Pandemic Crisis How to Battle Unemployment

The global Covid-19 pandemic crisis which started this early 2020 is affecting a lot of people around the globe.  It affected the first world countries as well as the third world countries, regardless of race and status of life it dawned to anybody a surprise whether affected by the virus itself or been unemployed.  Most companies, big or small companies declared bankruptcy from the recent months.

Face mask for personal use

Face mask available at Simplyoj Redbubble Store 

                          

Due to this crisis, unemployment rate increased.  Are you one of these people who got unemployed?  Hope may seem uncertain but a positive outlook in life can be done to battle the unemployment.  Here are things that you can do to move forward during this pandemic:

• Health is wealth.  This pandemic has given us a lesson to go back to basics.  Previously people tend to abuse self by working so hard neglecting health.  In order to move on, the physical health should be a top priority.

• Evaluate skills and self. If you want to get a new job, evaluate and list down the skills and interests that you have.  Your previous experience should not limit you for getting other opportunities beyond your working experience.  

• Improve skills and knowledge.  Getting unemployed is a challenge to improve skills and knowledge to be enable to be more marketable and be able to get a new job.  The Internet is a venue for learning and being in lockdown in the house means you have more time to learn.  Learn the latest trends in career development and the application tools might the prospective employer may require including the conferencing tools such as Zoom, Webex, Google Meet and similar tools.

• Update your resume or online profile.  Be creative and use current online tools to improve your data.  

• Freelancing and other online work opportunities. Remote online jobs increased after the pandemic, more and more companies are giving opportunities to work at home jobs to augment the unemployement and fill their vacancies.

These are basic tips that you can follow and the success will always depend on how you want the new job and do what you have it takes to get it.  

Giving Christmas Corporate Giveaways to Customers

One of the busiest months for businesses is the Christmas Season where the demand for supplies and services related to the Christmas celebration is increasing. Aside from the Sales activities, Marketing to customers is also important. This is the time where companies distribute corporate giveaways to customers as a way of gratitude for loyalty and continued business relationship.

The type of corporate giveaways depends on the budget of the company and the number of customers on the list. As early as September, it is advisable to start planning and canvassing for corporate giveaways. Common giveaways are fruit baskets, wine, calendar, office supplies with company logo, apparel, bags, and more.

For a limited budget, sending a simple free e-card or email campaigns to all customers will be a good idea to thank them and also one way of informing them of any promotional programs this Christmas.

Corporate Giveaways for Christmas

Giving corporate giveaways every Christmas is a marketing activity of companies to give appreciation to its customers for being loyal to them throughout the year and as a promotional tool by including the logo or contact details. Some also includes their website URL link.

Common corporate giveaways are calendars, bags, shirts, gadgets, office supplies, and more. If you are the person in-charge in purchasing, here are some tips on how to go about it successfully:

1. Work within the budget.
2. Be ready with your list of recipients so you can compute for the over-all cost
3. Canvass atleast 3 suppliers and get the best deal without sacrificing the quality of your giveaways.
4. Be aware of your timetable, it is recommended that you deliver them first of week of December.
5. Make sure that it is properly packaged before delivery.

Business Peak Season during Christmas Season

When the month of September starts it means Christmas Season is coming.  Companies starts planning and thinking of their shopping list as early of this month for Christmas giveaways.  Some actually advance their shopping schedules to avoid the rush and be able to get more early bird discounts. 

Business is booming during Christmas Season due since lots of festivities and activities are being held during the season. There is high demand in various gift items such as gadgets, men and women’s accessories, bags, travel accessories, wine, toiletries gift packs, business related gift items, and many more. Companies also allot budget for their corporate giveaways in volume orders.

Hotels and vacation spots are also fully booked for family travel plans and business related trips. Unlike with other months, December is the busiest month. Retail and wholesale stores makes sure that their stocks are the best in season and their warehouse are full. Store hours are extended and the manpower are full alert to service the demand of the season. 

How to Choose the Right Christmas Gifts

December is the busiest month for those who are celebrating the Christmas season. Shopping for Christmas gifts is one of the busiest activity for people. Christmas gifts for family, friends, office colleagues, and business associates.

Gifts to your children
Either you have a son or daughter, choosing the right gift for them should be carefully thought of. They are the ones who are dear to us and we do not want to fail them with our gift. For kids, toys or clothings are the usual gifts while for teens includes the latest gadgets.

Gifts to a friend
Friendship is one of the greatest gift that we can enjoy and cherish. They are friends that is why we know them well, we know their interest. It is much easier to think gifts for them.

Gifts to an officemate and business associates
Since we do not have much emotional attachment to work colleagues, general items will do. Wine, planner, and business related items are the most common ones.

How do you Manage Complaints in your Business?

Customer is always right? Right in a way and wrong in someway. Customer complaints are common especially if you are in a customer oriented business. How do you manage complaints in your business?

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When we dine out sometimes, we find ourselves in a situation when we complain to a manager. What if you are working on sales, frontman in customer service, or owns the business. How do you handle complain?

It is understandable that customers do get angry when they are complaining, and some remains compose and complain in low tone voice. 

• Listen to customer complaint first.
• Let the customer talk and air what she/he is complaining about. 
• Apologize about the convenience that this situation has brought her/him, explain properly the side of the company or any policies related to her complain. 

But sometimes customers are not always right, they insist and beyond reason. Inspite of that, always offer a win-win solution and try to meet half-way if necessary. If the customer is way beyond your policy and always exudes wrong behavior, it is time to let go and focus on increasing customers instead.

Working with an Organized Desk

Working in a fast-paced environment requires a lot of organization and it also means organizing your working space. Your desk speaks a lot of how you work and how you deal with everyday challenges.

In a corporate office environment, there are various documents that are lined up for action but not necessarily urgent. 

Designate proper places for every document, label them according to its priorities. Urgent matters must be placed where you can easily see them for immediate action. 

Keep your area clean and return things to their proper places at least at the end of the day.

Lastly, take time to declutter your desk periodically so you can avoid unnecessary documents to save space and work more conveniently.

Dealing with Online Clients

Online freelancing takes a lot of skills not only with the skills required for the project but also dealing with clients as well. Here are some tips for online freelancers or virtual assistants:

One pre-requisite for freelance workers is to be able to communicate well in English as a standard medium of communication. 

Communicate often with your client, they need and like to be updated always.

Be objective with your replies and straightforward. Make sure that your answers really answers their question.

Be truthful with your words and make sure you complete the project satisfactorily.

Know where the limitations of your tasks as per your agreed scope of the project. There are clients that are abusive which go beyond the contract and still pays at low rate.

Be careful in dealing online where there are scam clients that pretends to be legitimate.

Improve your Computer and Productivity Skills

To be marketable at all times, improving your computer skills and other productivity skills are important.  The career industry is highly competitive especially with Covid19 pandemic, more people are unemployed.

Image by Stanley Dai on Unsplash

One of the important skills nowadays is computer skills, either you are hired by a company or you take freelancing jobs online.  Having a 45wpm and above speed rate are required to get data entry jobs.  

The more software programs you know the better.  You will be able to get more job offers.  Be ready to create your own portfolio especially if your skills are into graphics, audio, and video production. With the emergence of mobile and desktop applications to improve productivity, Entrepreneurs are looking for individuals who are knowledgeable on these applications to help manage their business.

Evaluate yourself and improve whatever your talents and skills for better productivity and employment.

Updated May 9, 2021

Writing Ideas for Freelance Writers

There are many articles written about “writer’s block”. If you are trying to start a writing career, you need various topics to begin with. Here are some ideas to write about:

1. Start with standard topics that you are comfortable to write with depending on your knowledge and skills.

2. Creative Writing. If you are not ready for articles that requires 300 words or more, you can also start with creative writing such as poems. This is easier to write than full length articles.
3. Seasonal topics are excellent topics such as Christmas, All Saints Day, Mother’s Day, and more.

4. Write more about topics that relates to you. If you are a parent, write about the challenges of being a mother of father, raising kids, cooking, and more.

5. Write about topics that interest you such as things that you love to do. Hobbies such as photography, cooking, gardening.

Writing is fun and it is a double bonus if you are earning from it.

Office Bullying?

In a corporate environment, competition among employees are common. There are different types of people working in one place of environment where attitude clashes and there is a need to deal with even with the hard or nasty people. What if these people are superior in position, or in another department where you need to deal with those people even if you do not want.

Most of the victims of office bullying are young new hires who do not know yet how to defend themselves from intimidating a much older and senior co-workers. Other victims are women who are being bullied by men, nasty bosses who maltreated subordinates.

Do not be a victim of office bullying, be always assertive and deal with them objectively. If they go the boundaries, let the Human Resources Department that you are being bullied, just be ready that you can prove it because they can easily turn the table for you.

Using Viber in your Business

The Internet had become a big help in businesses. If you have shifted from traditional to online marketing, you will have a global market at your hand. Viber became popular not only for personal users but for businesses as well. Using Viber will help business cut cost on their operational communication cost. Since customers will be globally, aside from email, chat, traditional calls is still necessary when doing transaction. Photos and videos can also be sent. 

As the technology develops, communication is getting cheaper which helps businesses on their operations.

Tips When Buying a Used Car

Buying a used car is an option for buyers with a limited budget. For some, there will be other reasons, but mostly it is because of the high cost of brand new cars they tend to have the option for used cars. There is always a risk, here are some tips to consider before considering a used car:

Decide on your budget, you will be able to choose from hundreds of options but you can narrow it down by knowing the ceiling of your choices. This is much easier to start with than browsing too many used cards but not on the range of your budget. Now you know the price range, decide on what type of car you want. The brand and type of body, color, and more. When you visit a car dealer, they can better assist you and suggest you according to your preference.

Choose the dealer carefully, a referred one is best rather than dealing with a total unknown dealer. If you are not a car expert, bring a professional mechanic when canvassing so you will be guided in checking the condition of the car. Canvas at least from three to four shops for comparative analysis.

What Happened to Redgage?

Earning money online sounds good right? But for those who experience delay of payment it is really frustrating.  After the hard work and waiting it will be wasted if you are expecting the payment.

Redgage is a social media website where you can post links, blog, photos, and videos.  Most of the shared posts are links and photos.  I have seen great photographers and  interesting profiles at Redgage.  I like the community and it is where we can create backlinks to  articles.

But some Redgage members including me  were not able to payout until today. They have upgraded the site and transferred the old profiles to the new one.  But since then the payment has not been good.  It is good if you  are just posting because of  article promotion, but it still depends on the site you are promoting if they accept traffic from Redgage.

What happened to Redgage? 

Online Marketing to Increase Sales

Increasing the sales of the company is always the main goal of a business.  To achieve goals, promoting and other marketing strategies are needed to reach its target market and turn into potential customers. 

Build a good website that clearly showcases your products and services.  A good and professionally designed website is a good platform to generate sales enquiries that convert to sales.  High quality photos of your products are also an important aspect.


Online marketing is a major factor in increasing your business sales.  Aside from the traditional marketing, the use of social media helped a lot in promoting things such as online advertising, email marketing, e-newsletter, use of video ads, creating a business blog, and creating online profiles from various social media sites.

Are you Honest with your Work or Company?

Do you browse the Internet for personal use like checking your Facebook during office hours?

Have you taken  office supplies to your house  even for just a few folders, a ballpen, pencil, or folder fasteners for your personal use or for your child’s school supplies?

Have you saved company confidential data for personal gain or use?

Did you steal the company’s products even for a small quantity?

It is not enough that an employee is efficient and skillful, work attitude and moral values are very important.

Time Management: Getting Busy or being Idle

Time management is an important factor on being successful.  Time is gold for those who have handful of activities where 24 hours are sometimes not enough. You cannot even find time to sleep because there are things to do. But for those who are lazy and bored, idleness is a way of life. 

Days are counting but you are still unproductive.  Getting busy or to be  idle is a choice you have to make on a daily basis. It is a choice if you are going to be lazy or do productive activities. If you choose to be idle, it means you just hang around the house or your room, watching television being a couch potato, staying on the internet just browsing without having an agenda of researching or working online.

If you choose to get busy, you have a plan for your daily activities and  motivated to accomplish what you have planned. Sometimes things did not happen the way you planned, but you can adjust and be flexible.

During these Covid-19 pandemic days, time is slow while you stay at home.  This is a great opportunity to use time wisely for family, home improvements, self discovery, enhance skills and knowledge.  Sharing for unfortunate people during this pandemic is also needed either giving our time doing DIY faceshield, cooking meals for others, and other ways to help.

Time management means you value your time and also respect other's time.

Updated August 21,2020

Alternative Way to Manage your Online Files

How do you manage your online files if you have a lot of articles already? Having a back-up for our online files is a must for writers who still want to make use of their articles in the future and archive it effectively.

Do you use the browser bookmark for your online articles and other reference URL links?  If you have joined one site you would probably have fifty, hundreds, or a thousand articles.  If you have several websites you will have a lot of online files.  For the word files, it is better to be well organized so that you can easily refer to them if you need them for your future online activities.

One way to manage your online files or published works is to consolidate one word file for each site and have an MS Excel to organize the links.  It is easier to have one file for easier reference and for the links relying on browser bookmark tools which can be deleted if your operating system crashes.

Things You Can Do While Unemployed Vlog in YouTube

Losing a job or being unemployed is not an easy matter especially if you have a family to support. This can be a challenging part of one’s career but if you are on this situation, cheer up because there are still other opportunities waiting as long as you are already doing something to get a new one.  With the Covid19 pandemic in 2020, more online jobs are available for people who are unemployed from traditional jobs.  

Here are things you can do while you are still unemployed in random order:

Vlogger Laptop Skin by Simplyojvirtualdesk

1. Find opportunities online.  There a lot of online jobs or activities one of them is creating a YouTube channel or "Vlog".  More people are interested to go online, a college degree is not necessary when you upload videos and talk in front of the camera.  Be sure that your video content is worth watching to build subscribers.

2. Practice your Skills.  While waiting for employers response, practice your skills and develop more skills to be able to be more employable.

3. Get any other job and find ways to have an income while not being employed in a company.  

4. Take time to bond with the family while you are not yet busy with work. This is being neglected at times if you are working full time.

Updated May 4, 2021

How to Start your Own Business

When you are tired of being employed and would like to pursue a long time dream of having a business of your own. An interest for a business usually comes from a personal hobby or expanding from a family business. If you are the one who is planning a new business, you may want to consider the following:

1. Are you in the right business? Does your business really the one that you like to have. Primarily, you must love the field of your business since there will be ups and down that you have to deal with along the way.

2. Do you have enough knowledge and expertise to do the business?

3. Do you have enough capital to fund the business?