Earning Money

Summer has come. It’s time to relax and bask in the sun, sleep in and stay up late. Wait, you did that during the school year too. Oh well. Actually the summertime is a great opportunity to brush up on key things you need during the fall and spring semesters. Anyone vying for a top internship will tell you that am extensive resume is a must. Each resume is different; each chronicling different people’s histories and in different manners. If you are a college student, it is likely that you do not have more than one, at most two different jobs in your employment history. Given this shortage of material to work with, you need to expound on other aspects of your life.

Are you a fast typer? How about your phone skills? Take time to sit down and laundry list things that interest you, or that you think you are exceptional at. Next think over classes you have taken. Did you do a specific exercise that challenged you? What were some of the things you learned that could be applied to the job you eventually want. Keep in mind you may want to change the wording or emphasize certain points over others, depending on the field you want to enter. For instance, if I was looking to be hired with an advertising firm I wouldn’t elaborate on my certifications in database training. They are two separate fields and may discourage your potential employer from choosing you.

When it comes to listing your previous employers, unless you left under duress elaborate on the tasks you performed. You should be clear about what your job entailed as well as any certificates or awards you may have earned. If you last job ended badly, still elaborate on your tasks and be prepared to explain the situation should your interviewer question you about it. Most often they ask “So why did you stop working with __________?” Don’t feel the need to go into detail, merely explain that it was best for you to move on.

References are key when you have a lack of previous employers. You do not want these references to be family if at all possible. Choose professors and long time family friends. List no more than three at the end of your resume, along with their relation to you and their contact information. These people can vouch for you with your interviewer.

Last Tips:

1. Resumes are never more than one page single spaced.
2. Do not leave a lot of white space but do not fill the page with meaningless graphics.
3. Leave a phone number that you can speak to the person on. Make sure that your voice mail message or “ringback tone” are non-offensive.
4. Make sure you have a professional email listed. An employer may be hesitant about hiring “snugglebunny44@….”
5. Do not use Microsoft Word Resume Wizard. Professionals have long since learned all the formatting from this software. It shows a lack of creativity.
6. Do not lie. This should be common sense but if you do not speak a foreign language, do not list that you are fluent in four.
7. Use your university’s career advisor! These people are employed to help you build an outstanding resume. Take advantage of the slow summer months to set up an appointment with them.

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Yesterday, I mentioned the importance of staying consistent with your forum. With this, I mentioned how important it was for you to constantly post on your forum. However, sometimes it can really be difficult to get these posts. Maybe you are not getting people to sign up for your forum and you’re unable to get conversations going on. That’s happened to me before. Or maybe your forum is dying and you just need a little boost on it. That has happened to me before as well. Running a forum is not the easiest thing, I won’t ever tell you it is. However, getting posts on your forum is not that difficult. Here are a couple of ideas on how to do it.

The first is called a post exchange. The title of it gives away what it is. Basically, it is an exchange that you do with someone else. So, why would you want to do this? I’ve found that it is difficult to generate a lot of conversation by yourself and sometimes, you don’t have any ideas on what you can post about. It happens that way sometimes. However, by bringing another person in, they might post questions that they have that will produce new threads and they might reply to some of your posts and that’ll allow for more and more growth for your forum. Whenever doing a post exchange, I recommend asking for a few threads on top of posts. It’ll help with your overall growth.

Geting a Moderator. I have said it time and time again and I think I will probably say it again in the future. Getting a moderator can really help you get more activity on your forum. Once you have one, they tend to start posting more because now they are a part of the team. They are a part of the growth of the forum and this gives them their own pride. I’ve found myself from when I was a moderator that I wanted to prove to the owner that I was good at what I was doing. Because of this, I found myself posting more and more. Getting a moderator can really get a lot more posts on your forum.

Make a second or third account. This is something that I have never tried because I find it slightly dishonest, but it can definitely help. If you want to try and make it appear that your forum is more active than it actually is, something you can do is make a couple of accounts. On one account, post a thread. Then with another account, post a reply. Then you can go back and forth talking about it. This will add a lot of posts to your forum and make it appear more active than it is. However, all you need to do as a forum owner is show people that your forum is active, even if it really isn’t, and people will sign up. So, it’ll go from a false activity to a real activity.

The final method is to actually buy the posts. Now, this is only to be done if you are desperate to get your forum active once again. I have never actually bought posts for my forum; however, I did used to own a forum posting company. I did it with my friend and I found that people were very interested in doing it. For a cost, they were guaranteed X amount of posts on their forum. If you’re intending on opening a forum soon or really marketing it, this is something I would recommend because you are going to look extremely active. The only downfall to this is that it costs money. You have to fork money over to people to get the posts. But…They are posts, right?

Forums are really hard to run and to grow large. I know a guy that makes five thousand dollars a day on his forums. Not that’s a lot of money. However, he really works on them and gets them large. However he does it, I do not know. I am not going to say for one second that I am a forum expert. I work on a forum and I have plans to open another forum as well as a role play game that runs on a forum in the future; however, for the time being, I am no expert. All I can say is this…Constantly post on your forum and if you can’t, try and do something to get other posts. Get a moderator, do post exchanges or hire a company. Whatever you do, you must ensure your forum does not grow inactive. That’s the most important thing.

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