To gain a great control over other people, one has to have a great control over himself, his willpower must be exercised and tested each and every waking hour... or you can cheat it.
Who wants to control others without much effort, should build an image of mage (or a witch). Suggestible people who have expectations of you having certain powers will succumb to these powers even if they are not present. The point is that the subject's inner belief does the trick for you. If such a person thinks he is cursed and some problem arrives (like bus being late or having a bad hair day), the curse becomes his personal "truth".
Advantages
I believe we all have experieced at least few occassions when we wanted to help someone, ease their pain, heal their wounds, help them to find a better job... being perceived as a experienced adept of Magick can certainly help us with those cases, all we have to do in such case is to affirm our client that we are going to help him + we should do some minimal effort from our side. This way you can eg heal massive headache with few affirming words and a minimum expense of energy.
Double-edged sword
This goes both ways, expectations and beliefs of our patient can ease our work, but they can also render our work nearly impossible. Trying to heal a hardcore skeptic is like trying to win a swordfight with a lemon, in other words you will have to spend a massive amount of energy as compared to opened and suggestible people.
