TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Megapost: Meniere’s, Weight Loss, Income Property, and Affiliate Marketing Updates

March 25, 2015 Posted by Tyler Cruz

Glen from ViperChill.com sent out a tweet that he had mentioned me in his latest blog post. Reading the post, it made me guilty for only posting once a month these days. Geez… is that really the post frequency I do now? I can remember back to the days when I would consistently post 3-4 times a week.

I guess what that’s what happens when you blog for literally a decade with over 1,000 blog posts – you tire out. It’s probably why so few bloggers exist today that existed back in 2004-2005.

Anyhow, I thought I’d publish this post and try to get you guys caught up-to-date with what’s been going on in my life both personally and “professionally”.

Meniere’s Disease Update

So, it’s been about 7 weeks since I had my huge Vertigo drop attack and was diagnosed (more or less) with Meniere’s Disease. The 2-3 weeks after that attack, I was in really bad shape, with very blurred vision, constantly being dizzy and lightheaded, and really depressed. I blame about half of that due to the drug I was taking at the time.

I then was switched to different drugs and for the past couple of weeks I’ve been off medication completely. The only thing I’ve been using is my True Pheromones oil which I’ve been using to improve my sexual health. I’m now about 85-90% back to normal – I still get little bouts of vertigo here and there, but seem to be able to “fight it off” if I catch it early and concentrate really hard. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but it’s similar to fighting off a yawn but a lot tougher and more intense, and it will still come through a bit.

I’ve very slowly worked my way up to 5 days of badminton a week again, finally reintroducing the 4th and 5th days just this past week.

I’m trying hard to limit my sodium intake, which is supposedly helpful in managing Meniere’s – so that may be part of why I’m doing better.

While I can walk around fine now and use the computer again, there’s all these little things that I have to be careful with… anything from… angling my head at odd angles, looking at something that moves very fast, anything to do with motion such as taking an elevator, braking in the car quickly, etc.

Oh, here’s a GIF taken from Wikipedia’s Meniere’s Disease page. I can’t look in the mirror when I get my major attacks, but I believe my eyes probably do this too when I’m having an attack… only probably to a worsening degree. It sometimes happen in the middle of the night or when I’m trying to fall asleep too.

Overall though, yeah, 85-90% back to normal

Weight Loss… Again

For long-time readers of my blog, you don’t have to worry; I won’t be posting a new series of posts dedicated to my weight loss again. I know that those weren’t a hit, heh.

But I thought I’d share that I’ve been busy with weight loss again over the past few months. Why? Well, because the lifestyle of an internet entrepreneur is a very sedentary one, and I know that a lot of you are in the same fat boat.

So, over time, I regained all of what I lost from my last weight loss challenge and I decided to address it again before I gained even more.

This time, I decided to finally try calorie counting for the first time. I log my calories in a free and extremely popular app called MyFitnessPal, and basically eat whatever I want as long as it fits within my daily allotted amount of calories. Any exercise I do simply adds to the amount of calories I get to eat.

Calories in < calories out = weight loss. Simple. Proven. Effective.

I managed to lose 30 pounds in 86 days – just under 3 months:

However, as you can see, I’ve plateaued over the past 3 weeks. Part of this is to be expected… after all the lower you go in weight, the harder it is to lose additional weight. Also, I lowered my weight loss rate from 1.5 pounds to 1 pound a week, which really slowed things down.

But more importantly, I noticed an interesting trend. Being the very statistic-oriented person I am, and taking some of my affiliate marketing campaign stat analysis, I noticed that I had been slacking a bit on staying within my quotas recently, which add up and stagnated any weight loss I would have had.

I started to very gradually revert to some of my old bad habits, such as allowing myself snack-sized bags of chips. Anyhow, I just made this realization while writing this post, so hopefully I can get back on track and continue to lose some more weight.

The following comparison photo is of me from the “before” shot which is 4 years old – taken from my last public weight loss challenge back on May 25th, 2011; I didn’t take one for this current weight loss since I wasn’t blogging about it.

The “after” shot was taken 7 weeks ago on Jan 28th (just 50 days after starting). Since then, I’ve actually lost an additional 10 pounds. I was just to lazy to take an updated photo

A week and a half after taking the after photo, I went out and bought my very first set of weights! I’ve never lifted weights in my entire life outside of some short gym training thing back in high school, so I have a lot to learn.

Right now I’m keeping things very basic with dumbbell curls. I’m doing 10 curls each arm every 2nd day (alternating the other days with push-ups). I started at 13 pounds, then moved up to 18 (the bar itself is 3…) which was a huge jump for me and I really struggled after the 7th rep. But now, I’m finding them much more manageable and only have a little bit of trouble with the 10th rep.

Yes, I know, I’m weak I’m not setting out to become the Hulk though. Just want to tone up slightly.

Anyhow, I recently discovered that they make weight plates at 1.25 lbs.! I currently have 2.5 lbs. plates as the lowest weights which means that I have to jump 5 pounds whenever I want to move up which is way too high of a jump. I’m going to buy 4 1.25 lbs. plates so that my next increase will be just 2.5 pounds, from 18 to 20.5.

From what I’ve read though, it’s difficult to find the 1.25 pound plates in stores, so I may have to order them online…

Oh, one more thing. On New Years Day (the last day of boxing week sale), I bought an exercise bike (50% off baby) – the first piece of exercise equipment I’ve ever purchased. So far, I’ve been pretty good with it, using it consistently around 3 times a week – typically on the days I don’t have badminton.

Here’s a photo of the bike and the weights. Can you tell I like black?

I have the bike setup to face the TV and I watch Netflix while using it. Perfect.

Income Property Updates

As mentioned in my last real estate update post, the market here has been completely dead for the past few months. Even though we’re into spring now, it’s simply a seller’s market, with only a handful of new listings meeting my criteria entering the market each month.

Nothing that comes on the market is a good opportunity, and it makes me lament about that absolute perfect oceanview duplex that I let fall through my fingers. Ugh…

There’s really only 3 new property updates worth noting:

Oceanview 4-Plex

There’s an oceanview 4-plex here that I wrote about before and is one of the properties with some potential that I’m keeping my eye on it.

It had a 40k drop which is a pretty substantial drop. It made it from breaking even in cashflow to netting $200 a month.

I need it to drop again before I go take a look at it in person though

The School Duplex

A small duplex located right across from an elementary school came on the market.

It nets $270 a month which is not horrible, but needs improving. If it drops in price, I’ll take a look at this in person too. Here’s a photo:

The Hospital 6-Plex

When this came on the market, I was very excited. A multi-unit building with common areas is something that is right up my alley. It can give me some more hands-on things to do if I want, and gives me more opportunities to increase value.

Located right across from the hospital, this 6-plex even has a fair bit of land, including individual storage space and even a 6-car carport with ample space.

However… this place actually comes in at a negative cashflow of –$200 a month!

It’s interesting… because I did some research and the only other 6-plex on the market here is actually with the same realtor, priced nearly the same, and also cashflows negatively at $200 a month. I did some research, and the owners of each building appear to be different people, so I’m wondering if the local market is dictating their price or the realtor is putting his 2 cents in. Perhaps both…

This property needs to have a significant drop in order for me to take a look in person and consider placing an offer on it.

I should mention that taking a look at the rent roll here, that there are a lot of long-term residents, which means that I could probably adjust my vacancy rate from 10% down to 5% or lower. The rents here are pretty low so I either drop my vacancy adjustments or I raise the rents over time.

If I halve the vacancy rate, manage the property myself, and the place drops by $60,000, then it’d cashflow half-decently at around $600 a month… but then I’d also be managing it for only $600 a month and that’s not worth it.

Hmm… I just took a look at the actual unit rent history, and it’s actually far less than 5% even. I don’t know the exact % because I can only see when they were each last rented out, not how long they sat vacant, but it’s certainly less than 3%. If I put 3% which is fairly conservative, then it actually makes $50 a month at the current price (with a reasonable purchase price reduction). If it drops by $50,000, then it’d cashflow at $250~ month… without me having to manage it. $600+/month if I managed it myself.

The interesting thing is that I just also just finished running the numbers if I raised rents a bit to keep them more in line with the local rates here, although still at a pretty good price, and kept vacancy rates the same at 10%, and it actually worked out to be about the same cashflow, so it would actually make sense to keep the existing tenants in place then.

Bah, now I’m just trying to make the numbers work… the place would have to drop by $100,000 for it to make any sense for me.

I guess I just keep waiting and looking… it’s been 8 months since I started though so I’m beginning to get impatient…

Affiliate Marketing

Remember affiliate marketing? I barely do. I’ve barely touched my campaigns ever since I had my biggest vertigo attack back on January 31st, 2015.

I ran some very small basic campaigns here and there and created a new landing page, but that’s about it.

Slacking at Work

A big part of the reason why I’ve barely been working the past few months is because I’ve been so tired all the time. I’m not sure how much of it is Meniere’s related (it shouldn’t really have an effect on energy) or general health related, but I think that part of it could be due to my weight loss efforts.

Losing weight is time consuming. Especially counting calories – exercise aside, logging and counting calories requires me to log every single thing I eat and drink… and I log absolutely every calorie. And since I’m trying to limit my sodium for my Meniere’s, I also keep a close eye on that as well.

Then factor in the fact that I’m not eating out as much as I used to and prepare a lot of my own meals and snacks, and you can see how I’m finding it difficult to work like I used to.

But I can’t blame weight loss and health for everything – I think that I’m really just drained from working online for 10-11 years. I still love it… but I’m also tired of it. What I hate the most is the constant learning and adapting. Once you finally learn something, it becomes outdated and you have to learn something else.

This is partly why I’m so interested in owning some income property. It will give my eyes some rest from the computer and it also doesn’t evolve as quickly as the Internet does.

I do have some plans on how I can refocus back on my online work though. It will take a couple months to get back to the stage where I’m working diligently again though, assuming I follow through on my plan.

Anyhow, there you have it – an update on my life both personal and work related.