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

Being Able to Focus by Minimizing My Life with Medical Intuitive Healers Help

I am doing pretty well and making good progress in my 30-post challenge as this is post #7 out of #30 (the final order may vary), which means that I’m keeping in pace with my 1-2 posts per day goal pace.

This is on top of taking care of other work and errands at the same time. So what changed? Why am I able to write 7 posts in 4 days when a couple of years ago it would have taken me 4 weeks?  Part of it is definitely due to taking a 1.5 year break from blogging and coming back fresh and with a lot to talk about, but I only attribute that to part of it. The other reason is because I have made a very conscious and deliberate attempt to minimize and simplify my life.

In fact, one of the main reasons I waited so long to get back to blogging was that I wanted to make sure that I had as little distractions as possible. I used to have my hands in so many cookie jars at once that I could never focus on anything properly, and so I knew I had to minimize and simplify my life.

Tackling Procrastinated Projects

It’s no secret that I’m a procrastinator. I mean hell, I abandoned my blog for a year and a half.

In order to tackle my procrastinating tendencies head on, instead of avoiding the things that I had been putting off forever, I challenged myself to make them my priority instead.

Tending to Hundreds of E-mails

I had let hundreds upon hundreds of unprocessed e-mails build up, and I very gradually tended to them all over a very long period which was a seemingly never-ending job. I am happy to report that I now have only one e-mail left that I need to deal with (it involves creating a complicated blog post, so I’ve been putting it off forever). After that, I will be at inbox zero – a place I haven’t been in probably 5+ years.

Took Care of Income Taxes

This was by far the most stressful thing I had been putting off and was constantly causing me stress in the back of my mind. There’s nothing I procrastinate more with than getting my taxes done.

Despite taking them all to an accounting firm to get processed, it still requires a lot of work from me since I have 3 income taxes to process each year: my operating corporation, my holding corporation, and my personal taxes. And since I work online, it can be very difficult to obtain and organize all the proper paperwork since online sources often don’t have proper reporting options, don’t let you report by a custom date range (needed for my fiscal year), etc. In addition, when I was doing affiliate marketing, I had literally HUNDREDS of various income and expense sources. It is a herculean task to simply prepare the paperwork to give to my accountants.

Fortunately, I spent a significant amount of time creating an extremely organized “to do” checklist and system that lets me create and organize all the proper paperwork, which dramatically reduces the amount of time I need to spend on this in the future.

I am now up to date with all my taxes and am currently waiting for my accountant to get back to me to tell me the results of my latest year’s taxes.

Updated My Blog

Another reason I hadn’t blogged in so long is that the affiliate link plugin I had been using suddenly broke and I was having a hard time finding a suitable replacement, and I wanted to get that done before I started posting again. I finally got that sorted out now.

I also updated every single of my side pages such as my About and Recommended Resources pages.

In addition, I upgraded my plugins, WordPress, and even upgraded some of the icons on the side menus of my blog (some of the ones that were still referencing poker from way back in the day!)

I am still in the process of cleaning up spam (I’m currently caught up to late 2016), and getting rid of broken links (280 left to go).

Made Computer Backups

I had to find a new system for backing my computer up as my old method couldn’t be used anymore since the encryption software I used to use, TrueCrypt,  stopped being supported due to potential security issues. I ended up going with a pretty weak replacement, but I’m also not making much online anymore so it’s not that important. I’m aware of cloud-based backing up solutions, but I have ISP bandwidth limits to consider, plus I don’t want to shell out $120 a year for a back-up service.

Minimizing My Life

In addition to tackling my procrastination issues, I also minimized my life as much as possible, both offline and on. While I was actually already very organized beforehand, I wanted to minimize things even further, just to clear space both physically and mentally.

• I went through every damn physical thing I owned that I hadn’t used in a long time or realistically planned on using in the near future and was effectively just clutter, and sold it on Craigslist and other online classified websites.
• I went through old photos and threw out duplicates, digitized others.
• I went through every program on my computer and updated it or removed it if I hadn’t used it in ages, and also went through every single file on the computer and deleted anything I didn’t need anymore.
• I cleaned my office from head to toe (which was already extremely organized to begin with), even disconnecting cables and wiping them down, etc.
• I even took my computer apart and used my air compressor to clean it.

I did all this not because I was having a Danny Tanner moment, but because I wanted to start things back fresh and new.

Sold Off Old/Dead Websites and Domains

Apart from tackling my taxes and tending to all my e-mails, this was probably the hardest thing I did to minimize my life.

Once upon a time, I had literally dozens of web properties, many of them actively (or passively) making cash. Over time, I sold most of them, but I still had a bunch lingering about. I kept onto a lot of them because I had owned them for a long time and put in countless hours and effort into them, and I knew that they would not fetch much or anything if I tried to sell them. I was essentially just holding onto them for sentimental reasons, which is a pointless business move. All they were doing were taking up space and wasting my time – they weren’t growing or bringing in any money, so I should have cut the cord on them years ago.

I actually ended up selling Movie-Vault.com for only $2,500 – which the guy never did anything with and left it to completely and truly die. I put more work into that site that you can fathom; it was my oldest site and I actually started it close to 2 decades ago (I believe the website was 15 years old when I sold it). But I had to cut the cord.

As I write this, I currently have another site up for auction with no reserve. I won’t link it here since by the time I publish this post, it will be sold. The high bid is currently at $25.

Other domains and websites, I simply abandoned completely, letting the domains expire.  Various websites I spend tens of thousands of dollars on and countless hours.

It’s a shame and sad to see all that hard work have to be thrown away, but there was no point in keeping them. They were just a leech on my resources.

Benefits

So as a result of all of the above and spirituality sessions at catherinecarrigan.com, my head is now a lot clearer and I have a lot less “pending anxiety”. When looking for an anxiety relief, Delta-8 products like the delta-8 hemp flower and Cake delta-8 products have recently emerged as cannabinoids. It contains neuroprotective properties that may help reduce anxiety, pain, and nausea. Exploring medical cannabis for ocd could offer another potential solution for managing symptoms. It also produces psychotropic effects similar to delta-9, the primary form of THC in cannabis, but delta-8 is less potent. You can find these products at any dispensary ocean beach san diego. Read this smoke a dab guide to improve your cannabis smoking experience. Smoking cigarettes can also help relieve tension or improve one’s mood. You can find high-quality cigarettes for sale at discountciggs.

I’m not 100% done all this and where I want ultimately want to be, but I only have a couple of things left to do, so I’d say I’m 97% there.

If you are in the same boat as I was, perhaps you might want to try minimizing your life as well. Cut out everything that you don’t need or provides no value to you, face things you’ve been putting off, clean up a bit, do things that puts a smile on your face such as taking products like CBD Oil UK and you might be surprised how much more clear-headed you feel.

So What the Hell Happened? Part 1 of 5

My last blog post before I disappeared was made back on February 13, 2016 – a good year and 5 months ago. So what the hell happened?

Since I have a year and a half to cover, I am breaking this up into a series of 5 separate posts.

Okay.

If you remember, I had sunk the majority of my affiliate marketing profits into an income property as I knew my affiliate campaigns could die at any time. In fact, I knew it was just a matter of time. And with constantly increasing regulation and competition (namely against big brand advertisers who don’t have to worry about ROI), I could see the horizon looming ever closer – at least for me. This is why I did research about investing for a year.

Votesy

But at the same time, I didn’t want to simply give up on making money online either. I could sense that affiliate marketing was dying, and my experience and background before affiliate marketing was in developing community-based websites. I came up with the idea of Votesy and just couldn’t get it out of my head, and so I decided to give the online thing one more go and went all out with Votesy, putting the last of my income and effort into it, along with a silent partner/investor.

I knew that Votesy was a big gamble and that the odds weren’t in my favour, but I also knew that if it did take off, that it’d be a real hit. I took the risk, it never took off, and I accepted the consequences. I don’t regret it though. Most of the stuff I’ve tried have failed, but a few have been successes, and affiliate marketing is all one big calculated gamble, just like poker (which is also part of my background).

Depressed and Sick

After sinking a fair bit of cash, but more importantly: time and effort, into Votesy, my affiliate marketing campaigns had mostly all dried up and died, and I wasn’t interested in trying to resurrect them. It would cost too much money, which I had none of at that point, and after Votesy didn’t take off, I was getting pretty tired of trying to make money from the Internet. In addition to Votesy and my campaigns failing, my Meniere’s was really kicking my ass and its effects were having a massive drain my life.

It’s one thing to be poor, but it’s another to be both poor and have serious health issues. Not being able to go out and do anything, having the horrible vertigo attacks, and suddenly going from making a lot of money online to absolutely nothing made me very depressed.

I didn’t feel like blogging anymore. In fact, I had been tired of blogging even before all that shit happened, mainly because at that time I had been blogging for 11 years. That’s 11 years straight with over 1,100 blog posts. I needed a real break from the ruthless fast-moving world of the Internet.

Goodbye, Internet!

While I hadn’t clearly decided at that point that I would abandon everything I had going online, I did know that I needed a good long break from it all. With so many failures online, and the constant struggle that making money online entails, I looked towards alternative means of making money. That is, making money offline.

I wondered why I struggled so much online when 99% of people just work a regular job and make just as much (more or less), only they have job security in most cases and get paid as long as they show up to work. Now listen to me carefully – I didn’t want a regular job, but it just seemed so oddly strange to me that people got paid so much for doing essentially nothing. For example, here are some average US salary numbers I took from a quick Google search:

• Retail salesperson – $25,310
• Cashier – $20,370
• Janitor/cleaner – $24,850

Okay, so they’re not exactly making bank, but consider how much time and effort people spend in trying to make money online. Most will make no more than $50 if they’re lucky, after years of struggling.

Is being a cashier or working in retail easy? Hell no, but the money is guaranteed – you show up to work, you get paid – simple as that. And THIS is why I wanted to look offline to make money – I wanted a more guaranteed way of making money. I wanted to receive money in exchange for my time, unlike being an entrepreneur.

How I Survived

In each of the upcoming posts in this series, I will share the various things I did to pay the rent. This will be new territory for my blog, as since its inception I have always made a living purely from the Internet.

It will also shed me in a different light as I hit absolute rock bottom and have to struggle just to survive and be able to pay for heat. On the positive side though, these are things that are much more accessible for many others to be able to do as well. This is in stark contract to things like affiliate marketing or developing websites which require more of a technical skillset and existing seed money.

Stay tuned for my next post in this series. It will be very embarrasing and humbling for me to share, but I’ve always been very open and honest on my blog and I have nothing to hide.

I’m 80% Done My 30 Posts – Only 6 More to Go!

Two weeks ago, I came back from disappearing for 1.5 years to announce that I was going to work on writing 30 blog posts. Once those 30 blog posts were completed, my plan was to then publish one blog post every 3 days, allowing me to promise 3 months of frequent blog posts.

I have worked really hard on this the past few days and am happy to report that I am currently 80% done with only 6 more posts to go!

If I keep this pace up, I should be done in just 2-3 more days. To be honest though, I am starting to struggle with ideas for topics. After all, I did just write 24 very long, high quality blog posts.

I talk about this a little more in the video below:

(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see the video.)

A Quick Update on My 30 Post Status

8 days ago, I suddenly appeared after a year and a half of hiding and announced my return to blogging.

I wanted to promise 3-months of solid content with a new blog post being posted every 3 days. In order to fulfill this promise, I need to create a queue of 30 blog posts.

I have been working hard on this and am currently 40% done. These are lengthy, high-quality blog posts too, most of which you should find interesting. So hang tight – I’m 40% done and if I stay on my current pace I should be finished within 2 weeks. At the latest I expect to finish in 3 more weeks.

Here’s a video reiterating the above:

(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see the video.)

Thanks for waiting – I’ll be back soon!