Credit Cards; How to Get them and How to Overcome Them

With the global credit crunch, the question of credit cards and credit and how to either get them or stay on top of your debts with them is becoming more of a vexed question. With interest rates falling now is one of the best times to get a credit card or to transfer your balances to a new card.

Of course, you will have a problem if you have adverse credit or if you want to apply for a credit card with no credit history. If you do apply then you need to understand the credit card application process. And, with banks limiting credit as part of the credit crunch it's more important than ever to understand why credit card applications are denied, as only understanding why you have been denied (if you have been denied) will you be able to sort the problem out to get yourself a credit card.

Of course, whether you already have a credit card or you want to apply for one you still need to know what credit cards are all about. In essence you need to have the information to understand the basics of credit cards.

Only by being informed will you know about what the different credit card types are so that you can understand the features of a credit card to get the best one for you. This way you can also know about the numbers on your credit card and what they tell you about your credit card (see this article describing how to understand credit card numbers).

Then there are the numbers on the back of your credit card called CCV (Credit Card Verification number) which, along with 'chip and pin' are part of the security measures that credit card companies use to try and protect you and your card from fraud and theft. That's why you need to understand credit card verification numbers and how to use them.

The next big question is about that oft quoted number APR (anual percentage rate). This refers to the interest charged on any money borrowed on your credit card (if you don't pay your balance in full). See a formula for APR and what it means. This will tell you how expensive a credit card will be tow own and how much you will have to pay if you don't pay your balance completely.

Then there's a question of why credit cards expire and how credit card companies use this to keep in touch with you.

If you do tend to spend too much on your card then you need a guide on how to begin paying off your credit card. If you are completely stuck with payments, have missed several payments and have a lump sum put by you may still be able to offer your credit card company the deal of paying off your credit card with a lump sum and saving yourself some money in the process.

Finally, if you have a credit card... you need to protect it, as it's potentially very valuable. Learn how to protect your card and what to do in the unfortunate event that your credit card is stolen.

Though just a brief guide this should give you some pointers as to what to do in terms of helping yourself with credit cards in the current economic climate.

Improving Adsense Returns

Google's AdSense program can be an amazing source of revenue and it's very easy for just about any website owner to set up. However, actually making any real money with AdSense can be trickier than most people realize. The truth is that unless you understand the program and are willing to put in some work in terms of optimization and improving your site you are unlikely to make any real money.

The first item is to get the AdSense code and to place it on your website. You can then play with the look and feel of the ads so they either match your website or stand out from it (which one of these strategies works best depends on your site). After that the most important thing is to get visitors to your site to see your ads. This means you need to get links to your site and you need to climb in the search engine positions. Basically to need to work hard to market your site and to get it noticed.


However, it's also often forgotten that each ad is worth a certain amount of money and only pays you a certain amount for each click. You want to get ads to your site that will entice your visitors to click on them and which will earn you the most income. This is why you need to pay particular attention to how your website is indexed and the keywords you have.

Your keywords should always be related to your site's content, however some keywords are better at getting high-paying ads than others. Also , the google bots index the whole of your site and if you have a complex page with lots of links this may not be a good thing.

The links and other text you have may lead to areas of your site and topics that are not related to the main focus of the page they're on (this is particularly true of portal sites and forums and article sites) and this is where Google provides tools to help you. One of the most important of these is a series of tags:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

text of section

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

This tells Google that the text between those tags is the most important part of a web pate. Now, the remainder of the page won't be ignored but whatever's between those tags will be given extra weighting. Google recommends that you include at least 20% of a page's content in those sections and you certainly can't use it to just highlight certain words and phrases. But if your page is complex and especially if your page design puts some of the main navigation elements before the main content it can be very powerful.

If, however, you want certain text on your pages to be ignored completely for ad indexing you can use the following tags:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->

text of section

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

This article is adapted, with permission, from the Improving your Adsense Returns from the Celtnet Articles free articles site.