Ask any small business owner when their last vacation was, and the answer is inevitably the same – “What’s a vacation?” Trust me, I totally understand.. It’s tough to leave your business behind, but all work and no play actually makes you less productive. So even though I’ve got a mountain of work to tackle, I’m taking a much-needed vacation! (And we’re flying for free, thanks to all the points I racked up on my American Express Gold Card)

But the key is to truly “unplug” from your job. Just recently, I got a flyer from Carnival Cruises promoting their new wi-fi and cell phone service.. I’ve never understood why people would need internet access while they’re relaxing on vacation, but people are strange. The teenagers are probably checking their MySpace profiles 20 times a day, while Dad is checking his work e-mail every few hours. One of the things I like about cruises is that there are no annoying cell phones (and douchebags loudly talking on their Bluetooth headseats) – But it looks like that will change shortly! Soon you’ll see everyone laying out by the pool with their laptops and Crackberries in hand, and those same people will return to work the following week no less stressed than when they left!

That’s not my idea of a good time. So I’m off, completely unplugged from the world, with only one goal in mind – TO RELAX! No laptop, no cell phone, not even my iPod. I’ll pass the time with books and magazines (remember those?). See you guys in a week!

Why make a post about credit card debt? You’d be surprised at the number of people that used credit cards to fund their business when they first started out. It seems like a dangerous game to play, but if you don’t have savings to dip into, you’ve really got limited options. Unfortunately, many of these people borrowed money at less-than-favorable rates, using multiple credit cards, and they’re now struggling to work themselves free from the debt they’ve amassed.

Kill Off Your Credit Card Debt

The biggest question is, “How do I know which of these cards to pay off first?”

Best-selling author David Bach developed a system that helps prioritize your debt payment plans. It’s called DOLP, which stands for Dead On Last Payment, and DOLPing your way out of debt is all about building momentum as you systematically pay off each card, one by one. This system can help you break free – You can get a true handle on how much you owe and how to put a payment plan into action in a matter of minutes.

Here’s what you need to do get DOLPing:

1. Make a list of the current outstanding balances on each of your credit card accounts.

2. Divide each balance by the minimum payment that particular card company wants you to make. The result is that account’s DOLP number.

For example, say your outstanding Visa balance is $500 and the minimum payment due is $50. Dividing the total debt ($500) by the minimum payment ($50) gives you a DOLP number of 10.

3. Once you’ve figured out the DOLP number for each account, rank them in reverse order, putting the account with the lowest number first, the one with the second-lowest number second, and so on.

You now know the most efficient order in which you should pay off your various credit card balances.

4. Pay as much as you can each month toward the card with the lowest DOLP number. For each of your other cards, make only the minimum payment.

5. Once a card is paid off, cut it up — but don’t close the account! Leave the account open so you have credit you aren’t using, which will help improve your credit score.

Now move the next card up on your list and repeat the process until all your cards are paid off.

Track Your Progress

Tracking which cards have been paid off is a huge emotional boost, and propels you toward future progress. Here’s a template you can use to create your own DOLP chart:

Negotiate Interest Rates

Other experts will suggest that you pay off your cards in an order based on the interest rate each card charges. I disagree with this strategy. Instead, you should contact each credit card company and try to negotiate a lower interest rate. Once you’ve asked for a lower rate, you may end up with pretty much the same interest rate on all your accounts. From there, you’d follow the DOLP method.

Stay On Top Of Your Bills

Late payments can cost you upward of $30 a month, higher interest rates of up to 30%, over-limit fees of up to $35 a month — and more stress. DOLPing your debt helps you break this cycle.

Patience, Persistence, and Progress

Although the DOLP method is simple, getting out of debt isn’t. It may take months or even years to pay off all your credit card debt. It can take twice as long to get out of debt as it took to get in it. But you can do it, and it’s worth the effort.

Google states that they pay out over $500 million each quarter to AdSense advertisers. Are they using old statistics, or is that still the case? Most webmasters I’ve talked with stated that they used to make a LOT of money with AdSense since it’s inception, but that things have changed. Maybe AdWords users have finally learned that they can specify different bid prices for Google vs. content network ads? Maybe it has to do with Google’s Quality Score addition?

It’s hard to say, but a quick scan of the top blogger sites show that most of them have phased out Google Adsense almost entirely, and are now monetizing their site through other means (affiliate market, other ad networks, paid reviews, paid text links, etc). I came across an interview with Markus Frind (of PlentyOfFish.com fame) from 2006, where he talks about a $900K check he received from Google for 2-months of Adsense. Yet if you look at POF today, you’ll notice that there are no longer any Adsense ads. They’ve now been replaced with something else entirely. Why the switch?

We run Adsense on a niche site that gets around 4000 hits a day, and the results have been downright dismal. Hopefully in the next week, we’ll break the $100 barrier, so that we can stop running the campaign, get paid by Google, and move on to something else that monetizes better.

How have your experiences with Adsense been?

It’s a simple concept – Don’t rely on a single source of income, because if that revenue stream dries up, you’ll be screwed. And that’s exactly what happened with Henry and Wilson, twin brothers from Baltimore who got banned from Google AdSense earlier this year and lost roughly $200K as a result! AdSense was the only way they were monetizig their websites, so this was a devastating blow.

If Google suspects that you’re involved in click-fraud, they’ll ban you first, and ask questions later (if ever). It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again. It’s great that they’re so proactive when it comes to click-fraud, but many innocent bystanders have unjustly fallen victim to Google’s ban-stick.

Never let yourself rely on a single source of income or traffic. Making money online is all about maximizing income and traffic from multiple sources. Yahoo banned one of my sites about 6 months ago for no apparent reason, and my pleas to them fell on deaf ears. Has it affected my traffic? Sure, but I’ve worked around it, bringing in other streams of traffic to compensate for it.

Below are some AdSense alternatives that you should consider implementing on your site:

Some Good Affiliate Programs:

You’ve got nothing to lose, so try them out – The results might just surprise you!

Many webmasters are unsure whether they should advertise their website with SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click advertising).

Actually, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals.

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Advantages:

• You get instant results. If you advertise your website through PPC, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
• PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
• You can stop PPC ads at any time.
• PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
• PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn’t get good search engine rankings.
• PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages.

Disadvantages:

• PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don’t calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
• Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.

If you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should use a ROI tracking tool to make sure that you don’t waste your money.

Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages:

• Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done.
• After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
• A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
• Search engine optimization delivers long term results that don’t require permanent financial input.

Disadvantages:

• SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
• SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.

Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it costs considerably less in the long term. However, you must make sure that you optimize your website correctly, if your want to get high search engine rankings.

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimization both contribute to the success of your website. If you use both wisely, you can get many new visitors and customers without spending a fortune. See the recommended resources below for PPC and SEO software tips.

Text Link Ads helps you monetize your website, by selling ad space to perspective advertisers. As the name suggests, the ads you’re selling are simple text links. Advertisers like Text Link Ads because they get search engine love as well as traffic. Unlike other ad networks, the links served by Text Link Ads are static links without a nofollow tag. TLA is as much a SEO tool as advertising tool.

Publishers like Text Link Ads because the links are non-intrusive and doesn’t look like advertising. I sell TLA links on one of my sports blogs, and I’ve placed them right below my blog roll. Advertisers get the SEO benefits, and readers don’t view the links as advertisements, but rather sites that I endorse. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Advertisers buy links on a site for one flat monthly rate. The price is based on a site’s Alexa and Technorati ranking as well as Google PageRank and estimated number of RSS subscribers. The better the numbers, the higher the link price. Currently, we’re only getting a modest amount of money for our ads on the NFL site, but we expect the price to increase when the next Google Page Rank update happens.

Text Link Ads is a great program to join, as it adds yet another revenue stream to your website, and it’s not dependent upon variables out of your control (traffic, clicked ads, etc). TLA take 50% of the link price as their fee for getting a link sale. It’s a bit high, but they are finding you the advertisers, and all you have to do is approve them. All in all, it’s a pretty good deal!

Check them out – It costs nothing to join, so check it out!