If you’ve got a blog and it’s got traffic, then you’re 90% the way there. The next step is to start making some real money out of your blog. That process is called monetization.

Now, there are “traditional” monetization strategies, such as Google AdSense, affiliate offers, and CPA offers. Google AdSense is those little ads you see on blogs and content sites. Affiliate offers you can get through Commission Junction, ClickBank and the like, and CPA offers are usually found through different networks like Hydranetwork.

And oftentimes, this is all you need to make a good amount of money from your blog. But if these usual routes aren’t working for you, or if you want to dig a little deeper, here are some creative tips you can use to find advertisers and offers to promote on your blog.

1. First off, Google your main keyword phrase and maybe a few of your secondary keyword phrases. Now, take a look at each and every AdWords ad on the right hand side of the search results. You can do the same through Yahoo and MSN, by the way. These ads are from businesses and entrepreneurs who believe that your niche is a money maker for them. You know they’re willing to spend money advertising for your keywords, so why not contact them and see if they want to advertise on your blog? They could put a banner on your blog, or you could charge them X amount per month for a set number of text links.
2. Go to Technorati and find the top blogs in your niche. Now, go to each of these blogs and make a thorough study of their advertisers. Figure out where those advertisers come from. You can even contact the blog owner, if you want. Most people are very helpful and would be happy to point you in the right direction.
3. Take a look at Commission Junction or other networks and see if you can find affiliates who might be interested in advertising on your blog.
4. Take a look at offline advertisers. This one is a little more complicated because you’re not dealing with people who understand the Internet. Take a look in newspapers and magazines in your niche or your local area and see who might be interested in advertising on your blog. You’ll have to do a little more education, here. Probably preparing a little report with screen shots of traffic would be a good idea. Don’t talk down to these folks, but realize that terms you consider to be “everyday” like RSS are a foreign language to them.

Certainly there are other, creative ways to make money out of your blog, but these four are excellent. They should also get your creative juices flowing. Thinking out of the box often leads to making more money than folks who stay in the box!

Everyone should regularly monitor their credit report to ensure that the information on there is accurate and up to date.

The first step to doing that is to go to annualcreditreport.com to get a free copy of your credit report. You can do this once a year. This will not tell you your credit score – you have to pay for that – but it will tell you what is on your credit report.

You can get your credit report more frequently than that but you usually will have to pay for it. An exception is if you applied for credit and were denied, the company that denies you must tell you which credit reporting agency provided them with information which caused them to deny your credit. And then that credit reporting agency must provide you with a free copy of your credit report if you ask them for it within 60 days of being denied credit.

If there is inaccurate information on there you should dispute it immediately, in writing, by sending a letter explaining what is inaccurate about the report, both to the credit reporting agency and to whoever provided the credit reporting agency with the incorrect information.

Send these letters via certified mail with return receipt. This will show the date that you sent the letter, because if the credit reporting agency can not verify the negative information within 30 days, they have to remove it from your credit report.

If there is negative information on the credit report that IS accurate, you should contact the lender who provided the negative information, and attempt to work out a payment plan with them. If you can pay it all off at once, so much the better. However, ask that they remove the negative information from your credit report once they receive the payment, and get that in writing from them. And do NOT send the payment until you get their agreement in writing.

Sure, we all have our small indulgences which seem harmless and which don’t seem to affect the overall big budget picture.

However, if you could trim a few thousand dollars a year from your expenses and put all that money towards paying down debt, wouldn’t you be significantly better off?

Here are some little things that really add up over time:

That Starbucks/gourmet coffeeshop habit: If you spend $4 a day on gourmet coffee five days a week, you spend $1040 a year on gourmet coffee. If you can’t bear to give it up, at least cut back to once a week, or get a cheaper drink – say, a small regular coffee or tea at $1 – or both.

Gym Membership: Look at how much you are paying monthly. Are you using the gym regularly enough to justify the expense? A $60 a month membership costs you $720 a year. Could you find a cheaper, no frills memberhsip for half as much? And if you are not using that membership at least a few times a week, for heaven’s sake quit altogether.

Heating and air conditioning: every degree that you crank the air up or down can add as much as 10 percent to your monthly bill. Keep the heat at 68 and air conditioning at 78.

Monthly storage fees: Are you paying $600, $800, or more per year to store stuff? If you never use this stuff and haven’t seen it for a year, why do you need it? Clear out the junk in your house that you do NOT use…sell it, throw it away, donate it and get a tax deduction…move in everything that you can fit from the storage unit…and sell, give away,  or donate the rest.

These little savings can add up to huge savings over time and can greatly help you balance your budget.

Blogging is absolutely one of the best ways to make a significant income online. Don’t think about blogging like creating a one-time product, selling a few, then moving on. Blogging is a lot like offline publishing. You’re creating a readership, which hopefully will come back day after day to read your blog…and buy your affiliate items and click on your ads. Build a readership large enough and you can make a very good income blogging. This is not going to take place over the next week or so. This is more like a three to six month strategy. But you’re building an asset, and the rewards are well worth it.

The topic you choose for your blog is critical. You need a topic that not only has a lot of potential readers on the Internet, but also which is profitable. That is, there are affiliate products, CPA offers, and Google ads that your readers will buy or click on so that you’ll make money from all your hard work. Here are three steps to finding a profitable topic (or niche) for your blog.

Step 1:

If you can focus on a topic that you already know something about, or at least that you’re passionately interested in, you’ll be far ahead of everyone else. Knowing a fair amount about a topic helps in multiple ways. For one thing, you’ll have to do much less research. For another, familiarity just shows. You can tell by the way someone writes if they’re intimately familiar with what they’re writing about. Their words have that ring of truth and experience that even the best researcher can’t fake.

Not only that, but a blog is not a short term deal. It’s a longer term deal, if you will. If you’re going to be doing this right, you’re going to be living with your blog day in and day out for a year or so. Unless you are really interested in your topic, you could easily get sick of your blog a month or two into the game. That would cause you to quit writing content, which will result in your blog losing readers rapidly.

Step 2:

Do your homework. You can use Google’s external keyword tool to get a feel for how many times per month a certain keyword phrase is searched. Another thing you need to do is to check out who’s advertising in your niche. Having a number of advertisers is good, not bad. No advertisers, or few advertisers, doesn’t mean your niche is undiscovered. There aren’t any of those, anymore. What it means is that your niche is not profitable, for whatever reason.

Step 3:

Make a list of the top keywords and write your blog posts to feature these. You can easily search engine optimize a blog post by including the keyword phrase you want to rank for in your title and first sentence. Also, include it once every 50 words or so. That’s 2%. You can try to go up as much as about 3%. Finally, make sure your keyword phrase is in the last part of the last sentence.

If you follow these three steps, you really can’t go wrong. Find your passion, find your niche, write a lot, and watch your stats and your income rise! It really is that easy.

You know the old saying, “When Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It Usually Is.”

Companies want you to buy their products, and they will frequently make offers that seem too good to pass up.

Just remember, these deals will always benefit them, not you.

For interest, the No Interest For One Year, No Money Down, deal. They know, based on statistical models, that odds are that you will NOT have paid off your loan one year from now. So suddenly your interest rate will shoot up sky high and whatever you bought at that “bargain price” costs you as much as 25 pr 30 percent more than you thought you were paying for it.

Also, if you are making minimum payments during that “no interest” grace period and you are a day late with ANY of the payments, chances are you need to start making payments again immediately.

What about those balance transfer deals where you can transfer all of your high credit card balances to a card with low interest rates?

There are all kinds of potential pitfalls there. First of all, if you have a hard time controlling your spending, odds are that you will just run your credit card balance right back up again on those cards that have high interest rates.

Secondly, again, these low introductory rates don’t last forever, so when that grace period is up, you will be socked with high interest rates on this new credit card – and opening up new lines of credit can hurt your credit rating – so you saved a little bit of money with lower interest rates for six months, but hurt your credit rating which can cause interest rates on all of your other cards to rise.

So what to do? Do NOT open new credit lines unless it is an absolute emergency. And an emergency means unless you are about to lose your house or have your power turned off, not that Christmas is coming and you want to buy a bunch of pricey gifts, or you really want a new big screen TV or jet ski or designer purse.

debt Collectors have the right to pursue debts that you legitimately owe, but they do not have the right to be abusive.

Consumers have a number of rights that are very clearly spelled out under the Fair debt Collection Practices Act.

Debt Collectors are not allowed to contact other people and tell them that you owe a debt. They also are not allowed to send mail that states on the outside of the letter that they are debt collectors, and they are not allowed to communicate with you by postcard.

If the debt collector is informed that you are represented by an attorney, and has that attorney’s contact information, they must contact the attorney, not you (unless the attorney fails to respond to their contact within a reasonable amount of time).

Debt collectors are not allowed to use profane or abusive language when contacting a debtor.

Debt collectors may not publicly publish lists of people who owe debts.

Debt collectors may not claim to be attorneys if they are not in fact attorneys.

Debt collectors generally are not supposed to call after 8 p.m. in the evening and before 9 a.m. in the evening in the customer’s time zone.

The debt collector is not supposed to contact the debtor at their place of employment if the debt collector knows that the employer prohibits the employee from receiving such communication.

Debt Collectors are not allowed to conceal their identity when contacting a debtor, or to use deceptive communication to trick the debtor into revealing information.

Violation of any of the above principles may be a violation of federal law; you can contact an attorney if you feel that you are being illegally harassed by a debt collector.

Remember, though, the debt collector DOES have a legal right to attempt to collect if you owe money! The best thing to do is to attempt to work out a payment plan with the debt collector – once you have verified that you really do owe the debt and that they are a legitimate collection agency.

Be sure to get any agreement that you reach with the debt collection agency in writing, though.

When you are trying to get out of debt the last thing that you need is to fork more money for energy than you need to. For a lower energy bill, here are some simple tips:

1.) Clean Your Air Filters. When they get clogged with dirt, dust, pet hair, etc., not only does that affect the air quality in your home, it drives up your energy costs significantly. Aim to change your air filters at least once a month.

2.) Find out if your power company will send someone to your house to do a free energy audit.

3.) Hire someone to do an HVAC inspection if you haven’t had one done in a while. Your heating and air conditioning system accounts for about a third of your home’s energy costs and if it is not working efficiently you will see it in your monthly bill.

4.) Do you have an old refrigerator and stove? Those are also major energy guzzlers. When you shop for new appliances, find one that is Energy Star certified. They are more energy efficient than appliances that are not certified.

5.) Check to make sure that you do not have any water leaks anywhere, including outside where you may have a garden hose.

6.) Do your windows and doors have drafts? If they do, every time you turn on your air conditioner or heater, money is literally flying out through those cracks. Money spent now to fix those can pay back many times over in lower energy bills.

7.) Set your heating/cooling system to “auto” rather than “on” – make sure that it shuts off when the desired temperature has been reached.

8.) If you are going on vacation, or going to be away during the day, you don’t need to heat/cool your home to the same level – a couple of degrees on the thermostat can save you a lot of money every month.

9.) Buy energy efficient lightbulbs.

Once your debt really starts to pile up, you are likely going to start looking for any way possible to pay it off. There are good ways to pay off debt and bad ways to pay off debt. Let’s discuss some of them here.

Good Ways To Pay Off Debt:

Work an extra part time job and put all of the money you earn towards your debt. Doing this for six months or a year could make a significant dent in what you owe, without the necessity for borrowing more.
Slash spending in every possible area.  Go through your cable bill, telephone bill, insurance bill, grocery bill, clothing allowance, gift allowance, vacation spending…if you’re paying 25 percent interest on a credit card loan, any extra luxuries are costing you a fortune. Give up these luxuries until your debt is paid down.
Find a credit card with a low percentage rate and transfer your balance and debts there, if you qualify. If you don’t qualify now – make all of your payments on time until you get a better credit rating, and then start asking around to find a credit card company that will allow you to lower your payments.
Home Equity Loan – if you can qualify these days, and ONLY IF you are going to change your spending habits. Home Equity Loans generally have much lower interest rates than credit cards.

Bad Ways To Pay Off Debt

Home Equity Loan. Hey, wait a minute, didn’t we just say that was a GOOD way to pay off a debt? Yes, IF you can change your lifestyle and spending habits. If not – guess what – you now have a home equity loan, and you paid off your credit cards and then ran them up again – so you haven’t really helped your situation, have you? In fact you are more in debt than you were before – and at risk of losing your house.
Borrowing against your 401k or cashing in your 401k. If you cash in your 401k you are putting your retirement money at risk and also you will be hit with huge prepayment penalties and you will have to pay taxes on it.
Taking out a high interest loan to pay off all of your old loans. Taking on new debt hurts your credit, and odds are that this new loan won’t solve whatever problems caused the debt in the first place.

Sometimes when you are striving to pay down your debt, a little outside help and advice  can go a long way.

These days, a lot of people are turning to credit counseling services. They can be very helpful for people with large amounts of outstanding debt. However, there are a lot of unscrupulous agencies these days that are springing up to take advantage of people in need.

The safest way to find a legitimate credit counseling agency is to go to www.nfcc.org, which is the web page of the National Foundation For credit Counseling. Choose one of their member agencies; they are nonprofit and certified by the NFCC.

When you contact the credit counseling agency they will ask you to bring in a list of all of your expenses, assets, and income, if any. They will also ask you to bring in letters from all of your creditors – the people that you owe money to.

They can help you negotiate lower monthly payments and reduced interest. They may be able to negotiate a lump sum payoff which will be less than the full amount that you owe. Take note: this does hurt your credit because generally it will be noted on your credit report. However, if you are at the point where you are at a credit counseling service, odds are that your credit is severely compromised anyway, and this may be a solution which helps you to get back on your feet.

The way it works is that the credit counseling agency will contact your creditors for you and negotiate lower monthly payments. You will pay the credit counseling agency a small monthly setup fee and sometimes a fee for each account. So if you are paying off four bills with this method, and they charge $7 each, that would add up to $28 a day.

You would give them the check, and they would make the payments to all of the creditors.

What is the advantage of this method? Well, they can often negotiate lower fees and lower interest rates than you could on your own.

However, you have to look at the plan that they propose and decide if it makes sense for you. Do not feel pressured and if the plan won’t help save you money, or pay off your debts faster, don’t do it!

Blogging is big. Over 100,000 blogs are created each and every day. That’s right! That’s a one followed by five zeros. The reason blogging is so big is that people naturally love them.

People trust information on blogs more than they do the news. There was a study done recently that showed that people would rather get their “news” from blogs than from established news sources like CNN. The idea is that the news sources are far from biased, so if you’re going to get biased news, you might as well get something that fits your world view.

People looking for solutions to problems they have like various illnesses often turn to blogs for information. Blogs give us a personal, individual view point. It’s a been there, done that type of thing.

Because of this “reality” feeling blogs have, they’ve turned out to be great vehicles to sell stuff. It’s quite a natural progression from reading about someone’s experiences with acne to buying an expensive affiliate product through that same blog.

Another thing that blogs have over “real” work is this. If you’re a successful blogger, you can work from anywhere. Yaro Starak, an up and coming blogging guru, toured the world last year, took his laptop with him, and made over $200,000 in the process. How sweet is that? Or, you don’t have to travel. You can just avoid the commute!

The average American commuter spends $2,500 each year on gas and wear and tear on their car. Automobile accidents are often the second or third most frequent cause of death in the US. Imagine how great your life would be if your commute was from your bedroom to your office, maybe via the kitchen to get a nice cup of tea!

Stress is a major factor in our lives. But what if you had a blog that was pumping out affiliate dollars on autopilot? Not only would you probably be making more money than you made working for “the man”, but your stress level would be markedly less.

Ah….the Internet lifestyle. It really exists, you know!

And it can be yours, if you learn the basics about blogging. So, where do you learn to blog? How can you create this lifestyle for yourself? There are several resources on the Internet you can use, but perhaps the best thing you can do is to start blogging yourself.

This is definitely a learn by doing business!