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A Radical Book or Two

November 28th, 2011

Yes, I have some different ideas about things, and the time has come to publish a radical book or two. Actually I have four in the works, with the first one completely done and the other three just in need of editing. I have even paid to have book covers designed for them. They will be only available as e-books on Amazon’s Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook. I should have them published by January.

They are collections of essays, some of which I wrote years ago, and many more recent ones. People think I am outspoken about issues, but the truth is they don’t know the half of it. If I’m not asked I rarely offer my opinion on a matter when talking to others. I do not want to offend people just to show off my own beliefs.

On the other hand » Read more: A Radical Book or Two

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Posted in personal, philosophy, writing

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Working While Traveling

September 30th, 2011

I like the idea of working while traveling. I even bring this full-sized laptop that is in front of me now (in the past we just brought a mini). But it isn’t actually easy to work while on the road or in airports.

At the moment we are in a hotel in Portland Maine, and I have already done the usual five minutes of daily work that gets done when traveling: checking email. This is my feeble attempt to do more than that; a simple post–but even that just a short note on my personal blog. In a few minutes we are heading out to sea on a schooner.

It is worth at least » Read more: Working While Traveling

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Posted in advice, internet, money, personal, writing

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Working at Home

September 24th, 2011

One of the great things about working at home is that you can take a break whenever you like. One of the problems with working at home is that you can take a break whenever you like. My routine consists of working for a while, and then eating, maybe taking the cats outside (they don’t go out unsupervised), and then working some more. This pattern of work mixed with other activities continues throughout the day. When we are not traveling, Ana and I work seven days per week.

Now, I thought I was working quite a bit. Years ago it was easier to make a living online, and I worked about 20 hours weekly, but lately I had been really putting in the hours–or so I thought. About ten days back I started tracking the time I spent on my writing and our business (which are the same thing). I just wrote down how much time I had spent at the computer whenever I left it.

It wasn’t very many days before I realized that » Read more: Working at Home

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Posted in advice, personal, writing

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Another Radio Interview

September 21st, 2011

I did another radio interview on Friday. It was for Martha Stewart Living Radio, on Sirius XM 110. The show was “Making a Living,” with Maggie Mistal, and I did fifteen minutes live, talking about my book “101 Weird Ways to Make Money” and about jobs in general. It went well I think. Here are three questions Maggie asked before the show, by email, along with my responses:

–What is the most creative way you’ve made money in your career?

A lot of creativity went into the walking sticks I used to carve, or into the real estate deals I’ve done, but probably my most creative work has been in the internet business my wife and I currently own. It’s surprising which creative niches can be profitable, and I have numerous interests, so I get to write in so many areas and make money doing it. My website metaphorology.com, for example, which is all about metaphors, actually makes a little money. My site on ultralight backpacking made more than » Read more: Another Radio Interview

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Posted in money, personal, writing

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Make More Money With Your Writing

September 8th, 2011

I’m always looking for ways to make more money with my writing. I experiment quite a bit to look for those ways. I have found that I can sometimes make more money giving away an ebook rather than selling it, for example–by including affiliate links to products that I like. I have made it work the other way too, selecting free content from my websites and then packaging and selling it as an ebook. I have published some books in paper and as PDFs, and other only as paperbacks.

Luck Book

Sometimes, though we miss the obvious, for a lack of knowledge or just–as in my case–a presumed lack of time.

For about two years now I have been making a couple hundred dollars monthly selling my books as Amazon Kindle downloads. In case you’re not familiar with the Kindle, it’s a e-book reader that is now owned by millions of people, which gives instant access to tens of thousands of books from virtually anywhere. It costs nothing to start a publisher account with Amazon and then make your books available on Kindle.

So, publishing only books that I have previously written, at the total cost of about two hours each to format them properly and upload them to the Kindle platform, I have been making a nice extra income stream. Of course I knew that Barnes and Noble had their “Nook,” another e-book reader, but I » Read more: Make More Money With Your Writing

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Posted in personal, writing

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Time Investment

August 27th, 2011

It is an old negotiating technique, sometimes referred to as “time investment.” A recent experience reminded of it.

I was contacted by a reporter for an east coast magazine, who was doing a story about odd ways people make money. She wanted to interview me about my book “101 Weird Ways to Make Money.” First, though, she was looking for people in her area to profile–people who were making money in less-common ways. She wasn’t sure how to go about that, and wanted my help.

I spent an hour the next afternoon, checking online for people working at jobs or businesses that I covered in my book–and who were within an hour of the reporter. I found a mural-painter, a street performer, a funeral home doing green burials and eight others for her to choose from. I sent her a » Read more: Time Investment

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Posted in money, writing

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How to Get Published

August 23rd, 2011

There are many ways to get published now, including a new and expensive way I’ll get to in a moment. For starters it is cheaper than ever to self-publish. I did this myself with Secrets of Lucky People and Beyond Mental Slavery. In each case I used a different POD (publish on demand) publisher, and even with editing that I paid for on “Beyond” it cost less than $1,000 both times.

Then there are my ebooks. They have never been best sellers, but Ana just did the accounting, so I know they made a couple thousand dollars in the second quarter of 2011. I spent about $200 one time years ago to set up the accounts at ClickBank ($50 each), and I used to use a PDF conversion service, but since finding a better free converter there have been no expenses. None. Of course we already had websites to sell them on, but zero cost could still be achieved with » Read more: How to Get Published

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Posted in personal, writing

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