Well, Mahalo is still a bit young for this.

However, for an Internet Marketing position, you could focus on "community building" and the SERP's. These are common things for folks with traditional SE experience. People may not work for Google, but a key skill of an "Internet Marketer" is to play the SE game.

Mahalo is different, but it's not that different.

If I was applying for an Internet Marketing position, I might list Mahalo something like this:

During the past x number of months, I have been working in a freelance capacity on Mahalo.com. I have played a role in building the community by creating xxx number of targeted pages that carefully answer user submitted questions. Additionally, I have built xxx number of SERP's by hand using traditional SE tools and methods. These pages currently rank in the top xx% of all pages on Mahalo.com and I am continually optimizing them for increased exposure throughout the Internet.

That's pretty rough and completely off to the top of my head. However, you get the idea... I think that it's possible to list Mahalo on your resume for an Internet Marketing position however you'll want to focus on the tangible stuff around here like content creation and SERP statistics.

Depending on the exact position, you could even use Mahalo as way to differentiate yourself. Mahalo is growing and you could say that you're one of a handful of people in the world who knows how to use Mahalo effectively as a marketing platform. It would be possible to build pages for your (future) Internet Marketing customers, maintain those pages, answer and ask questions about those companies and use Mahalo as a part of a complete online marketing strategy.

Hi @demanda, Good Question. One I've been wondering about too. Clearly, many of us, particularly those with black belts have some time, talent and skills that they either have 'found' here at Mahalo or developed here.

I'd suggest placing your Mahalo experience somewhere on your resume, but not in your 'Professional Experience' category.

I included my Mahalo accomplishments on my resume in my Technical Skills section. You can highlight your researching and writing skills and mention content you have created this way, without needing to formalize the experience as a 'job'.

You especially have been such a contributing factor here, that I can't imagine you'd feel right going in to a job interview - certainly the one you are considering in internet marketing - without your Mahalo black belt on...somewhere...he, he.

Good luck!

I would advise you to not put it up as work experience, but as a hobby. That way, you can toss it in during a job interview, and explain what you did and how that will affect your effectiveness as internet marketer.

Mahalo is not work, except for staff of course, and few employers would take you serious if you try to pass Mahalo as work.

I think it depends on the job you are looking for and your other experience. If it's something creating content, you can definitely tie that in. Also, it would depend on what other experience you have, and your situation while doing Mahalo. For instance if, you were a student, or did this to earn a little extra money while holding another job, then sure. It is work (although fun!) and you do get paid (although, not much!). The most important thing is to put yourself in your potential employer's shoes and ask whether your experience here is something that would help sell you to the company. I'd lean towards yes; I don't think it could hurt given how well you've done here, and I'm sure the staff would even give you a great recommendation.

Many resumes are developed with a skills and accomplishment focus, rather than a chronological focus. This would be especially important for you, as you are considering a career change, and have a diverse background. By education you're a teacher (from what I can gather) and you're looking to enter internet marketing and sales.

1. The first thing to do is to determine what skills and talents the new position requires.
2. Then look at all the aspects of your education, training, and experience that meet these requirements, focusing on measurable achievements and accomplishments that support these goals. (For example, you can use Mahalo to support a statement such as "Researched search terms, wrote content, and developed a web page that generated X$ within Y days".

The key is to focus on what you've done that is relevant to the job, no matter where you've done it. It's less important that Mahalo is new and young and not widely known - unless you're applying to a start up, in which case your experience as a community member in a fledging company is incredibly valuable-- but again it's not just that you were here, but in what you accomplished-- (Ie Recognized by Mahalo, Inc. by being offered a freelance editorial position doing quality control after Y months of contributing as a user)

And check with @jeffhoard to see if he'd write you a recommendation, or be willing to serve as a reference.

Good luck!

demanda...

if i were going to apply for an internet marketing position and include Mahalo, i'd probably put it down as a hobby... unless you can demonstrate skill by what you have done. then it could go down under a portfolio section or some type of experience.

you can mention that you are trying to break into the internet marketing field and are testing different SEO methods using your pages on Mahalo. since google picks up Mahalo pages, it is a pretty easy way to test and see if something works.

if you have created most of your pages, then you can demonstrate your copy writing skills and usage of SEO within the page. if you need help with this, there are several people on mahalo that i am sure can give you some tips. =]

some of the pages you manage have received a lot of traffic in a short time. examine why that is and be prepared to talk about it. maybe you just caught a trend, but maybe something you did is duplicatable into your other pages.

there are a number of ways to spin it, and i would tailor it to the position you are going for. in any case it will probably be an entry level position, and your zeal will count for a lot.

keep in mind that they can check everything you do here, because it is pretty transparent. some potential employers check several social networking sites to see what kinds of things applicants talk about and whether there are any undesirable elements like racy photos. (not that you have that here... just saying they do things like this) look back through your questions and answers... how do you look to a potential employer? and maybe think about some new topics you can introduce that could help present whatever image you are wanting to project.

beyond all that, if you are truly wanting to do internet marketing, there is a ton of information out there on the subject, much of it free. i recommend you start now and expand your knowledge base. try to find recent information, though, because the rules change often. what works today may no longer work tomorrow.

and as always... whenever applying for any position. show your eagerness to work for THAT company. know in advance a couple of reasons why this is the position that you want and be honest about your experience. i would emphasize your eagerness to learn as well, and why you think that company would be a great place for you to further your education in this field.

be confident.

from what i've seen of you on here you should do fine... just be prepared. =]

I am sure that listing time spent in Mahalo will be a great pluspoint for your job. Because the way you socialize with people in Mahalo will be a great example to show which is a necessary qualification for internet marketing.

Also the number of pages you have created and the experience obtained by other thing will clearly assist you in selecting you for your job.

Getting a recommendation from @jasoncalacanis will also help you ;)

Good Luck on your Future Job ! :)

It really depends on how you treat it. As job experience? No. As an interesting hobby, with which you have sharpened your research and rhetorical skills? Yes, all the way.

I would emphasize the work as a freelancer in your spare time and detailing exactly what you contributed to Mahalo. Can't hurt.

I think whether or not it should go on a resume comes down to how committed the member has been to the community, how much time they have spent on the site and what their accomplishments have been. Demanda, you're definitely up there in accomplishment, but I don't know how much time you spend here and that might be the deciding factor.

That being said, I take my role in Mahalo very seriously and it is unarguably "work." I STRONGLY disagree with the answers above that state Mahalo isn't work. What have I been doing all this time for 10+ hours a day??? All employers will take your Mahalo work seriously. No exceptions. If they don't, run from them as fast as you can - you don't want to work there.

Definitely. It's work experience, esp. if you were getting paid for it.

Anything relevant, even volunteer experience, can be put on a resume if it shows off your skills.

I think you can write Mahalo in your resume, in the section called work experience. Just be sure to bring a portfolio of your work at Mahalo, when you go to the interview.In this way, they will have a better idea of what you have done at Mahalo.com.

The advice everyone is giving you could be all right, or all wrong. It depends. If you keep in mind that the only person who matters is the exact employer. That may be a supervisor, it may be a hiring committee with different specialities, it may be a personnel officer graduated from a career program, it may be potential co-workers, the organization may have tried and true tricks for new employees fitting in - they may have a band and if you play an instrument you are in, they may find previous employees dead from the neck up if they list nothing interesting in their spare time and skip them. So, regardless of how silly it seems to you, all the users of Mahalo, your friends, and people on the street. The person you need to impress at that moment in time, with the right thing and you may never know what that is, is the prospective employer.

As I see it you can go about it a few ways, you can see if you can find out more about the makeup of the hiring committee, ask questions of personnel, research the company a lot, even do casual walk ins and talk to staffers if you can by you or others, whatever works for you to get more info and you can still be wrong about it, or right. I applied for a job once, and found out later that what I said on the application was not important everyone was in competition, it was that one of my references took the time to personally call them unasked to put in a good word for me, and the fact that I visited the place in addition to giving in the resume in personnel, that I handed the person who would be the supervisor an extra copy of the application and met them that made the difference, in another setting that would be too pushy and it would be wrong, but something only has to work once does it not?

Or you can go another route, register at all kinds of agencies, recruiters, I have heard that teachers are well regarded by executive and professional recruiting firms, and then they have the inside info and tell you what to do as they want the job and do that work for you. I dont know if this is one such place, accidentally I saw it and thought of you. If it helps you can always tip me anytime :) Here is their Twitter http://twitter.com/SummerWorkation here is their web http://www.summerworkation.org/

Having been briefly in a position to scan resumes for positions, I can tell you, that the rules don't matter. If you want someone who can DO the job and BE a great colleague so you don't have to scoop up after them all the time and do their work for them, then you are looking for any evidence that they have the necessary transferable skills or abilities. I remember one position it was neck and neck with two candidates both excellent and experienced in different ways. The person who had listed creative writing in their hobbies and the names of some short stories they had written won hands down. Why? Both candidates were equally capable of doing the job, the staff decided they WANTED to be with someone daily who showed creativity, who was interesting and showed initiative even though the job did not require it, quite the opposite it was a dry boring technical job and by all proper rules that person had no business even admitting they wrote fantasies in their spare time and published them - and the hiring turned out to be excellent, the person was not a dull bore as all the others had been in the job and everyone was a lot happier with them than others in the past, so don't be afraid to show who you are because everyone else will be doing that too and you have to look different or better to win. If the supervisor is a creative type and knows they need a bean counter, your resume with statistics will win out, if the supervisor is a bean counter but wants a creative type because previous bean counters failed on the job because no one wanted to speak to let alone buy anything from bean counters on the job, then if you hide your creativity, you will not get the job, simple as that - there are no rules, the employer makes them and they change. I know that some people have had tremendous luck with professionally made for them resumes, they cant do the job, and never do it well, but they look great and that impresses someone enough to open the door and they never take their foot out of it so try anything that works regardless of whether it is taught in human resources training programs.

Unless you're a guide, I wouldn't. It might be seen as a negative (eg. spending too much time on the web).

If it's closely relevant, then why not. But if it doesn't contribute to the job that you seek, then chances are it will just be brushed off as irrelevant.