A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

So far, I have not learned to program, though I do know a little HTML and CSS from running my blogs, basically. This failure to learn to code is due to a combination of having been very ill, which makes it hard to learn anything new, and much of my time being taken up with struggling to survive and solving my health problems that are not supposed to be solvable. (And probably other factors.)

The other thing is I am good at solving things, but I am not good at figuring out "business ideas." I know how to get well when that is not supposed to be possible. But I don't know how one turns that into money.

I don't think this is just me being neurotic. I think there are some inherent problems in monetizing such a product. I feel strongly that the way modern medicine is monetized is part of the reason people are failing to get well. Modern medicine makes money for treating you, not for getting you well. Ongoing need for treatment is a means to keep making money and I think that is an inherent conflict of interest. I haven't yet figured out how you set your sights on actually getting people well and somehow get money out of that. Because that is not the financial model for modern medicine.

I would like to create simulations for smaller health problems and eventually create a simulation to teach other people with CF how to do what I do. Blogging is wholly insufficient to convey the density of info required. My thought was that I would start with a small simulation for how you cure sunburn rapidly by eating the right things and then build on that for larger, more complicated problems.

But I used to get really ugly pushback for talking about getting myself well. This was far beyond not getting taken seriously. It was incredibly threatening and worrisome, so I have also spent some years working on figuring out how to approach the problem space without inspiring lynch mobs, basically.

I do have a private blog with some of my ideas written out intended as a design doc. But it hasn't gotten a lot of development. I have been mostly overwhelmed by events.

Thank you for your long comment.

While there is certainly a small minority of such folks around half a percent of the US population in fact the threadmill between not bothering to come to work and homelessness is so short that not many people are en route at any given time. On the other hand around 14% live in poverty in contrast. Looking at the houeshold income anyone in the bottom quarter is barely scraping by given the cost of health insurance and house costs.

Your perception is an elaborate fiction informed by no actual data. Most of the people in poverty are working hard to stay in one place.

notanothermoneyblog:

I tend to be turned off of traditional blog layouts because of navigational structure. As a reader, I don't care about when an article is written, I care about matching my reading interests quickly with what is available on your site (perusing the titles / tags / categories). If there is a config to toggle away the year-month navigation style, I would prefer that. YMMV

sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide:

The site seems niche and, as you have mentioned in other posts, there is a stigma against homelessness. Non-homeless (awkward description, I know) readers might feel immediately turned off before reading anything. You might be able to convey the same type of message by describing it as "scraping by", although this may be counterproductive.

I would suggest you might try to review your previously-written articles and see if you can make them more reader-friendly. Currently, they seem a little writer-friendly and not very optimized for the reader. Having a TL;DR at the top might keep interest. Eg. the "gift card" article #2 was interesting because it mentions the CA state law that gives consumers the right to cash out sub-$10 balances. That is very useful for me, as a California consumer and I probably would not have thought I would find a nugget on a site and wouldn't have found it if I wasn't trying to review your site. Having the nugget of wisdom in the article title (eg. "Gift cards can be cashed by state law") rather than a less-specific "Cash for Gift Cards -- Addendum"

Small bug: The link from the /p/money.html page to "Starbuck's and Domino's Rewards and Gift Cards" is broken (there is a stray "http:/" at the beginning).

If you can, try to get an Amazon Affiliate account and add Amazon affiliate links when you describe / review books like "Book recommendation: How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously". It might not be useful short-term as they won't cut checks for amounts smaller than ~$25, but they pay 4+% on lots of products.

The most important thing is to build a habit and stick to it. If you reserve some specific 10 minutes of the day for learning to code, like just before going to sleep, it will soon become so ingrained that you wouldn't even think of stopping.

It may seem like a daunting task before you start, so much to learn, but if you take it step by little step, 10 minutes at a time, you can do it.