The Importance of Perspective

Boost Your Credibility

Credibility is critical for resume writers. We need our clients to see us as an expert before they engage our services, and we need them to believe in us in order to trust our advice.

If you are credible, people will have faith in your resume services. They will buy from you, and they will recommend you to others.

Part of gaining credibility is building trust. Always give honest, accurate information and be able to back it up. Nothing will destroy credibility faster than not being able to back up what you say.

Follow through with promises. When you tell the client you'll deliver her draft in five business days, make sure you get it to her on day five (or, better, day four!). Do your best to honor the promises you make.

Show that you care and respect others. Listen to what your followers and customers say. Acknowledge their concerns and respect their opinions. While, you cannot please everyone and may not be able to meet every demand, if you show that you care about your people, your credibility will increase.

Customer and client testimonials can help you establish credibility. People want to see proof that something is good. As the business owner, they won't simply take your word for it. Displaying testimonials from satisfied customers goes a long way towards building credibility. Audio and video testimonials are much more effective than written ones.

Don't be a fence sitter. If you believe in something, let it be known and stand behind it. Being "on the fence" diminishes your credibility. If you tell clients they need to always send a cover letter any time they can't hand the resume to the decision-maker, and they question you on it and you reply, "Well, you don't always have to send a cover letter." This can make your client question your methods!

Have passion about what you're doing. If you are enthusiastic about your resume services, others will be too. Your friends and family, previous clients, and others will feed off of your enthusiasm and passion and in turn spread it to others. If you're shy, use the written word to share your passion.

Credibility translates to income. A credible resume writer is more attractive than a resume writer who isn't as credible.

Guest Post: The Best-Kept Traffic Secret For Attracting Visitors To Your Website

Guest Blog Post by Jim Edwards

Did you realize that thousands of website operators use a simple technique to generate targeted visitors to their websites without paying a dime in advertising? It's true.

In fact, the technique works so well that many of them don't want you to discover how they get those thousands of website visitors and make so many sales on virtual "auto-pilot."

Their method?

Creating tightly focused articles other people publish in their ezines (online magazines and email newsletters) and post on their websites. This method rates so powerful that some even call it "the web's best-kept traffic secret."

Now, you may ask, "Why would an ezine publisher or website owner publish my articles for their subscribers?"

The answer: Content!

Over a 100,000 ezines and newsletters operate on the web (along with millions of websites) covering everything from pets and cooking to investments and real estate. Many of them need tightly focused content and they simply can't produce all of it themselves.

Look at it this way... it's the same reason newspapers use the Associated Press. Individual newspapers often can't afford staff writers to cover every story, so they accept articles from outside their organization.

You can do the exact same thing for various ezines and websites catering to your niche audience!

You can get valuable publicity -- exposure you often couldn't even pay for if you wanted to -- by providing valuable, content-rich articles in exchange for a byline and a link to your website (called a "resource box")!

The following represent only a few of the enormous benefits of writing and distributing simple articles online:

• Attain "Expert" Status. Let's face it! In the eyes of virtually everyone who reads your articles you rank as the "expert" on the subject. Just look at people who write newspaper columns. You may disagree with their viewpoints, but they still have an elevated status in your mind compared to the "average Joe" off the street.
• Pre-sell Website Visitors. If your article appeals to a niche audience hungry for more information on a very focused subject, you actually pre-sell them better than any sales pitch. In their minds, you've already delivered content they really want so when they click over to your site you already have a "reputation" in their minds.
• Traffic Lasts Longer. Even though the Internet changes very quickly, webmasters are usually very slow to remove content from their sites. Once you get an article posted on another person's website, you have an excellent chance of that article staying there for weeks, months, even years.
• Increase Links To Your Site. In a recent search I found just a dozen of my articles posted on over 813 different websites! Not only do those postings bring me traffic, but they also help my search engine positioning because of my increased "Link Popularity." 
• Builds Your Affiliate Base. Fact: Affiliates always take the path of least resistance. If you provide excellent articles they can easily post on their sites or copy and paste into their ezines, your affiliates will promote you more often and more effectively compared to those who don't give them tools. Plus, as you make more sales and publish articles, other people will see you providing excellent tools and will want to sign up as your affiliate so they can use them too!
• Build a Huge "Opt-In" Email List. You can use articles to build up a huge list of subscribers by simply compiling several articles into a series and delivering them at preset intervals. Often called a "mini-course," this technique allows you not only to prove to your subscribers that you deliver great information, but enables you to capture their name and email adress so you can send them articles and special offers in the future (with their permission). 
• Requires No Special Skills. People often think they need to be a "writer" in order to publish articles, but that's not true! FACT: If you have a passion for a subject and can talk and explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will love to read. So if you operate a website selling virtually any type of product or service (whether your own or as an affiliate), publishing and promoting with articles should rank high on your list of traffic generation strategies. No other method of generating targeted traffic to your website provides the quality, quantity and steadiness of traffic in such a simple, straightforward, and cost- effective manner. 

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook, "Turn Words Into Traffic," that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate link!
Click here for more information--> http://hop.clickbank.net/?RWDigest/ezarticles

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights Reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com

Tax Deductions for the Self-Employed Resume Writer

As the end of the year approaches, it's time to start thinking about taxes. Yuck. I know.

When you own a resume writing business, there are a lot of things to consider. One of them is taxes. It will take you a little longer to get them done than someone who is a W2 employee, but there is one upside — tax deductions for the self-employed.

When it comes to taxes, there is a lot to know. As a self-employed professional, things can get a bit more complicated because you work for yourself. When you work for a company, your wages are subject to taxes. You fill out a W-2 form and the company does the rest. You can see on your check what has been deducted for state, federal, and social security tax. It's a no-brainer for the employee. I'm jealous for some of my jobseeking clients when I think about the ease of getting a W-2 form. I'd have my taxes done when there is still snow on the ground in Nebraska if I were an employee!

But alas, I've been self-employed since 1996.

Most self-employed people receive their full pay for their services. Taxes are not taken out. This gives you an advantage when it comes to utilizing as much of your money as you can. But, tax time comes and it's time to settle up with the IRS. This involves calculating all of the income you've earned from clients, and then figuring out your tax deductions. Deductions in the form of tax write-offs can reduce your taxable income. This can change your tax bill.

Tax Write-Offs 
Here are a few of the tax write-offs that you may be eligible to deduct as a self-employed individual. A full listing can be found on the IRS website. Turbotax also has a good list of possibilities for 2012. (Check with your tax professional for specific advice and guidance, of course.)

• Home office — This deduction has tripped people up for years. Basically, you will need a dedicated office space in your home for your business. Conducting business occasionally from your computer in the family room doesn't qualify that space for a tax write-off. But, when you have an office set up, you are also eligible to deduct a portion of the utilities too. (You calculate the total square footage of your home, and the square footage of your "office" and then can deduct expenses as the percentage of your office compared to the total home.)
• Travel expenses — Did you attend a resume writing conference this year? Time to pull together those records -- conference registration fees, airline tickets, meal receipts, gas receipts, and other incidentals. A percentage of these expenses are deductible because they were incurred in the transaction of your business.
• Medical expenses — Because you are not employed by anyone, your medical bills are your responsibility. However, you can regain some of the insurance premiums you paid on your tax return. The exception to this rule is when your spouse is eligible for family insurance at their job and this could cover your medical needs. Again, check with your tax professional. Also: Look into a Health Savings Account as a way to increase your deductions for expenses you're already paying.

You work hard. Make sure that you claim all tax write-offs that are due for your resume writing business.