[ ! ] The Sugarbuzz Project Redefining me…

Use Your Skills to Your Advantage

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Right now is a very turbulent time in my personal life. As some of you know, I've been driving a truck for the last few years. It's been decent, but it's hardly the lifestyle that a man with young children needs to have. Of course, you have to take care of them and support them, so you do what you have to do.

Until last week, when they fired me. Some other personal issues had a serious negative effect on my job performance, and try as I might to keep them from interfering, they did. So now, I have some very hard decisions to make.

Monday I will be starting a new job in a call center, doing support for a major company. I've done work like this before, and let me tell you it was stressful. At least supporting those blasted Compaq Presario systems was. In addition, I'll have to get a second job if I want to afford a place to live. On top of that, I have to be out of where I'm living now this coming weekend. It's a bit overwhelming...heh.

But I say all of that to lead into the real topic of this article. You see, a year ago I tried to get this same job at the same place and was rejected because of a lack of "recent relevant experience". Any of you who have ever changed careers know exactly what I'm talking about. You have to find a way to use what you know to your advantage, both in the analog world and when you want to make money online.

I was looking over my resume, trying to figure out just what it was that I was lacking. I mean, I had plenty of relevant experience, but customer service...well, it was there. You just couldn't see it when you looked and saw the title "OTR Driver". The fact is, we dealt with our customers at every stop. We had to do what it took to keep them happy. We had to sometimes diffuse tense situations when tops came in damaged or we were running late.

Bingo. You need to analyze what it is that you do in order to find out exactly which skills you do have.

How can this apply to making money online? Well, when I looked over my ridiculous work history, there were several things that I've done that I can leverage as experience. I can apply that not only to my analog job, but also my digital one. Here are a few of the things I've managed to leverage:

Blogging, Freelance Writing, Affiliate Marketing - I've been doing this stuff since the end of 2007. It's made a bit of money. I am responsible for tracking my income, finding new clients, producing content, communicating with clients, editing my work, tracking invoices...you get the idea. With that much experience that would normally be taken for granted, I decided to put that on the resume under the header 'self-employed'. It took time to develop those skills, and there was enough to justify putting it down on paper.

Radio/Voice Work - I've done a couple gigs in radio. I have also noticed that, while rare, you can find jobs on Digital Point recording spoken testimonials and stuff. So I decided I should leverage this and put an ad on DP offering a great deal on a 30-second bit of audio (complete with editing).

Basic Math - While it is true that this might not directly help you make money online, it can definitely help you when it comes to keeping your sanity and getting paid a fair amount for your work. Yesterday I was asked by a client (hey Ryan, :p) what my price was for doing link building. Since he was asking for a monthly price based on 8 hours per day x 5 days per week, I quoted him $1500 per month. Of course, he freaked out. He wanted to only pay me $150 for that same amount of work, which breaks down to around $0.94/hr. I do understand that he, being from India, has a far different currency system that we do here in the US, but I think most people who are regularly doing business on DP tend to expect everyone to work for the same low rates. Right now, it takes about 49 Rupees to make 1 USD. From what I understand, it only takes about 15 to buy a decent meal in India. But here, it takes a bit more. I really couldn't justify spending that amount of time working for that small of a payment. Not that I didn't appreciate the offer, but it just wasn't worth my time.

I'm sure there are tons of other skills you have. You just need to step back, look at what you have done or are doing, and enumerate them. Then, milk 'em!