I'm actually kind of hesitant to post this here, because I hate it when people build up a blog with quality stuff and then start whoring it out by promoting their products. I guess this does promote my book, but I'm writing it because I feel great! Here's the story:
A while back I decided to go nuts and start eating super healthy. It really made a huge difference for me and I wanted to get into web marketing because friends were making money in it, so I wrote a book. I thought the book came out great. It was short, but had everything in it that I wanted, so I figured that people would appreciate that it's right to the point.
Months later, I make a little bit of money off it every month, but probably not enough that it's actually worth the hassle. I get a good amount of people gushing about how it's helped them, but I also get people returning it before trying it because it's short. This really pisses me off because it WOULD work if they would just do it, but people want weird complicated books to make excuses about how hard it is to lose weight. But still, I refuse to pad it with filler, because I want people who are serious about losing weight to be able to do it without being insulted by a padded book.
Anyway... today I got an e-mail that made me really happy. Check it out :
Hi Dana (that's my pen name),
I just want to send you this email and thank you for changing my life. I don't know how I got to your website, but I am so glad that I did. Since starting your lifestyle change(I dont say the word diet anymore), I have lost 15 lbs in about 3.5 weeks. I also feel so amazing and happy. My skin is clearer, my hair looks amazing, and I get compliments every single day.
For all the people out looking at this website and thinking that it can't really be true, it most certainly is. I am tried everything in order to lose weight...pills, low fat diets, high fat diets and they all left me wanting more and craving foods. This is the best purchase of my life and educates anybody on how your body handles food.
Dana, thank you for making this as simple as possible, showing ways to incorporate heathly eating into our busy lives,and giving every single person a chance at being beautiful inside and out.
Respectfully,
Amy
I don't make much money, but when I get e-mails like that it makes it totally worth it. Also today I saw my friend Jessica. She's an actress who caught a big break early, but was having trouble getting work recently. I gave her a copy of my book and now she looks great and just landed a national commercial. Obviously I can't claim all the credit or anything, but I'm glad to have contributed to her success in whatever way I did. Go Jess!
I think the people who pre-ordered for Haiti have had enough time to read the book, so now it's time to make it available to everyone.
You can buy the book here at Amazon!
In case you're new to the site, I haven't had a regular condo or house in 4 years or so, and have been traveling around the world and around the US. Life Nomadic a really practical guide about efficient traveling -- experiencing a LOT while spending relatively LITTLE. It has everything from travel stories I didn't publish on the blog to packing lists. If you broke it down, about 1/3 is life outlook sort of stuff, 1/3 is stories (maybe a bit less), and 1/3 is take-action-now howto advice. It will change how you travel, one way or another.
The original title of this post was, "The Reason We Didn't Meetup When I Visited Your City" and it was geared towards explaining what it's like to be busy with lots of correspondence. The post grew past this. This one will be useful for people who expect that they might have huge correspondence increases in the future - rarely do people talk bluntly about what it's like. It'll also be useful for the expansive sort of person who reaches out to people they don't know, so you can understand the mindset of who you're reaching out to. It rambles a little bit in the middle, but I think the mindsets and details could be useful for you.
The Reason We Didn't Meetup When I Visited Your City...
...is because I'm disorganized and you didn't drop a line again.
So, I get a lot of correspondence. Which is great. I really dig that. A couple days ago, I had a great Skype chat about international investing and business expansion with a really smart and cool guy out in SF, and then I met three people locally in Tokyo who are all exceptionally cool guys. I learned a lot, and I think so did the guys I got to hang with, and it was good. I like seeing other people thrive and make money, and got to have some good talks on business and entrepreneurship with everyone I met - I think everyone can hustle a bit more cash here or there.
I really enjoy that. I like meeting smart and enterprising people. I say that everyone - on my site, in posts, on my "About" and "New? Start here" pages,
