A record number of people were declared bankrupt in England and Wales last year - and the figure looks set to continue

A total of 134,142 people went bankrupt or took out Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVA’s) or Debt Relief Orders (DRO’s) during 2009 - the highest number since records began in 1960.

The record number of insolvencies dwarfed the previous high of 107,288 set in 2006, with insolvency practitioners (specialised accountants) estimating that this level had already been passed by October of last year.

Insolvency practitioners are warning that 2009’s total was likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, with persopnal insolvencies expected to continue rising this year to reach an expected 150,000, with further annual increases of 12% which, in turn, are expected to last until 2012.

A record number of insolvencies chose to take an IVA last year at 13,219, in which interest is frozen in return for a set amount being repaid each month.

Insolency practitioners have warned that, although the UK is officially out of recession, the harsh reality is that people are still living beyond their means. Historical records prove that personal insolvencies will continue to rise after the recession finally ends and for sdome time to come.

The problem though, is that rises in taxation and cuts in public sector spending are predicted for 2010 and a lot of people will need to take drastic action to resolve their financial problems such as applying for bankruptcy.

If you’ve spent a good deal of time in the Internet Marketing arena, trying to get up and running and feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, then you may be looking for a personal mentor and coach for the coming 2010 year.

Learning the marketing ropes on the ‘net has evolved from advice being shared sporadically in forums to the development of how to guides people could tackle on their own.

But lately, there’s been a movement toward more hand-holding and direct one-on-one interaction between student and teacher. To date, only the very rich could afford the high-priced coaching opportunities that top marketers offered.

And in some cases, that will still hold true in the year 2010. But here’s the good news: You can invest in coaching like you’re building a ladder – moving up one rung at a time until you’re able to pay for top tier mentoring at the level you need.

For example, let’s say right now you’re a total newbie. You know nothing – you’re clueless about how to choose a niche, you don’t even know what a keyword is, and when it comes to launching a website, you’d prefer to run outside and bury your head in the sand like an ostrich.

You can get by with hiring a more affordable online mentor. You’ll want someone who has more experience than you, who is making money online, but who isn’t priced so high you’d have to take out a second mortgage just to spend 30 minutes on the phone letting them ask you questions about your dreams and desires.

Then as you progress, if your coach has taught you all that they can, you move on to the next tier and the next, until you yourself are considered an expert marketer in your own right.

When you search for a marketing coach for your 2010 business pursuits, look for someone who does not have a one-size fits all approach to teaching. You want someone who isn’t multi-tasking during your time with them, whether it’s on the phone or chatting via Skype.

On the initial communication, you should both be analysing each other – the coach should see if you’re a good fit for what he or she teaches and you should consider whether or not they seem like a good fit when it comes to how you learn best in terms of sharing knowledge and even how your personalities mesh.

Expect more competition both as a product creator and an affiliate marketer on ClickBank. While this prediction might make you squirm a bit, consider it a beneficial forecast. A thriving marketplace attracts more consumers.

ClickBank just introduced three tutorial videos to help bring on German, French and Spanish speaking sellers and affiliates. This will help widen the global audience and your potential for sales.

They will be doing more handholding for the masses, training product creators to stay above the board and not spam or do unethical things, and training affiliates to utilise tools to make more sales.

For example, in a recent ClickBank blog post, they even advised affiliates to use PLR to help promote ClickBank products. That’s a positive thing for marketers, because many online companies frown on PLR, not understanding its ability in the marketplace.

ClickBank is going to continue cracking down on vendors. Many topics are already being declined from the list in 2009, and you can expect them to continue weeding out topics in the coming year.

They’ve recently shut down topics such as credit repair, marketing through social networks, multi level marketing memberships, and more. You’re unable to submit topics in these categories at all and they will not review your product for you.

ClickBank plans to ensure its vendors are in compliance with the FTC regulations – especially if you’re using the Vendor Spotlight feature. They don’t tell you what’s wrong, just that you’re not in compliance – and they direct you to the FTC’s website so you can investigate the rules yourself.

The site has also begun expending its marketplace categories, and probably will widen it more as the number of vendors and affiliates grow. You may have noticed, if you already have a product there, that when you log into your account, you’re told of your new category and subcategory – and given a chance to dispute it if you wish to do so.

Some people complain about the ClickBank marketplace, preferring instead to use another form of affiliate marketing like PayDotCom. But for those who want to cover all bases and have their products promoted by a large number of affiliates (or want to have a large number of products to promote as an affiliate), it’s best to just stay abreast of the ClickBank rules as they’re announced, which means staying tuned into their blog.

The movie Julie and Julia took blogging mainstream for many who had no idea that an everyday, average individual could command attention and pursue their passion using an online technology available to the masses for free.

And it’s not just movies and rare blog success stories that make people want to blog. In 2009, the job market resulted in a ton of layoffs for journalists and print newspapers and magazines went out of business. These writers will take their skills to the Internet.

Blogging will boom in 2010 even more than it already has in marketing circles. Just like reality TV has now become a career pursuit for some young adults, blogging is being viewed as a potential income source for those who don’t want to take the regular route to financial success.

Perez Hilton has been very open with the amount of money he’s raking in – and it’s substantial. There are so many blog success stories that you can learn from and apply them to your 2010 Internet Marketing strategy.

The Bankaholic blog was sold for $15 million. ArsTechnica sold for $25 million. PaidContent sold for $30 million. Someone recently commented that you can start a blog about Doritoes potato chips and once it gets rolling with traffic, wait and see how much they pay you to own it.

In the year 2010, you’re going to find many grassroots bloggers who are flying by the seat of their pants. The one edge they may have over experienced marketers is that they don’t just get into a niche because it sounds lucrative – they do it because they truly have a passion for it.

That passion will translate into frequent blog posts and the building of a loyal and enthusiastic like-minded core audience. It will grow like a wildfire and when that traffic hits a certain number, competitors will come knocking at the door of these bloggers hoping to make an acquisition and funnel that traffic to their own interests.

Many of these bloggers you’ll be competing with won’t have the marketing savvy and insight to monetise their blogs as well as yours, so initially they may not see the same financial success. But don’t count them out if they’re fierce about feeding the Googlebots with constant content and ensuring they’re not hyping up their reviews in a way that violates current American FTC rulings.

Your goal for 2010 as a blogger should be to continue leaving breadcrumbs on a daily basis for search engine spiders. Make sure you utilise broad and long-tail keywords. Comply with FTC regulations about being transparent if you receive compensation for a review or testimonial. And narrow your niche down so that you have a high chance for success against the influx of new bloggers in the blogosphere.

In the Google Adwords blog, they recently posted about the 2010 New Year strategies that you’ll need to develop to succeed in their campaigns. The simple fact is, more competition is aware of Google AdWords than ever before.

Instead of just a handful of net savvy marketers leveraging this advertising powerhouse, brick and mortar businesses and everyday entrepreneurs are utilising AdWords campaigns to get an upper hand on their competition.

In their blog, the AdWords team stressed the important of experimenting with your campaigns to get the ultimate optimisation possible. That’s something far too many marketers fail at.

If you’re going to pay for advertising, as opposed to using free marketing avenues like social networks, then it makes sense to invest as much time as necessary to get the most out of your money – in this case, the ROI is your click-through and conversion rate into sales.

They even give you some hints about how to stay one step ahead of your competition. You can monitor niche trends using Google Alerts – so whenever something new is making waves, you’re one of the first ones to capitalise on it via an AdWords campaign.

AdWords also created many tools for your 2010 campaigns to help you get better conversions – including templates that show you the display ads you make that have text as usual, but also images, video and logo options.

The AdWords team understands that a marketer doesn’t have to be the first to campaign about a topic – just the best at connecting your product’s message to the intended audience and for this, Google’s team keeps enhancing their analytics tools.

Google has created an entire series called Think2010 for its AdWords users. They want you to get the most out of your experience with this tool because when you succeed, they make more money, too – it’s a win-win situation to help you learn the ropes.

They want to stress that we’re in a recovery period. Amid all of the doom and gloom about the economy, 2010 is poised to help get people back on their feet – and consumer shopping will likely increase, contributing to more profits through your AdWords campaign.

Don’t shy away from Google AdWords campaigns in 2010. It’s the perfect time to take a course and educate yourself about how to create an effective campaign through the use of trend-watching, predictions – and of course, technical acumen when creating your next promotion online.

Ezine Articles (EZA) is perhaps the best known article directory and most widely used by Internet Marketers. It used to be that you could submit any topic to them, include links how you wanted, and reap the rewards for your content efforts.

But slowly but surely, EZA has been cracking down on marketers – and this may be an inconvenience to you, but it will ultimately provide a better marketing venue for you. Chris Knight, the owner of EzineArticles.com, has implemented new rules that will probably continue to grow in the year 2010.

In 2009, they stopped letting you submit articles about certain topics. For example, you could no longer submit articles about private label rights – because they don’t want to promote the use of PLR to the public. Some people were sorely disappointed when a new rule impeded their progress.

EZA implemented the Premium account where you could pay almost $600 a year for faster service, better reporting, and more convenience perks such as an increased number of resource bio boxes you could store onsite.

Chris Knight is deeply aware of how Google perceives his site. For 2010, he’s considering making a change that will eliminate or hinder your ability to edit your article after it’s submitted and live.

Why will this be done in 2010? Because Google is being told there’s an article in a certain place. If your article is edited (and according to Knight, about 83% are just resource box edits), it ceases to be live, so Google goes there and sees nothing there – making EZA look bad in the eyes of Google’s indexing system.

Other article directories are going to clamping down on affiliate links and spam topics, too. Just like social networks, they fear their site will be slapped by Google if they allow marketers to create a “bad neighbourhood” online.

As Knight said in his EZA blog this year, “Our reputation (and the reputation of everyone who participates in the EzineArticles platform/system) is on the line with every single outbound link included on every single article.”

They have to be very careful of where you’re linking and for what reason. Instead of being angry about the new rules they create, why not embrace them with a thankful attitude that this article directory is working overtime to help ensure your content is safeguarded against prevalent spammers and that it maintains its positive reputation in the eyes of search engines everywhere?

The shift change at work has happened, and the department I work in has now been reduced from 5 members to just 2, of which I’m one of them.

One of my colleagues has retired, rather than face signing on, and the other two have been laid off.

Finished. The end of a five year chapter whilst I’ve been there.

That now puts in a “proper” job for the first time since 1987, when I started working nights. I now work days, Monday to Friday, and for me, this is going to represent a massive life and culture change for me. I know, given time, that working days will be beneficial for me, as, as human beings, we are not designed to work nights.

This has been my first designated weekend off for ages. I’ve finished my membership site now, which went live about three hours ago as I write this, and I now only have to update the site on a weekly basis with new downloads for the members.

I’m sorting out my new schedule now as with only two days off in a row, then working 5, my time is really pushed. I am trying to devote one weekend day to the business only; as I still have to do “normal” things like mowing the lawn, household duties and so on, and I’m trying to re-arrange my life so that I work 5 days in the job, the business for one day, and leave the seventh day for the household responsibilities.

It’s hard going fitting everything in. Before I used to work 8 or 9 days/nights straight, then have 5 off. See the difference?

It is even more important now that my business income starts to become residual, repeating and still comes in without any hands on work from me for 6 days a week. That’s the idea behind the membership site. Tying this in with my eBay store and Amazon book store gives me 3 streams of passive income.

You can see my membership page here:

That’s got to be a good start to my 2010 debt free strategy, hasn’t it?

Responding to people’s instinct, you will be able to improve your sales by giving away free things. Everyone likes a good deal, but everyone likes to have free things as well. You will find that there are some ways that you can benefit from giving away free products, but, like everything else, there are also some cons to giving out free products.

Some customers will be grateful if you give them a hat and a bumper sticker or some other various ‘giveaway’ merchandise items that make them feel valued and they are getting way more for their custom. This is a great way to improve sales, and not really costing much to set up giving away the free mechanise. This is just one of the ways that you can give out free products and make your customers feel they are making a profit from the deal. A relatively simple give away trick here is to give them limited edition merchandise emblazoned with your logo or trademarks.

Giving away this kind of merchandise makes your customer feel valued, a part of an exclusive family, but this will only work if the limited edition products are only given out to customers, and are not available elsewhere. Make your customer feel part of an exclusive club and you will be able to seal the deal and you’ll gain profits from the improvement of your sales.

The second way that you can give your customers free products is with promotions such as BOGOF items. (Buy One, Get One Free.) You’ll find that there are many products that can be sold like this. Another alternative is to promote using a buy one, get another half price strategy which can also work. In addition, this can be an excellent incentive to sell your over stocks. You will be able to dispose of the extra products and still make a profit, as well as disposing of the ‘dead stock’ or slow sellers. This will also help you with personal sales figures.

The third giveaway strategy involves giving rebates and refunds. This can be one of the best ways to make money, improve sales, and give away free products, because if you work the numbers to your advantage, you won’t lose anything, but the customer will think that you have. It is all about working the numbers. The rebates are better in some instances because your customers will be getting actual money back. You will also find that customers will be more likely to spend more for their ‘money back’ if you set a minimum qualifying spend first for them to qualify for a refund or rebate .

There are a lot of ways that you can use the free item strategy for your advantage, but you must make sure that you take your time to explain to your customers exactly what it is that they will be getting free. Once your customers are told that they can qualify for getting free merchandise or refunds, you will be able to keep their attention. ‘Terms and Conditions apply’ is the catchall phrase that should accompany each promotion.

Free merchandise should be only one part of an intensive marketing campaign. Your business needs to be professional in it’s dealings and it’s outlook. Your products or services need to be worthwhile. Forget about promoting your product for what it is - your customers won’t be interested. Instead, concentrate on promoting your products benefits to your customers. If you help solve one of your customers problems, he will be grateful to you. And grateful custromers become good friends.

Customers spend money buying from friends. Solve a problem, gain a friend. Use the free giveaway or refund technique to get attention to your business and product. Maintain your professionalism and knowledge throughout the sales pitch. Make your customer feel included and valued as well as at the same time solving one of their problems, and you’ll gain a customer for life.

Free offers alone will help get your customers through the door. It’s up to you to convert that enquiry and turn your customer into a friend.

Isn’t it amazing? For most of us, the weekly shop is just that; buy the food and supplies we need for the week. For the supermarket, or store if you’re American, it’s a major battle for them to get us to spend more more money every time we go in there. Using a vast array of proven psychological tricks, they normally succeed.

By understanding the psychological tricks they play on all consumers, we can fight back. Here’s some of the most popular tricks all stores employ to get us to part with our hard earned money.

By far, the most prevalent and annoying trick they use is to regularily move their stock - and aisles- around, making it harder for us to find the stuff we want. The common accepted psychological reason for this is simply to get us to spend more time in the store as individuals, as the longer we stay, the more we spend. Moving regular lines to different parts of the store is just one way of doing this, as we are forced to look for what we need - passing many other aisles in the process.

Eye Level Marketing - this technique is where the stores place the products with the highest profit margin at eye level. This conforms with a basic human instinct of saving time - we are apt to choose what we see first rather than physically stop and visually scan the aisles for the products we really want. Proof? The cheapest items are almost always on the lowest shelf - keeping them out of normal vision, and forcing us to physically stop and bend down to buy them when we do find them.

The Man Hater Policy - next time you’re in a store, watch out for the men. They’ll be ‘boomeranging’. Men will buy just what they want or need, they simply turn around and walk back they way they came. The boomerang. The stores countermand this by putting popular mens lines, major items, and high profit items, at the furthest point of the aisle, forcing us to walk all the way to get what we need.

Always eat before you go shopping - the stores entice us with smells of freshly baked bread to make us feel hungry as we walk around. Hungry shoppers buy more food and make the superstore more money by buying snacks, chocolate and so on at the point of sale or the checkouts so we buy even more. Whats more, the point of sale units with chocolate and sweets (candy if you’re American) are always low down - just at the right height for children to see and hassle mom or dad for a treat on the way through the checkout.

Never go shopping when you’re hungry. It’s a proven winner with the supermarkets - and a proven money loser for the consumers.

Essentials are never at the front of the store - the idea behind this is simple - it forces you to walk through the store to get what you need - and often, buying things you didn’t plan on buying on the way. Impulse purchases are very big business for all supermarkets.

The supermarkets overall strategy is simple - the longer they get us to stay in store, the more we spend. Couple that with the psychological impulse creating strategies they use while we are actually in the store makes it a surefire winner for the supermarkets - and a certain loser for the consumer.

How to take charge of your debts
The rising cost of living and dying has made people more reliant on loans and credit. Most people have been indebted to someone at some point in their lives. A debt is an obligation that should be paid and accounted for no matter how meagre the amount.

Being in debt is normal considering that no one has a monopoly of all the money in the world. People will always have the tendency to accumulate debts no matter how rich. In fact, rich people have more debts than poor people because they have more needs and they have more collateral or security.

Being indebted isn’t something that you should be ashamed of provided you are a responsible debtor. This means the money was used for a very good cause or purpose and the debtor is strict about looking after his responsibility to pay his debts.

Even a person who is financially aware can get into debt for one reason or another. However, a person who is good in managing his finances should also be good in managing his debts. Managing debts would include the ability to know how much a person owes and from where he would get the money to pay such debts.

The ability to know the total amount of debt is a must in debt management because the person who is in debt is aware of the total amount he has to pay to finally pay off his debts. There are people who don’t practice good debt management and they keep borrowing money without being able to monitor how much they already owe individuals or financial institutions.

Debt management means that at the time the loan was made, the borrower knows where he would source the payment for such debt. This makes the debt manageable because it would appear that the person has some source of income and he is just not liquid at the time he borrowed the money.

People who don’t have a steady source of income should obviously be discouraged from borrowing because there is a tendency for their debts to pile up without being paid at all. Unemployed people who resort to borrowing for their essential expenses like food and daily subsistence may borrow from another creditor to pay off a debt that is already due and demandable. The same thing happens to the second and the next loans after which it becomes a vicious cycle.

A person who is indebted to someone should take into account his assets that can be used to pay off his debts. There is no problem if the debtor is looking at a possible income that hasn’t yet been paid. Such unpaid income can be considered an asset that can be used to pay his debts.

Debts are easily made but they are difficult to pay. Thus, every person should be careful when borrowing money from others. Make sure that you have something to pay for the debt like an permanent income or other assets that can be sold to pay off the debt.

Some people get in debt through loans that have varying interest rates. This means that as well as the principal (cash) amount borrowed, the debtors still have to pay the interest rate.

A person who borrowed £100 at ten percent interest rate per month will have to pay the principal plus the interest rate of £10 per month. Some interest rates are based on the actual balance so, for example, if the debtor has already paid £20 then the interest rates would only be charged on the balance of £80. However, there are some interest rates charged for the full original amount borrowed.

While being in debt is prevalent, every person should learn how to manage his debt and how to stay out of debt if possible. One of the major factors why most British people are indebted today is the misuse of credit cards.

Credit cards are those plastic cards that can be used to pay for almost any purchase even if you don’t have cash. People find it easier to spend when using their cards because they just swipe it and, just like magic, their desires appear before them.

However, most people who fail to use their credit cards wisely become indebted and are eventually faced with legal action for failing to pay their cards when they become due and demandable.

If you must borrow, always take charge of your debts to make sure they don’t lead you to declaring insolvency or bankruptcy.

And it’s really easy to end up in such a serious condition within weeks.