Five Ways To Monetize Your Potential Online Nabbesh founder and CEO Loulou Khazen Baz gives tips on what you can do to stand out and make the best impression online.

With the increasingly active online marketplace at work for entrepreneurs across the Middle East, it's important to play up your key strengths and added-value. You can significantly market your skills online, but you need to make sure that you're doing things right. The basics just aren't enough to make the best impression anymore, and I've got some tips for you that will help you stand out… and yes, even make more of that well-deserved income!

1. Find your sentence

The story goes that Clare Booth Luce, a former American journalist and one of the first women to serve in America's Congress, visited President John F. Kennedy and told him she had concerns he was trying to do too much. In the end, she told him, "A great man is a sentence." She meant that the story of a successful person should be summed up into one sentence. If you can focus on what you can bring to the world and convey this message concisely in a sentence, others will be able to buy into your slogan too. The money will soon follow.

2. You are your own brand

Market yourself as though you are marketing a unique, wildly successful company, because you are: Brand you! If you're not telling your story (or at least directing it), someone else may… or may not. In today's world, where everyone is just a Google click away -good or bad- you cannot afford not to get the story out there that provides the narrative, imagery, and branding that makes you special. This is especially true if you're looking to make money either by setting up your own business, searching for a new job or looking to establish your freelance presence.

3. Solve a problem, don't just sell yourself

Ultimately real success is about making your mark on this world by doing something you are passionate about and hopefully helps people in the process. Focus on solving a problem, whether you're solving an entrepreneur's need for marketing or social media, solving world hunger (okay, maybe that's a stretch), helping combat unemployment, creating beauty in the world around you, or doing web development for a startup. Whatever you bring to the table should solve a problem. When it does, there are almost no limits to monetizing on your potential!

4. Throw away your resume and get visual

The average recruiter spends six seconds looking at a candidate's resume before they decide the person's fit for a job, while over 1.1 billion people spend at least 17 minutes on Facebook every day. That should tell us something: The power of connecting and the power of images matters today perhaps more than ever before. You don't have much time to make a great first impression with a CV, but a visual portfolio with images, pictures, and samples of your work is much more attractive and inviting for today's viewers. Put your best face forward, whether that means hiring a freelance photographer to take professional pictures or hiring a graphic designer to make your brand, logo, or presentations standout. Let your visual profile, website and samples of your work, presentations, and material speak for you.

5. Focus on your definition of success and the money will follow

Only you can determine what success means for you. I've met plenty of people with great jobs that make a lot of money, but aren't happy. I've also seen successful corporate professionals leave their well-paying jobs to follow their passions (making a bit less money), but go on to make better and happier lives. Some even make much more money following their passions, but had to stop and take that initial risk first. For each person, success will not look the same, so ultimately to monetize your potential, you should focus on your potential, and from there you can monetize the best life for you!