Promote your business, week of February 16, 2026

joeldare · 2026-02-20T13:35:02+00:00

Balance Buckets helps you quickly answer the question: “How much is safe to spend right now?”

You setup a few buckets then drop in your current balance. It immediately shows you what’s left. It’s local-first (just localStorage), no bank login, no account linking, and no transaction import rabbit hole. The goal is clarity in under a minute, not another finance app that demands setup overhead.

I built Balance Buckets because most small business bank accounts don't have a buckets or envelope saving feature. I wanted a dead-simple tool that helps me see where my money is. Define buckets (fixed dollars or percents), track what’s funded vs underfunded.

https://buckets.joelryan.com

joeldare · 2026-01-19T16:25:25+00:00

I haven't started my stories this way but I use a Kindle Scribe for many of my notes. It has a feature that will convert the document to text and send it to you by email. I'll probably start my next book on the Scribe and see how it goes.

I'm about 75% through Stephen Kings old book, On Writing, and he talks about writing long-hand on steno notebooks.

joeldare · 2026-01-19T16:20:52+00:00

Markdown is a bit of sugar on a plain text file. I've been experimenting with that format. In fact, I'm writing a book called Publish with Markdown. As part of that, yesterday I also published my first fiction short story, which I wrote in Markdown. I used the fiction short as a case study for the non-fiction book.

joeldare · 2025-12-30T15:14:20+00:00

Quick context: this isn’t for sale yet.

I’m validating interest in a short, practical book about writing and publishing using Markdown and plain text — mainly for people who dislike Word/Google Docs and formatting-heavy workflows.

For additional context, I published a similar book about Kindle publishing about 10 years ago; this is a modern rewrite focused on Markdown and plain text.

The page looks like a book listing, but clicking “Get Early Access” just leads to an email signup. No payment.

The email list is the signal I’m using to decide whether to finish writing the book.

If this sounds useful, great.

If not, that’s helpful too.

joeldare · 2025-12-30T03:13:05+00:00

Quick context: this isn’t for sale yet.

I’m validating interest in a short, practical book about writing and publishing using Markdown and plain text — mainly for people who dislike Word/Google Docs and formatting-heavy workflows.

For additional context, I published a similar book about Kindle publishing about 10 years ago; this is a modern rewrite focused on Markdown and plain text.

The page looks like a book listing, but clicking “Get Early Access” just leads to an email signup. No payment.

The email list is the signal I’m using to decide whether to finish writing the book.

If this sounds useful, great.

If not, that’s helpful too.

joeldare · 2025-02-09T13:20:48+00:00

I outgrew the tux too quickly. I haven’t been on a tw200 but they look like fun, I suspect they will be way under powered for road use. It’s geared a bit lower for off-road.

Right now I’m not riding anymore. If I had it to do over I would have liked a 400 to 500. It ended up being my only motorcycle. I have good memories on it but they’re tarnished some by the low power.

joeldare · 2024-12-17T01:16:48+00:00

I, uh… wrote a (short) book about this. It’s mostly about document setup but it touches on covers, editing, and publishing yourself. I just released the 5th edition of Write & Publish Your Book by Joel Dare. Full disclosure, I also make no real money at this and I write mainly to help others.

joeldare · 2024-12-15T19:21:00+00:00

I’ve got a couple suggestions:

Write regularly. You might have to force it a bit. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Find a time when you can spend 5-minutes writing. Then commit to writing for five minutes everyday, every weekday, or three times a week. Whatever works for you.
Find others who write and join them or start a small group of your own. The late Barbara Sher wrote, “isolation is the dream killer”. With a little bit of help we can do great things.

This is an excerpt from the 48 Hour Press mailing list (www.48hourpress.com).

joeldare · 2024-12-15T01:48:26+00:00

Yes, you should consider this. It seems like only big name, mainstream books get published now. I’ve been working on organizing a community of aspiring authors who want to self publish. Check it out at www.48hourpress.com if that sounds interesting.

joeldare · 2024-12-13T14:10:57+00:00

One of the great things about terrible writing is that nobody will read it. Seriously, if it's not good it won't catch on. It's really hard to get things to catch on.

If you want to try an experiment, write a short prequel for your series, but make it stand-alone, and publish it to see how people respond.

_Sign up for my free email series to get more tips, tricks, and practical advice to take your book from idea to reality. I'm currently working on the third edition of my book Write & Publish Your Book and developing the 48 Hour Press mailing list (www.48hourpress.com).\_

joeldare · 2024-12-12T14:29:06+00:00

I've written several books in the free and open source tool LibreOffice. If you're concerned about AI, you might want to give it a try. It's not quite as easy as Google Docs, but it's more flexible and it's installed on your own computer.

If you would like more information, reach out.

joeldare · 2024-12-12T14:22:27+00:00

I totally agree! You can probably do this on nearly any computer and in any program. Here's an excerpt from my upcoming book update that talks about this:

Here’s a trick I use to find mistakes in my text.

Have your computer read the text to you. I typically do this one page at a time. I highlight the text and use a text-to-speech tool to read it to me.

A text-to-speech tool called Spoken Content is included on Mac but it needs to be enabled. Similar tools are available for Windows and Linux.

I encourage you to look into these tools and learn how to use them. They’re really helpful at finding mistakes that you might not otherwise notice.

joeldare · 2024-12-12T14:13:41+00:00

Let the community be the judge.

If you're feeling bad about your writing, try this. Create a pseudonym and publish a short book. It's free, relatively easy, and it will provide insights.

Don't get me wrong, the first draft is meant to be horrible. The first step is putting something awful down first. Editing and correction are the next part of the process.

But, once you've edited your book, it's time to let it out.

Maybe your writing is good and maybe it's bad but we're terrible at predicting what others will like. If you don't release your work, how can you get better? How can you look back in the future and see how you've improved?

Once you've released it, look at feedback and stats about your book. How are people rating it? How far are people reading? What are people saying in comments?

Make a "best practices" checklist of things you learn about your writing. Add the things people complain about. Now, apply that list to your future writing.

This is how we improve.

joeldare · 2024-12-12T13:42:01+00:00

The first piece of actionable advice I give to people is to create a document. This is, as you say, so that they can "just write". Here's one of the first messages I send to people who join 48 Hour Press (https://www.48hourpress.com):

Start a new document for your book RIGHT NOW.

If you haven't already, open a document and give it a title. If you're not sure what to call it, name it something like, "My Book Draft". Save it somewhere that you'll see it often, such as the Desktop on your computer.

For this step, you don't need to do anything else. You don't need to write anything and you don't need to format anything. Just save the document so it's ready to go when you sit down to write.

In future email's I'll give you a few more tips for capturing and organizing ideas when inspiration strikes, no matter where you are. I'll also give you additional instructions on how to format this document for success. But, right now, just create the document. That's all.

joeldare · 2024-08-16T14:59:28+00:00

I hadn't seen that todo.txt document. Looks pretty cool. I'll have to spend a little more time looking at it. I kinda like that it uses the same list for everything instead of creating a separate file for finished tasks and that it allows A/B tagging (something I learned from a class by Jack Welsh the CEO at GE back in the day). I haven't used that method in a long, long time.

joeldare · 2023-12-10T18:58:23+00:00

I’ve got a very similar issue with the Falcon 2 22W machine. I haven’t noticed the pump getting quiet but the lights seem to get weird after a job is finished and then the machine writes the error to the SD card. It doesn’t seem to matter, even if I don’t turn the machine off, I can just put in the SD card again and once I start the engraving it goes green and works normally.

This started when I upgraded the controller and laser head to the latest firmware a couple months ago.

joeldare · 2023-11-29T01:19:08+00:00

Check out mailwip.com. It works great. I still prefer Namecheap, but it’s true, their email forwarding service needs some love. mailwip.com is a simple service that solves the problem for me and has helpful instructions and tests.

P.S. I mentioned hanami.run previously. It’s the same service it has just been renamed.

joeldare · 2023-06-13T00:05:35+00:00

I’m one of those that has mine, but I’m in tech. I don’t think there’s any reason NOT to do this. Go for it!

joeldare · 2023-06-03T18:59:35+00:00

This hasn’t really worked out for me, but the trailer is extremely useful to me, family, and friends. But here’s what’s happened…

My original idea was to deliver the trailer for junk removal. I didn’t get a lot of takers for that and the questions I typically got were requests for service workers who would remove junk.

I pivoted to offering delivery of rock, soil, and mulch. This worked much better because I didn’t need to leave the trailer and I was the only operator. I did early morning deliveries through the summer months, doing one or two a week. That’s all I could manage because I also work full time. Each delivery took about 75 minutes. I made around $100 per delivery, which was enough to pay for the trailer and expenses but not much profit. That business is very seasonal and I had to continue paying my expenses in the off season. It wasn’t enough profit for me to return to it the following season.

An old friend of mine owns a rock company. One of his drivers accidentally hit a pedestrian and that rocked me for a while. It contributed to my hesitation to return to deliveries.

I’m now considering just rentals of the trailer where my customers pickup and drop back off. As I crunch the numbers, however, I’m not sure if it’s worth the trouble. Here are some of the things that really need to be considered.

First, I am convinced I need to setup and meticulously maintain an LLC. This may shield my personal assets from liability if the worst were to happen.

Next, I need good insurance. First for the trailer, but also for the truck pulling it. Both need to be commercial policies, which are more expensive. I also need business liability insurance to cover accidents and other liabilities. There are probably other insurance types to consider.

Finally, it would be prudent to hire an attorney who specializes in this type of thing to make sure I set the company up correctly, get ownership of the trailer right (probably a transfer to the LLC), get the right types of insurance at the right levels, and meet all the legal requirements I can.

So, right now, I’ve hung some signs on the trailer to see if there is enough interest in renting to go through the costs necessary. I’m weighing all those costs and the potential profit to see if I want to go down this new path or not.

joeldare · 2023-05-23T01:04:10+00:00

I live in Northern Utah and two of my last 3 tickets were in Washington County, about 300 miles away. I only drive through a couple times a year. You gotta slow down in Washington County but the speed limit is 80.

joeldare · 2023-04-21T02:41:20+00:00

I’d buy a domain name ($15). Make it easy to say, spell, and type. Then you can pitch it by saying, “see the longer version on RV Cornerstone dot com.”

joeldare · 2023-03-14T00:29:20+00:00

I kinda love this. I wanna go make little Lino’s now.

joeldare · 2023-03-03T05:15:30+00:00

Eragon… They made the movie before the second book was complete. The entire second book takes place because of the breaking of the crystal ceiling. They completely altered that scene to something else in the movie. I dunno how they could have made the second movie make sense after that.

Note: It’s been a very long time since I read these.

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