Category: Making Money

Profiting from the sale of personal or business items. Working for pay. Investment purchase at below market prices and reselling at or above market value. leveraging one’s time and resources through the efforts of others for residual income.

Avoiding Some Typical Resume Mistakes


Resume information complexities

If you have ever written a resume for yourself or tried to write one for someone else, you’re probably fully aware of how difficult such a task can be; made even more complicated by the large amount of information that often goes into a resume. From the individual’s career objective to listing his/her qualifications, a resume should be personal, it should convey confidence and it should be presented in the best possible way to impress a potential employer.

About resumes, cover letters and interviews

However, in view of the fact that creating a winning, well-written resume is not easy, it is of crital importance that the resume writer pays special attention to some of the most typical mistakes made in resume composition, and take the necessary steps to avoid and/or eliminate them. Some of those mistakes are elaborated upon in the following paragraphs.

Including references to personal web sites

You may wonder why referencing a personal web site may be a mistake, since you might have a sample of your graphic design work on a site that you want your potential employer to see; but this is a good idea only if the site you are referencing is limited to work-related content.

Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of including their personal web sites, most of which contain information that a potential employer may find irrelevant and therefore, in his/her view, is a waste of company time if not inappropriate altogether.

As a rule, do not include your personal web site if it contains yours, or other photos that may be viewed as inappropriate; including jokes (even if they are clean), or your blog. In other words, if the site you have is entirely for personal purposes, it’s best leaving it off your otherwise well-written resume.

Include a link to your web site if the pages are set up specifically to showcase your professional portfolio, a copy of your resume, reference letters, presentations, photos taken for professional use, or your web development skills.

Using small fonts to compress content

Sometimes you just cannot squeeze all the information required on a resume into a single page, especially if you are presenting twenty or thirty years of education, experience and skills; because it will not format will and can otherwise be very challenging.

As a rule, well-written resume should not exceed two pages; but in recent years it has become commonplace for professionals to change jobs frequently, and if you’re a member of this group, you know that listing all your experiences, as well as your career objective, education, qualifications and references, can certainly take up a lot of space.

However, you should refrain from using a small font in order to fit everything into your resume; because there is not a single area in your resume that should have a font size of less than 10 points. Keep in mind what font type you are using and stick to the basics.

Arial and Times New Roman are the standard font type for resume writing, and are therefore recommended for use in writing your own resume. So instead of changing the font size, review and revise your resume to make sure that statements made are more concise.

Employer and school listing errors

Some critical errors that are sometimes made on a resume without the realization that they’re being made is the preparer’s failure to refer to past employers and/or school(s) they attended by their full and correct names; and this should be avoided in all instances; so do not use variations of company and school names; and don’t use abbreviations unless they are in fact part of the name.

In other words, if you have attended New York University, list the complete name, not just NYU – even though it’s commonly known and your employer will likely recognize it. You definitely do not want to appear sloppy, or unable to pay attention to details.

Lengthy descriptive paragraphs and typos

In order to list those responsibilities you’ve had in your past professional experience, it is best to use bullet points that begin with action verbs; such as managed, developed, etc. You really don’t need to use full sentences, and you certainly don’t need to use a paragraph format.

Using full sentences in a paragraph format make the information in your resume overwhelming and difficult to review quickly; so make your statements brief and clear; and don’t add words simply to fill in space.

What may be the most important factor in achieving a winning and well-written resume is proof reading; and since you want to put your best foot forward it is absolutely unforgivable for your resume to contain grammar and spelling problems which by themselves are enough to give your potential employer the impression that you are not detail-oriented, or even negligent.

About resumes, cover letters and interviews

Of course it is understandable the difficulty in proofing a document you have been working on so closely; so use spell check – but be ware, it will not catch everything – and ask your friends/family for help, or meet with a career counselor. Do your best to present the most polished resume to your potential employers, and begin with eliminating simple mistakes.

The Vital Elements of Affiliate Marketing




The fact of the matter is…

There is an aspect of affiliate marketing that many seasoned affiliates – those who are struggling and some who have found success in varying degrees – are hesitant to discuss due to a perception that disclosure would make it more difficult to attract newcomers (newbies) to the business. This particular aspect is the cold hard fact that over 90%, but less than 95% of affiliates will actually make less than $100 a month; and those who exceed earnings of $100 a month, but haven’t reached the pinnacle of success, probably comprise another 8% to 9% of the affiliate workforce, leaving only one to two percent at the elite status of super affiliate marketers.

It is therefore important for any aspiring or newbie affiliate marketer to understand that s/he should not count on making a full time income unless and until s/he is able to acquire the tools, resources, online marketing skills and relationships necessary to launch the type of affiliate marketing business that will be sustainable for the first few years, and could eventually generate revenue on a consistent enough basis considered enough to meet the high bar of success as it pertains to the affiliate marketing business.

Basic elements and traffic flow

The basic elements required for kicking off an affiliate marketing career are:

  • A good web site that converts!
  • Adequate search engine optimization (SEO)!
  • Interesting if not compelling content!
  • Website visitors, or traffic in AM jargon!
  • Supporters: returning visitors who like you (via your site)!
  • Reputable and reliable merchants
  • Great products to promote!

The one thing an affiliate marketer must have in order to succeed is a constant flow of traffic from which s/he could establish relationships which will produce the base of followers/supporters some of whom, with minimum prodding or coersion, will purchase products via the affiliate’s website. However, this traffic-to-relationship-to-buyer conversion is a lot easier said than done, which is one of the reasons that over 90% of affiliates make $100 or less a month. Consider this ratio for a moment: 1:200 is the number of visitors who will buy products via a typical affiliate’s website!

So unless the affiliate is promoting high-end luxury products with big price tags (cars, yachts, jewelry, real estate, etc.), s/he will need a substantial traffic flow on a daily basis, and that’s where adequate SEO can be instrumental in getting that affiliate’s website listed in the search engines (preferrably on the first page) so more people will be able to find it. That having been said there is a misconception about affiliate marketing that oo many people buy into, and when they learn the truth about how they should actually do affiliate marketing it is often too late.

Dispelling the misconception

But contrary to popular opinion – or misconception – affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick type of program; and success is not achieved by placing a few product links and banner on a website (poorly optimized or not) and then money will start rolling in; and those who hold this belief should not be surprised if they never make a single sale or any money at all. There is a lot of time, work and creativity involved in developing and nurturing a successful affiliate marketing business, some of which have alreay been mentioned above; and even when the time and work have been put in, there is still more to be done.

Understand also – if you are that aspiring affiliate marketer – that there are no guarantees of success, or even that you will ever make your first $100 or how long it will take you make; because, as with every other affiliate marketer, how much money you make depends solely on how much time, effort and money you are willing to put in. If you are a quick learner and really good at affiliate marketing, you could make 2,000 in 2 years; and this is based entirely on whether or not you’re starting from 0 with another full time job that prevents you from devoting a lot of time to your affiliate marketing program.

In view of everything already said on this page, if you decide to give affiliate marketing a try, you would be doing so with the realization that it is not an easy business; but you should also know that the toughest part are the challenges you will be confronted with in the first five to six months; and if you check your stats and see that you are only making a few dollars, you might find yourself wondering if all the hard work was worth it; but the important thing to remember is to stay committed with your hard work, and the commissions should start growing as you keep working.

Practical expectations, realistic results

One of the biggest factors in affiliate marketing is the traffic that goes through your website; because even though you’ll get a lot of traffic passing through your website, only a fraction of the traffic will be buyers. The key however, is knowing your visitors and then being able to determine which affiliate programs you can offer to meet their needs. There is also the concept of pre-sale, which is the ability to put your visitors in the required mindset for them to actually click on one or more of your prduct links.

By sticking with affiliate marketing, you’ll learn more and more over the years; but you shouldn’t expect to be the best when you first start out, it will take a lot of hard work and dedication. Just keep in mind that by putting the time and effort into your programs, and building the necessary relationships and base of supporters, you’ll be well on your way to making it in the very profitable and exciting world of affiliate marketing, even if you have to endure a few years of growing pains before seeing measurable and/or acceptable results. Good luck!