Feeding at the same trough - Google

My sister is an employee of Google, working on the "plumbing", as she calls it. Her work involves the machinery and codes to run it, from the BIOS on up. Next time you "Google" something, it's the work of her, her team and many others that make that search happen in a gazillionth of a second and return umpteen million "hits". Never mind weeding through all that stuff for the answer you really want.
    She's a supporter of my efforts at publishing - even bought my DEVIL'S DICTIONARY for quotes she can foist on others! Here's her current favorite:

QUOTATION: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

While I'm still new to this whole business of monetizing myself, my blog, my RSS feeds, etc., I still had the dumb luck to put up Google AdSense advertising here. It's not a roaring success yet, but I'm learning every day.
    Furthermore, I've invested a bit in eBooks on using AdSense in an effective manner. They're actually helpful, as opposed to all the fluff pieces out there that cover general information and have TONS of links to other products the author insists one must have.
    AdSense for Beginners, The Google Adsense Empire Handbook and AdSense Revenue Exposed will be offered separately and as a "bundle" for a bit of a discount. Even though they're intended to boost the income of the publishers, they all offer real value, simple explanations and useful links that aren't going to make the publishers any real money.
    Now that I'm getting store traffic, it's time to put up products that'll get me some real income, not just pay for their fees and expenses incurred by opening a store!

The Book of the Day Club

Now that I’m a publisher, I can actually fulfill an idea I had years ago: use my knowledge of typesetting and layout to produce sellable information at a very low cost. Not only am I producing self-help material based on my research and experience, I’m getting out Literature that’s in the Public Domain! I can bang out a well-edited book, complete with cover art, in about two hours. That includes listing it on eBay!
         Current titles include THE ART OF WAR, THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, DRACULA and A STUDY IN SCARLET, the very first Sherlock Holmes adventure. I’m already working on a list of authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Jane Austen to start (in no particular order), along with more by Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
         Any suggestions are welcome as to classics you’d like to see made available as finely wrought .PDF files. Yeah, I forgot – FANNY HILL is on the to-do list, too~!

Escape velocity

It’s amazing how fast things are proceeding, now that my overload of information has “jelled” in my mind. I’m rolling out with listings that seem to have been good sellers for others. I also add on value with my own contributions, such as typesetting (I knew that printing business knowledge would eventually pay off), image creation, sales copy writing, etc.
     Here’s the real hoot: due to the way eBay Store Manager calculates your inventory, my dozen plus listings (with 10,000 of each item available) is now valued at over $200,000 US! My markup at retail (the percentage of the selling price that’s above my cost of buying) is over 99%!
     Life is good and keeps getting better.

Growing by leaps, bounds and short hops - not necessarily in that order.

Hit several landmarks today. In eBay:
•Made the Top 5,000 Reviewers - funny, that makes the little icon thingie smaller. How about the top 000,000,005,000?
•Got my new feedback "star". I am unsullied, at this point. No negatives.

From eBay:
•Found a self-financing business strategy which I had posited MUST exist. Replies from the Universe can be swift and apposite.
•Got some more eBooks with resale rights that actually appear resellable. Found others that showed me what NOT to do in terms of listing, re-branding, etc.
•Met a crazy guy from the Netherlands that practically fell all over himself to oblige me, customer service-wise. See post below this one.

The biggest leap forward is the change in type and kind of attention I've been getting, both here and in other venues. At first, it was friends and family. Now it's those who are new to me, curious, a little wary and much more experienced in dealing with open online environments. Most of my online experience was in static domains, where I was a big fish in a small pond. Here, one needs to be more circumspect and definitely less arrogant than I am accustomed to. I may have a lot to be arrogant about, but myriads upon myriads here trump me!

Hmm, maybe the humility thing is the biggest leap. Nah, I'll tackle that tomorrow!