Is the Glass Ceiling For Women Only?

Image by ptufts via Flickr In both the private sector and the public sector, male and female employees sooner or later find out that there is a glass ceiling. Whether you are in manufacturing or wholesaling, or retailing, not only will employees hit speed bumps in their careers, but they will hit the impregnable ‘glass ceiling.’ No longer is the ‘glass ceiling’ the women’s barrier. It is everyone's barrier! No one is safe because the upward climb resembles an upside down funnel. There’s only so much room at the top. And only those with grit, muscle, resilience, and physical endurance will squeeze through to the top. How can women, the old, the disable, and the eccentric compete and shatter the glass ceiling? The sad reality is that they can’t. Let’s take an accountant who has been with a company for 29 years. You’d expect this person to reach the heights of the corporate ladder and enjoy the fruit of 29 years of steady contribution to the growth of the company. Yet, as we age we become more sedentary, overweight, less mobile, and –let’s face it: our looks fade-- less handsome or attractive. While men are accepted to having sparse hair, women are not. So there you have another barrier. Not only employees live with the daily angst that they may be replaced by a younger employee who would be willing to work for one-third of the veteran worker’s pay, but also with the thought of illness. But not everything is lost. With the advent of the Internet, many employees are shifting their leisure time to Internet Marketing. The goal is to find a way to earn enough money where no one is limiting your opportunities—where there’s no ‘glass ceiling.’ Other benefits follow: no boss! Now, in my case I retired from business. Yet I also look for ways to increase my retirement income. And I take this quite seriously; it isn’t a game for me to explore, engage, and experiment with different ways of Internet Marketing. For those who are Web-savvy and with plenty of time on their hands, they will find that there are many opportunities in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing comes in many levels. Some individuals earn huge amounts of money while others barely recover their advertising costs. I don’t have to patience to learn the intricacies, much less the convoluted practices of Adwords; so I put my attention elsewhere. For those who are new to this part of the Internet Marketing—beware! Scams, scoundrels, and scampers abound. They are easy to detect because they will show screen after screen that depict the thousands of dollars they are earning in commission. In nine out of ten the screen are all fake and done with Photoshop.' Penultimate recommendation: do not expect to replace your job in a month or two. Internet businesses take a long time to establish. A lot depends on trust. People, readers, curiosity seekers, suspects, prospects, customer, clients, and subscribers will finally do business with you if they see you’re providing a good steady service. Final recommendation: build a website and one blog. Work on both every day until you see a steady traffic build up. One good day you’ll see that people –from abroad and from within-- are coming to visit you regularly. The object is to get both your site and your blog listed by Alexa in the top 100,000. Once there, you can replicate and iterate your business formula. The writing techniques I use in this article are all explained in Mary Duffy's writing manual--an indispensable guide: Sentence Openers Click-->Back to main page

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