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Willy Loman didn’t have tools like SellingCrossing in his day. If he had access to a similar online jobs database for salesmen like him, would he have felt less pressure and despair? Would he have been amazed at the wealth of opportunities open to him? After all, people will always consume, even in a recession. Businesses will always need salesmen to peddle their products. There is definitely no lack of postings for sales professionals on SellingCrossing. There are almost 2000 job openings posted for today alone, and not all of them are entry-level either. I’m sure Willy, who could sell anything, can find something in any of the 35 key industries being monitored and mined by this site.
What will I do with my Mturk money once I get to New York?
Why, be Wicked, of course.
Except that even for matinee tickets, Broadway is still expensive:
Front Mezzanine: $139.50
Orchestra: $139.50
That’s a lot of transcription jobs right there.
Right now, my challenge is to see if I can use Mturk as the sole source of income for my New York trip. But sometimes Mturk hits can often lead to other money-making opportunities.
Not having a science background, it seems a pity that I can’t take advantage of the opportunities offered by Sciences Crossing. A job database specializing in science jobs, Sciences Crossing offers online profiling and job matching services to people who sign up for a small fee, although the site also offers a free trial.
Right now, the website boasts of information on openings from Kelly Scientific Resources, Manpower Professional, Genentech, Inc. and Pfizer Inc. Apparently, there have been 2,265 new jobs posted for the week, with 377 openings newly posted for the day. If only one of those openings leads to a happy worker, then good for them.
WritersWeekly, a site I frequent for leads on writing markets, is sounding the alarm against an Amazon business decision that will prove detrimental to small printing houses.
In an article, Angela Hoy of WritersWeekly talks about how Amazon is now requiring print on demand (POD) publishers to use Amazon subsidiary BookSurge to print their book orders or else “the ‘buy’ button on their Amazon.com book pages will be ‘turned off.’”
The book information would remain on Amazon, and people could still order the book from resellers (companies that list new and used books in Amazon’s Marketplace section), but customers would not be able to buy the book from Amazon directly, nor qualify for the coveted “free shipping” that Amazon offers.
There have already been complaints about the quality of the products produced by BookSurge, as documented in that site.
Of course, having a major retailer dictate the terms of the sales carried on its website in such a monopolistic manner is that Amazon will always have the final say on pricing, distribution and access to services. PODs have a very small market as it is; how can they hope to negotiate for better rates against a behemoth like Amazon?
My other fear is that this will result in the homogenization of tastes. Amazon is already heavily promoting pap bestsellers and self-help books. Why should it exert additional effort in printing one or two copies of an obscure text that will only have a handful of readers?
I have six months to raise $800 for a New York trip in October. Right now, I have $117.17 earned through Mturk.
Let’s see how fast I can achieve my goal.
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