Job hunting? Here’s a Search Engine you Can’t Live Without

Monster. HotJobs. Your local paper. Company websites. If you’re looking for a job, conventional wisdom almost always says that looking for work is a job in itself. With so many places to hunt for listings, job hunting isn’t always a quick-and-easy thing to do — especially if you start adding multiple websites to your list.

Enter http://www.indeed.com, a specialty search engine that pulls jobs from multiple websites. Also known as a “vertical search engine,” this type of search engine offers job hunters precious time by pulling in results from all over the web. Earlier, I had mentioned how important it was to use keywords to sell your articles. Here, hunting for jobs is no different.

After a few weeks of trial-and-error, you’ll want to make sure you have a list of different combinations of keywords available for the job you’re looking for. Because some listings may appear on multiple sites, I generally only went about three-to-five search result pages deep to find what I was looking for. You can search by income level and location, but be forewarned that the results are only as good as the listings. Sometimes, the same job can appear in the low and high income stratospheres. Anecdotally, this might be the case because positions often don’t list the salary for the job so Indeed might default to offering the listing in every category.

For my fellow prolific freelancers, Indeed.com does list contract positions and freelance writing and editing opportunities in places you’d expect like http://www.problogger.com and places you certainly wouldn’t. Highly recommended, this vertical search engine is useful, focused and saves me time. If you’re interested, check out some of the links at the bottom of Indeed.com’s search engine portal; you’ll find the “trends” graphing capability to be quite interesting.

Do you Know Why you Need Public Domain Fonts?

Bluntly, public domain (or open domain) fonts are fonts that you can use for commercial use. Public domain fonts are not the same thing as “free fonts.” Simply, “free fonts” mean that you don’t have to pay for the font; public domain fonts allow you to use the font for professional use. Just because you have a Mac or a Windows font library that comes with your software, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the ability to incorporate those fonts into a professional project. Repercussions of using non-public domain fonts can include lawsuits, which will hurt your bottom line. Additionally, any web designer will tell you that using the appropriate font is vital to excellent readability on the web; incorporating open domain fonts is just another layer to protect your work.
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Post-GenCon Sale! Tales of the Seven Dogs Society Fiction

Just wanted to share that we have some copies of Tales of the Seven Dogs Society leftover from GenCon: Indy that we will be selling for the publisher. The price retails for $12.95 and I will be more than happy to sign the book for you.

For more information about this collection of novellas, feel free to visit the Flames Rising post describing how to order Tales of the Seven Dogs Society. Also, be sure to read my novella design notes based on the game Aletheia.

These copies are pre-release editions offered well before the official release date in November.

Your Writer’s Manifesto, Ethics and Your Future

So from time to time every writer runs across something in our world where we have to make a decision that we know involves doing something “questionable,” to either further our work or our careers. These choices range from trashing another writer’s work to taking shortcuts that border on plagiarism. A lot of these shortcuts that we know are “cheap” may, on the surface, appear like the fastest shortcut to a great future.

Are they?
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How to Run a Booth at a Con

Back from four days in Indy, I thought I’d share with those of you who have never run a booth before some tips on how to manage your time effectively and reach out to new customers.

Bring Proper Documentation

First things first. Make sure–before you go–you have a centralized location for all the con paperwork. Next year we’ll be updating our stack to include email correspondence with the staff as well. We found out the hard way it’s not always a good idea to rely on in-house staffers to track communication–especially when there’s last minute changes.

Know Your Product

I can’t tell you how important it is to know what you’re selling. Sometimes it’s easy to come across like you don’t–especially when you’re nervous or encounter a difficult question. But if you can’t sum up what your project does, what it’s about, and what it costs? To your customer it’s going to look like you have no idea what you’re doing.
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