For the last couple of years I have sold on Amazon, but through a rather passive way. Meaning, I put my books on there, and that was that. They sold it, collected the money, shipped it, and all that fun stuff. And I like it that way for the most part.
A few weeks ago, I happened up selling on Amazon, in this case, used books. What's the difference? Quite a bit. First off, let's just Admit Amazon takes a hell of a lot in either case. However, with this way, I felt like I have more control. I know who the customer is, and where they live which is sort of empowering.
Of course, Amazon has rules in place to discourage you from dealing with that customer aside from the sale, but it is still helpful to have a name to go with a product being sold. Aside from the name, there is the text message alerting you to the sale, followed by an email. Then you pack and ship. The difference with this is it makes selling tangible. Withe the passive income, it is easy to forget that a person bought something from you since you only see the name of the book, how many copies it old, and what you made from it.
So, while selling tangible items on Amazon may be more work, there is a huge plus for actually feeling like you are really in business, which passive income does not provide.
Silicon Valleys Sexually Harasses it's Women to Keep it a Boy's Club
Silicon Valley has a problem with hating women. Hate means "to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest." Over the last couple of days I have seen example after example with techies doing all manner of things to degrade, harass, and sexually objectify women.
Sarah Parmenter of "You Know Who" wrote a blog post about her experience where an unknown person put up faked porn pictures of women who LOOKED similar to her, and proceeded to send links of the photos to high profile people she knew in order to ruin her credibility. You can read that here
Whitney Hess tells her story of harrassment here. She knows who the individuals are, but has allowed the ones who have harassed her publicly on her blog, twitter, etc to go unchallenged which has brought some benefits (new clients), and loss (friends distancing themselves from her).
Dr. Lesie Jensen-Inman discusses a physically threatening situation from a conference attendee. And how the attendees were too busy discussing her physical attributes and clothing on Twitter to be concerned with what she was speaking on.
Here's what these all have in common:
- All these women were afraid or ashamed to tell their story until time passed. In the case with Sarah, the person who did it was never caught.
- The women were mainly subjected to the harassment at conferences where they were speaking, by men who did not like the idea of a WOMAN speaking.
- Considering the average age of an employee in Silicon Valley is less than 35, this attitude towards women is being taught and re-enforced in the tech industry itself, and not necessarily through American culture where it is the norm for women to work, speak in public, and be the top in their field (i.e., Hillary Clinton).
Silicon Valley is supposed to be innovative, disrupting stuff, and creating things we want to buy, but how can the men of Silicon Valley have any idea what women want or need when they refuse to listen to those within their industry?. How can tech grow when there is a blatant attempt to silence women?
Forget about the laws being broken and potential lawsuits, and focus on the real issue; sexism and misogyny is just plain wrong. In order for it to stop, the good men are going to have to take the lead. Unlike the women who were fearful of disclosing their harassment but did it anyway, too many influential men in the technology industry have done something far worse, they ignored it.
Posted with Blogsy