Many mature professionals today, still think that there are limited career opportunities for them in the new age job market. They think that they are either not tech savvy enough or most new age career opportunities are technology-related jobs. There is no doubt that new age career opportunities are leveraging on new technologies to make jobs simpler and easier to perform but the nature of most jobs have not changed much.

In fact, the advancement of technologies has brought new career opportunities for many mature professionals that they would never dream of. If you are wondering what kind of new age career options are available for you. You will be delighted to know that the job options below are something within your reach if you have already incorporated technologies in your life.

Affiliate Marketing
If you do not know what affiliate marketing is, it is an amazing way to earn income without owing product, services or inventory and be involved in any billing, logistics and customer services. Affiliate marketing has become a popular career option for many people because it does not require any qualification or work experience. What you need to do is joined the merchants’ affiliate programs and help the merchants to drive more traffic to their sites. You will be rewarded with commission when sales occur. Hence, it is an excellent career option for mature professionals because it is low risk, easy to pick up and required no traveling to work.

There are thousands of affiliate programs to choose from so you can pick the one that match your professional knowledge, experience and passion.

Blogging
Blogging is one of the well-liked new age career options today due to its potential to generate massive income one day. Blog is a type of web platform where the author (aka blogger) post about his/her knowledge, skills and opinion regularly and allow his/her their readers to leave comment, feedback and suggestions. Authors are normally known as blogger while the act of posting on the blog is called blogging. If the blog is popular and receive massive traffic daily, it can be monetized using advertising, sponsorship and affiliate marketing.

The blog is easy to set up and well-liked by search engines due to its fresh content. Hence, it is an ideal platform for mature professionals who want to share your expertise and skills. Once you have established a base of readers, your readers will view you as an authority in your fields. This will open up the door of other career opportunities such as public speaking, writing, consulting and mentoring jobs.

Entrepreneurship
With a wealth of knowledge, expertise and skills, one of the best new age career options for mature professionals is to go into entrepreneurship but in a smaller scale and with a lesser capital setup – home-based business. The internet technology facilitates online business setup and allows you to stay connected with your customers worldwide. Many like the flexi working hours and freedom being a home entrepreneur because of extra time spend with their family.

In addition, many 3^rd party solution providers provide platforms which help to facilitate the growth of home-based business. They offer platforms online that allow creative mature professionals to continue their passion and creation. For example professions such as digital photographer, illustrator, copywriter and designer, they can focus solely on creation rather than the business aspect of their jobs. These platforms allow them to showcase their works and take a percentage of the fee only when sales occur.

Writing
There has been an unprecedented demand for writing because of the growth of blogs, websites and digital products. Content creation has become the number one priority for all these media. Your intellectual knowledge and skills will become extremely valuable under such strong demands.

In addition, people are searching online for solutions everyday and some require in-depth solution for their problems. If you could address them in a book, you could make a good income out of it.

Writing a book is no longer a tedious and consuming process, technology has made it a breeze today not only to produce a physical book but an eBook. An eBook can be made easily and sold at Clickbank.com or Amazon.com, these websites manage the selling and billing for you so you can just focus at what you are good at.

Online Teaching
Teaching may not be an attractive career option in real life because of its salary, pre-requisite qualification and working condition. But online teaching is actually a very lucrative career option for mature professionals in the new age job market. With the help of new technologies, it is possible now to teach comfortably at your home to students globally at any time. You can interact with your student on a one-to-one basis or in a group.

You can also choose to put up all your teaching materials online and let your students learn at their own pace by using a membership subscription model in your website. The beauty of such model is it helps to eliminate student recruitment works and provide you guarantee income in advance.

Mentoring
Like online teaching, mentoring is another under-explored but with a great potential career option for mature-age professionals. If you are already established in your niche and view as an authority, your deep expertise can be put to good use. You can give one-to-one mentoring using telecommuting via webinar technology. In this age of instant gratification, many young people love to be mentored because they want a short and easy path to reach success and richness in the shortest of time. They would like to tap into the rich experience and highly skilled mature professionals to cut down their learning path and time. And would certainly be thrilled if they are guided by someone who has proper knowledge with global perspective and is technically competent.

Public Speaking
If public speaking is your cup of tea but you could not endure the airport security and flying, here is the good news! Today, public speaking is made easy by webinar technology, it allows speaker to speak directly to masses of audiences using audio and video without physically flying to the places where the audiences located. Virtual public speaker can be a viable choice for mature professionals as there are strong demands for speakers for web conferences, teleseminars and webinars in this information age.

You can earn by creating a series of paid webinars and deliver them live to audiences all over the world. You can also encourage your audiences to visit your website to download your teaching materials. They may become your long-time subscribers if they love your speaking and you can then enjoy additional stream of income without additional works.

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Even though the above new age career options are self-employed but they are an attractive career opportunities for those who want to extend their careers and utilize their current knowledge and expertise. They are also excellent choice for mature professionals who want flexi-hours and continue to thrive in the new age job market. Your experience and expertise will complement the current inexperience workforce which skews toward recruiting only fresh and young people. While the young talent could offer innovations and ideas but no workforce will be completed without the wisdom and advices of the seniors.

Is there other new age career opportunity you have encountered but not covered here? Or you feel there is no new age career option for mature-age professionals? Feel free to share it in the comment below.

Many highly experienced laid-off professionals might find themselves suddenly lost of identities, pride and values after their laid-off. The power, status, authority, security and respect were all gone once they were no longer in their jobs. What was left were bitter feelings and rejection getting from jobs hunting. It is uncommon to hear that “You are too old”, “You are overqualified” and “You are too expensive” from interviewers. This often left them psychologically wounded and wonders do they still have any values and worth in such society?

These laid-off professionals were overwhelmed with such thoughts that they actually overlooked the potential goldmines they have with them. They were busy hunting high and low for new job opportunities but might not aware that there is actually a shining goldmines waiting for them to be explored. Are you one of them?

What are Your Life-time Goldmines?
If you are one of these people, do you know what could be your goldmines? If you are already in your mid 40s or 50s or more, you might think there is no goldmine left. But, if you look at yourself carefully, you may be surprised you have more than what you expected.

Goldmines #1: Valued Skills
The number one goldmines that going to last for life-time is the wealth of knowledge, experiences, skills and expertise you have gathered. You are experts in your own fields and you may have developed deeply specialized skills in your industries which are rarely found elsewhere. These expertises are hard-found skills and are goldmines that can turn into life-time living. Your unique skills are usually comprised of the following.
 

• Technical Skills / Job Related Skills
  These are specific skills you used to perform your job. It is also known as technical skills but not limited to IT, scientific or engineering skills but rather the total skills set you acquired from your actual work experience plus the education you get from your chosen field.
• Transferable Skills
  There are two types of transferable skills – general transferable skills and specific transferable skills. These skills set are transferable from one job or career to another. Examples of transferable skills are communicating with others, supervising, analyzing, problem solving and organizing. 
• Adaptive Skills are also known as self-management skills. These are the skills you use every day to survive and get along in different situations. Examples of adaptive skills include honesty, enthusiasm and getting along with others.

The sum of all these skills make you what you worth. Your salary will depend on how highly complex of these skills are and whether they are now in hot demand. They will only appreciate in values and become more valuable in times so safeguard these goldmines, they are your number one assets.

Goldmines #2: Credential
Do you have credentials that people can trust you? A good credential speaks for your knowledge and experience, it reflects your positive commitment to maintain current in your professional field. If your credentials have helped you to earn more projects and customers, these will set you far apart from your peers. It is a goldmine as credential gives you authority and people will look upon you as their mentor. People will start following you and every piece of advices you give is like a piece of gold to them. There are many coaches and mentors end up getting rich with mentoring programs so don’t underestimate this goldmine.

Goldmines #3: Ideas
If you find yourself constantly generating a lot of fresh and creative ideas, congratulations! One of these ideas might worth a goldmine. You could be the next Harvey Reese turning simple ideas into money-making machine. If you are wondering who is Harvey Reese, he is the one who invented the dumb reindeer antlers that people put on their pet dogs and cats every Christmas. He is making millions of dollars from simple but yet smart ideas.

Creative ideas may be subjective though, but as they saying go – no ideas are dumb ideas, they just need more redefinition and revision. Your ideas could be new solution to old problems or new invention to improve life; they are not limited to business problems but also could be consumer, social or global problems. People are dying for improved solutions to their day-to-day problems, so take note and fully utilize your natural ability.

Goldmines #4: Networking
If you have been actively networking in the past, your hard work will pay off now. The relationship you have built with your network of friends and associates will be a goldmine to explore. You can now leverage on their network, connection and resources to open doors for multitudes of opportunities. The more people you know, the more resources you can tap into, you never know your next breakthrough of your career could be from your network.

Goldmines #5: Passion
Do you have passion and you love doing it? Or you have long forgotten you have a passion? Well, now it’s a good time to rediscover your long-long passion and find back the energy, satisfaction and joy.

You might be wondering why passion could be your goldmine as it is something not marketable? But passion could be the only spark that rejuvenates your life. Remember the times, when you were passionate about something, you were filled with excitement, enthusiasms and energy! You would never find it boring, tiring and discouraging while doing it. This is the same sort of feeling and experience you should bring back to ignite spark into your life again, so go on and rediscover your passion now!

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If you could see by now, the goldmines are not limited to just wealth but also the emotion, experience, knowledge, skills and expertise you have accumulated over your life. You might have just lost a job and one of your goldmines – income, but you still have other goldmines that will stick to you thick and thin for life. These other goldmines could be the mean to your bigger goldmines if you know how to make good use of them. I’ll talk about how you can do that in the later posts so please stay tune.

At the meantime, take inventory of your goldmines now and have fun exploring.

You might have heard of the word “blogging” but it just did not catch your full attention during those times. Blogging is a hot trend now and will become the dominant new media in no times. Since it started at early 1990s, blogging has already affected how we work or even how we live. Hence, it is worthwhile to spend some time and learn more about blogging now especially for the mature professional. It could be an excellent tool that give your lacklustre career a power boost or who knows … you next career breakthrough!

What is Blogging?
First thing first, what is blogging? Blogging is a way of writing on a new media known as blog, it is actually a type of a website with additional new features. The word blog is shortened from web log which acts like a diary. People used to use web log to record their personal lives, hobbies and other activities but it gradually evolved and has now become the well-know blog which also used for business purposes. The person who writes on the blog is known as blogger. Bloggers love to interact with one another on the blogosphere, it is a term used to describe the interconnection of millions of blogs together in the internet world.
 
Different Types of Blogs
Different bloggers write different things or topics for their blogs. As a result, there are many types of different blogs in the blogosphere but basically they are categorized into the following types.

• Personal or Rant Blog
• Business Blog
• Politics Blog
• Directory Blog
• Forum Blog
• Non-Profit Blog
• How-to, tips and review Blog
• Informative Blog
• Educational Blog

Blogging Platforms and Blog Services
If you are wondering where the blog located? Basically there are 2 ways: it is either self-hosted or using third party free blog services. In technical term, it is known as the blogging platforms. Some popular blogging platforms include WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Blogger, Movabletype, Tumblr, Posterous and Typepad. Some of them are free while some require you to get your own domain name and pay for your own hosting fee.

If you are interested to try out blogging, you can always try out at wordpress.com or blogger.com. They are free and great blogging platforms to start with.

Why Mature Professionals should Care?
Blogging has gradually become the new-age career for many people. There are companies who are hiring full-time, part-time or freelance bloggers for their websites and blogs. If you are interested on what type of jobs are available for blogging, check it out at BloggerJobs.biz , Problogger.net, BlogWork.com and Blogging4Jobs.com.
 
Bloggers are rarely called bloggers for their official job titles but there might be more now due to the strong demand and increased awareness of blogging. Another reason could be the blogger’s job is not just limited to blogging but also a combination of other work duties. Thus, these bloggers are also known by other job titles such as writer, reporter, marketer, virtual assistant, editor and webmaster.

The blogging career is considered one of the hottest and popular careers today. Many people have already created new career opportunities just by blogging, see successful stories here. Blogging is also considered an excellent career choice for mid-career changers or retirees now. It is not because it is low risk and an easy-to-pick-up career but it could be your next career breakthrough. Why? Because it is a tremendous platform that could lead to many other job opportunities. You can check out some of the successful examples in my previous posts. These bloggers have not only found great career success from blogging but also fame and fortune that blogging has brought.

I believe that mature professionals like you can find equal success in blogging career because of your accumulated knowledge, hard-earned expertise and in depth experience. If you are technical person who are well versed in your industry, market niche and product, your ideas, opinion and perspective will even be highly sought after. Some companies might overlook or not value such assets but it will definitely value by the industry community and blogosphere.

In addition, mature professionals who know blogging are seemed to be a more tech savvy and dynamic individual. A well-focused and written blog will help to position you in the industry and market as authority or expert. In another words, blogging helps to market your expertise, experience and skills to your future employers, business partners or even customers.

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Therefore, mature professionals should keep a close eye on the new development on blogging. Learn more about blogging and get into it soon. You never know your next career breakthrough could be through blogging or it could be, you need its platform to help you to bring your career to the next new level.

What do you think?
Can blogging make an impact to your career? You are welcome to leave your thoughts in the comment box below.

In my previous post - Laid-off Professionals: Discover Your Lifetime Goldmines, I talked about the several goldmines that the laid-off professionals might possess but do not know how to fully utilize them. In this post, I will highlight some of the ways that you can use to convert them into life-time goldmines which might become your next satisfying career.

Blog
Thanks to the information technologies, you are now given many new and various platforms of finding new career opportunity at the comfort of your home and the blog is one of them. Blog has become very popular these days as it allows you to share and showcase your knowledge, skills and expertise to the public easily. If you are not aware what is a blog, check out the video here.

The blog is generally used to share passion, hobby, knowledge, experience and solutions to problems so there are many specific blogs created for specific topics. The blog is a convenient platform to attract customers; easy to set up and cost little compared to a physical shop or office – it is also like a virtual shop and a knowledge sharing center. Blog has interactive interfaces which allow you to connect with your visitors easily and it also has comment features that allow visitors to leave comments and interact with one another.

This is an efficient platform that you can utilize to generate life-time goldmines by sharing your insights, experiences, common problems and solutions faced in your profession. Format them into interesting and inviting content then put it on the blog. The main benefit of the blog is it will help to draw visitors from all over the world which may eventually become your loyal fan. This will not only help to raise your profile but also build your reputation as a thought leader. You can then leverage your reputation and expertise to become a paid consultant or coach.

Affiliate Maketing
Once you have a blog with an inviting content, you can further monetize it with affiliate marketing. If you want to find out what is affiliate marketing, check out the successful internet entrepreneur Joel Comm’s video on its definition.

This is an excellent way of getting life-time goldmines because it does not require huge investment in inventory, customer services, logistics or billing to sell product or service at your side. How the affiliate marketing works is that you just find some relevant products or services from the affiliate merchants that would complement your blog’s content then refer them to your visitors. If any of your visitors bought any products or signed up for any services, you will get commissions from the merchants. It is probably one of the easiest and safest ways to find your life-time goldmine when compared to other methods.

Information Product
Information or digital product has become a highly popular product in this information age; this is a good news for you as you have a wealth of knowledge, skills and expertise to share. You can now convert them into highly desired information or digital products that people demand such as an eBook, how-to guide, tutorials, home-study course, online course or continuity programs. This is by far the most popular and new way of earning in the new information age.

Creating an information or digital product may take considerable times but it is definitely worth the effort and times as it will give you the long-term income just like earning royalty from a book.

Online Video Training Course
Similar to information or digital product, online video training course has become another great way to market your expertise. It is considered more effective than a normal eBook because of its multimedia elements. People generally learn faster and better though multimedia elements such as animation, images, audio and video as it engages all senses while learning. Furthermore, reading static information product like an eBook on the computer can cause eyes strain so using video as an online training course is a preferred choice by many people now.

Online Membership Site
To achieve life-time goldmine, you have to have life-time recurring income and one of the best ways of achieving it is through building an online membership site. You can build an online membership site based on the knowledge, skill and expertise you already know and offer continual membership subscription to your blog visitors. It can be a monthly or yearly subscription but in order to make your members stay forever, you have to ensure constant stream of new contents from your membership site.

Packaging the online video training course into the membership site can be a good idea. You can break the course down into several modules and let your members choose to learn at their paces. Once you have established a reasonable base of members, you can add in a discussion forum so that members have a venue to discuss what they have learnt and exchanged ideas. If the discussion forum can grow into a active online community, it can become your another goldmine as it helps to generate content, feedback and ideas for your future training courses.

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The above are some of the ways that you can use to convert your skills, knowledge and expertise into life-time goldmines. You can use the above methods individually or combine them together to achieve your objectives. I hope the above will also give you an idea that a new career opportunity can be created without the need for another job hunting. Now you already know the methods of achieving it, the next step will be knowing the exact steps of achieving it.

As each of the methods is quite a specialized topic; I will discuss each of them in details in future posts so remember to check back for more.

One of my cousins is getting graduated soon and she has just gone for an interview and the interviewers asked her an unprepared question: “What do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?” She was frozen in panic as she never thought of this question before and even when she is thinking about it now, she just couldn’t see her future. The main reason is she is a scholarship-holder and has to fulfill her 5-year bond with the sponsored educational bodies after she graduates. 5 years is a long year especially when she is not so keen about teaching for all her life. In addition, she is concerned that working in public sector will stifle her growth and exposure. After the bond obligation, will she still have any market value and will she be too old to switch to other job?

Common Myths about Scholarship

Contrary to what most believe that scholarship is a stepping stone to better career opportunities, there are some scholarship-holders, however, feel weighted down by the bond.

Some are unhappy that their careers are dictated by their bonds and have no freedom to choose what they like. In short, they feel they have limited career growth and career opportunities than those without scholarship.

Unconventional Career Path

However, this needs not be so! To achieve career success, it is not necessary to follow the conventional career path by climbing the corporate ladder. In the 21st century, there is new breed of professionals emerge as they want the freedom to do what they want, when they want and where they want. There are plenty of opportunities out there and one of them is in the online world. Thanks to technology! It allows you to find and build your own career success without even leaving your home or dearest!

Finding Career Success at Home

There are already many people find successful careers from home, if you have not read about the online career opportunities, click here to read it now. If you still think it is not possible, check out this post on “Top 10 Six-Figure Bloggers” and see who are the successful people who have made it online and started at home. They are real-life examples and many of them started with no resources, no help and no support.

But many of them succeed despite of choosing another totally different field. If you are like my cousin who does not want to be teacher all your life, you still could find other career opportunities such as venturing out on your own in the online world. If you do not know already, online world is one of the fastest and safest ways to start a business.

In the online world, you can easily transit from one job to another and apply your skill and knowledge to other uses. You have total freedom to express yourself in many different ways. For example, if you like teaching but dread the idea of teaching school-bound subjects to students every day, you may find joys teaching innovative learning and studying skills instead. The following are some avenues which you can try to achieve your goals.

Blogging

If you have read the post on “Top 10 Six-Figure Bloggers”, you can see how these successful people reached their career success by blogging. They use the blog to share their knowledge and skills while at the same time selling their consulting services or products. A blog has become a popular platform for sharing and interacting which also open up and lead to many other career opportunities. Many of them were nothing when they started but most of them ended up as a private coach or mentor. Hence, you are no longer restricted to just being a teacher for students but probably a consultant to parents or a coach to fellow teachers or even just a full-time professional blogger.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most lucrative industries these days. It is basically a way you can earn commission by referring customers to merchants. Some merchants are willing to pay as high as 70% for commission or recurring commission if the customers you referred use their services or products continually. So if you enjoy selling and marketing jobs, you could switch to affiliate marketing selling merchants’ products and services.

eBook

If you enjoy writing, you should not miss writing an eBook. Many teachers are also writers but not many find career success in it as writing a book involves massive amount of time, resources and money. However, this is streamlined and become more cost effective by technology. If you aspire to become a writer online, do check out this post on writing an eBook.

Membership Site

Technology allows you to try different ways to achieve your career success while doing what you are best at. If you still like teaching but do not want to confine yourself to one place and same group of students all the time, you can consider building a membership site. It allows different students from different parts of the world to sign up at their own pace and time. You do not need to be physically present as the courses can be prepared in advance and scheduled to release them one at time when students sign up.

e-Products

The greatest satisfaction of anyone is to having your own product especially a product that makes an impact to other people’s life. You can make your own product and sell it online; the product could be an eBook, Software or Online Video Tutorial Courses. Developing a product is not easy but it could lead to many more career opportunities and advancement that you might not know.

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So you see there are many career opportunities for scholars just alone from the online world.  As a scholar, you have unusual high expectation about your job so it is normal to feel depress and discourage if you are not assigned to your dream job. However, it could be a best time to learn the fundamental of your trade so why not learn as much as you can while you are fulfilling your bond obligation. After your bond, you can then utilize and apply your knowledge and skills to create your career in the online world. You will find that you will be exposed to many roles and responsibilities in the online world that a normal employment position might not be able to give you.

So hopefully, you can see there are other career options after fulfilling your bond obligation. I wish you best of luck seeking a second career in the online world.

 

Most of us will face this dilemma, choose a career that you love with little money or choose a career that you hate but it offers great money. While there are people believe that it is better to achieve financial stability first before thinking about your career interests, there are others believe choose something you like to do everyday is well worth than anything.

Money Power
Let’s face it. Money is power! It also brings honor to your family, your parents will be proud of you if you help to change your family financial status and elevated your family social status. With enough money, you can pay off any debts and be debt free for the rest of your live. All your basic needs can be met easily. Your family is well taken care of and even protected from any hefty medical bills that suddenly occurred. As a result, you can enjoy better quality of life, time and future.

While money is indeed important to ensure quality of life, it shouldn’t be the only essential thing in a typical career.  Ask yourself are you happy with your current job? Do you dread going to work everyday? Are you hoping that your career will bring you fun, fulfillment, and challenges each day?

A Career You Love
If you choose a career that you love, it can really make a drastic difference in your life. It’s because if you love the work you do, you get more of what you love in terms of happiness, satisfaction, and a growing enthusiasm which keeps you going and motivated everyday. In addition, it makes you become more successful in your chosen career.

How to Select the Career You Love?
As Jay Farlay, an American psychologist said, “First you need to discover your most important interests and inclinations…” and that is really true. In choosing careers, what matters is what you’re made of and what you like. Jay goes on to say that “the kinds of activities you enjoy, the kinds of settings you prefer, the kind of technology you like to work with, and the sorts of people you like. This understanding will lead you to activities that spark your excitement and enthusiasm, work that taps your creative edge, and a lifestyle that is deeply satisfying.”

When your career answers all those things, it is sure to be something that you’ll continue to love working on.

Besides, it may not be worthwhile to take too many chances with the careers we choose. Your career makes up a great part of your life. If your career gives you much satisfaction and purpose, there will be no regrets when you leave this world because you’re leaving a sort of legacy of a career-fulfilled life.

Helpful Methods in Choosing a Career
Below are some simple but helpful tips on how to choose a career that you love.

1. Have a Proper Mindset
   The first thing to do in choosing a career is to have a proper mindset. A proper mindset helps set your priorities straight, and provides you with a guide on what you need to do in order to decide if you should stay at your current career or not. If you don’t consider this first step, you may end up choosing a career that won’t give you that fulfillment that you are seeking for in the first place.

   In having a proper mindset, it’s best to keep yourself up to date with helpful information. Educate yourself. Here are two books that you may read for guidance and inspiration to help you gain a proper mindset on careers: “48 Days to the Work You Love” by Dan Miller and “Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type” by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger.

2. Set Your Priorities
   Setting priorities help create a roadmap of some sort for your career goals. So it’s best to sort your thoughts out for this. Ask yourself questions. What do you really want out of your career? What are your needs? What is more important to you? You may find that these desires change from time to time, so look where you are at in your life right now. It’s important to take a good look at where you are and where you want to go.

   Think of these things as you sort out your priorities to help you learn more about yourself and the career that would be more appropriate for you. A quick quiz here might help.

3. Get Out of Your Comfort Zones
   The next step is to take action. That means getting out of your comfort zones. This may be difficult at first. But remember that everything may seem difficult at your first try. When you have this thought in your head, it will be easier for you to move out of your comfort levels.

   Yes, this is totally challenging. But this is where you can make good changes in terms of your career. Opt for taking baby steps. Don’t choose to make big steps because this may overwhelm you and make you want to go back to your comfort zones. So, take small steps, and encourage yourself to take more of those little steps until you see the change you want to see, and be able to free yourself of your level of comfort that doesn’t seem to be helping that much in the past anyway.

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It could be stressful when you are facing dilemma like this especially in such stressful and competitive world. Nevertheless, we live only once and since our career make the biggest part of us, we should do something we love and enjoy everyday. As the saying goes, “Do what you do and the money will flow”.

If you think otherwise, please leave your comment below.

This is the third part of recurring income tactics series, if you have not read the previous recurring income tactics, do check out the first part and second part here. As mentioned previously, recurring income is the ultimate goal that home entrepreneur should seek after. This is the only income that provides stability and reliability for long term. So in this post, we will look at another recurring income tactics – by writing and selling your own electronic Book (aka eBook or digital book).

Why Write and Sell Your Own eBook?
eBook is very popular today due to the strong demand of self-help digital products. This is the result of the current knowledge-based economy as everyone is looking for ways to solve a problem or learn a new solution or skills. If you can package the solution, advices, tutorials and tips into an eBook, you can turn it into a long-term recurring income by introducing frequent updated version of your eBook. Furthermore, writing an eBook is one-time effort but you can enjoy being paid over and over again. This is definitely ideal for home entrepreneur like you who are pressed for time.

Unlike its traditional counterpart – Print Book, eBook takes shorter time to produce and distribute. Best of all, it does not cost you a fortune to print your own eBook like traditional print book.  Readers can download your eBook immediately online and at any time. This eliminates the waiting time for the book to print and ship. Most importantly, you do not need to worry the logistics and inventory part of keeping your book.

Technology facilitates the Production of eBook
Thanks to the advancement of technology like Portable Document Format (PDF), it is so much easier to convert a document into portable format and distribute widely to the masses. Everyone who has a Adobe reader will be able to read your document from any medium. And now with the introduction of more eBook Readers like Amazon’s Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, it makes reading even more revolutionary.

The multimedia elements of such eBook readers especially Apple iPad makes reading no longer restricted to just flat surface. The multimedia elements like audio, video and 3D bring a whole new perspective for reading. A good example is a scientist – Theodore Gray’s eBook “The Elements“, check the video here and you will know that why Theodore’s eBook application has made Apple iPad a “much-have” today.

I hope Theodore’s eBook success will give you some sparks of inspiration of what you can do for your eBook. Hopefully, it will break away the conventional belief that eBook is limited to just plain text and hyperlinks. In fact, there are a lot more than that. So if you think that you need marvelous writing skills to write an eBook, you are wrong. Theodore’s eBook demonstrates that a collection of photographs can also form an eBook.

In addition, there are many types of eBook, it could be informational, instructional, case studies, research, tips or tutorials. Such eBooks do not require Shakespeare’s writing skill to impress. Most of these eBooks require direct and straightforward writing style to present a solution. Unless your eBook can bring values and benefits to your targeted readers otherwise it serves no purposes even though it is written in perfect English. At the same time, instructional and tutorial eBooks require lesser formality and pages than a print book which expedite the process of writing and publishing.

Everyone can Publish Your Own eBook
With all the good points mentioned above, there seem no reasons why you cannot write and publish your own eBook? As a mature professional, you stand a better chance of writing your own eBook because of your knowledge, experience, expertise and skills.

There are even platforms available to help you to publish and sell your eBook. Websites such as eBay, Free-eBooks, Amazon, Clickbank, Payloadz and Apple iBook Store almost give you a one-stop solution for all your eBook publishing and selling needs. These sites may require you to pay a fee to use their system but it is definitely worthwhile as they takes away the administrative and payment process for you. The fee is negligible compared to print book as you need to give away your profit to publisher, distributor and agent. Selling the eBook on such sites give you total freedom to set your own price and where to sell it.

So if you have not considered writing an eBook for making an income at home, start thinking it today. I will cover more about creating, publishing and selling eBook in future so please remember to subscribe to my RSS or email list for future posts.

At the mean time, here is an eBook guide from Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale on how to “Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as Little as 7 Days”. If you are eager to start a low-risk home business and with steady income, do check out the eBook on how to do it.

This is the second part of the post on “How to Mould Your Second Career from Home”; you can read part 1 of the post here. As mentioned earlier, starting your second career from home will need a lot of researching and planning to make it successful. In this post, we will continue looking at the steps of doing so.

7. Make a Checklist
Coming out with a checklist will help you to stay organized and focus. Click here to see the “Checklist for Starting a Home-based Business”; it covers most of the items you need to consider before starting your dream career from home.

8. Find a Workplace
Once you have worked out the checklist, find a suitable and conducive place at home to be your home office. It could be your extra room, a corner of your house or share it with your bedroom. The workplace must be a place where you can focus and do your work productively and in peace. If you would like to know the Feng Shui of how to set up your dream office effectively for your home-based business then don’t miss out the post on “Setting Up Your Dream Home”.

9. Finding a Successful Home-Based Business Model
This could be one of the most important steps when you are starting a home-based business. It is a fundamental way of making money to survive and grow. If you have chosen the wrong business model, it will not only waste your valuable time and effort but also you will not see much profitability and growth for your home-based business.

There are many home-based business models available online so take your time to think carefully and pick the most suitable one. The beauty of online media is you can combine a few business models together at the same time to achieve the most optimal results and such model is known as hybrid model. For example, you can combine blog model with membership model to capitalize the interactivity of blog platform.

10. The Fastest and Safest Way to Start a Home-Based Online Business
If, however, you are still not sure what is the best home-based business model to start with? I would highly recommend you start with an affiliate marketing business model. It is probably one of the fastest and safest ways to start an online business at home, find out why by clicking here.

Nevertheless, affiliate marketing business model has its downside too. For example, over-dependent on the merchants for income could be risky as they might change their compensation policies or close down their affiliate programs suddenly without advance notice. Hence, weigh its pros and cons carefully before adopting it.

11. Why Finding a Niche Market is important for Home-Based Business?
One of the important criteria of starting a successful home business is to know exactly what your targeted customers’ needs. Some of their needs may be too specialized that is not being fulfilled by any business in the marketplace. For example in the baby market, you can find a niche market for twin babies. This market segment may be small but could be highly profitable. They will be your niche market if you can offer unique product and/or services to meet their demands. Learn how you can find a niche market here and once you know how to do it, you can eliminate competition easily and dominate in the niche marketplace. 

12. Build a Website to Showcase Your Products/Services
An online business cannot start without a website as it will be your web-based storefront. The website is needed to showcase your product and/or services plus other information such as tips, benefits, testimonials, pricing and your contact details. Your website is open 24×7 everyday for business and globally so you can expect sales worldwide unless you want to limit your business just locally.

Having a website may not be sufficient to grow your home-based business, you must actively market and promote it via online and offline channels.

13. Networking to Get More Business
Networking is one of the best offline methods to build business and find potential customers. It gives you the opportunity to interact with potential customers and at the same time, you may harvest good relationship with fellow networkers so that they can refer more business to you. Once you have established yourself in your group of network, you will find “word-of-mouth” can be a powerful way of getting steady stream and repeated business.

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Moulding your own career is not easy but controlling your own career success is now within your hands. You are now in control of your own destiny and no longer rely on others for job security and living.

If, however, you are concerned that starting an online business at home as an alternative career option has no prospects, then don’t miss these inspiring stories of billionaires who started their humble beginnings from home. They have achieved their phenomenal career success by working for themselves.

You can learn that a successful and fulfilling career does not necessary have to work for someone else, you can also mould your own career success, even from home.
 
As always, you are welcome to leave your thoughts and comment below.

We are so used to leaving our careers to our employers that we forgotten we have the ability to mould the desired career ourselves. This is evident when one is laid off; the first thing that came into his or her mind is to find another job immediately to replace what he or she has lost. But times have changed, economic is bad now and jobs are scarce so instead of thinking finding another job and leaving your career to the hands of your new employer, think again! You may end up underpaid, unhappy and under developed for your career.

We should stop relying on other and start taking responsibility for our own careers. In this post, we will see how one can mould out a second career from his or her own home after being laid off. Why from home, you may ask? This is to take full advantage of what you have and reduce unnecessary expenses. Since it will also be you long-term career, starting from home will be a good starting ground.

1. Set a Career Goal
First and foremost, set a career goal for yourself – see what and where you want to be in a specific time frame. Unlike in the corporate world where you can see a rigid career path with fanciful job titles laid out for you, there is, however, no such career path now. You are free to mould one for yourself. For example, if you have an interest in public speaking, you can set yourself a goal to become a highly demand and well-known speaker in 5 years’ time.

Once you have set your career goal, it will be easy to mould the steps toward achieving it.

2. Align Your Interest & Passion with Your Career Goal
It is important to align your interest and passion with your career goal so that your journey towards your goal will be a pleasant and enjoyable one. In addition, your interest and passion will help to sustain your enthusiasm when you encountered obstacles and difficulties. They can be excellent motivators during down times.

3. Take Stock of Your Expertise
Next, take stock of what are your skills, experience and expertise that you have. You can read the previous post “Laid-off Professionals: Discover Your Lifetime Goldmines” on how to do this. You need to understand your strengths and weakness so that you know how to best utilize both your good and bad attributes.  At the same times, it also helps to manage your personal expectation more realistically.

4. Utilize Your Expertise
Once you have identified your wealth of skills, experience and expertise, it is time to decide how you can utilize them to help you to achieve your goal. You can read the steps on my previous post “How to Convert Your Skills and Expertise into Goldmines”. The steps suggested are skewed heavily towards starting your own home online business and producing digital products. This is to leverage on the internet technology and low entry cost of online business.

5. Find a Suitable Industry
You can either continue in your existing industry or find a new industry that interests you. If your current industry is dying, you may consider switching to a new industry that can utilize your expertise. Many skill sets are still transferable if you know how to customize and upgrade them with some relevant training.

6. Check Your Comfort Level
Since you are creating a long-term career, you should also check you comfort level. Some of them include the following.

• Are you comfortable working alone with no support at home?
• Are you comfortable working with your kids around?
• Are you comfortable working with PC, laptop, computer programs and Internet?
• Are you comfortable dealing with customers and other business functions?

These are some questions that you need to think ahead before starting a second career as some of them may hinder your success toward achieving your career goal.

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