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I have spent a lot of time today researching Search Engine Optimisation tips. That is how to optimise your site and content so people can find it in search engines.

I have gathered together a large amount of tips on how to implement SEO into your website to drive more traffic. If you implement these it is likely you will see an increase in your traffic and therefore an increase in your amount of revenue from your website. (more…)

Sometimes you will come to a point in your life where you require some money which you do not have and you will require the cash fast! I want to show you 5 quick ways to make an extra buck or two so you can make some easy money fast. I have used most of these techniques in the last few months leading up to my girlfriends birthday.

1. Sell Your Old Items

Ebay is a treasure chest where your old useless items become $$$ in your pocket. It is easy to make some extra money online on ebay. Take me for example. I have sold loads of junk on ebay in the last month or two. Including a set of golf clubs $120, my old laptop that I wasn’t using $220, A kitesurfing kite $100, a dvd player $15, old snowboarding gear $70.

2. Buy Cheap and Sell for More

I recently bought a phone and sold it 3 days later for double the price I paid for it. Also I have bought many other things for a low price and sold them for higher. It is a great way to make some extra cash while you can.

3. Ask Someone for Money

Why not ask your friends or parents for some money. They may not want to give you $100 each but find 5 friends who will happily give you $20 to help you out and you will then have $100.

4. Credit Card Cash Advance

If you are really desperate and you lack the creativity or essentials to make enough money, why not get a credit card cash advance. You can take out some cash as pay it back later. However make sure you pay it back as soon as possible or you will be paying a lot of interest.

Note: Be careful with cash advances on credit cards and the amount of interest you pay is often a lot higher than normal purchases. You will also incur a fee for doing this on many cards and it is likely you will be charged interest right from the word go.

5. Send an Email to Your Friends

Why not send an email to your friends telling them about an incredible product you have found that you think they would love. Go to www.clickbank.com and sign up to be an affiliate. Then send emails to everyone you know recommending this great product and earn up to 75% commission on all sales. Pick the right product that you know your friends will love. Note: Often the check takes some time to be processed.

Want to learn some easy tips for implementing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) into your everyday writing without spending hours on it? Well you have come to the right place.

Search Engine Optimisation is used by many web designers and bloggers to drive traffic to their site through search engines by using key words and phrases that people will use to search for their content.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sites out there offering you tips for SEO (many come will a cost attached to it). However, I want to share with you today (for free) a great way you can implement an easy SEO tactic into your everyday writing. You do not need to waste valuable time researching for terms, it will take you less than 5 minutes to do.

Here is what I do (as I suggest you do too):

If you have a website or blog and you are about to write a page/post then sit down before you start writing and spend a maximum of 5 minutes thinking up search terms people will use to find the content you are about to write about. Write down all your ideas on a sheet of paper.

When you then go to write your article keep the page with all your key words and phrases in front of you. Then as you write you article fit in as many key words and phrases as possible (make it reader friendly) and bold the key words where applicable (this stands out to search engines).

There you have it. A great, yet simple way, to integrate Search Engine Optimisation into your writing without taking your focus off writing great content.

This is a guest post from Trent over at www.thesimpledollar.com which is a great personal finance site. I thought my readers might enjoy it. It is full of great tips.

Mike wrote in lamenting his struggle to make a budget work for him (he attached his budget for me to look at, but I think sharing it with 100,000 readers might make Mike a bit uncomfortable):

I keep trying to stick to a budget, but I keep failing. I go through all the steps that I read about in the workbook, but when I actually put it to work, something always comes up and I can’t stick to it. What’s wrong?

If you’re continually seeing failure at budgeting, the best place to look is usually at the fundamentals. It only takes a fundamental mis-step or two to transform a well-planned and well-formed budget into a complete disaster.

Here are ten very powerful things to consider as you build your budget that will point you on the right track towards success.

1. Know why you are budgeting.
If you’re developing a budget just because someone says it’s a good idea, it probably won’t help very much. Similarly, if you’re just following the steps in a personal finance workbook because it suggests this is a great way to move towards financial success, budgeting won’t help much at all.

The reason for budgeting is to help you spend less than you earn. It shows you where your spending weaknesses are and provides the structure for you to get stronger in those areas. I like using the “training wheels” analogy when describing a budget - it’s not a solution itself, but guidance towards being able to effectively and naturally spend less than you earn.

2. Have a specific, concrete long term goal in mind.
For many people, it’s debt freedom. For others, it might be saving for a house or for the ability to make a career change. Whatever it is, having a big long term goal in mind, particularly something that would have a big impact on your life, is useful when planning a budget.

Why? An effective budget is likely going to involve a few difficult choices. You’ll likely be agreeing to cut your entertainment spending and probably planning to do a few other things that on the surface seem like they’ll reduce the quality of your life a little. Knowing that these little choices are in fact adding up to something specific and tangible - and something that you really want - makes the process much more palatable.

3. Know how much you actually make.
The correct answer here is not just your annual salary, nor is it dividing your annual salary into twelve parts for a monthly budget. Instead, you should be basing your budget on your take-home pay per month.

If you make $48,000 a year as a salary, you’re likely knocking off somewhere around $8,000 in income taxes, and likely much more than that when you look at other work benefits and costs you’re paying up front for them, like health insurance. Because of that, using $4,000 a month as the basis for your budget simply isn’t correct - the correct number is likely much closer to $3,000, and possibly below that.

Make sure you know exactly what you’re bringing home as a paycheck, because that’s the number you’ll use as the framework when you budget.

4. Have some accurate data when it comes to your spending, both monthly and irregularly.
Similarly, when you go to plan a budget, it works best if you plan it based on real numbers. This means pulling out your bills and your receipts for the last month or two - all of them - and figuring out what you’re actually spending. Your first “budget” shouldn’t actually be a budget at all - it should instead reflect your spending in an average month.

Don’t forget the irregular bills, either, like homeowners’ insurance, car licenses, auto insurance, property taxes, and so on. These bills shouldn’t be “unexpected surprises” - instead, you should be planning for them throughout the year by socking away a little each month for them.

5. Have checking and savings accounts that have useful budgeting tools incorporated by default.
Does your bank offer automatic transfers from your checking account to your savings account (or, even better, sub-accounts)? Does your bank offer online bill pay? The answer to both of these should be yes.

Now, does your bank charge you maintenance fees on your account? Do you have to pay a lot of ATM fees? The answer should be no.

In short, if your bank is doing these things, they’re actively working against you in terms of making a successful budget work. Many banks offer these features - online bill pay, automatic transfers, no ATM fees, no maintenance fees, and often a nice interest rate to boot. Some options include ING Direct (the bank I use), E*Trade, Washington Mutual, and Charles Schwab all offer solid online checking and savings options.

6. Have a simple budgeting tool that you understand how to use - start with pencil and paper if you have to.
If you’re starting off by sitting down with Quicken or Microsoft Money and you’re quickly overwhelmed by the complexity of the software and the huge number of options available, it’s going to be a lot harder to convince yourself to keep going with this. Your first budget should be incredibly easy to use and manage - and you should understand it from the inside out.

That’s why the best bet is usually to use pencil and paper for your first budget. If you want to move it to an electronic format, I’d recommend trying something simple like PearBudget Online or their free spreadsheet (if you’re familiar with Excel).

That’s not to say that Quicken or Microsoft Money aren’t great options - they are. The problem is that they offer so many options that it can often overwhelm the new user, and if you’re overwhelmed, you’re quite likely to just give up because “budgeting is too complicated.” Don’t let that happen - start with simple tools, then move to more complex ones if you feel a need.

7. Be realistic.
Budgeting is like diet planning - it’s not going to work if you make huge, unrealistic assumptions right off the bat. If you’re trying to diet, moving to a lettuce and tofu diet might work for a few days, but eventually you’ll crack. A much better solution is to be realistic - instead of drinking a sugar and fat-heavy coffee in the morning, cut down to a low fat version, and instead of eating a double cheeseburger for lunch, bring your own cold cut sandwich. Small steps work; big steps result in failure.

The same rule applies to budgeting. Don’t pledge to reduce your entertainment spending by 80% - it won’t work over the long haul. Instead, just average out what you’ve spent on entertainment for the last few months, and pledge to a cap of just 5 or 10% below that average. Then, after some time and some success, trim it a bit more. Going whole hog right off the bat will almost always end in failure over the long run.

8. Have some support from at least one other person.
Whenever you’re attempting to make a significant change in your life - and a budget is a harbinger of significant financial change - things always go better with support. Look to your spouse, your parents, or your closest friends for help.

If you’re surrounded by a group that’s actively committed to overspending, you’re in the midst of negative support - the kind of support that will cause you to abandon your plans. Take some tentative steps to find a less materialism-oriented crowd to spend your time with. After all, if you’re considering a budget, you’re also considering a significant shift in direction when it comes to your money choices, so take it a step further and find healthy support for these new choices.

9. Set some very short term goals that you can easily achieve if you stay on budget.
While long-term goals are great for feeling good about your general direction, they don’t always help with the day-to-day choices. It’s easy to convince yourself that one little slip-up won’t actually hurt your big goals (even though they do, because one little slip-up is often just the first pebble in an avalanche).

One powerful solution is to develop some short term goals to go along with your long term goals. Set a weekly food budget and splurge on a pint of Dove ice cream if you stay within it. Set a monthly entertainment budget and go out to a guilt-free movie if you’re within budget at the end of the month. It’s the simple motivations that work the best.

10. Don’t be afraid to adjust, even radically.
There will usually be moments when you’re learning to budget when you discover that some element of your budget is just not right. It’s not realistic because you forgot about some key piece of information while making your plans, and that means the budget you developed doesn’t really work.

Don’t panic. Don’t abandon your plans. Just go back to your plans, make the needed adjustments, and start over again. This is normal - it happens to everyone. It does not mean your budget was a failure at all - it just means it needed to evolve a little bit.

Financial freedom is a powerful and beautiful thing. Good luck in taking the first steps to get there.

To all my readers,

The University Kid is giving away a Nintendo Wii to anyone who wants to enter. The competition runs for one month and can be found at www.theuniversitykid.com I suggest you all enter. The University kid rocks not only because it gives away free stuff (which is does) but also because it offers great advice.

Most of you will have heard of Market Leverage; they’ve been taking the blogosphere by storm, and they are the ones who have sponsored the Nintendo Wii.

They rock because they are taking the affiliate networking by storm and they are generous in giving away free items to other bloggers.

So if you want a Wii check it out today.

Today I want to show you a few great ways to earn more money. Often personal finance writers will focus on gaining wealth by spending less than you earn. Which is a necessary principle. However, I love to focus on earning more money that you are spending, rather than spending less money than you are earning.

By earning more money from extra incomes you can continue to have the same amount of spending and yet continue to save. This is the key to becoming rich and wealthy. Each year you should strive to earn more than you earnt the year before, yet still trying not to increase your spending too much.

Personally I am spending this financial year trying to earn an extra $10,000 over what I earn from working in my casual job at the chemist. This is a great goal which I would love for all of you to join me in. As a starting place I want to begin to identify all of the major ways I have thought of to make more money

These are my suggestions: (more…)

Over the last two days foolswealth.com has now made the change to becoming smarterwealth.net

This decision came as a result of lots of questions from my friends about “Why Foolswealth?”

I didn’t feel that the name represented the goal I had in mind (due to the negative connotations of the word fool). So now smarterwealth.net has been born and will continue on.

You will notice a brand new look for the website and I will be writing some great posts in the next few days. I will also be marketing this blog as much as I can and as best as I know how in the next few weeks as I know it will take some time for search engines to find me.

I hope you enjoy the new site and I believe it will be running for many years to come.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Hey Guys,
As you might know I am going on a missions trek to Japan in December and it is going to cost me about $4,000 to go and I need to fundraise money fast.
I am asking ALL my readers for their ideas, then I want to put together a post after all this on “great ideas for fundraising”
Leave your ideas in the comments section below

I just want to quickly express the frustration that once again “Money Magazine” has given me. I am an entrepreneur at heart and this is why money magazine frustrates me.

I strongly believe that each and every person has the potential to earn and save significant amounts of money, yet money magazine’s main message is to simply work in the job you are working and slowly save up money until you are 50 or 60 and then retire.

However, I believe this is the wrong attitude to have towards money. I believe we need to ‘grab life by that balls’ as the saying goes and we need to step out of the box we find ourselves in, and begin to make our own money.

The problem I have with money magazine’s strategy for wealth creation is that ‘what if I don’t live until retirement age?’. My great grandfather worked years and years in a job that he completely hated just simple looking forward to his retirement. Unfortunately he died before he was able to retire.

I never want to live my life in a job that I hate waiting for the day when I am old enough to retire. I want to live life to the full, make an impact and do what I can now.

So if you also are frustrated at money magazine please leave a comment below. Or maybe you love money magazine, tell me about it below.