The 5th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest

The 5th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest 96 My biggest cash prize yet, and much, much more. The fun starts NOW. This 5th edition of the biggest job search guest blogging contest in the world has over twice as much in prizes as last year. There are ONLY 25 10 no more guest blogging slots available. Look forward to next year! In this official announcement, you'll find: Main contest prizes How to WIN the contest Most shared article prizes â€" a first! How to enter the contest Contest calendar Take your time to carefully read this announcement. There's a lot of information and many prizes, you don't want to miss a thing. Here… we… go… Main contest prizes Thank you to our Gold Sponsor: Marcus Tandler and JOBlog Marcus Tandler's JOBlog is Germany's oldest blog about job search careers. For its 6th anniversary (!) the JOBlog is proudly sponsoring JobMob's guest blogging contest. The grand prize winner will win: Over $2600 in prizes. Everything you need to take your blogging to a whole new level. US$250. Sponsored by Marcus Tandler and JOBlog. 1 hour of business consulting. Sponsored by Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, a US$360 value 4-hour video of Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg's Marketing Secrets Seminar. Sponsored by Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, a US$200 value 1 year PRO membership of MyBlogGuest.com. Sponsored by Ann Smarty and MyBlogGuest.com, a US$200 value Premium blog setup and design services. Sponsored by Kiesha Easley and WeBlogBetter.com, a US$600 value 1 year of premium website hosting + cPanel + $75 Google Adwords coupon, sponsored by WebHostingBuzz.com, a US$881 value Interviewed on The Recruiting Animal Show. Sponsored by Recruiting Animal. Access to Jason Alba's paid webinar “Blog Marketing 201-501”. Sponsored by Jason Alba, a US$100 value. A copy of Jason Alba's upcoming book “8 Lunches”. Sponsored by Jason Alba. One premium WordPress theme. Sponsored by Keller Hawthorne and Simply Fresh Themes, a US$40 value Thank you to our Gold Sponsor: Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg In case you've been living in a cave for the past several years, Rabbi Issamar is an internationally acclaimed advisor to successful business owners, and a winner of Inc. Magazine's prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. Three lucky winners will each receive a full hour of time with Rabbi Issamar to discuss their future, vision, and obtain clarity of goals- and get a game plan for how to get there! The second grand prize winner will win: Almost $1000 in prizes. US$150. Sponsored by Marcus Tandler and JOBlog. 1 hour of business consulting. Sponsored by Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, a US$360 value 4-hour video of Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg's Marketing Secrets Seminar. Sponsored by Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, a US$200 value 1 year PRO membership of MyBlogGuest.com. Sponsored by Ann Smarty and MyBlogGuest.com, a US$200 value One premium WordPress theme. Sponsored by Keller Hawthorne and Simply Fresh Themes, a US$40 value Thank you to our Silver Sponsor: Kiesha Easley and WeBlogBetter.com Kiesha Easley is the owner of WeBlogBetter.com, a blog devoted to offering blogging tips. She is a freelance writer, copy-editor, and blog consultant for small business owners. She's just recently released, Be a Blessing: 77 Ways to Bless Others, a book that encourages everyone to consider practical ways to help others. Connect with her on Twitter @weblogbetter. The third grand prize winner will win: $850 in prizes. US$50. Sponsored by Marcus Tandler and JOBlog. 1 hour of business consulting. Sponsored by Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, a US$360 value 4-hour video of Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg's Marketing Secrets Seminar. Sponsored by Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, a US$200 value 1 year PRO membership of MyBlogGuest.com. Sponsored by Ann Smarty and MyBlogGuest.com, a US$200 value One premium WordPress theme. Sponsored by Keller Hawthorne and Simply Fresh Themes, a US$40 value Thank you to our Silver Sponsor: WebHostingBuzz.com WebHostingBuzz is a reliable web hosting company based in MA, USA. WebHostingBuzz serves 25,000 clients from around the world. With a reputation for reliable, fast web hosting backed by excellent customer support, WebHostingBuzz is an ideal choice for webmasters looking for web hosting, reseller hosting or vps hosting. WebHostingBuzz offers a 30 day money back guarantee for it’s hosting services and also has a generous web hosting affiliate program. The early bird prize winner will win: US$50. Sponsored by Ann Smarty and MyBlogGuest.com A second early bird prize US$50. Sponsored by Freelancer.com. The winners will be chosen at random from all the contest submissions received before Monday August 1st, 2011. Thank you to our Silver Sponsor: MyBlogGuest.com MyBlogGuest is the free platform which bloggers join to easier find each other and exchange guest posts. The most popular feature inside is the Articles Gallery where you can upload an article for blog owners to come to review it and make their offers. Here's a quick video intro made by one of our members. Announcing the Judges' Choice prize US$100. Sponsored by Freelancer.com. The Judges' Choice prize will be the overall favorite guest post as voted by the contest judges (who will be announced later), regardless of how well the guest post performed in competition for the other prizes. The idea behind this prize is that sometimes the contest has great posts that for whatever reason don't perform well, and this is a way one of them can still get some recognition. Thank you to our Silver Sponsor: HireAHelper.com HireAHelper helps people compare and hire movers. Entering a US zip code and your move date pulls up a list of local movers, final pricing from each company, and honest reviews from past customers â€" unedited, positive AND negative. So, throw your phone book out (I mean really, what moving company would give you positive negative references about themselves?) and do all your moving research and hiring in one place: HireAHelper.com. Every participant will win: A copy of the latest edition of the Personal Branding Magazine. Sponsored by Dan Schawbel. How to WIN the contest Simple: drive as much traffic as possible i.e. get as many people as you can to visit your guest post when it's in competition. Here's how the contest works: Once your guest post is accepted as an entry, you’ll receive an email telling you exactly when your guest post will enter the contest and to compete for visitors. After each guest post appears on JobMob, it will enter the Contest Rankings. The Contest Rankings are determined by the number of unique visitors to your guest post during the 7 days after the post was published on JobMob. That page will be updated frequently during the contest, and notification of those updates will be published on the JobMob Facebook page. The grand prize winner… …is the author of the guest post appearing at the top of the Contest Rankings at the end of the contest, with the other grand prize winners decided based on their guest posts' rankings. In case of a tie, the winner is the writer of the guest post with the most comments/trackbacks, Facebook it to your contacts, friends and family. If you have a blog, linking to your own guest post is fine. Most shared article prizes â€" a first! Thank you to our Bronze Sponsor: Jason Alba and JibberJobber “So what is JibberJobber? Is it a job search tool? Is it a networking tool? It is more like a personal relationship manager that allows you to do everything you need to do to manage a job search and optimize your network relationships â€" for the duration of your career!” In addition to the main prizes given out according to the unique visitor counts of the Contest Rankings page, there are also prizes for the most shared articles. This year's Contest Rankings will also show the share counts accumulated for each article during its 7-day run. The numbers will be taken from the sharebar that you see floating to the left of every article on JobMob and at the end of the contest, prizes will be given out for the most ed Article US$50. Sponsored by HireAHelper.com. Thank you to our Bronze Sponsor: Dan Schawbel Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding LLC, is a world renowned personal branding expert. He is the international bestselling author of Me 2.0, and the publisher of the Personal Branding Blog. Other notes about the prizes: Prize money will be paid in any currency supported by Paypal, using the exchange rate of the day it’s awarded. Paypal is the only way prizes will be paid outside of Israel (get a PayPal account here if you don’t have one). Additional prizes may be announced over the coming weeks. If you’d like to sponsor the contest, please follow these instructions. Thank you to our Bronze Sponsor: Recruiting Animal Animal is the host of a rowdy online call-in show about recruiting and careers. In April 2006, he founded the Recruiting Animal blog, then, in March 2007, he started The Recruiting Animal Show, the only online call-in show about recruiting in world history. How to enter â€" Easy! Write a new blog post for JobMob on a topic related to job search. Follow our guest post guidelines, which also explain how to submit your entry. Like the JobMob Facebook Page to be notified of Contest Rankings updates and other contest news. There is NO DEADLINE for submissions but there are only 25 blogging slots available, so ACT FAST to be included. They will go quicker than you think. Thank you to our Bronze Sponsor: Keller Hawthorne and Simply Fresh Themes “I, Keller Hawthorne (blogger, web designer, e-commerce store owner and WordPress fanatic), design Premium WordPress themes that can easily transform your WordPress install into a modern day website. With powerful theme options, you can customize the color, look and feel of your theme with just one click! Take control of your website with WordPress and Simply Fresh Themes.” Besides the need to follow our guidelines, here are some additional rules: The contest is open to anyone over the age of 18. You don’t need a blog to enter. For your own benefit, do not republish your entry on another blog (such as your own blog, if you have one) before the contest is over. You may do so after the contest as long as you credit your entry on JobMob by linking back to it. Submit ONLY ONE guest post as an entry. NO RESERVATIONS, so please don’t email me to hold one of the 25 slots for you, but by all means email me for anything else ?? I reserve the right to not publish any entry without justification, especially if it doesn’t conform to our rules guidelines, but it rarely happens. Thank you to our new Bronze Sponsor: Joshua Waldman of CareerEnlightenment Joshua Waldman helps frustrated job seekers leverage social media to find work FAST! He is the founder of CareerEnlightenment.com and the author of the new book, Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies. Sign-up for his newsletter today and get access to his exclusive training videos for free. Announcing the Bonus participant prizes 10 randomly-chosen contestants will each win a free copy of Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies. However, only contestants that haven't won any other contest prize will be eligible for these. Contest calendar August 1st 2011 â€" first guest post appears on JobMob, early bird prize winners announced September 12th 2011 â€" the last possible day that a guest post will appear on JobMob, and the Contest Rankings page will no longer be updated until the end of the contest. September 21st 2011 â€" official announcement of the grand prize winners and most shared article prize winners Suggestions Use the articles under the pink Best Of tab here on JobMob for inspiration. Otherwise, you can write about: Job search success stories (anywhere in the world!) Unusual job search experiences Your opinion on a specific job search-related topic Your most-liked/least-liked job search tools, websites, etc. Good luck Remember- there are a VERY LIMITED number of blogging slots available â€" as you can see in the sidebar â€" and there are 2 early bird prizes, so get your entry in as soon as possible! This year's contest is full. See you next summer…

The Ugly Truth About Debt

The Ugly Truth About Debt Debt has come to be an accepted part of modern life.  But the reality is that debt is probably the single largest obstacle to your living the life you really want.  A look at the statistics for the United States tells the bleak story: These are the averages:  $15,762 in credit cards; $168,614 in mortgages; $27,141 in auto loans; and $48,172 in student loans.  And none of that is counted in your part of the national debt, which now stands at over $154,000. Weve been pushed to consume, forever buying more and bigger and better.   For most, there is virtually no prospect of ever being debt free.  Their future is mortgaged, and current consumption leaves no room to allocate money for paying down the balances. Even investing has been tainted with over-leveraging.  Thats debt-speak for borrowing too much to finance a purchase.  Its sold as other peoples money (OPM}.  From the small investor to the biggest of corporations, making money with little of your own at risk remains as common as it was in the pre-great recession days. The Real Cost of Debt Unless youve been hiding your head in the sand, youve seen the warnings.  The real cost of using that credit card to enhance current consumption is huge.  One thousand on the card now means the real price of what you purchased will be around $1,600.  So the money you saved on that great deal doesnt end up in your pocket.  It ends up on the banks balance sheet as profit. From a leverage point of view, its even worse.  You survived the housing crisis of the last decade.  But did you learn the lessons it taught?  Take this example of having $50,000 to invest and using two different approaches. Scenario 1: You put $50,000 down on a house that costs $200,000.  You have $50,000 equity.  If prices drop, as they inevitably do in real estate cycles, your investment will be at risk.  Should they drop 10%, youll lose $20,000.  But youll still have $30,000 and  youd still be the owner of the property. Scenario 2:  Youve seen the reality shows and the product pitches and youre in.  You decide to take your $50,000 and buy five houses, each costing $200,000.  In each one, you have $10,000 equity.  But now, if that same 10% drop in prices occurs, youre entire investment is gone.  No equity, no money, and for all intents and purposes its now the banks property. And Then Comes The Deceit A recent study in the U.K. showed that  37% of Brits lie to their partner about their debts.  Thats more meaningful when you look at the following breakdown: The majority, 47%, stated they had no debt when in fact they did. 35% understated to their partners how much debt they had. 18% had overstated how much they owe to get out of paying joint bills. Its long been recognized that debt, especially when its accompanied by deceit, damages relationships.  The results are too frequently divorce, bankruptcy, or both. Chris Reilly   of My Voucher Codes, who sponsored the above research, gives the following advice: “Getting in control of your finances is important, so don’t allow yourself to be swallowed up by debt. It’s always good to talk to someone, such as a debt or money management advice agency. However we would recommend talking to your partner and being honest with them, that way you’re not worrying alone.” Choose Your Future Of course, its not a matter of right or wrong.  Its about being conscious of results.  More and more people are waking to the reality that more stuff doesnt make you happy.   That its the experiences and relationships that bring happiness. So its worth pondering the purchase of that big screen television youve been eyeing.  You can buy it, now, and pay interest for the next three to five years while you watch its technology go out of date.  Or you can skip it, and invest in yourself or in memories that will last a lifetime.  The choice is yours. Images: Debt  openDemocracy  debt shackle  Chris Potter

Personal Branding Weekly - Do You Know Who to Connect With - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Weekly - Do You Know Who to Connect With - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career As long as people do business with people and business is built on relationships, networking will be important. Online and offline networks are both important, but it’s online networking that’s powerfully driven the need to know who to connect with. After all, with the world at your virtual fingertips â€" who do you spend time with thousands to choose from? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of predictive way to know who the best connections are? Knowing who the influencers are in your industry is valuable and so is knowing who of your customers would make (or who already are) great referral sources? How valuable would it be to know who of your connections are a perfect fit to be someone who can refer business to you? When was the last time you assessed your referral strength? This is important intel and vital to managing and communicating your personal brand. Speaking of personal brand, here’s what we featured last week: How to Never Again Be Intimidated by Bosses by Skip Weisman Creating a Social Media Plan of Action by Crystal Washington The #1 Killer of Job Hunting Success? Networking! by Nance Rosen How to Deal with Office Politics by Ceren Cubukcu What Moving to a New City Means for Your Brand by Heather Huhman Consult Professionals to Speed Up Your Job Search by Alex Freund Role PLAY versus Real Conversation  by Elinor Stutz Mindfulness and Personal Branding Success by Roger Parker Death Battle: Resumes vs. LinkedIn Profiles by Richard Kirby Doing Business Differently: An Interview with the Founders of Honest Tea by Bill Connolly Keeping Confidences Your Secret Weapon for Success by Jeff Shuey The Story Behind the Personal Brand by Maria Elena Duron Afraid of Feedback? Find How It Serves You Best by Sharmin Banu Focus On What You Can Do For Your Company! by Beth Kuhel Why Cover Letters Still Matter by Glassdoor.com Develop a Personal Brand Mindset in the Workplace by Leslie Truex Basic Articles Mean Mediocre Articles by Erik Deckers 6 Reasons Employers Are Going to Pay You More by Ken Sundheim Your Brand Is Being Built For You by Nick Inglis Partner with Recruiters to Manage Your Career by Marc Miller From these posts, here are seven takeaways (golden nuggets): Regardless of position type, company or title, employers want and pay for people who are difference makers. (Author, Ken Sundheim) The “blue ocean strategy,” the untapped vein, is to write and share the advanced knowledge that most of the other “experts” aren’t even aware of, let alone talking about. (Author, Erik Deckers) The “blue ocean strategy,” the untapped vein, is to write and share the advanced knowledge that most of the other “experts” aren’t even aware of, let alone talking about. (Author, Leslie Truex) It may be the era of texting, multitasking and communicating in 140 characters or less, but when it comes to finding a job, cover letters still matter. (Author, Glassdoor.com) An emotionally mature person realizes that if you really want a certain job you’ll impress the interviewer in the following ways: Show genuine interest in the business’s mission and an appreciation for wanting to fit in and contribute to its success! (Author, Beth Kuhel) It’s simple. Master the ability to Keep Confidences. It is your Secret Weapon for Success. (Author, Jeff Shuey) Networking demon? There’s no such thing. There’s people who collect and throw away business cards. There’s people who put you on a list. But people who can really help you? They are the people who know you. (Author, Nance Rosen) To assess your referral strength, take a look at your current connections and find out: • Who has referred business or connections to you already? • When was the last time someone referred business or a connection to you? • Do your connections serve your same target client and in a non-competitive industry? • Do you have connections in your industry that would be considered competitors but have strengths or focus on areas of the industry or business that aren’t your favorite tasks? Let me know in the comments of any hints or tips you have in assessing your referral strength. For next week, here’s our highlights: • The shrinking job market. • Second impressions. • How to place a value on your brand. • The importance of your LinkedIn profile. • Focusing on benefits and buyer motivation. • How to become an ideal workplace. • Eliminating the “it’s not my job” attitude. • Assessing if personal branding is your second job. • Researching if personal branding should matter to baby boomers. As always we appreciate your readership, comments and focus on personal branding. Author: Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of  buzz2bucksâ€"  a word of mouth marketing firm, and a professional speaker and trainer on developing social networks that work. She provides workshops, webinars, seminars and direct services that help create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand.   Maria Duron is founder  and moderator of  #brandchat   a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of  branding  that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers. Are you busy? Here’s some quick and easy tips on  Social Marketing for busy people.