Folks, we live in very “interesting times” there’s no doubt about that.  I’m not one of these people who’s running around screaming “the sky is falling!” but even I would be stupid to say there’s nothing wrong in the world.

The economic situation can affect you even if you *are* doing well in your business.

SIDE NOTE:  We went to see our accountant on Monday to deal with last year’s taxes… he was surprised to even see us since he knew we were going through multiple foreclosures over our collapsed real estate empire from the past few years, and figured we (like almost all his other clients) wouldn’t have any significant income to show anyway.  I showed him my single page overview of my online business for last year, and I swear he did a triple take.  He could NOT believe what he saw… that we actually had a business that had HUGELY exploded over the year, and that actually had very significant cashflow to show.  Of course we’re making it all disappear through TONS of real estate deductions that we get to apply for years to come, but… we actually showed about a quarter million dollars in revenue just from online activity, which he said is pretty much unheard of for his clientele right now.  I thought that was a very interesting thing to learn, coming from someone who’s job is to know the intimate details of his client’s financial lives.

OK so the real point of this post is to let you know about a hit we just took.  Over the past year we’ve had plenty of credit cards lowering our limits.  Even American Express – our supposedly “no limit” charge card – has cut us to $1,500!!  This is despite a perfect payment history.

Today, we had another card with a $30,000 limit, cut to $500.  We had JUST paid it in full and were ready to put our next big round of adspend on it, and in the couple of days it took the payment to clear – they killed it.

Fortunately for us we built up a massive arsenal of credit a couple years ago so it’s not the end of the world at all.  But it IS something to be aware of and take note.

Companies that have given credit out like candy in the last decade, are in a PANIC now and are reeling it back in any chance they get because what happens when people have credit but lose a job or have some other financial hardship?  They USE THAT CREDIT!  And if they live on the credit until it’s maxed out and then default, the companies are hosed.

It can make NO difference how much you’ve been spending, or that you’ve always paid on time, etc. etc.  Even people with flawless credit (which I am not one of due to the real estate mess) are having the same thing happen.  It can happen to anyone, and I would go so far as to assume it WILL happen to you.

So what am I suggesting?  A very calculated but potentially dangerous strategy.  Keep your credit cards FULL as much as you possibly can.  The last thing you want to have happen is for you to lose that leverage, and if you keep them full, they can’t take it away (except for the period after you pay it off, as mentioned above… watch out for that!).  They can freeze them though and not allow you to charge anything more, so even this is not without limitations.

So keep them full, but MAKE SURE THEY ARE MAKING YOU MONEY!!  Don’t just spend them up for the sake of spending.  🙂

This requires exceptional money management and tracking of your limits, balances, etc.  It’s also very bad for your FIco score if that matters to you (i.e. you’re buying a house, refinancing, etc.) Also if you’re just plain not comfortable with credit/debt as a tool, then absolutely don’t do this.

But if your primary requirement is credit capital to keep your online business momentum moving, even with paying some interest (which we generally don’t since we pay in full before interest accrues) simply becomes a cost of business and we’re willing to do it in order to keep the machine moving.

In time things will turn around and credit will flow again, but for now (and I believe at least the next year or two minimum) things are pretty damn ugly out there for most people, and if your business depends on credit cards (as most of us probably do who deal in paid traffic) then you NEED to have a plan for weathering this time.

Oh, and a little plug… I have two formal testimonials now from people who have put my Prepop Power Profits report into action, and both were in profit from day 1 with it (one guy earning $300/day PROFIT from 3 campaigns!)  Granted both of them had some experience under their belt – they were not total rookies.  But the point is this method DOES WORK and I believe will work for anyone who just does what I outline in the free report.

I was also asked today, why I gave this method away… did it mean I was on to bigger & better things, or that it didn’t work that well anymore?

Here’s my answer:

I thought REALLY hard about this, and was thinking I better not tell anyone about it.  But then I thought on it some more and realized… all this will do is give MORE people the ability to make MORE money promoting MORE offers.  It doesn’t in any way hurt MY ability to do the same thing.  In fact, it might HELP email submit offers to stick around, and maybe even encourage more advertisers to support prepop.

Now if it was a strategy for getting super cheap clicks on Google or something… then yeah, sharing it would hurt me!  But this is something everyone can use and I still can too.  🙂

So there you have it… this isn’t something that will “work” for a little while and then stop. It can’t get saturated or lose effectiveness. Prepop is just a tool that you can employ to generate more online revenue.

Use it and prosper!

Jonathan