How To Pay Down Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt can overtake your finances if you're not careful. High interest rates result in higher finance charges, which increase your credit card balances. High balances combine with those high interest rates, and force you to pay only the minimum payments, just to keep up. Take charge of your financial situation, by paying down your credit card debts, before you end up over your head!

Pay Down Credit Card Debt with Balanced Payments.

Are you spending more on credit card payments than you are on other bills? If so, maybe it's time for you to take a look at how to pay down credit card debt.

Stop Spending to Reduce Credit Card Debt

If you have out-of-control credit card balances, it's time to stop using your credit cards. Each time you charge something, you're increasing your balances, and getting deeper and deeper in debt.

Make a Budget to Lower Your Debt Burden

With a comprehensive budget, you can plan to ensure that you spend only the money you have. If you have extra cash left over after paying your bills, use it to pay down your credit cards debts.

Pay More Than The Minimum to Get Out of Credit Card Debt

If you only make the minimum payments on your credit cards, you will never get out of debt. Pay down the debt as much as possible, as often as possible. Concentrate on credit cards with the most finance charges, and you will pay down the debt faster.

Knowing how to pay down credit card debt is only half the battle. Avoiding the spending habits that resulted in your high credit card balances, sticking to your budget, and using excess cash to pay down the debt, are all tough, but necessary in order to end up debt-free.

Avoid Burnout when Working from Home

Working at home may seem like a position that is immune to burnout, but if you aren't careful, you may end up spending a whole lot of time doing nothing. When you're burned out, it's hard to concentrate. When you're unable to concentrate, you don't get as much work done. In addition, the work you do get done is of poorer quality. In order to prevent burnout and overload, make sure you separate your work time from the rest of the day, and set a schedule to follow.

9-5?

When you work a regular 9-5 job, it is easy to tell when it's time for work and when it's time to relax. When you work from home, however, there tends to be an overlap. While this can inject more relaxation into your workday, as you lounge in your recliner with your laptop, you may also find that it brings work into areas that should be reserved for family or relaxation time.

Although it may seem difficult, try to set work hours for yourself. At the least, set aside times during the day when you are forbidden to do any work. It may seem like a golden opportunity to finish up that last article of the day, but the dinner table is no place for a laptop. If you don't set aside relaxation and rest times for yourself, you may find yourself working from morning until night, but still not getting much done.

Create A Space

If you can, designate an area of your home as your work area. A home office, or even a corner of the kitchen table with a cup of pencils, and your laptop, can make you feel more productive.

Setting Goals

Set goals for the day- and quit once you meet your goals. Don't set your goals too high- make them realistic and achievable. Know how much time you will have available during the day, and how much you should be able to accomplish, and plan accordingly.

Pat Yourself On The Back

Reward yourself when you are consistently meeting your goals. Take breaks, enjoy a nice cup of coffee, and maybe even watch some tv. Get a good night's sleep, and don't forget to take a day off at least once a week!

Residual Pay vs. Up-Front Pay

When an online writer starts out, they must find a balance between paying the bills now, and planning for the future. Writing for private clients, or content providers like Demand Studios, or Textbrokers, provides cash NOW. Writing search engine optimized articles, with well-researched keywords, for residual sites like Suite101 or eHow, provides revenue for the future.

Starting Out

When you first start out, start with a budget. Figure out exactly how much money you have to make in order to meet your goals every month, and write as much for your up-front clients as you have to in order to meet those goals. With the time you have left, research and write your residual articles. As your residual income grows, you will find that you can lower the number of up-front articles you have to write, to meet your goals.

Making Progress

When you reduce the number of up-front articles you are writing, use the additional time to write more residual income articles. The more articles you have up, the more residual income you will make. If you continue with this cycle long enough, you will make enough money on your residual income articles to reduce your up-front writing to a minimal amount.

Words of Warning

Stick to your budget. If you spend more money just because your income has gone up, you will never catch up financially. Keep your spending the same, and you will be able to work less with the residual income from your writing.

Can you get Cash for Clunkers Money for your car?

The government's new Car Allowance Rebate System, CARS, is also known as the slightly less attractive "Cash for Clunkers" program. Dealerships that have registered with the government will offer you a cash rebate of thousands of dollars for your vehicle, when you trade it in for a newer, more efficient, vehicle. Despite the name, the trade-in vehicle does not have to be a clunker to get the CARS allowance. The restrictions on the CARS program are actually pretty simple. The "clunker" can't be more than 25 years old, it has to get less than 18 MPG, it has to actually run, and belong to the same person for one year before being used for the program. Certain types of trucks must be much newer, produced in 2001 or later.

The money you can receive as part of your trade-in deal through the CARS program can be as much as $4500.00, and can be applied to a lease or a purchase. Sounds like a good deal, bearing in mind that the ink on the sticker prices is probably still wet. (Since a smart dealership would have just finished marking all of their prices up about $4500.00 in time for the roll-out of the CARS program)

Demand Studios Algorithm Can't Replace Real SEO

Have you ever checked up on the keywords in the titles of your Demand Studios articles? I recently started using the research I'm doing for Demand Studios Articles to write my own articles on the same subject. Since Demand Studios owns the titles, however, I needed to do some keyword research for new titles, etc. I have noticed that the titles of their articles are NOT well optimized, at all. So, for the same amount of research, I can write one $15.00 article for Demand Studios, and one article for myself to post on Suite101 that's 7$ to 9$ CPC! You see- they are good at picking TOPICS, but not good at picking keywords.

Revenue Duel: Suite101 vs eHow

Writing for a revenue share site has it's perks. While the instant gratification of an up-front payment isn't there, you do get to feel the 'zing' of 'Hey, someone read my article' over and over and over... The money may not be as good immediately, but it does keep on coming, which is nice down the road. Many people write for eHow, and for good reason. It's quick, easy, and is not selective at all. Suite101, on the other hand, is a little picky about who they allow to write for them, and is a more complex and more demanding site than eHow. But OOOohhh, is it worth it.

eHow
Anyone can open an eHow account and throw up any old thing. eHow is a great place to learn how to write online, try out search engine optimization techniques, and just learn about the whole online articles for profit scene in general. Many people make a lot of money on eHow, but I'm not one of them. I have 50 articles up on eHow, and I currently make about a dollar a day. Not bad, considering the fact that most of those articles took me all of 15 minutes to write, and I'll never have to touch them again.. Or so I thought, until I started writing for Suite101...

Suite101, or as I'm beginning to think of them: SWEET101

I have put 5 articles up there this week. (and many more on their way, I assure you) Every one of them is already indexed by Google, and is in the top couple slots in search results! Hmm.. I have June eHow articles that still don't show up in a search, but my Suite101 articles are pretty much instantaneous! And then there's the earnings. I'm not going to release the exact amount, but let's just say that if I had 50 articles up at Suite, I would be able to write a lot more for myself, and a lot less for Demanding Studios. (I'm just full of nicknames today!) The only bad news is that a Suite101 article requires more work, and more effort, than an eHow. On the other hand, I think that I'll be able to put the research I do for DS topics to good use, writing companion articles for every DS article I write. (Same topic, different title, different angle) Also, I really enjoy writing a good article, without having to squeeze into the structure of DS. I may be in the minority, but I actually feel like the DS standards lower the quality of an article, in many cases. (and I know that the CE's often lower the quality of an article) But I digress... lol..

The moral of this post is this - write for revenue share sites that make you comfortable, but don't forget to shop around!

Demand Studios Writing (re-writing) Tips

Style guides, CE's, and conflicting guidance can all create problems when you are trying to write copy for Demand Studios. One of the most disturbing events is the inevitable ridiculous rewrite request. If your beautifully crafted article on the architecture of Rome has been sent back for a rewrite because you didn't include the best place to get pizza in Italy, or your article about ideas for a baby's birthday party has been sent back because you didn't include ALL of the different types of birthday parties a baby could have, what do you do? Try to do what the CE has asked for? Delete the article? Send an appeal?

Try to Accomodate the CE

This is a dangerous approach, in my opinion. If a CE is unreasonable enough to send a ridiculous rewrite, they are also unreasonable enough to reject your attempt to fix it.

Delete the article and take it elsewhere

This approach makes sense, if you have a place to put it that doesn't require any tweaking, changing, etc. AND if you make sure to change the title, since that title is Demand Studios property.

Appeal

The appeal is my favorite method. After all, it's a perfectly good article, and all the time I spent writing it shouldn't be wasted because a CE is still getting 'broken in'. So, what's the secret to getting an appeal approved? A little give and take. Find at least one thing in the CE's request that makes sense. Make that change. Send off an email as per the DS rewrite appeal process, and briefly explain that rewrite request doesn't conform to the style guide for whatever reason, but that you have made changes in an attempt to address the CE's concerns. Request a review of the current article, to ensure that the article is within DS standards before you send it back to the CE.

The reasons this works are as follows: Even if the CE's requests are unreasonable, the editorial staff will probably find some way to agree with them in some little way just so they don't seem to be taking sides. You'll end up changing something anyway, so why not pick the change yourself? Plus, if you are proactive in making the changes, it doesn't look like you're just being stubborn and complaining. Finally, and this is the key point, it makes things easy for the editorial staff. All they have to do is read your article, and say 'yes, that's fine' instead of trying to do the CE's job. I'm not guaranteeing this 100%, all I know is that it's worked for me, and has cut down the time I spend on rewrites by 80%.

Make Money by Writing Online

So you want to Make Money by Writing Online?

Making money by writing online from home sounds like a great idea to most people. After all, writing is easy work, right? It's not like you'll be doing any manual labor, or even normal office work. Many people seem to think that anyone can make money by writing online. If you look at the majority of articles on eHow, it's easy to see where they get that impression. It is, however, important to consider that not everyone can really make money by writing online.

In order to succeed as an online writer, you should be able to answer in the affirmative to the following questions:

1. Do you have an excellent command of the English language, including punctuation, spelling, and grammar?
2. Do you understand the rudiments of search engine optimization? (If not, are you willing to take the time to learn?)
3. Do you have the time to invest in building up multiple streams of income?
4. Are you willing to take your writing seriously, and work at it like a 'real job'?

Most importantly, if you want to make money by writing online:

5. Do you love to write?

If you answered in the negative to any of these questions, you might want to consider keeping your day job until you have the time, motivation, and skills to pursue online writing as a full-time career.

Multiple Streams of Income

One very important aspect to consider when working at home is the need for multiple streams of income. If you write online, having one very lucrative client is a great way to maintain a steady schedule, but multiple streams of income ensure that you will have stable income. Some choices for online writers to consider include Up-Front Content Sites, Bidding Sites, Residual Income Sites, Blogging, Ebooks, and Private Clients.




Up-Front Content Sites
There are several websites that offer to pay cash for well-written articles. The best-paying content site that I have found is Demand Studios. Others include Quality Gal, and Textbroker. Associated Content is an online article site that also offers some up-front pay in addition to their revenue share program. These sites are an important part of the online writer's multiple streams of income, unless you have already got an established blog that is making money, or are successfully marketing an Ebook. Having cash-in-hand to pay the bills gives you the freedom to work on your other streams of income from writing online content.


Bidding Sites
Sites like Elance and oDesk offer freelance writers the chance to bid for projects, and potentially connect with private clients. A bidding site is a great way to dip your feet in as a freelancer if you need to diversify your sources of online income. Getting experience dealing with private clients is important, when writing for a living, since these jobs can be much more lucrative.


Private Clients
Private clients offer cash for work accomplished, and are a bit like the content sites, except you are basically cutting out the middle man. Instead of selling your article to a content site, that will mark it up and then sell it for a higher rate to a customer, you are simply selling your writing skills directly to the customer. Bear this in mind when you set your prices- don't undervalue your work.
Private clients are a great way to supplement your streams of income, but often are difficult to rely on in the long term. Online writing projects come and go, so make sure you have other jobs lined up at all times.


Residual Income Sites
eHow, Suite101, and Associated Content are all sites that offer future income, based on page views or ad clicks. Success on these sites depends on your ability to write well, and understand Search Engine Optimization. In addition, you may need to write hundreds of articles on each site in order to generate multiple streams of income that can compete with the up-front cash of Demand Studios or others. One concern many people have is the possibility that they may come to depend on their residual income articles as a stream of income, and then lose that stream when the company hosting it goes out of business, policies change, etc. In order to alleviate that fear, it is best to ensure that you are not depending on any one of your multiple streams of income.


Blogging
Putting up a great blog, driving traffic to it, and keeping it up to date can be a time consuming job all by itself. It takes time to build a readership, and get enough daily traffic to generate income. Once you have established a following, however, blogging can be a good source of online income.


Ebooks
The best way to make money as a freelancer is to sell your skills and knowledge directly to the public. When you sell an article to a client, you make some money, and the client reaps the ongoing rewards. Working for yourself ensures that all future rewards come to you. Write an ebook, and you will be selling your own product. If you write on an evergreen topic (a topic that will remain relevant over time) you are setting up a very solid addition to your multiple streams of income.