The ebook market on eBay has changed a little over the last few years. The bad news for those interested in selling ebooks is that they will be facing more competition for sales than previous “generations” of sellers. The good news, however, is that consumers are now familiar and comfortable with the idea of purchasing digital information and the number of potential buyers is increasing.
These two factors have led many in the ebook selling field to realize that one key to success is offering never-before-seen products on eBay. By providing new ebooks to a market segment increasingly apt to purchase new quality information, sellers can still reap considerable profits.
Finding new material has become increasingly difficult, though certainly not impossible. It does take a talent and skills to find new ebooks with master resale rights available, however. One trying to find ebooks written by others to use for resale on eBay need to be able to spot potential winners quickly and to get them ready for market in record time. “Staying ahead of the curve” can produce awesome results, but it does require speed and efficiency. It also means that a product’s “shelf life” will likely be short as others pick up on the new information and offer it at auction, too.
This has led many savvy ebook sellers to produce their own ebooks. They understand the market and its needs and can envision the perfect ebook to exploit underserved niches. Writing your own ebook can produce spectacular sales and provides you with the opportunity to control, to a large extent, the supply of the product and to differentiate yourself from the slew of other ebook sellers.
Unfortunately, writing your own material requires significant expenditure of time and effort. It also requires solid writing skills. Not all ebook sellers have the necessary time, patience and skills to produce the winning ebooks they can visualize. As such, many expert sellers seek out freelance writers to produce ebooks for them.
A quality freelancer can produce the ebook you need to your specifications. Generally, talented freelance writers work very quickly and do not require extensive direction to produce the kind of materials a smart seller needs. There is, of course, an expense involved, but the cost of hiring the freelancer to produce the product can be easily recouped by a successful ebook sales campaign.
A custom ebook can put a seller in a fantastic position. They will own all rights to the ebook, allowing them to initially exploit demand for the information itself. When the seller believes the time is right, they can then offer the now already-successful product to other ebook sellers along with master resale rights. This enables you to exploit initial consumer demand and subsequent reseller demand!
Do you think you could grab a significant share of one or more niches within the eBay ebook market if you had a custom-designed ebook that you knew met otherwise underserved demand? If so, it may be time to consider hiring a freelance author to build your ebook to match your needs. The end result will be a product uniquely yours that can produce mammoth sales numbers.
John Thornhill is an eBay powerseller and trades on eBay under the username planetsms…
For more advice on how to succeed on eBay visit http://www.planetsms.co.uk
The question, “Is God Dead?”, first entered my consciousness when I was ten or eleven years old. I saw it on the cover of a Life magazine, and it’s lingered in my mind ever since. At the time, though, I wasn’t too concerned with His possible demise. I had pretty much determined that God lived inside each of us. No matter how hard I tried, I hadn’t been able to find God in the lukewarm rituals of the Protestant faith. Instinctively, I knew God wasn’t dead, He was just hiding within each of us, waiting to be discovered.
I became interested in Freud in high school and entered college as a psychology major. After several years studying psychology, I underwent an existential crisis: I couldn’t bear the thought of my future career as a psychologist consisting of continuously instructing strangers about how to live their lives. It would be too boring to endure. So, I transferred to art school (a Nietzchian choice, I now see). For years, the question languished in the back of my brain: “Is God dead?” Or was the idea only yellow journalism or intellectual coffeehouse chatter? But all this background is bringing me ahead of myself.
It wasn’t until last month that I finally learned God’s death was first announced by and perhaps directly attributable to the philosopher Frederic Nietzsche. Only now am I beginning to understand the enormous impact of those three little words.
As a newly-renewed psychology major, I am fascinated by Nietzsche’s bold declarative question, “Who among philosophers before me has been called a psychologist at all?” (Nietzsche, 16), and how his thoughts anticipate, influence, and in fact, define modern psychology. Therefore, in this essay, I am attempting to interweave the death of God with the mission of contemporary psychology, and to offer some of my own thoughts and experiences. If I have added a distinctly personal spin to the proceedings, forgive me; I believe Nietzsche would have accepted the voice of personal experience.
“Whither is God” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers” (Nietzsche, 95). Thus, in 1882, Nietzsche created a madman who announced the end of Christian tradition and in so doing, the beginning of modern life. In conclusion, the madman proclaims to the listening crowd: “This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves” (Nietzsche, 96).
Nietzsche could be mistaken for an atheist, but no man can kill something he doesn’t believe in. Even if man could kill God, God is a Supreme Being who possesses the power to resurrect Himself. Nietzsche’s point, then, seems to be that mankind cannot destroy God for all eternity, but that men can banish God from their lives. The death of God, serious though it may be, is a metaphor.
The metaphors flooding my mind are these: Man has murdered God, been tried and found guilty, and is currently serving a life sentence without Him. God first threw us out of the Garden, now we’re throwing him out of the asphalt jungle. We have replaced original sin for man-made guilt, anxiety, and despair. The reality of God’s death may be too much for man, a mere mortal (and now, more mortal than ever), to bear, as also is the lack of meaning in life. But every metaphor and consequence arising from the original theme begs the question, “God is dead, long
live . . . ?”
* * * * *
Nietzsche qualifies his metaphor and hints at some answers. First, he states that ” . . . the belief in the Christian God has ceased to be believable” (Nietzsche, 447). Second, he describes man’s life after God’s death:
“Indeed, philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel as if a new dawn were shining on us when we receive the tidings that ‘the old god is dead’; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, anticipation, expectation. At last the horizon appears free again to us, even granted that it is not bright, at last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’ (448).
The open sea is our psyche. But before I become too blithe in my interpretation, I must remind myself that the death of God tormented and tortured the philosopher. He sailed on through dark and into mostly uncharted waters to explore the human mind and human behavior—in a word, psychology. With prescient references to various Freudian concepts, Nietzsche discusses sublimation, instinct, repression, guilt, and ego. Still, we may worry that he’s left us behind and half-jokingly wonder, “Is there nothing sacred anymore?” Nietzsche would answer, “No. God is dead, long live psychology.”
Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi neatly summarizes the connection between Nietzsche, ‘the first psychologist,’ and modern psychology:
“After all, at least since Nietzsche concluded that God was dead, philosophers and social scientists have been busy demonstrating that existence has no purpose, that chance and impersonal forces rule our fate, and that all values are relative and hence arbitrary. It is true that life has no meaning, if by that we mean a supreme goal built into the fabric of nature and human experience, a goal that is valid for every individual. But it does not follow that life cannot be given meaning” (215).
Just as there was “no psychology before him,” it is highly doubtful there could have been any without Nietzsche. Csikszentmihalyi not only accepts Nietzsche’s premise that life is meaningless, he also offers this insight on the link between the “first psychologist” and the role of modern psychology:
“If values and institutions no longer provide as supportive a framework as they once did, each person must use whatever tools are available to carve out a meaningful, enjoyable life. One of the most important tools in this quest is psychology” (16).
The highest calling of modern psychology, then, is to recognize our instincts, repressions, guilt, and the like, and to ask, “How can mankind be improved?” Modern psychology accepts God’s death, doesn’t mourn His passing, and goes on to acknowledge Nietzsche’s logical implication of personal responsibility (”All of us are his murderers”) and the “superman” who seeks perfect personal transcendence. Modern man can depend on himself and only himself for rewards and satisfaction, and his inner quest requires great discipline. Suffering may still impart meaning to life, as Nietzsche postulated (453), but we are secular victims, not religious martyrs or Greek tragic heroes. Besides, we don’t have the time; instant gratification is our goal, if it can be said to be a goal or if we have any goals at all.
* * * * *
The purpose for modern man is to find purpose in his life. He must re-create himself in his (small “h” intended) own image. Attractive and repellent, unprecedented and overwhelming, our task may be more than we can bear. We have our doubts about ourselves and are also suspicious of science; the science of psychology may be more an art than a science. Nietzsche might have predicted our misgivings. He might also have pointed out that, in the end, we are human, all too human, and perhaps we cannot transcend ourselves or science without God.
By looking at the death of God, the mission of modern psychology, and my thoughts about both, I had hoped to reach some definitive conclusions. I have not. I have, however, suggested a number of questions that will continue to interest me as a fledging environmental psychologist. In summary, I have only this to say: If God is truly dead, may He rest in peace.
Sources
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. 1954. New York: Penguin, 1982.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For more than two decades, P J Smith has been motivated to write and writing to motivate. Today, she’s the motivational word spinner in residence at http://www.wordbrains.com. Her work has also been published in newspapers and magazines, and seen on public television. She’s a student of psychology, Reconnective Therapy, Flower of Life — and life. Let P J inspire and inform your audience. Find out more at http://www.wordbrains.com.
In the times of yesteryear when Prophet Muhammad banded together the followers of Islam into a single economic and political group people associated their livelihoods with their tribe. Purchasing, selling, earning money was predominately transacted through the ideology that the tribe must thrive and dominate. As Islam became more important it was evident that it superceded any consideration to the needs of other entities. Islam became the new standard of economic activity. As the borders of the Muslim world increased so did its economic strength. Eventually it was the most powerful entity on the Earth.
In modern times Muslim countries live in great poverty. Even though there are a number of wealthy pockets to be found, the vast majority have a difficult time feeding their children or building necessary infrastructure improvements. Why is this so? The reasons lie in the assumption of nationalisms superiority over Islam. In Islam’s past there was no concept of country and national currency. Instead each city was viewed as a small state that lived and worked in the collective of the Muslim world. At that time the concept was revolutionary and lead to a great many economic changes. The Christian world was still squabbling and fighting wars against each other, furthering the economic drain on their local economies. They therefore, could not compete against Muslims effectively. The Muslims had a central authority that made great strides in reducing internal squabbles. Therefore, when they acted they could do so in a uniform manner.
Today the situation is reversed. The wealth countries of Europe have banded together in terms of economic treaties and military collaboration. The United Nations, the European Union and FTAA are all examples of this collaborated effort. This spirit of working together mitigates any internal structures they have by virtue of utilizing one of these larger organizations to arbitrate. The Muslim world, to its dismay, has reduced itself to internal squabbling and the active “undermining” of each other.
The only way to reverse the Muslim misfortune is to change our entire way of viewing business. Islamic principles of fairness, hard work and collective effort need to evolve. The concept of nationalism needs to be viewed as outdated and the concept of the singular “Ummah (community) should take its place. By working together the people can utilize their untapped wealth in terms of knowledge and natural resources to develop something for the betterment of all. Countries like Saudia Arabia, who desire a more secure food source, could invest in those countries with fertile soil but little capital wealth. Trade barriers between nations can be reduced to assure that easy flow of goods and money is possible. Leadership could be made accountable for the increasing the viability of not only their nation but that of their neighbors.
In essence the promotion of a singular Muslim currency and governmental body is necessary if any meaningful reform is going to take place. The structural governmental body would be much like that found under the European Union but with substantial Islamic improvements. Individual and national agendas would not be given full weight nor shall economic improvements be subject to corruption. Internal control would have to be developed that would help solve some of those problems that thrive in the Muslim world.
Murad Ali is a two time published author of “A Call to Greatness” and “An American Mecca”. He works full-time in labor relations, is developing an heirloom farm, runs a small consulting business, is working towards his PHD, and edits the Muslim Times. If you are interested in more articles written by Murad please visit www.muradenterprises.org
1. Stop Leasing Lines
Prior to VOIP, you had to lease lines from your local exchange carrier. For
example, each line often has a small start- up fee, and there is a monthly access
cost to use each line. Furthermore, each month, there are usage charges for local
and long- distance calls.
The charge is relatively small, perhaps around 40 cents a minute.
That certaintly sounds small, but think about how many lines your company has,
and how often each line is used. It’s easy to see how small charges can quickly add
up to millions of dollars a month.
The good news is that with VoIP and Avaya Phone Systems, the leasing
fees can be greatly reduced or eliminated completely.
2. No More Extra Regulatory Fees
In addition to leasing fees, traditional telephony models also have other
regulatory fees. Unlike the leasing fees, which are collected by your Local Exchange
Carrier, these fees go to various governmental entities. They include things like a
911 fee, and the Federal Line Surcharge. The total cost of the which can range from
4 to 7 percent of your total phone bill.
When you make the switch to VoIP, these fees are paid in
conjunction with the data network, eliminating excess charges.
3. No More Charges for Calling Features
If you want more features than the ability to make calls, say voicemail,
call transfer, or call forwarding, you’re going to have to pay extra, when you use
traditional telephony.
Not so with VoIP and Avaya Phone Systems: you get all the standard
features and a plethora of advanced ones that help increase productivity and
efficiency.
4. Eliminate Charges for Changing the Network
Under the old model of circuit- switched telephony, if an employee
moved to a different office, or a new employee was hired and had to be added to the
network, expensive technicians had to be hired, to the tune of $150 an hour.
Networking addresses had to be changed or added, and port numbers had to be
reprogramed. Major changes and moves were expensive and time consuming.
But VoIP has an intuitive intelligence. Devices like phones or
computers know where they are: move them to your new office and it will
automatically connect to the network.
Cameron Elliott is an Telephony specialist at avaya voip phone systems where he extols the benefits of Avaya
Phone Systems