Health copywriter speak, ebooks, online writing insights, tips, mutterings, and cross-talk

Paying Off the School Loan in One Year * Building an Email LIST in 99 Days

Two major goals at this time:  Paying off my school loan and building my email list

I’m going public with my major goals here on my website.  They are inter-related, and I’m hoping going public will make them happen faster.  I was inspired today by noharvardloandebt.com.  Joe Mihalic paid off $90,000 worth of school loan debt in 7 months!  That is not him at the right.  That’s a pic of an Occupy Wall Street protester.

My Goal:  Pay off my $58,000 worth of school debt in one year.  Joe’s loan payments originally were more than $1000 a month for 10 to 15 years.  My payments are around $300 a month for 20 years.

Caption:  No, I’m not a Socialist.  And I’m working to pay my $58,000 school loan off in one year.

Related Goal:  To get 1000 new quality subscribers to my ezine LIST in 99 days.  May 7 to August 14.  I have 5 new subscribers as of today.

He did not go out shopping or buy anything for 7 months.  He had a great job, however, with a yearly income near his total debt amount.  I have no such thing.  However, I can increase my earnings with my Amazon.com business.  He sold stuff.  Found roommates for his house.  Tried extra jobs — and started a landscaping business on the side with a friend.

My overhead is already very low.  I hardly  spend money on entertainment.  And I don’t even have a car.  He had two cars and a motorcycle.  But for me it will mean not going out to eat once a month, not buying any goodies for a year.   Read the student’s story — no new shoes, no new anything for 7 months.

I will increase my sales on Amazon.  And I will build my LIST.  I believe that LIST is going to help me in the long run if not the short one.  Building relationships will give me connections and people to work with — perhaps barter with.

I need to learn to use AWeber.  So far I have sent private individual welcome emails to the 5 new subscribers via regular email.  And I have not written an email series yet.   But as I continue to push and get more subscribers — I need to learn to be more proficient at using the tools.  Even 100 subscribers is too many to be sending out private emails!

The school loan?  Go to noharvardloandebt.com.  It’s inspiring to read.  Who needs or wants this debt?  No.  Get it off me!  The first couple of years after he graduated he paid more than $1000 a month on a $101K loan.  When he looked at how much he’d paid off — he still owed $90,000!

I’m in the same boat.  I’m only paying $177 month — because I just recently started paying it back, and tried to get the loans as small as possible.  These are called graduated payments.  If I were to keep this up — by the end of my loan payment period my payments would be over $500 a month.   But to my horror!  Looking at the numbers — when I pay $177 a month, I’m only paying $5 a month on the principle!

People do make money on Amazon FBA, however.  A matter of fact, I can teach people right here how to earn up to $1000 a month selling on Amazon.  You need certain tools, technology and systems in place.  And it is doable.

I belong to a Yahoo FBA Amazon selling forum.   A few people on that forum are netting over $60,000 a year.   Now, I need at least that much in order to pay down my school loan.   I need to be one of those ones earning $5000 a month on Amazon, not just $1000.

So those are my 2 major goals.   In 99 days — 1000 new quality subscribers to my LIST.  And the big GOAL:  Pay off my $58,000 school loan in 12 months by May 21, 2013.  I’ll remember it as from my sister’s birthday to my sister’s birthday — May 15 to May 15.

Follow my blog — and see how I juggle and expand my online Amazon business to do this.

And other goals — To stay strong and healthy, cheerful, kind and have a social life.  To be honest and maintain fair and reputable business relations, which I do (see my rating on http://www.amazon.com/shops/EditWrite ).  Ethics is important online — many do not abide.   So I’m told.

To take care of my teeth too and body.   We gotta be healthy.  Like don’t get root canals, and tons of other things. ….. But that is for another day.  And to hear more about health from me, go to the top of this page and sign in to my double Opt-In box for my Health Ezine.  I’m sending out emails on health, healing with food, healthy recipes, as well as updates on my blog — and Amazon selling.

Here’s a YouTube of the Harvard student’s story about paying off his loan in 7 months.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y6kTsBNH78

The Email List — Health Ezine

As I build my email list for the health ezine with my goal of 1000 new quality subscribers within 99 days, I’m reminded of the reasons I’m doing this.

Yesterday, I knew it was time to do some book scouting, so I went to my  local GoodWill.  As usual, I found a couple of great books to sell on Amazon in my non-fiction book specialty.

One book Discovering Nutrition is selling on Amazon for nearly $60, and I found it at the GoodWill for $1.99 yesterday afternoon.   I found 3 other items and books for good turn arounds as well, but the Nutrition book was the very best.

That is what good scanning and scouting tools will do.  My ASellerTool (AST) PDA tool holds a database of the entire book category on Amazon, after I download it from my home computer.   Then I use my Android smart phone with a couple of helpful apps.

After I finished looking at books and was waiting for my car pool partner — I decided to look at clothes.  I ran into a shopper from Vermont and Port Aransas, 2 beautiful places in U.S., nez paz?  We both were finding such great clothes at the GoodWill yesterday, Wow!

We clicked, I liked her.  Since I’m looking for 1000 new subscribers to my list, I need to tell near everyone I meet, and also send out email requests for sign ups.  It’s a bigger goal than I realized at first.

I work with Steven Acuff, stevenacuff.com, 40-year health consultant.  He told me and gave me the green light to be a health consultant.  I know enough after working with him for years now.

It turns out the new friend I made at GoodWill had surgery for a kidney stone just 2 months ago.  She feels great and is happy for a successful operation.

This is what the health knowledge I want to share is about.  I honor her and her need for the surgery.  I want to share how this can be avoided in the future, however.

We don’t always put the two together — the importance of diet to our health.  And/or we don’t know where to begin.  It’s confusing and mysterious — why doctors and healers do not share the basics of good nutrition.  Steven believes it’s because there’s no monetary value in doing so.  And I believe too it’s ignorance (ignoring) — doctors and medical professionals are not trained in healing with food and nutrition.

OK.  So what would I have done?  This is how and why Steven Acuff told me I could do health consulting.  He said, you can share what you know about health.  And tell people what you would do if you were in their situation.

What would I have done?  First thing, I would have contacted and asked Steven Acuff.  Because I’m a baby, and a hyper-contriact sometimes.

But I know what to do too.

1)  First get very alkaline.

Pain is a sign of inflammation.  One can’t really have pain without inflammation.  You can’t really have inflammation without being too aciditic.  We get alkaline by doing some of what I’m noting below.

2)  Cut all the bad things out of the diet.  Stop caffeine and sweets and sugar.  No refined flour products, wheat, corn, soy.  Make your own food — prepare simple foods.

3)  Add good things to the diet.  Virgin coconut oil, green drinks (like baby dried barley grass), seaweeds, fresh organic vegetables, beans and brown rice for starters.

4)  Drink plenty of good clean purifed water (not distilled — instead have spring or filtered).

And now, you know the basics and the drill.  Get plenty of rest, light exercise, if you feel good enough.  When we don’t feel good and it becomes excruciating or unbearable it is time to get into high gear and get alkaline, eat pure food.

Remember to add  natural fermented foods to the diet, and prepare them yourself.  Pickles are probably the easiest and best.  Homemade pickles or pressed salads are easy to make.  The fermentation gives us good bacteria that in turn aids digestion and helps us utilize vitamins and minerals in our body.

Good whole food supplements and a quality fish oil also are important in time of crisis to the body.

It’s 6 am in the morning now in my beautiful area of the country, near the Hill Country of Texas — and it’s on to another day of scouting and book listing, and getting those 1000 new subscribers.

I’ll be learning how to maneuver and manage this new email tool that includes that box at the top right of this blog for Sign-Ins.  It’s a little different than just sending out an email to a friend or two.  There will be a learning curve for sure.

In the meantime, if you have not done so, kindly go to that simple little box at the top of this blog — and sign in to my list.  I will be sending out simple emails like the post today, an ezine about health — sometimes I’ll announce a new post to this blog and send you the link.

One Way to Build a LIST of Email Subscribers

How to build a List — a major question, challenge and the work of budding Internet marketers.  Now, in a way I’m not really a new Internet marketer, because I have an online business with Amazon.com.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m not an established big time online seller.   I earn about a $1000 a month net.  Why not better?  Because I don’t focus on it solely.  I like to work on my websites, post to my blog, to write and work on copywriting.

But I keep the Amazon business going.   It just happens that I’ve learned to live life simply without a lot of overhead and expenses.  But that student loan does eat at me.  Do you know I owe about $55,000 in student loan — and I didn’t even finish college?  But that’s a story for another day.

To build an online list:  OK I’m going to share my plan.

In a nutshell.

I live way down in the southern part of the United States, close to the Gulf of Mexico.  My family and friends from a non-profit group I belonged to where I worked and received my early editorial training are located in the Northwest United States.  I have not seen these friends — who know span the U.S. and globe — since 1997-1998.  My family since 2009.

This summer I will visit.

Very exciting.

However, building the LIST.

Not sure I can do this.  Because I’m going to beautiful Montana where hot springs, and Teton mountains and parks and a Yellowstone River and great country await me.  Ah, can I tear myself away from enjoying the pleasant weather and company — to focus on building my List?

I will try.

My Plan:   I want to get a 1000 people to my List.  At this time I do not have an Opt-In box.   I do not have an ebook or audio or product I give away to entice readers to sign up to a List.   I have and use 5 or 6 email accounts regularly.  I email a lot of people.  But I do not have a real list that I’ve put together with an autoresponder like AWeber.

One thousand people is the immediate goal.  Yes, I can get the Opt-in set up on this here blog.  I can work on my sitesell / SBI ! website that’s about copywriting and health copywriting — and put an Opt-In up there too.  I can sign up for a friendly compatible forum like Jim Cockrum’s MySilentTeam once again — and post a lot of comments.  I can put a few articles up at ezinearticles.  And these are all things I will do.

But this is the PLAN:   I want to combine some business with my pleasure trip to the Northwest.  I’ve never been one for taking a lot of time off from the job at hand.   I’m going to be gone for more than 10 days.   And yes, my family lives up there.  I will be seeing family and friends.

PLAN:

1)  Find out how many of the towns I’m going to have Small Business Development Centers.

2)  Call them about presenting a lecture or talk.

3) Meanwhile (I’m not leaving for a number of weeks) write an ebook.

And the ebook I want to write is about how to learn to make $1000 a month selling on Amazon.  Yes!!  I know how to do it.  Who would not want to make an extra $1000 a month?   I’ll write the ebook.    Either use Amazon Kindle to sell it, or sell it as a PDF.   I’ll put all kinds of good links that bring people to this site and squeeze pages where I’ll ask for people’s email address.

And I’ll learn how to give a good Talk.  Never done much public speaking before.  And I’ll get my first ebook out there that will show people a good skill.   And I’ll talk about what’s in the book.

And I’ll see about scheduling talks in maybe 4 towns while I’m up in the Northwest to build my list of 1000.  And you can follow me, and see if by summer’s end I have 1000 on my list.

Health and Nonbelievers

Good health is a grace, and may come more slowly to nonbelievers.

I stand at my computer, because it’s not healthy to sit for long periods of time.   But I forget this at times.

I sleep in occasionally, because restful sleep at night rejuvenates the body.  And sometimes I miss out, and do some catch up.

I take whole food supplements, and give myself good foods like seaweeds, homemade pickles, organic virgin coconut oil and green drink whenever I can, because sometimes I forget, don’t go shopping, or can’t afford all of these.

This is the path of good health.  And sometimes I and the rest of the human race do not enjoy the very best because . . . because of lack of discipline, lack of knowledge and understanding — and sometimes not believing.

What is it about health that we don’t understand sometimes?  If we knew how much better we would feel by doing certain simple practices, I think most of us would do it.  But we must believe it before we put out the great effort and expense.

Maybe some people can’t remember when they last felt really really good.  Or the young, feel good most all the time — so why does it all matter so much.

Many reasons, but ……

But I see people intimately who want to be in the best health, want to feel good — and mentally and verbally they say they understand what health is.  But they don’t follow through.

I know myself.  I’m pretty good.  But I get busy working.  Take the easy way out sometimes.  Grab what’s easy to eat.

Then others ask me, what to do to get over this ailment or problem.  I say, well, cut out the worse things first — the caffeine, the beer, the sugar and refined food.

Then start adding good stuff — what I named above.   Many can’t get past the coffee.  Or the occasional beer.  They want the little sucker that their local bank gives away.  The goody sample at the local grocery store.

These things won’t bring us the health we want.  We all want to feel good, “to get better.”  I’m sure.  But it takes discipline.  And we can’t be nonbelievers here.  We need to try and try to accept that these things really may help and make a difference.  We must take that step.  Because we’ll never know until we try.

Health depends on doing it.  I know.  I’ve seen it in my body.  And I’ve seen it in others. I’m amazed at how these things work.  It’s a combination.  Exercise.  Good water.  Cutting out the bad stuff.  And adding the great foods and supplements to our daily regimen.  I’ve seen incredible turn-arounds to bad situations in just days.  It doesn’t even take a long time.

It takes getting alkaline.  Getting rid of inflammation and things like that.

Health is within reach — but won’t work when one is a nonbeliever first. Gotta believe and give it a try.

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