Friday, April 27, 2012

No One Size Fits All Credit Card

Guest post 

I have been thinking about switching to a different credit card lately, but it is kind of an overwhelming task to figure out which one is going to be the best for me. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different cards to choose from all with different incentives, interest rates, perks, and pitfalls. There are so many factors to consider before you can even narrow down what is important to look for? Do you pay your card off in full each month or are you paying interest as you pay down your debt? Do you travel frequently, especially to foreign countries? Are you a student or a business owner? I have been trying to do my own research in order to compare credit cards, but then I found there are websites which will do just that for you. You are able to see all laid out for you the benefit, uses, interest rates, signing bonuses, etc. so that comparing cards is actually easy. For me personally I think a card which has a good rewards program is the most ideal feature. I generally pay my balance in full, but use my card a lot in order to earn extra points. I am not sure yet if I want to go with a card that specializes in frequent flier miles because ideally I would love to start traveling more, or if that will give me the most “bang for my buck” so to speak. I have seen some cards which give you a pretty decent amount of points just for signing up which would really be nice. If I had a balance I still needed to pay off on my current credit card and was paying interest, the most important thing I would be looking for is a card which allows for balance transfers with a 0% interest rate for at least a few years. Because I do plan to travel more in the future, especially out of the country, it is probably important for me to also look into the service fees associated with money exchange and using your card out of the country. It's hard to be sure you are getting the best fit (and deal) possible when there are so many options, but at least there are tools which can help you sort through what is worth and what is not.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Total Earnings for March 2012

Well this has been quite an interesting month in that one of my sites found itself on page one of search results for many of the key search phrases. This also happened to be at the height of the buying season for the particular product that this site focuses on. So for a period this site was getting an average of 250 visitors per day and averaging $20 per day in commission. Sadly this only lasted a week or so before traffic the site fell back down the search engine rankings and traffic returned to a mere trickle. This was good while it lasted and gave a tantalizing glimpse into just what is possible. This spike in traffic meant that I made a record breaking $269 during March. Of I won't see this for a couple of months so this doesn't get counted in this month's total.

Elsewhere, there was not much happening really. This has been a busy month in other parts of my life which has meant that I have had very little time to put into my online empire. I have made a couple of Clickbank sales at least which has kept things ticking over.

Here are the totals:

Swagbucks: $5.00
Squidoo: $2.65
Private Advertising: $79.39
Clcikbank: $20.58

Total: $107.62

Not too bad I guess considering how little I have actually done this month.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Total Earnings for February 2012

This has been a bit of a quiet month in some respects. I must confess to not doing a great deal of work on my various projects. I have decided to cut down on some of my projects and where some domain names have been due to expire on projects that have not been performing or I have not got around to doing what I had originally intended to do, I have just let them expire. I have been spreading myself too thinly and not focusing enough.

On the positive side I have received my Amazon earnings from Christmas which was a great boost. Here are the totals for this month:

Amazon.co.uk: $135.16
Amazon.com: $186.53
Squidoo: $0.98
Surveys: $31.51 (Pinecone, Surveyhead)

Total: $354.18

Not bad really. If I could repeat that level of sales on Amazon every month I would be very happy!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Monthly Total Earnings for January 2012

Into the first month of 2012 and while I am really hoping that my earnings will really turn a corner, I hope that this month does not set the trend for the rest of the year. There have been a couple of good things - my first Amazon.co.uk payout and the first two Clickbank sales of the year - overall there is no sign at present of things taking off. My focus has really been my new blog. At the moment I really just focusing on getting more content on there before I really try and bring in some traffic and ultimately some money. It has not made me anything so far and nor would I expect it to. However, traffic is starting to pick up a bit and I have noticed a few other blogs have linked to me already, so it is looking promising.

Traffic has, predictably, dropped off to my review sites following Christmas, but I am still getting traffic and I have made more sales than I expected. I have decided to keep working on my most successful site building up content and trying to get more traffic. Once this is really performing as I would like then I will move on to the next one.

Here are my earnings for this month:

Clickbank: $39.29
Swagbucks: $5.00
Surveys: $40.10 (Pure Profile)
Squidoo: $5.33
Amazon.co.uk: $47.68
Sponsored Reviews: $5.00

Total Earnings = $142.40

Actually not too bad in the end especially considering it was just following Christmas. Let's see what February brings.