Settle said in one of his recent emails, there’s a lot of value in “world building.” That’s what fantasy and sci-fi authors like JRR Tolkien and Frank Herbert do: They invent entire worlds or universes, including made up ecologies, histories, languages, mating rituals.
When done right, these made-up worlds have a coherence of their own… and they suck readers and fans in like magic.
Of course, maybe you’re not interested in writing a fantasy or sci-fi saga. Fear not.
World building also applies to marketing your stuff online.
Ben Settle is actually a good example of this, with his gooroos and Maynard trolls and conemtptible new product junkies — all characters who keep reappering in his emails.
But you know who’s even better at world building?
It’s somebody I call the “Ben Settle of Facebook.”
Much like Ben, this guy has a rabid audience that will pay outsized fees — $2k or $5k or more a month — just to sit at this guru’s feet and learn from him.
Much like Ben, he’s also a student of the classics of copywriting (Gary Bencivenga) and persuasion (Jim Camp).
The only difference is that, while Ben is abrasive and loves to mock and shame, this Facebook world-builder is all smiles and cuddles.
I’ve mentioned him many times in these emails, but in case you don’t know who I’m talking about, his name is Travis Sago.
Travis has a bunch of micro-groups on Facebook and each group is like a miniature part of a bigger story. Each group explains one aspect of Travis’s money-making mythology — things like tapping, the 30 year wealth shortcut, and the mini monopoly. It’s a masterclass in world building… and in making money rain down every evening.
But The Lord of the Rings is pretty lame if you hear me retell it. You have to read it for yourself. Same with Travis Sago. So if you want to see how he builds his worlds in all their detail and complexity, here’s the entry point into his orbit: