These guidelines may help you.

Take help of a medium

When you are new on Internet and don’t know which recruiter is trustworthy approach recruiters through websites. Many freelance websites take responsibility and ask employees to file a complaint against recruiter when cheated or abused. When approached with the right set of proofs they also ban the recruiter from its website. Find such websites and look for work over there. Make sure you communicate only through the website and you have all communication history stored over there. Once you work with a client and think he is good enough you can work with him in future, while communicating directly.

Read testimonials or search by recruiter’s name

When you are working with a client for the first time, make sure you get the maximum information about him or her. Don’t fall for a new client easily, choose an experienced recruiter. Read all testimonials or reviews about the recruiter on the website. See what past employees had to say about the recruiter – how many thumbs up and how many down are there. It may be an eye opener for you. If there’s no testimonial or if you have some doubt and wish to know further search his name on search engines and find out more about him or her.

Ask for required detail

If you can’t become too personal with the recruiter for work sake you can definitely ask for some personal detail like – full name, contact number, city, mail address, communication mode etc.

Make things clear

Never take things for granted. Whatever terms were discussed make sure you have a proof either on Internet history or you both sign a mutually agreed upon contract paper. Discuss about nature of work, specific requirements, deadline, mode of communication for clarifications, mode and terms of payment etc in advance.

Ask for some advance payment

Don’t feel shy to ask for some advance money before you start working together. It will keep both of you feel assured, happy and motivated. You may take 25% of the total work in advance, 25% after submission of first draft and the rest of 50% after final submission of work.

Now, finding a trustworthy recruiter won’t be difficult anymore.

I will not tell you that you will get gazillions of benefits should you occasionally talk to your clients, but I can surely tell you about some benefits — that you will care about — of talking to a client on phone.

Benefits of doing business on phone

1. The fastest mode of communication: You may think chatting, texting, and e-mailing are the fastest modes of communication, but they are not. They are not real-time, in a sense that telephonic conversation is. You can ask questions and seek answers to them in real time. The movement of communication thread in telephonic conversation is very swift.
2. No ambiguity: It also reduces ambiguity. Unlike text, which could be interpreted in many ways depending upon the reader, spoken words tend to be clearer, as it gives away the intention of the speaker.
3. Get response without delay: In a typical e-mail or chat communication, you send a message, your client reads it, he takes his time, type a response, and send it, and then you get to read it. And if you need further clarification, you start the process all over again. This is time consuming. Contrastingly, question and answer is live on the phone. There is no time-lag between question asked and answer given.
4. You get to know your client: Knowing the nature of your client is very, very important. On e-mail, you get limited knowledge of your client. Of what kind of person he is, what he likes, what he hates, what he is fanatic about, and what he expects of you. This knowledge is a gold-mine. It will help you customize your offering.

There are many more benefits, but these are the ones that will help you increase your business. Do you still think you should not call your client?

Key findings

Positive Indicators

• 45% hope to reap rewards (profit) from social media spending in next 12 months
• 57% have built online network using LinkedIn or similar websites.
• 61% uses social media to identify and attract new customers.
• 75% small businesses surveyed had a company profile page on any social networking sites.

Things that make them scowl

• 6% of survey participants said that use of social media has hurt them
• 17% of them said using social media left the companies vulnerable to consumers’ criticism.
• 50% thinks it takes more time than expected.

These findings (See image for complete detail) indicate that to be successful in the new socially-connected economy, the company has to be caring. “Meet deadline and bottom line” oriented company will have a hard time persuading its customers. The concerns that small business owners that participated in the survey talked about had more to do with their business and its operation and less to do with the nature of social media. They will grow and get accepted, if only they accept this fact and make required changes in their businesses.

So first things first, figure out where you want your IT business to focus.  By assessing your career goals and educational background, you can get a good feel for what you can accomplish in the industry.  Come up with a unique service that you can provide.  Something people would need, or something people didn’t even realize that they need.  Either way you can give yourself a good selling point to customers or clients.  Having a solid selling point is the basis of every business, as it’s hard to turn a profit if you don’t have any money flowing.

From there you want to make sure you have solid credentials within the field.  That means having an iron clad work history and academic accomplishments that would make someone what to look to you for a service.  If you find yourself lacking in either category, starting your own IT business probably isn’t for you.  When it comes to work history, you cannot be thought of too highly.  The more renown you can garner through your professional career, the better it will serve you in your own business venture.

From there you’ll have to apply for a business license.  You’ll have to look up the legal requirements in your area, and from there take the appropriate actions.  Usually you’ll have to fill out some forms regarding the nature of your business, as well as tax info.  In some cases you may even have to pay a fee.

Now you’ll have to set up an office, with your own equipment.   This is where you use your experience and education to take as little money as possible and turn it into a well functioning office.  Any money you spend is negative profit, so you want to be creative in how your money is spent.  Don’t allow quality to suffer to save yourself money, but use good judgment when it comes to spending your business money out of pocket.

Finally, you have to hire employees and determine the fees for your services.  This is also where your experience will come in handy.  To get the best employees you’ll have to offer salaries that are competitive with other companies in the IT field.  To find the best customers and clients, you’ll have to be competitive in those fees as well.  Use your experience to make informed decisions.  Then make sure you work hard to keep all those customers and clients coming back.

Learn… in30 minutes

A headline like this will give the reader a definite time frame in which he or she can acquire the skill or knowledge talked about in the article in question.

Example:

1. Learn to Disinfect Your PC in 30 Minutes.
2. Learn Piano in 30-Minute a Day.
3. Learn HTML in 10 Days.
4. Learn Photoshop in 30 Days. (Photoshop in 30 Days).
5. CSS in 10 Easy Steps.

Tried and tested headlines

A “tried and tested” headline infuses credibility in the article. A headline like this suggests that the article following the headline will provide the solution which has been tried by many people and they got benefitted from it. This is a type of testimonial headlines. (Read more on Testimonial Headline)

Example:

1. Tried and Tested Formula for MLM Success.
2. Tried and Tested Method to Make Your Abs Flat.

50 best…tips

“50 best…tips, or 10…tips” or any similar headline gives a definitive idea about the length and nature of the article following such headlines. The article following this kind of headline should be written in a list-format. You can also use subheadings (Tip 1, or X tip 1) to write the article.

Example:

1. 50 Best SEO Tips.
2. 10 Media Marketing Tips for Success.
3. 10 CSS Tips.

As the definition suggest, positioning can only be done in reference to other brands present in the market. If there is no other brand in the market you are serving, you do not need to position your brand. If you are the only player in the market then the entire market is yours, but as soon as the second player enters the market, you need to convey your buyer about the benefits, the brand attributes, brand  personality, brand standing in the market, and the value your brand deliver. You needed to differentiate your brand because you do not want to confuse your customer. If you fail to differentiate, your customers will not buy from you. You need to give your customers the reason to buy as no one likes to do business with a me-too company.

There are many ways to position a brand in the market, and which strategy you will choose depends not only on the nature of the brand but it also depends upon the nature of the competitors as well as the available slot in the mind of the consumer.

The concept of positioning is as applicable for the online products as it is for a product sold in your local supermarket. Both are vying for the customer’s attention, which is getting scarcer. In the today’s world of hyper-competition, just positioning your brand on any attribute will not fetch much result. To get a substantial result, you need to power-position your brand. You need to explore and express the connect between your brand and the customer’s mindset. This can only be done if you are aware of the customer’s changing need. While saying so, I assumed you already have a thorough understanding of your brand. If this is not true then your work should begin with understanding your brand, and finding the community that is more likely to swear by it. If you have a really good product then finding this key will not be difficult, but if you are just another brand in the category, I will suggest changing the business or building a key differentiation in your brand.

Consumers are hyper-active these days. If social bookmarking and social networking have made it easier for you to reach your customer then these services also minimized the distance between two customers. You should keep this in mind, while attempting any trick on your customers. It could mark the end for your brand.

There is a certain structure you need to follow in order to build a strong argument that in turn will win over the recipient. Before discussing the structure of a persuasive letter, let’s first talk about the research objective. The following list will tell you what all you need to know before you can begin writing a persuasive letter.

• Define the target audience
• Purpose of writing a persuasive letter.
• Make a list of information you want to include in the letter
• Make a list of supportive arguments. The arguments will show the reader what is in there for him.
• Make a list of possible objections, or mental block that might be pushing the reader to decide against your proposal.
• Is there something peculiar about the problem you are going to address? Make a list of it.

Anatomy of a persuasive letter

Introduction: Introduce your product, services and request in this first paragraph. Outline the important changes in this new version.

Outline the benefits: The introduction paragraph should be followed by the paragraph that will talk about the benefit of the product, services and request you are making. In this paragraph write statements that will build case for you.

Call for action: Once the recipient knows about the benefit he will have by accepting your proposal, you need to tell him what you want from him, and what action he should take to help you.

Thanks: Thank your reader for the time he has devoted in reading the letter. Also include a conclusion in this final paragraph. The conclusion should be as forward thinking as it can be.