By Peter Andrew

The bad news

If you’re a student or recent graduate, you’re entitled to feel resentful. These are supposed to be among the best years of your life (I know; I sound so old), but they’re turning out very differently.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), only about 25 percent of college graduates who completed job applications in May 2010 actually found work, compared with half who did so three years earlier. And the unemployment rate among college graduates aged under 25 is running at nine percent. The news isn’t much more cheerful for those who do find work. Salaries fell for those with bachelor degrees from the class of 2010 when measured against those of their predecessors in 2009.

It’s the same if you’re a little older but are finding that you’re now encountering financial challenges. In August 2010, unemployment was at or close to a 27-year high. And if you add in those highly qualified people who’ve had to take part-time or menial jobs to stay afloat, the number of Americans who are likely to have debt problems is staggering.

What’s really frustrating is that older generations – many of whom had it easy themselves – are quick to criticize younger people who find themselves in financial difficulties. Many find it impossible to sympathize, even though – or perhaps because – they’re the ones who got the country into this mess.

The slightly better news

There are signs that the current difficulties are not going to last for ever. NACE, for example, is projecting a rebound of 13.5 percent for hirings for the class of 2011. And MarketWatch recently quoted Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, as saying: “We are beginning to think the labor market has dodged a bullet.” He acknowledged that unemployment conditions remain “truly awful”, but there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s not necessarily an oncoming train.

Credit scores and future success

You need to position yourself to be ready to take advantage of the approaching recovery, and one of the ways you can do that is to protect your credit record. The first step on this path is to access a free FICO credit report.

Of course, everyone knows that keeping your credit score as high as possible can help you getter better rates when you need a credit card, auto loan, mortgage, or any other sort of credit. But nowadays those with iffy credit reports can find it difficult to get a cell phone contract, insurance, or even their utilities hooked up, and they may struggle to rent an apartment. Today, it seems as if everyone wants to know your credit score and is prepared to discriminate against you if it’s low.

Most worryingly of all, that includes employers and potential employers. Many of these now routinely carry out credit checks during the recruitment process, and some of them even do so when considering existing employees for promotion. Yes, you could find yourself unable to get the job you were counting on to help you fix your credit score… because of your credit score. Is that a Catch-22, or what?

Free FICO reports

A couple of years ago, one of my colleagues wrote a blog on this site with the title “How to get your free FICO credit score and avoid fake credit offers“. It was a masterly overview, and is full of valuable advice, though you should check that some of the prices and deals described there are still available.

By law, you can receive free credit reports once a year, but the blog also describes low cost ways of securing continuing access to your credit report.

Zero percent balance transfer credit cards - an escape route?

A second way to survive in tough times is to manage your credit card debt better. If you’re finding that the burden of credit card interest is putting your credit score at risk, you could consider a zero interest balance transfer card. However, I’m afraid that we’re back to a Catch-22. If you really, really need a 0 balance transfer card, your FICO score may already be too badly damaged for you to qualify for one.

But let’s be positive, and hope that your score’s still good enough. What are the benefits of switching to one of these cards?

Well, pretty much all credit card debt is expensive now, and many people are paying 20 percent plus on the balances they carry forward. Those are truly onerous rates, and have dragged plenty of people down into the financial mire.

So imagine if you could get a break – for six, 12, even 18 months – from paying interest on your cards. If pay as much as you can each month on these cards, all that money would go to paying down the balance, and none would be wasted on interest. If you’re disciplined, you could make a big hole in, or even eliminate completely, your credit card debt. Think how that could boost your credit score.

Zero percent balance transfer credit cards - two caveats

It’s a good idea to think of zero interest balance transfer cards as a second chance. If you instead think of them as a new line of credit, you could find yourself at the end of the introductory rate period with just as much, or more credit card debt, and no easy way to move forward without incurring yet more expenses.

And that brings us to the second caveat. There was a time when “no balance transfer fee” was a common sight on credit card issuers’ solicitations. But that’s no longer the case, and today those invitations are as rare as those received by tea partyers for an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, however they are still out there. It’s very likely that you’ll have to pay a one-off balance transfer fee of three percent of the amount you transfer for a six-month holiday from card interest.

The good news

As OK Go sang (and maybe somebody said before them), “This too shall pass.” To put it another way: hang tough. If you can keep your head above water for another year or so, there’s a good chance that you could soon find yourself bathing in the warm glow of a real economic recovery.

Peter Andrew has been writing about – and for – business for more than two decades. For the last couple of years, he has found himself increasingly specializing in the U.S. financial sector.

Source URL: 2 ways to stay afloat during financial storms

Copyright Protected © 2010 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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When people ask me if they could be successful at day trading, my first response is, “Do you know what day trading is?”

Most people don’t. You might think day trading is about finding the best online brokerage, grabbing a stack of financial reports, arming yourself with financial blogs and news and then diving in.

What many would-be day traders don’t realize is that success doesn’t come from the uncanny ability to analyze balance sheets and fundamentals like Warren Buffett. And even if you have the ability to interpret charts and price action–the primary skill for day trading–this is secondary to having the strict discipline of adhering to specific rules and guidelines.

Without these rules in place, day trading is like a child playing with a chainsaw.

I’m not judging the merits of day trading. I know both very successful day traders and those who blew themselves up financially with day trading. (For what it’s worth, I know many more of the latter variety.) But if you’re going to succeed at this kind of investing, you’d better understand what it takes.

What it takes to succeed

Here are observations from my experience as both a professional trader and money manager about what it takes to succeed at day trading:

• Hard work. Brains don’t hurt, but day trading is a skill, and that skill needs to be developed by treating this as a business. A lot of people day trade as a side avocation or hobby, maybe because it seems like an easy road to riches. Don’t fall for that mentality. I’ve known people with a gambling mentality who have been drawn to trading, only to be chewed up because they treated the markets as a casino and not a business.
• Discipline. Do you ever see the same people wandering around your gym who have no noticeable changes in their appearance from a year ago? It’s from lack of discipline and goal-setting. Trading is no different. People jump from strategy to strategy, or worse, have no strategy at all. The importance of discipline to day trading can’t be overstated. You may think you have discipline, but the true litmus test is your results.
• A keen grasp of probabilities. The best baseball players–the ones who get paid the most–hit the ball around three times for every 10 at-bats. A guy who hits it four times for every 10 at-bats is the best in the business. Put another way, even the best baseball players in the world achieve an undesirable result most of the times they get up to bat. Great traders are the same. Making money through day trading doesn’t mean you make the right call most of the time. The key is to lose a little when you are wrong (which is often) and make a lot when you are right.
• Letting go of the need to be right. Some people would rather be right than make money (or would rather be right than be happy, but that’s another blog post!). This personality trait makes for lousy day traders. In day trading, you will be wrong more than you are right, but that is not failure, it’s probability.

Defining your day trading personality

On a recent episode of “America’s Got Talent” (I admit it, I somehow got hooked on a summer reality TV show) judge Piers Morgan told one performer that he did not know how to define his act and asked the performer how he would define himself. The entertainer looked completely bewildered, and it’s no surprise that his act fell flat.

Ask 100 people to define their “investment personality,” and you’re going to get 90 blank stares. Lacking a clear description of your investment personality–are you a trader, gambler, investor or saver?–is a common error, one that can make or break your results.

In the broadest sense, everyone’s financial goal in investing is to make money. But that’s not enough. You have to find a strategy and set of rules that you’ll stick to and will keep you from an expensive labyrinth of mistakes.

Spending some time doing a little self-discovery can yield a strategy that is more in sync with your personality type, which may help reduce some of the emotional impulses that often lead people astray.

Still think you have what it takes to be a successful day trader? You’re the only one who can really know. But if you lack any of the key traits or a strong investment personality, don’t be surprised if you’re in for a long grind–or a financial meltdown.

Marc Pearlman is the author of the Positive Money Mindset and host of the popular radio show Your Money Matters! For more about Marc, visit marcpearlman.com or www.Yourmoneymattersradio.com.

Securities offered through Securities America, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Securities America Advisors, Inc. Marc Pearlman, Representative. Your Money Matters! radio show and the Securities America companies are unaffiliated.

Source URL: Day trading: Do you have what it takes?

Copyright Protected © 2010 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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I am a part time (almost full time now) blogger who spends a great number of hours working on the Internet from home every night. For more than a year now, I’ve been quietly earning a sizable and consistent amount of money through blogging and my internet marketing efforts. As a multi-year veteran now to the world of making money online with a blog, I’ve joined a rather unique and eclectic group of young and emerging internet entrepreneurs – individuals who have not only successfully harnessed the power of the Internet to generate real money, but who have managed to turn seemingly unassuming websites into rather lucrative income producing automatons. While the phenomenon of blogging for money on a part time basis is certainly not new, the idea that one can actually become a full time professional blogger (a problogger of sorts) and generate not only a stable, but a sustainable income at a high velocity through mere blogging alone is quite a surprise to many (particularly among my friends and family).

I’m sure many of you are already well aware of a number of fairly successful bloggers and established Internet entrepreneurs like John Chow, ShoeMoney, and Darren Rowse of Problogger fame – online personalities that dominate the so-called “make money online” niche. Most of these semi famous Internet tycoons have been in the news for some time and have had many years to perfect the art of both online and mainstream personality-based sales pitches. Much of their mystique, self perpetuating hype, and authoritative attention stems from the sheer amounts of money they have raked in through their blogging and online entrepreneurial activities, and the continuous reminders of their financial success to their readers in the way of monthly income reports and screen shots of high dollar amount affiliate income checks. However, the ones you usually don’t hear about are those of us like myself who also run pretty successful operations of our own, but who have generally chosen to remain contently semi-anonymous and out of the lime light. While I’ve enjoyed a pretty lucrative career thus far in terms of the income streams that I’ve been able to pull through my collection of websites and online businesses, I made the conscientious decision early on to remain in the online shadows and out of the way in terms of real world publicity and attention. Not vying for the social media spotlight for ego-stroking purposes has allowed me to quietly generate a pretty prolific online business without the complicated hassles of unnecessary attention or even the critical scrutiny that the well known online bloggers at center stage face. Have you heard of the term “Millionaire Next Door” ? Well I’d like to think of myself as the “Blogger Next Door” – one of a growing number of unassuming and self made entrepreneurs who enjoy their relative anonymity and are content to blend in with everyone else in cyberspace while they quietly build their online fortunes.

Working From Home As A Full Time Blogger Is A Difficult, But Emotionally and Financially Rewarding Profession

My goal today is to simply break out of my usual personal finance subject matter for a moment and perhaps share some tidbits to encourage and inspire fledgling writers and aspiring entrepreneurs who have been quietly sitting on the sidelines – individuals who want to believe, but are afraid to take the first baby steps towards the world of self employment and Internet-based incomes. Admittedly, the journey from entry level writer and semi techie egghead, to nearly full time super affiliate power blogger is a very difficult and time consuming process, particularly in the early stages. Despite its rather ephemeral and unestablished nature, the seemingly unrealistic fantasy of being able to work from home and generate a full time income from just blogging alone is very real. While I have yet to make the final leap to full time blogger (I’m still a part time attorney), I am living proof that working from home and working for yourself is entirely and ultimately possible.

I stumbled upon blogging and the whole online business model a few years ago in 2006 quite by accident. One day I was tinkering with my free personal Xanga blogging account (this was back in the old days when Xanga.com was still popular) and I suddenly noticed the banner ads and affiliate links in the website margins for the first time. Examining the html source code, I finally realized and discovered that there was a whole marketing and income producing mechanism underneath it all that was quietly profiting from all of the user generated content that Xanga consumers were creating. From then on I decided to investigate further and figure out how the blog content and advertisement scripts were integrated into a workable business model – and the rest is history. A blog, or a weblog as it is officially called, is nothing more than an online diary of sorts sorted in reverse chronological order according to article post dates. Blogs are uniquely advantageous for monetization purposes because of the regularly updated and archived nature of their content. Simply put, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all of the other search engines love blogs for both the fresh and timelessly relevant content they churn out, and generally prefer to rank them very highly for organic search engine traffic – which when translated into practical terms, equals dollars and cents for savvy entrepreneurs.

Now that I’ve worked for myself and have finally tasted financial success and professional freedom, no longer will I ever go back to working for someone else. No longer will I ever want to go back to the emotional and professional constraints of working the traditional full time desk job and devoting my efforts towards benefiting someone else’s company or firm.

I attended law school and graduated to eventually work as an attorney (law school is overrated in my opinion). But anyway, in one of the lawyer jobs I held before I pursued my dream of becoming self employed, I used to work for an overbearing and very unprofessional alpha-female attorney. Despite my best professional efforts at the job, I felt absolutely miserable working as an associate attorney at her small solo practitioner law firm – and never felt so unfairly scrutinized, treated so condescendingly, and persistently set up to fail. But because it was her law firm and because she was my boss, and also because I wanted to keep my precious full time job, I humored her belligerency and endured her belittlement and unreasonable demands for weeks and months. Despite my seething frustration, the fact remained that it was her personal law firm and I was merely a replaceable cog in a bigger machine – and thus I swallowed my pride and did as I was told. But eventually I had enough of the disrespect and quit the firm, literally storming out at the end of one working day without looking back – going from having a full time job that paid the bills to immediate unemployment.

Now that I am a semi full time blogger who runs a variety of part time real life business ventures and operates his own part time legal practice on the side, I use tragic memories of my working past to motivate myself. Whether you no longer want to work for anyone else or whether you were forced out of your previous or current job due to the economic recession or as a consequence of layoffs, it’s time to consider chasing the dream of becoming self employed and finally throwing off the shackles and emotional constraints of the traditional “trading hours for dollars” working life. It may be a scary first step to take, but the potential rewards and financial upside are worth it.

How Much Money Do Bloggers Make From Their Blogs? Answer: Depends On Blog Niche, Your Tech Savviness, and Effort That You Put Forth

When I talk about bloggers, I’m not referring to full time freelance bloggers and online newspaper writers who crank out articles for others. Those types of freelance writers who produce text based content for blogs that are owned by other people only generate a few dollars or perhaps just a measly $1.00 to $5.00 per blog post that they write. In this article, when I’m talking about bloggers and webmasters who are able to generate a very good part time income supplement or even a full time living from their blogs, I’m talking about those who own their own blogs and websites – entrepreneurs who serve as both website owner and chief content producer.

So how much income exactly do average bloggers earn from their blogs assuming a reasonable measure of built up success? That’s not an easy question to answer. Because the amount of money that bloggers make from their blogs varies so greatly depending on the type of advertisers that a website can attract, that statistic is highly dependent on the subject matter of the blog. As a general rule of thumb, the most lucrative and financially rewarding websites and blogs tend to be those in the financial niche where credit card issuers, online banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders are better equipped in terms of financial capacity to pay a lucratively high price to affiliate publishers for customer and new sales referrals. While not as financially lucrative, other blog content niches such as entertainment, gossip, fashion, clothing apparel, legal services, health care, weight loss, shopping, computers, electronics, and dating are certainly financially worthwhile in their own rights and can be immensely profitable as well. However, successful online entrepreneurs who are able to multi task and pour in significant amounts of time and effort on a consistent basis may be able to target different content niches with a diverse portfolio of actively updated websites. Obviously the greater the content diversity from a variety of different websites with appropriate targeted traffic to match, the greater the pool of prospective advertisers to generate income from. The key is to also truly enjoy what you write about. The blog traffic, blog comments, and relevant advertisers will naturally flow thereafter.

Making a decent full time income online by working as a blogger is very much possible but it does require an enormous amount of time investment and educational self training, especially upfront during the initial stages when the financial rewards are still miniscule or non-existent. Whatever you do, absolutely do not quit your full time day job until your part time blogging efforts start paying off. I started blogging part time while I still had a full time day job – spending my off hours teaching myself the intricacies of blogging, website design, and Wordpress blog optimization tricks. It also took a great deal of time to learn the fundamentals of Adobe Photoshop graphic manipulation and the intricacies of basic Wordpress PHP programming for blog theme tweaking purposes. While the barriers to entry are extremely low for blogging as a profession and almost anyone and his/her grandma can get started at any time without paying a dime, there is no guarantee that the process will be easy (and I can almost assure you that the journey will be difficult and sleep depriving). A five figure income per month is possible if you pick the right niche and work extremely and exceedingly hard, but it’s not the norm. Most of you (more than 95%) will probably fail due to blogger’s block, frustration, and lost of interest – but the ones who can persist will succeed in time. Nothing in life is guaranteed but if you put your mind towards blogging and don’t burn yourself out – $100 a month, $1,000 a month, and perhaps even $10,000 a month of passive income is reasonable with the correct mix of content, the right blog niche, and a lot of search engine traffic generation luck.

Much of the information needed to get you started as a professional blogger can be obtained online for free and there is no real need for you to purchase or spend money on E-books or on the make money online books being sold at bookstores. But if you really want a good primer to get you started, I’d recommend something like Darren Rowse’s book – ProBlogger: Six Figure Income Blogging. Anyone who is a wannabe blogger knows about the original pro blogger himself – and ranked by experience rather than age, he’s the granddaddy of us all. Alternatively you can always just visit your local public library and borrow the books for free. But my advice is to just follow your favorite bloggers online and read through their past blogging post archives to get the information you need. You’ll get more real world practical advice on blog writing techniques, search engine optimization tricks, and website business maintenance pointers from these updated daily blogs than you’ll ever glean from mere stale books alone. The world of blogging for income and the fickle nature of search engine traffic generation techniques are constantly evolving so it’s best to stay updated on the latest news by reading from actively updated blogs and websites than from constantly reviewing some ancient textbook on the subject.

If you want to know exactly how much money I currently generate from my online businesses and from this personal finance blog in particular, unfortunately, I won’t be able to share that information in great detail at this time. If you must know a little bit, I will put this forth – this personal finance blog generates in excess of $100,000 in organic net profits per year, most of it without substantial effort on my part. I do not pay any money for advertising, I absolutely do not sell text links, I don’t do paid reviews, and I don’t engage in any pay per click Google Adword advertising – it’s all organic search engine based. Regarding the specifics of my income breakdown, I wish to stay silent on that for now. Perhaps in the near future I will share more about my online income sources and real life business ventures in greater detail with readers. For the time being, I don’t plan to share any pictures of fancy checks or reveal the specifics of my income sources from my blogging operations – you’ll just have to take my word for it. But it’s perfectly okay if you don’t believe me. Like I mentioned early on, I’m not interested in capturing attention or attracting a loyal zombie following – just hoping to inspire a few people and motivate some of you to a call to action.

Never Stop Learning And Chasing Your Entrepreneurial Dreams

To get the blogging and website business know-how you’ll need to run a successful blog, you’ll need to strive towards constantly educating yourself on all aspects of blogging. The facets are broad as blogging encompasses everything from the fundamentals of writing to grammar, basic web programming, graphic design, salesmanship, multi tasking, negotiation skills, and efficient time management. It will take months, even years before you will become a fully self trained expert on the blogging business. I started the early research and tinkering process in 2006, but didn’t start running my first few successful online blogs and start seriously generating a stable income sufficiently large enough to replace my day job wages until 2008. From the time I truly started writing and promoting this particular financial blog you are reading, I didn’t generate a sustainable full time income until 12 months thereafter. There will be times when you first start out that you will feel like no one is reading your work and that you are writing for yourself, but that’s okay. We’ve all been there before and that’s perfectly normal in the beginning. It’s a lonely process at the start but with time, your efforts will pay off. Meanwhile, to this very day, I still spend hours and hours every day reading blogs about blogging and scouring the web for any new morsels I can uncover about website optimization, how to generate more search engine traffic, and how to capture blogger traffic. As far as I’m concerned I will forever be a work in progress. There is so much to learn and my self driven educational enrichment will never cease so long as I continue to blog for a living and make money online (view my beginner’s primer on how to get started).

Source URL: How I Started Blogging To Make Money Online

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.