The Extra Income Guide Blog

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While we all enjoy the Christmas holidays, once the bills begin to arrive we are usually brought back down to earth with a bang.  If you want to avoid holiday debt, here are some tips.

Open up a Christmas club on January 2nd.  You can contribute five or ten dollars a week to the club and by October you will either have $200 or $400 to spend on Christmas gifts.

Avoid using your credit card to buy gifts.  This only adds to your ongoing debt and will just leave you stressed out after the holidays.  Pay with cash whenever possible.  If you have to buy an item with a credit card, pay the bill off as soon as you receive it.

A Christmas budget would be a great idea to decrease the likelihood that you will overspend on gifts.  Make a list of the friends and family members you intend to give a gift to and assign a dollar amount.  It is important to stick to the budget.

Begin Christmas shopping earlier in the year.  There are always sales every week – take advantage of them.  You can even buy two or more of the same item in case you have to give a gift you weren’t planning on.

If you like to shop online, use one credit card.  There are many online coupon sites that offer great savings throughout the year.  Utilize the coupons, check out the sales, and make your purchases.  Remember to pay the credit card bill balance as soon as possible. 

Perhaps Jane and little Joey want something very expensive this Christmas.  If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.  With the list of gifts they will present to you, there is sure to be some items you can afford.

Holiday debt may be avoidable if you start with a Christmas budget, put aside a few dollars every day, or open a Christmas club.  Instead of buying a cup of coffee everyday, put that money towards Christmas. 

Let’s be honest, buying items with credit card is very easy to do these days, especially with internet shopping.  But if you shop early, you can certainly pay off the debt before the holidays and start the New Year with a “bang” instead of a whimper.

Happy Earning

Steve Bents

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Traffic exchanges are an excellent way to receive free traffic to your website. A traffic exchange, also known as a click exchange is actually a membership site, which allows it’s members to exchange traffic between their sites. These exchanges work on a credit system.  A member earns some credits by visiting some websites. These credits are then used by the member to show his own websites to other members of the exchange and so on. There are two types of traffic exchanges — manual surf and auto surf. Manual surf exchanges are better than auto surf exchanges.

       The first step is to sign up with a traffic exchange as a free member. You can also join as a paid member by paying a small monthly subscription. Once you sign up, you can add the URLs of the sites which you want to promote. You can also add banner ads or text ads. Now you have to start surfing and look at other people’s websites to earn credits. Paid members earn more credits by viewing websites than free members. You have to look at each webpage for a fixed period of time, usually 10 to 30 seconds. After that you can move to the next page. If you are a paid member, you can get some free credits per month. The credits you earn this way can be used to show your own webpages to other members of the exchange.

       To earn credits quickly, you can become members of different traffic exchanges and surf them simultaneously by opening different tabs on your browser. In this way, you can view different traffic exchanges at the same time and earn credits from each of them. You can also earn credits by referring new and active members to the exchanges. 
       One big disadvantage of using traffic exchanges is that the traffic is not targeted and  the conversion rate from this traffic is very low. The main reason behind this is that the viewers are mainly other website owners, who are only interested to earn credits to promote their own websites and not much interested in the sites which they visit. Traffic exchanges can be effectively used for lead capture pages. These are useful for promoting MLM programs and list building.

Happy Earning,

Steve Bents

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