After having a 2 month period of very little extra work with my new part time copy writing job I got hit with a tough request. Could I bust out 6 articles in one day for an insurance company local to Louisville KY?

Never one to shy from a challenge I said of course I can. Insurance? What could be difficult about this? I’ve bought a beau coup of insurance policies in my day.

Part of being a part time internet copy writer is getting to meet the clients and interview them about their business. And some times like this time I get to make a new friend that’s well connected. I’ll tell you a little about Kelly Turton of Family Select Insurance (with his permission of course) .

Kelly is an exciting guy. I don’t know how else to explain it, but we’ve all met those few people in our life that we instantly enjoyed talking to. Their enthusiasm for everything they do is magnetic and you just enjoy really talking to them. That Kelly is excited about his new business here in Louisville doesn’t mean that he’s new to the business of insurance. During my interview I discovered that he’s already been to the top of the Insurance industry mountain. Having built and sold one of the largest privately owned insurance agencies out west, it’s not his first rodeo by any stretch.

Seems as though he sold it all then retired here to Louisville KY so that his wife could be around the area she grew up in. But as often happens with guys like Kelly he just wasn’t happy trying to busy himself all day with the mundane life of retirement. He had to get back in the game here locally so he opened a new office at 6409 Dutchmans Pkwy and Started Family Select Insurance.

It’s at this time that I should confess and spill the beans about how it was so easy to write 6 full page articles in one day. One each on Auto Insurance, Homeowners, Motorcycle, Boats, RV, and Renters Insurance. I simply asked Kelly if I could record our interview which he so graciously allowed me to do.

Afterwards I was able to just play it back and write at the same time. Periodically I would stop the recording and back it up and play it again. This is a tactic that I thought of after my first few writing assignments and I recommend it to anybody that does what I do, be it full or part time like myself. There’s no source of information as valuable as when it’s taken straight from the well.

So there it is. If you would like to see what I did for Family Select Insurance go check it out.

Beyond this, you’ll be getting an Ohio River Fishing report from me as soon as the water level drops enough for me to hit the river over in Jeffersonville Indiana. I do hope it’s not one of those years when that doesn’t happen till mid June. I would hate to miss the seasonal fish migrations again. That’s the best time to fish the river.

I’ll see you then!

It’s been a very busy time as of late. That can happen when you have a part time job as a writer. But Hey! I’m loving it.

Family visits during the holidays!

It’s the holidays and I’m in my office here at the house instead of doing over time at my full time gig so it’s all good. My brother and his wife are in town staying with us. When us Mason’s visit we don’t stay in motels, family stays at the house of whatever family member they’re visiting.

My latest project “Carpet Cleaning in Lexington KY”

I’ve been enjoying my Brothers company these last few days and he’s intrigued that I got a part time job as a writer. My latest gig for Kid Carson Media has been writing content for a Lexington KY based cleaning companies website. I had to write about 5000 words of content about everything from carpet cleaning in Lexington to window washing and it’s been an enlightening experience. You see some of the work I did by clicking the link back there. I now know more about how a professional cleaning company works than I thought I ever wanted to know.

And in case you’re finding this and reading this yes! I will write for you too. Just make me an offer. I think you’ll find my rates competitive and my writing style acceptable. Although I don’t know that I want to take on another project like the cleaning company site I mentioned above. There was just so much of a learning curve involved. BUT !!!

Now that I find myself comfortably on the other side of it 🙂 If you have a cleaning a company and need some blogging done or content for new pages, I’m your man.

One thing I’ve noticed about small business sites

One of the things I’ve noticed about these small business sites Kid Carson Media is building is that they seem to always rank well. The owner told me it had a lot to do with the way I write the copy for them. Apparently modern search engines like Google like for everything to be written in a natural way. So I’m guessing? What? I’m all natural? I think I am, so therefore I am? It’s not really important. But I had mentioned it to Blaine (KC Media) and he just blew it off.

So there’s where I’ve been these last few months. Not getting to do much writing here, but writing none the less. I do enjoy and am glad to have the extra work. The fact that I can do it from here in my office at home is a great pleasure. My brother is sitting here and we’re chatting as I write. He’ll leave and go back home tomorrow with his wife and kids. But we’ll be going there ( Nashville TN) come Christmas time so I’ll see him again soon enough.

From the Mason Family to You and Yours… HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!!

I got a part time job writing for a local Louisville SEO company.

I was at a local writers meet up the other night and ran into a guy that does some part time writing for Kid Carson Media here in Louisville. I instantly hit it off with him and I think it was as much of an age thing as anything else. Don’t we all gravitate to people that understand our genre’? That he was a part time semi professional writer was cool too.

So after hanging out that evening I gave him my number to give to the owner thinking that a little extra income couldn’t hurt. I don’t know about other peoples experiences with meet ups but I go more for the socializing end of it. To get out and meet people with a similar passion and get their thoughts. I’ve met some very interesting people here at local meetups. And truth be known I never really thought anybody would be interested in hiring me to write for them.

My Interview with the owner

I got a call from the company owner earlier today and he looked at my little blog here. Asked if I could write some local articles for them. Apparently they only work for Louisville based companies and if anybody knows Louisville it’s yours truly. I must admit to being a little flattered by it all. I already knew that they paid a 4 cents a word and busting out 500 words of quality copy for $20.00 seems good to me.

We talked for probably a half hour, it turns out that he’s a life time resident of Southern Indiana just across the river and that he’d seen my blog post about fishing the Ohio and loved it. He tells me he fishes several times a year from the same bank I was taking my blog post photos from.

While I had him on the phone I asked him what he thought of my blog. He reassured me that what he thought didn’t matter in the least. It would be different if it was a commercial venture but in his opinion that with it being purely of a personal nature that it didn’t need what a business website or blog needed along the ways of optimization and traffic generation. All in all I think he was being kind so as not to hurt my feelings 🙂

So yes I’m going to finally be a paid writer

So now I will be a part time writer. I’ve been online reading about how to write business copy and reacquainting myself with the 5 w’s of quality copy and am anxious to get started. I don’t want to mess this small gig up and some of the pieces I write will be having my name attached to them so I do want them to at least get a passing grade. I’ve been promised 2 articles a week that will be between 500 and 1000 words.

Now I need to learn about key words and key phrases and latent semantic indexing of words for the articles. I was told by the owner that they have a program that will check the writing for me and let me know if it’s under or over using certain words while I write the articles.

I love learning new stuff! And this is going to be so much fun 🙂

Can you tell that I’m excited!

One of the great things about Louisville is the Ohio River, and the fishing opportunity’s it offers.

Yesterday I went down to the rapids under the old railroad bridge and walked all the way from the Louisville side to the Jeffersonville Indiana side. During summer pool the water gets down low enough where making the trek is totally possible but it’s a long hike. Most of the people that are there fishing come in from the interpretive center in Jeffersonville.

I didn’t fish because I was there just to hike and do some photography. But I challenge any man to see another person fishing and not stop to watch. I seen some pretty nice fish being caught!

One guy was banking some nice catfish, while still another guy was pulling big drums right out of the white water with a cast net. Most of the people that hit the river to fish bring serious gear. You wont last long here with a panfish setup. The rods and reels need to be heavy duty and so does the line. About the minimum test strength for the river would be 20lb test. And then unless it’s a modern spyderwire or something like that there is going to be a lot of breaks.

The fishing season generally starts mid April and runs all summer long with the better fishing earlier in the year. If the waters to high an entire season can be ruined. I like seeing it get down where the fossil beds are exposed and the fish are concentrated into the rapids. Early in the year they’re trying to move upstream and they pile up right at the dam and it’s easy pickings while the water is down. It’s not uncommon during those early spring conditions to feel the fish brushing up against your legs and you stand in the white water trying to catch them.

Checking out the overflow

Caution is the word of the day when you’re on the Mighty Ohio. It can be a very dangerous place, and what can look Innocent enough can turn out to be fairly dangerous. Always cross any running water with extreme caution, and don’t take your eyes off any children that you have with you. The undertow in the river can sweep anything or anybody away in a brief second.

No trip to the falls is complete without going over by the overflow in the wickets and checking it out. It’s not always possible but yesterday all conditions were just right so I checked it out.So go check out the Falls of the Ohio! It’s a great place to go for a hike or some fishing.

Leave us a comment if you’ve ever fished at the Falls and tell us how you did !!

I never knew refinancing could be such a nightmare. But then, we’ve never refinanced our home before either.

This is the only house me and my wife have ever owned and we’ve been here for 8 years now and according to all the calculations we’ll be coming out ahead.

But God it’s been a pain in the butt.

The only saving grace was finding a good local broker to handle things for us named John Moel.

Of course we read all of the articles about shopping rates to get the best deal possible. We checked out the big outfits like lending tree online. Then some others that we see advertised locally here in Louisville. I got to the point where I thought to myself “If I hear one more mortgage industry acronym I’m gonna scream”.

I mean c’mon already! How the hell should I know what the hell HELOC means? We talked to this one lady that seemed like she was more intent on impressing us with the amount of confusing acronyms she could throw at us instead of helping us borrow some money against our home.

Then when I’d stop her and politely ask… pardon my foolishness and all, but what is an ARM? She took way to much pleasure in telling me. It was as though she was seeing herself as some all knowing mortgage business oracle that was imparting special knowledge that nobody else possessed. When she told us that an ARM was an adjustable rate mortgage my wife asked her “then why didn’t you just say that”? The poor gal looked at my wife and says “oh that’s just industry lingo”. The wife informed her that she wasn’t interested in industry lingo and to please just use English. It was at that point that I knew we wouldn’t be using the nice over educated lady or her companies services.

A guy at my wife’s office suggested we call his buddy John Moel . I have to admit I was skeptical because John works from home and has in own small brokerage, and on top of that the first thing I thought when I first saw him is he looks young. But in the end I’m glad we did, and that’s why I’m plugging him here on my blog. Not only is John blessed with great genetics, he’s a very, very knowledgeable young man, and very masterful of his trade.

He actually came by to meet us and I found out he’s a military veteran like myself and could instantly tell how he took pride in having served. He quoted us numbers much better than we were getting from the big corps and banks and I also like that our money was staying local. I don’t know why I distrust large banks and corporations but I do. None of that with John. Me and the wife were totally at ease except for one thing that was bothering me so I asked John. Why don’t you use acronyms like ARM and HELOC as you’re describing your services?

He told me that he finds them annoying !! We were sold.

It’s all over now, and last weekend we had John and his young wife over for the 4th. We had a lot to celebrate.

So if you’re going to refinance the lessons I learned are to do your due diligence. Research everything thoroughly, and talk to several banks. Last but no least don’t count out your local mortgage brokers. Your best deal may be with one of them, and chances are good that somebody you know, knows one that they can recommend to you. If not and you’re here local, give John a call. Tell him Terry and Barb Mason sent you 🙂

Louisville is my city. I was born and raised here and it’s the only place I can see myself being.

I’m blessed in the fact that almost everything that I love or hate is within 50 miles of where I live and because my glass is most always half full, there’s very little to hate.

We’re a generous fun loving people here in this river city with a lot of history and character built by the generations that came before me. Louisville is an interesting city and right across the Ohio river from us the community of southern Indiana it’s just as good.

I know that people from around the US think of this as podunk but in real world terms it’s a great place to live, work, and raise a family. We have the Kentucky Derby that draws people from all over the world; the Run for the Roses is no small thing here. And one of my favorite things about the Derby is that the party lasts a whole month. Business’s actually shut down, and let employees have derby day off.

Part of the festivities is the Thunder over Louisville fireworks show which is something everybody should see at least once in their life. It’s only one of the largest fireworks shows in the world and shakes the ground for up to a mile away. Funny thing is they’re launched from barges out on the river and at the end.. They light up an entire bridge with pyrotechnic glory. Literally the whole thing appears to be nothing but a wall of flames. Like I said, everyone should make it to Louisville just once in their life if for nothing else to see Thunder Over Louisville.

We’re a river city, and the Ohio river is a big part of the local community. Downtown Louisville is right on the riverfront and we have what’s called “The Great Lawn” where we party down in the Summer. Concert’s, shows, picnics, we do it all on the Great Lawn.

So yeah ours is a beautiful city and great for family and business’s. Unlike some of the areas of the country Louisville’s economy isn’t as badly impacted by the ongoing depression here in America. I think mainly it’s because of the fact that we have a very diverse economy here. The area is not dependent on any one industry. This in turn seems to inject a level of industrial diversity into our economy. If one area hurts it doesn’t so badly effect the whole.

There’s a lot more to what us locals call “The Ville” and I’ll blog about some of those things in the future. After all this site is just a little passion of mine born of boredom and a degree self expression. And yeah I’ll throw some pictures in here soon.

Thanks for stopping in and hope you return in the future!

Terry ~~