How To Sell Your Expertise…No, I Mean Sell It Literally!
Posted on 08. Oct, 2009 by Matt Shelly in Job Search Tips
 |
By Todd Bavol, The Job Search Ninja.
CEO, Integrity Career Transitions
Regular readers of my blog will often have heard me talk about the value of setting yourself up as an expert in your field or industry. Answering questions on relevant web forums or groups, or posting intelligent comments to the blogs of others can both be great ways to demonstrate your knowledge, but setting up your own professional blog or website is likely to draw far more attention in your direction, especially if you link it to your profiles on business and social networking sites.
Inspirational leadership speaker, seminar leader and business consultant, Brendon Burchard, says of expert status that ‘income and influence is directly proportionate to the number of people who consider you an expert’. Alongside this, however, sits the saying that people rarely value what they do not pay for. Where is all this leading? To this: what really makes people, employers included, sit up and take notice, is being able to say that you have been published. Whether in the form of a report, a thesis, a book or an ebook, publication does not only suggest a level of expertise in the topic, but a strong commitment to your field and to the work involved in producing your manuscript. What enhances credibility even further, however, is when people are prepared to spend their hard-earned cash on hearing what you have to say.
For those who can make the time to put together a book or an ebook which they can then market from their website and sell online, the potential is not just there to contribute greatly to their own professional reputation, but also to earn a passive stream of income at the same time. Even if it is impossible to commit to more than just maintaining a professional blog, however, many choose to create an anthology of their posts which, with only a minimal amount of editing, can itself form a book or ebook and in turn be sold – a little like Candace Bushnell, the creator of Sex and the City who published the book of the same name based on her own columns in the New York Observer.
When you look at the field that you work in, it can often be difficult to imagine that you have enough to say on the matter, but when you consider how things change from year to year and the fact that there are always newcomers to the arena, there is always something to contribute. While it might sound counter-intuitive in terms of earning income from your efforts, there is also value in making your work specific to a target audience. The generalist approach is one which is taken by many and so not only is the competition greater, but what most people actually want is to be able to get down to the nitty gritty detail.
This type of information marketing and opportunity to earn passive income is not, of course, limited to those who are currently in employment. What better way to fill your time in between job searching and keep up to date in your field during a spell of unemployment? Who knows, you might even create a whole new career for yourself!
For information about career products and services, visit www.integritycareertransitions.com. You can also follow The Job Search Ninja on twitter at, www.twitter.com/jobsearchninja, for great career advice.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Related posts:
