Three Ways For Unemployed Folks To Earn Some Cash

Original Post: Three Ways For Unemployed Folks To Earn Some Cash

The good thing about being unemployed, if there is such a thing, is that you have plenty of time. While you should be using the bulk of your time putting forth the effort to land another job, there are some opportunities to make some cash while you have some extra time. Take advantage of the time you have.

Sell Your Junk

While this doesn’t usually equate to a sustainable income stream, this is a good way to pay the bills for a month or two. I’m currently in the process of a de-clutter / moving some things around phase and as a result, I’ve decided to sell a bunch of stuff online. With minimal effort I’ve made over $300 in a few weeks selling stuff online and I still have a bunch of stuff that is still yet to be sold (I detailed this effort here [July 28, 2009])

Sell Your Friends Junk

If you get good at selling your own stuff, why not sell your friends’ stuff? I imagine some of your friends are too lazy to take care of this and probably, like you, have a bunch of stuff they’d be willing to get rid of especially if they didn’t have to do anything. Offer to split the money with them and do all the work: putting item for sale online, shipping, etc. If you’re selling a few books a week on Amazon, it doesn’t require any additional effort to sell a few more (you’re already going to the post office).

Create A Website

While this one isn’t likely to make you much money; it’s very hard to make money online. It could be the start of something big, and what better time to launch the website you’ve been meaning to launch?

If you decide to go this route, I’d recommend either focusing on building your personal brand (through demonstrating your expertise in a specific field), or simply providing valuable, unique information in a field. Just make sure that the topic is something you’re interested in because otherwise you won’t keep it up.

Use the opportunity to develop some new skills, build a potential lasting website, and possibly earn a few bucks.

The Future Of Work: Portfolio Careers

Original Post The Future Of Work: Portfolio Careers

Last week I explored the concept Noded working. “Noded” is really a subset of a much wider phenomenon emerging in the world of work — the notion of “portfolio careers.”

In her blog on the subject, Katie Ledger — co-author of the forthcoming book “And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career” — describes portfolio careers as work that “uses all your skills and passions…doing two or more jobs for different employers.”

The turbulence and insecurity of a globalized job market means that many people are, in essence, temporary workers with little assurance of a permanent job. As such, people are seeking security by establishing control over who they work with and what they work on.

The title of Ledger’s book is telling. Like many others, I find myself being asked,  “And what do you do?” frequently. But even after almost three years of self-employment, I struggle to find a concise response without rambling through a range of consultancy projects, advisory board roles, startup investments, writing gigs and conference development. Perhaps “a portfolio of digital technology projects” should suffice as an answer?

Though each of my activities and roles requires a different range of skills and attitudes, sometimes with no overlap between them, somehow it adds up to a cohesive career. Although outwardly it might seem unfocused and fragmented, I can now deploy “portfolio working” as a useful umbrella term.

Most significantly, people discussing portfolio careers often underline motivation as the key element in this mode of working — people use a portfolio of options when seeking a better work/life balance, to learn new skills, to extract themselves from office politics or simply for fulfillment.

Career coach Marianne Cantwell defines portfolio careerists as “free-range humans“ who are not “penned into an unhappy job-cage.” Contrast this with Cantwell’s “battery-cage humans” who see limited options for their careers, forced only to seek out particular types of jobs. It’s perhaps an unfair contrast, but fundamentally, it’s about choosing who you work for and what you do, as opposed to being imprisoned by rigidly defined roles.

Elsewhere, Ledger suggests there are common qualities shared by successful practitioners of portfolio careers and helps readers evaluate whether they’re suitable for such a mode of work.

Read more at “Portfolio Careers: Creating a Career of Multiple Part-Time Jobs” and subscribe to the Portfolio Careers blog.

8 Reasons To Avoid Making A Video Resume

Original Post 8 Reasons To Avoid Making A Video Resume: "

The other day, I was reading an article discussing the pros and cons of making a video resume. Although it covered the basics well enough, there are a few things that it did not cover (and some that it did) that you should know about. A video resume, if used correctly, can be a powerful tool in the job applicant’s arsenal. But if made without proper awareness or preparation, can lead to disaster.

1. You will be judged on quality. Unlike a standard online application (or even a paper resume), simply having a video resume is not necessarily a good thing. You will have to make sure the picture, sound and overall quality are high, as well as finding unique and interesting ways of presenting yourself. A bad video resume can hurt you more than help you.
2. You probably shouldn’t email it. Many employers will scan through the bodies of emails, but due to a fear of viruses or other digital nasties, might not open attachments. And given the size of a video file, it might take too long on both ends to send and receive the file.
3. It can’t go up online. Most online applications do not have an option for you to upload a large file, such as a video resume (if you are permitted to upload anything at all). And despite the allure of doing so, it’s not a good idea to put your video resume up on YouTube or other video hosting sites.
4. They might not want to watch it. Whereas a resume can be scanned into a program to search for key words and phrases, a video resume must be watched. And since they are usually at least several minutes long, an employer may not have the time or inclination to sit through the video.
5. They might not be able to legally watch it. Many companies are equal opportunity employers, meaning that they do not employ people with a bias towards race, gender, age and so on. By showing yourself in your video resume, you will be showing them what you look like, which could open the door to legal problems for the company.
6. It’s not always worth what you put into it. Unless you’re sending in the video resume because it actually pertains to the job you’re applying for (video production or TV commercial development, for example), having a video resume might not make that much of a difference in employers’ decision-making processes. And given the time it would take to plan, shoot and edit the video, you might be getting a lot less back from all of your efforts.
7. It might cost more than you care to spend. The monetary costs for the camera, editing software and storage (like CD-Rs, DVDs and flash drives) might be more than you can afford.
8. You might get the opposite response from what you had hoped. See exhibit A.

But then again, you could have a masterpiece like this. So if you plan to make a video resume, plan carefully!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/canhasjob/~3/O3T3SMQk2Ws/

Building a Credible Image When You Work in Multiple Fields

from WebWorkerDaily by Pamela Poole

How do you sell yourself and your services online, when you work in two or more fields? Won't a potential client's first impression be that you lack focus, and perhaps don't excel at any of the things you do? Freelancers don't always have the luxury of concentrating on just one field. We have to be flexible. We have to be creative with our talents. We have to pay the rent.

I was dealing with this a few months ago, when I was thinking of putting together a portfolio site. I was feeling like my presence on the Internet was scattered all over the place, and wanted a single site to which I could send professional contacts who wanted more info. I was tired of providing links to multiple profiles and blogs that didn't tell the whole story, and I'm not wild about any of the "identity aggregation" services that are out there.

Given all the different things I do, my primary dilemma was to make a non-static professional site that gave a good overall impression of what I'm about, professionally speaking. Below are some of the issues and approaches I pondered. Maybe they will be useful to you if you're in this position.

3 More Cool Twitter Tools To Do Your Tweeting With

from MakeUseOf.com by Wez Pyke

Over the last few years Twitter has became very popular with users but also popular for developers, and a lot of Twitter tools have been developed as a result. The easy to use API makes it incredibly fast to develop applications and that's why there are so many – some good and some not so good.

Here I will discuss 3 of my favorite latest discoveries.

Twi.tt

Twi.tt is a service that allows you to create and share pictures, videos, documents, audio and even polls. When you go onto Twi.tt you firstly need to sign into your Twitter account. Twi.tt uses the OAuth method for logging users in so it is secure and Twi.tt do not store your Twitter username and password.

If you have never logged into a Twitter service using OAuth before it is as simple as two clicks. First click the Sign in with Twitter button and then click Allow when you have been taken to Twitter.

Twi.tt allows you to upload pictures, videos, documents and audio from your computer, link to it via a URL or capture pictures, videos and audio straight from your computer. They are also planning on adding support for emails in a few days.

When creating a poll you have 112 characters for the poll question and there is no limit for the number of poll answers. You also have the option of disallowing repeated votes and not posting your poll to Twitter.

When your poll has been created you will be given a link to it and a link to it will also be posted on your Twitter feed if you did not select the option to not post there.

The profile page that Twi.tt creates for you is almost identical to your Twitter account as it has your background image and your profile image. People also have the option to comment on content that you have posted.

Tweepler

Tweepler is a service that was created by @coryschop that lets you organize people (also known as tweeple) that are following you and who you are following.

To login in to Tweepler you must enter your Twitter username and password at the top of the site. When you hover over Why? next to the login form you will see that they state your details are encrypted and not stored.

When you log in you are shown a list of people that are following you but you are not following back. These are listed as Unprocessed Followers. If you do not want to add a person you can move them to the ignore bucket by pressing the arrow to the right. If you want to follow a person back you click the arrow to the right of their name.

You will be able to see everyone's username, name, website, location and their bio. But if you click on more details you will get

• Information on the average number of tweets they post per day.
• The total number of tweets they have posted.
• Information on the number of followers they have
• The number of people they are following along with a ratio of following:followers. Their three latest tweets are also displayed.

It is possible to sort users by newest followers, oldest followers, name and username. If you don't want to bother going through all of the Unprocessed followers you can click the Follow All or Ignore All button at the bottom of the page.

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Tweetboard

Tweetboard is one of the most unique Twitter tools I have came across to date. What Tweetboard allows you to do is add a Twitter conversation for your site so that viewers can post messages and others can reply all in an easy to follow nested view.

Tweetboard is still in alpha but you can grab an invite by requesting one on the Tweetboard website by clicking the "Request a free alpha invite!" button. When you click the button it will take you to Twitter where you must send the message that is entered upon load.

When your account has been set up you will be notified. From the Tweetboard you can then grab the javascript snippet of code that will be placed on your website for Tweetboard to function. On certain content management systems and blogs the code may not work as intended to so some tweaking may be needed.

Tweetboard is a really good way of increasing traffic to your website and also a great solution of getting to know what your visitors think of your website.

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If you have a favorite Twitter tool or service then post a comment below and share it with us.

Reputation Accounts For 30-70% Of Your Value

Reputation Accounts For 30-70% Of Your Value: "

Branding on the right attributes is the difference between a leader and loser.

Before we called it personal branding, the overarching term for what society thought about you was simply your “reputation.” Of course, that society may have been your middle school classmates who always picked you last for dodge ball teams. Even if you’d practiced over the summer or entered high school one half foot taller, the stain of your poor ball handling (and evasion) skills remained.

Who you are and how you show up

It’s the reason why changing schools is not always a bad thing. You can upgrade your style, inveigle yourself with a better crowd and play on your parent’s guilt by squeezing them for a cooler phone. At that age, we’re acutely aware of what makes up our reputation: looks, friends and possessions.

Per BusinessWeek’s report on reputations of publically traded corporations, branding is responsible for the often-vast difference between book value and market capitalization. “Reputation for being able to deliver growth, attract top talent, and avoid ethical mishaps can account for much of the 30%-to-70% gap (between) … Proctor & Gamble versus Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson versus Pfizer … as seen in price-earnings ratio.”

On a granular and personal branding level, only certain elements of what is collectively called your reputation or brand, matter to people who will pay you, invest in your company or trade for a stake in either. Your actual skill or core competency – what you think your being hired or contracted to do – may be less important than your outside interests or personal creed.

United Technologies Corp (UTX) provides a teachable moment. After Communications Consulting Worldwide expertly dug into UTX’s reputation, the researchers found UTX didn’t need to do a better job communicating about its products or markets. The jump in value would come from messaging about the company’s environmental responsibility, innovation, and employee training.

Hence, a complete overhaul of your personal brand will probably be a waste of time, maybe impossible and come close to clipping a hangnail with a buzz saw. Just pick the three or so qualities that matter most to your market.

If you’re a big head of technology, your communications skills may need work. If you’re a writer, you’re mastery of technology may need work. Everyone needs clear evidence they play well with others, and most of us need to demonstrate empathy, trustworthiness and the ability to get a hard thing done. Almost everyone needs to use the right hair product.

In my business, appearances matter. See if you can discern how I weave that element of my personal brand in the Op-Ed piece I wrote for Marketing Daily last Friday, where I cut into Lane Bryant’s new social community.

Incorporating elements that matter

How do you incorporate the elements that matter into your personal branding or re-branding?

1. Pick a philanthropy or cause that allows you to develop the personal characteristics that make you more valuable than your years or skills.
2. Get mentored by someone who demonstrates the qualities that make people great in your industry.
3. Use the space you take in social media to reveal dimensions about your brand that go unseen by people who just work with you.

Author:

Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! & Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen.

http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/reputation-accounts-for-30-70-of-your-value/

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Don't Let Academia Advise You On Your Future

Don't Let Academia Advise You On Your Future

I find the constant worry about grades quite pathetic, as if your future was dependent on their outcome. Okay they kind of are if you are planning to build your life around the perks of the educational system. But if you’re willing to put in the effort you might consider redirecting that same effort out into the real world where the return on your energy is much higher. Begin by starting something.

Anyone can do it. If you think you can start your own entrepreneurial venture do it, if you not the self-starter type that’s fine, find someone who is, whose vision you like and work for them. Be a part of something special, something remarkable, something that makes a difference.

You really don’t need anything to get started, but our education system tricks us into thinking we need like 4 degrees and a 5 page resume before we can start something. There is no counsel that accepts and rejects ideas. The only thing stopping you is your own lack of initiative. (Well that’s not entirely true, there are bigger challenges once you get started). But taking the initiative to start is the hardest part and yet it’s really not the hard, it’s just takes a little bit of self reliance and conviction.

The education system will keep telling you need better grades to pass this assessment and get a better job, and that you have to please your superiors. It’s all just a big wankathon. It feels like that scene in the Matrix where you see the mechanistic real world and all the humans plugged into little capsules, that harvests their energy while they are preoccupied with the virtual reality called the Matrix.

In our world today, young people are preoccupied by memorizing information they won’t remember after the test is over, studying topics they don’t care about for a marginal increase in entry level salary, taking boring internships that seem like a good resume check and binge socializing in their free time to forget about how much the aforementioned activities suck.

As I’ve said before, people need to have something they actually want to do. And if you don’t your focus should be on finding that, anything else is a waste of time. Once you find that passion your learning will have a purpose and you’ll be amazed at the increased enjoyability and retention.

What I find very sad is that it’s not students’ fault. They haven’t really chosen this path. It’s the default path and no other options are presented as viable. And default paths are incredibly powerful especially when every other option is seen to be fit only for the losers of society. Interestingly, almost anyone who has been successful has realized that there’s something more out there and have decided to opt out.

I am working on startup that I hope will play a significant role in showing people that there is something more. Many people are already working on this and many people have written books about living successful, fulfilling lives and escaping the status quo. These books pump some people up enough to launch them out of the gravitational pull of the status quo and into a new realm of living. But that’s rare. Most people don’t have the self-confidence and drive to do that. But we still need to help the people who are clearly dissatisfied with their present and would like something more but they don’t know how. Well, that’s what we’re going to do. We are going to show you there’s something more, pop you on a bike with wings, (give you a can of Redbull…kidding, I hate that stuff) guide you past the point of no return and then let you fly off the edge to begin your entrepreneurial ascent, and with your new dimension of freedom you’ll look down on the seemingly two dimensional world below, watching your peers go through the same old pattern of corporate ladder climbing, hard dispassionate work and few rewards.

No really, without the dumb imagery, we’re going to help people who have big ideas, but don’t know how them happen, actually get their ideas off the ground and make them a reality.

I’m hesitant about linking to Force For the Future, because it’s super, super pre-alpha but there’s a form on the site where you can request advice and mentorship if you’re a young person, or offer it if you’re an older more experienced professional.