Issue #2545

• WEALTHY: It’s a good time to buy real estate (Julie Broad)
• HEALTHY: The nasty surprise in your teapot (Kelley Herring)
• WISE: Plato on beginning

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• 5 reasons to become a writer in 2009 (Suzanne Richardson)
• The Christmas tree that lasted ’til Easter (Judith Strauss)
• It’s Fun to Know… Christmas tree facts
• Add “acuity” to your vocabulary

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Why Current Market Conditions Shouldn’t Stop You From Buying Real Estate

By Julie Broad

Seven years ago, the real estate market where I live – the west coast of Canada – was in a serious slump. Crushed by the Asian crisis of the late 1990s, the Greater Vancouver area just couldn’t seem to rally back. Houses languished on the market, and often slipped into foreclosure. Price reductions were the norm. It was a tough time.

It was also when my husband and I began our real estate investing partnership.
The market was scary, but we didn’t worry much about that. We focused on our objectives and on finding a deal that worked for us. We wanted to buy a rental property in a decent area that would put a little money in our pockets every month. We looked for deals in areas within walking distance of schools, near shopping centers, and around transportation options.

Finally, we found a large duplex, sitting on top of a fairly steep driveway. It had been on the market for over 15 months, going from $199,000 to $179,000 to $169,000 and then slipping into foreclosure. We picked it up in court for $159,000. And within 12 months, our income from that investment was $300 per month. Since then, the rents have almost doubled, and the property value is well over $300,000.

It’s easy to mistake the incredible turnaround made by that market for good timing on our part. But it wasn’t. The reality is that we did very well on our purchase because we had a plan with a clear set of objectives – and we stuck to that plan. We focused on the deal, and didn’t worry about the market.

These days, real estate investing once again seems like a scary thing to do – and it is if you are trying to time the market or hoping to make a quick buck. But if you need reassurance, remember what Warren Buffett has often been quoted as saying: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

[Ed. Note: Set specific objectives for what to look for in a property, and don't diverge from your course - no matter what the market does. It's the clearest way to make the best possible real estate deals. Get more profit-producing real estate secrets from some of the world's leading specialists right here.

In eight years, Internet Money Club member and real estate investor Julie Broad and her husband have built a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio in their spare time with minimal cash resources. They publish a free monthly newsletter to help other rookie real estate investors achieve their investment goals. Get your free report for making money with real estate here.]

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“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”

Plato

Make 2009 Your Best Year Ever – Resolution #1: Become a Writer (Even If You’re a Really Bad Writer Now)

By Suzanne Richardson

A brand-new year is just around the corner. And though, here at ETR, we firmly believe that you can make major changes in your life at ANY time, January always feels like the perfect time to set some new goals for yourself.

We want to help you kick off the year right. So for the next 12 days, a dozen ETR experts will be suggesting specific resolutions that could make 2009 your happiest, most productive, healthiest, and most prosperous year yet.

To get the ball rolling, I have a simple one for you: Become a writer in 2009. And today, I’m going to explain why this should be on your list of resolutions for 2009 – and then show you a surprisingly easy way to accomplish that goal.

First things first. Writing can…

• Help you get your business off the ground. Writing an e-mail newsletter is an inexpensive way to market a fledgling business. Michael Masterson began Early to Rise with around $1,000, a simple website, and a newsletter. Originally, it was sent only to his friends and colleagues. But it grew. Now, ETR is a $26 million business with over 440,000 readers.

• Help you become wealthy. I’m not suggesting that you’ll be the next J.K. Rowling. Most fiction writers struggle to get published, let alone make a living. But copywriting is a career path that can really rack up the cash. Clayton Makepeace, Bob Bly, Paul Hollingshead, Don Mahoney – each one of these men makes hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by writing sales copy.

• Move you up to the top of your company. This is another way to make copywriting pay off for you. After all, as Michael Masterson has pointed out in ETR many times, the best way to get promoted is to get into the profit centers of your company. Writing copy that helps directly bring in money is one of the quickest ways to do it.

• Help you find a job – in any economy. A recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that the number one thing employers look for in new employees is “communication skills.” And a 2006 survey of 431 human resource officials indicated that those skills aren’t easy to find. Forty-seven percent reported that their employees who were graduates of two-year colleges were deficient in written communications, and 81 percent reported that their high-school-graduate employees had the same deficiency.

So if you know how to write, you’ll give yourself a big lead over other people competing for the job you want. Not convinced? My ability to write is what got me a job at ETR – fresh out of grad school, with very little work experience. And it helped me become Managing Editor in six short months.

• Help your business grow. The more traffic you get to your website, the more chances you have to find paying customers. And filling your website with high-quality content is a great way to get Google’s attention… and start attracting visitors.

Julie Broad, a member of ETR’s Internet Money Club, started her Internet business around this time last year. Then she started writing articles on real estate investing for ETR. (In fact, we have an article by Julie in this issue.) Soon afterward, her site’s traffic had increased 10 times. All because she was exposing her ideas and expertise – through writing – to ETR’s subscribers.

• Help build your credibility. Writing articles about your area of expertise can establish your credibility and help you get published in top publications in your industry.

Bob Bly shares this observation on the subject from E.U., a successful publisher: “It is simply amazing the reverence people have for the printed word. Simply because a person has written a book about a subject, people think he has something to say about it.”

And those are just a few reasons.

But it seems to me that a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of becoming a writer. If that’s the way you feel, I have (as I said at the beginning of this article) a super-easy way for you to do it:

Just get started.

If you don’t start writing, you won’t ever become a writer. 

I know a very smart, very experienced marketing expert we’ll call “Alec.” He has thousands of good ideas and a brain full of useful advice. But as soon as he tries to put it down on paper, he gets stuck.

He’s been invited to be a guest writer for a well-known marketing publication. And appearing in that publication’s pages could enhance his reputation, help him reach hundreds of thousands of new prospective customers, and get the attention of industry giants who could propel him to greater success.

But because he can’t even bring himself to start writing down his ideas… he’s missing out on all that potential.

This first step is very important. (And it works for any type of writing – articles, sales copy, fiction.) You simply choose an idea – one small idea that you’d like to share. And you write it down.

Then you give it to three people to read – even if those three people are your spouse, your best friend, and your grandmother. Or you post it to your blog, save it on your computer, put it in your journal. Just get it out of your head and onto the page.

And you do the same thing the next day… and the next day… and the next day.

Don’t worry about grammar. Don’t worry about spelling. Or whether you expressed yourself well. You can hone your writing skills later. (And, by the way, ETR has tons of great advice on that subject. To access it, all you have to do is a quick search through our Archives.)

Side Note: Many successful writers – including Clayton Makepeace, Michael Masterson, Charlie Byrne, and John Forde (to name a few) – write beautifully. So it’s worthwhile to learn what it takes to be a fine writer. But when you’re just starting out, doing the actual writing is much more important than crafting elegant sentences and paragraphs.

The thing is, if you wait until you can write like Jane Austen… or if you wait until you have a big list of potential subscribers to your not-yet-launched newsletter… or if you wait until you “get inspired” – you will never get started. You will NEVER become a good writer. And you won’t get any of the benefits that come with being a good writer either. So don’t wait. Start right now.

Michael Masterson has said it hundreds of times: Ready, Fire, Aim. You’ve already got the experience or the passion or the ideas. So you’re Ready. Now it’s time to Fire – to start writing about it. And then you can work on the Aiming/improving.

Pick up a pencil or open up a Word document and write something down. Right now. It’s as simple as that. If you can’t think of anything else, do this: Write an e-mail to us at ETR telling us what you think we can do better. Then send it to us at AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. We’re always eager to hear from our readers.

[Ed. Note: Writing down your ideas is a great way to start an e-mail newsletter. And starting an e-mail newsletter is the perfect low-cost way to get your Internet business up and running. For more advice about creating your own e-newsletter - plus step-by-step guides to product creation, marketing, website development, and much more - join ETR's Internet Money Club. Our team of experts will walk you through everything you need to know to start a business that could earn $100,000 to $25 million a year. Space is limited, so find out now if you can still enroll in the "Class" of 2009.]

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Your Special Holiday Gift from Early to Rise

Suzanne Richardson reveals a quick and easy tool that can make your writing at least twice as effective.

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== Highly Recommended ==

The Three Magic Words to Building Wealth Online

What are the three most important words for rapidly building enormous wealth online?

Quick, cheap, & easy! Our new Internet program has them all.

You see, the problem with most Internet advice out there is it’s designed for people with big (multi-million dollar) advertising budgets, lots of administrative, legal, and accounting support and an existing marketing base.

But if your company is smaller than $1 million and/or if you don’t have an Internet business yet, then you need something different… something that lets you start off small.

One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How’s that for starting small!

Let me show you how you could get a similar Internet income stream running for almost nothing.

- Charlie Byrne
ETR Associate Publisher

Dear ETR: “How come there’s fluoride in tea?”

“Kelley Herring’s article ‘Brewing Up a Pot of Fluoride‘ came as a nasty surprise. I’m aware that there’s fluoride in tap water, but it never occurred to me that this toxin exists in tea as well. How come?”

A.Y.

Hello A.Y.,

What may come as an even more “nasty surprise” is that the fluoride level in one cup of black tea rivals that of nearly 8 liters of water fluoridated at 1 ppm.

Why? Because the Camellia sinensis plant from which we obtain tea has a unique propensity to absorb fluoride. In fact, it is known to accumulate more fluoride (from pollution in both soil and air) than any other edible plant. What’s more, the fluoride in tea is much higher than the maximum contaminant level (MCL) set for fluoride in drinking water.

As I mentioned in my “Brewing Up a Pot of Fluoride” article, you can stay fluoride-free with green tea extract that has been cleared of fluoride. And here’s another option: Try herbal “teas” like Yogi Detox Tea. Boasting antioxidant-rich cloves, cinnamon, and ginger (with ORAC scores of 314,446, 267,536, and 14,840, respectively), this delicious beverage trumps green tea’s trivial ORAC score of 1,200, without any fluoride contamination.

- Kelley Herring

[Ed. Note: Have a question for Kelley or one of our other ETR experts? Send your query to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com and we may respond to you in an upcoming issue.

Survive the holidays with nutrition expert Kelley Herring's brand-new recipe e-books, Guilt-Free Desserts and Healthy Holiday Hors d'Oeuvres. You'll find 60+ recipes you can easily make at home.]  

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One of My Favorite Christmas Memories

By Judith Strauss, ETR Senior Editor

So there we were – newly married and living in an apartment furnished only by a mattress on the bedroom floor.

We had no money for lights or other decorations – but, hey, it was Christmas Eve! And we were in the middle of the Rocky Mountains (both of us working toward masters degrees at the University of Idaho). “We are surrounded by evergreens – Christmas trees more magnificent than anything you can buy!” we said. “How hard could it be to chop one of them down?”

We checked to make sure it was legal (it was) – and out we went into the snow, armed with a borrowed ax.

We searched. And we searched. And we searched.

“There’s one!”

We made a beeline for it… only to find, as we approached, that it was at least 20 feet tall.

“There’s a little one over there!”

Again, as we approached, it was enormous.

Finally, we found a “sapling” – barely nine feet.

We hacked it down (and I do mean hacked), tied it to the roof of our VW bug, and triumphantly drove it home.

Once installed in our formerly empty living room, it took on a life of its own. We trimmed it with the strings of popcorn and paper chains and “snowflakes” that we’d learned to make in kindergarten.

It filled the room – literally. And it filled the entire apartment with the fragrance and spirit of Christmas.

January came and went. February came and went. The tree still looked and smelled as fresh as it had the day we dragged it in. (That’s what you get for chopping down your own tree.)

Then it was almost Easter. It made no sense to keep the tree any longer – so, reluctantly, we dragged it to the curb and let it go. And the apartment looked even more empty than it had before.

But I still had – and have – my memories of that tree… and lots of pictures.

[Ed. Note: What's your favorite holiday memory? Let us know right here.]

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It’s Fun to Know: Christmas Tree Facts

• Christmas tree lots have sprouted up around the holidays since 1850 (though not, until recently, in front of local shopping plazas).

• The most popular Christmas trees include the Scotch pine, Douglas fir, Noble fir, Fraser fir, Virginia pine, Balsam fir, and white pine.

• There are Christmas tree farms in all 50 states – and 98 percent of the Christmas trees available for sale are grown on those farms.

(Source: University of Illinois Extension)

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== Highly Recommended ==

How to “Unscrew” Yourself from Life’s Little Frustrations
(and the Big Ones, Too!)

When you get stuck in a royal mess – and we all do sometimes – here’s how to get out of it looking squeaky clean and grinning like a Cheshire cat…

Got a speeding ticket and afraid your insurance premiums are about to skyrocket?  Don’t sweat it.  I’ll show you the smartest way to legally beat the ticket – without hiring an expensive lawyer to plead your case.

Have a really good reason to get out of jury duty?Let me show you how to escape it – even if the court clerk refuses to grant you an exemption.  Frustrated with airport waiting times due to tightened security?  I’ll reveal how to cut your airport waiting time in half!

Listen:  No matter which of life’s frustrations come your way, there are clever ways to easily get out of most of them.  I’m even willing to share them all with you – FREE!  Click here to learn why.

Word to the Wise: Acuity

“Acuity” (uh-KYOO-uh-tee) – from the Latin for “to sharpen” – is sharpness of perception or vision.

Example (as used by Stephen Budiansky in If a Lion Could Talk): “Horses tend to shy a lot because the construction of their eyes is optimized for a near 360-degree field of view, useful for spotting danger, but the price the horse pays for that is relatively poor acuity and some out-of-focus spots that can cause objects within the field of view to suddenly sail into sharp focus.”

[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]

Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 5:10 am and is filed under Daily Issues .