I recently came across a service which has left me completely dumbfounded… and very happy.

Why? Because it just keeps on working and making money.

£380 in April… £55 in March… £130 in February… £88 in January… £644 in December ’11… £497 in November ’11.

I actually can’t remember feeling this excited about a tipping service. As you know I’ve tested some absolute stinkers for Insider’s Edge – and on a number of occasions lost a lot of money in the process.

Russell Gibbs’ daily betting service has restored my faith…

You can see a full breakdown of the figures above here. (Click on the ‘results’ tab at the top).

Now these figures are not back-tested, cleverly manipulated or won using ridiculous stakes. All the results have been live proofed and tested by a number of industry experts and independent reviewers (he has even been proofed by the Racing Post). It’s not often you see that.

All the profits are based on stakes of just £10 a bet – and on average you’re only having to place around 20 bets a month so the liability is relatively low.

The tips come from a professional industry insider whose ‘day job’ is to place large bets on horses for race horse owners, trainers and jockeys

Russell Gibbs – that’s the tipster – is what’s known as a commission agent. That means that he bets on behalf of people in the racing industry who aren’t allowed to bet themselves (because of strict laws on insider betting).

As you’ll see there’s no slick marketing promotion with this service. Russell is a professional tipster who lives and breathes horse racing and has done for 30 years – he’s not an Internet marketer.

In an industry of wild claims and high pressure sales I find it quite refreshing, you can see his site here:

Russell Gibbs’ Daily Betting Service

I don’t think Russell would mind me saying that he’s not a techie or a computer geek. To receive the tips you get a text message to your mobile phone which lets you know that you need to call his tipping number. It’s a normal number (not a dodgy premium rate) and if you’ve got a mobile phone contract with free minutes this probably won’t cost you a penny.

(Incidentally, tipping services that do use premium rate phone lines are out and out scams and should always always always be avoided!)

The main reason Russell uses a tipping line rather than putting it on a website is simply that he just doesn’t have time to get to a desktop computer in a typical day – he’s constantly on the move.

Just to give you an idea, when I spoke to him yesterday he was attending a race meeting. That, in of itself is a full time job and goes some way to showing just how deeply committed he is to the sport.

So what can you expect when you phone the tipping line?

When you call up there’s no waffle, you get his recorded current days selections. If there are any last minute golden opportunities he comes across at the race course, he’ll also send you a text message to ring his update line. In that sense it actually works far better than email as you’re alerted to news instantly.

There are 2 strands to this service which really set this apart… one of these could have made you £2,340 in the past 6 months

Straight back bets are just one part of this service. You actually get two sets of tips, the other being lay tips (this is where you bet against something happening).

Let me give you a quick rundown of his lay betting results. These are warts n’ all:

-£50 in April… -£65 in March… £520 in February… £420 in January… £835 in December ’11… £680 in November ’11.

Now as you can see there have been a couple of slightly down months (as with any service not every month comes out on top) but overall it’s up £2,340 in 6 months. In this industry that kind of hit rate is as rare as hen’s teeth.

Combine this with Russell’s back selections and we’re talking about £4,134 (minus Betfair commissions).

Incidentally the figures for May’s lay bets are looking excellent and at the time of writing £500 up.

Now if you do have a go at the laying side it’s worth bearing in mind that you would need a larger betting bank (these results are based on £100 stakes). If you’re just starting out you might want to start with £20 stakes for example – obviously staking is a personal preference.

There is another quite genius ‘hidden’ element to this service which I’ll definitely be using…

There is also an extremely profitable, but slightly more complex strategy than simply betting on the tips that you can use. Let me explain how it works…

When Russell provides his tips they’re often available at excellent odds because he’s often visiting the courses in person and is privy to information that ordinary folk just don’t have access to. This means you can sometimes place a bet at Russell’s advised price and then just before the race starts place the opposite bet (lay bet) as the odds have shortened and make a guaranteed profit.

In other words you can often make money before the race has even started and eliminate all the risk. Email me if you want me to go into more detail about this. I’ve used this strategy with great success.

Russell Gibbs’ service won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not cheap compared to some services we’ve looked at and some people will be put off by the phone element (although for many of us this will be a major positive). Also rather than a trial period you get an introductory first month at half price. I think this may be the first time I’ve ever recommended a service that doesn’t offer at least a free month. So yes, you have to stump up some cash to try this unfortunately. On the flip side the long term results speak for themselves.

Russell’s customer service is nothing short of excellent. Response is quick and cancellations are processed immediately.

This service is only available to a small group of members and I had to do a bit arm twisting to get Russell to agree to let me share this with you. So if some people are put off by the points I’ve just mentioned that may actually be a good thing, he’s not taking big numbers on this.

If you are interested and do want to give this a go you can get a month’s membership half price here:

Russell Gibbs’ Daily Betting Service

It’s done through PayPal so your money’s safe and you can cancel at any time. If you click on the ‘Join Here’ button in the menu bar it guides you through the process. I’m personally looking forward to using this service for many months to come.

I’m marking this one up as: Highly recommended.

It’s worth $38 billion a year in the US alone…

Cocaine is big business.

Drug traffickers don’t have to pay any tax or import duty to governments, but the penalties for being caught are huge – in some countries the death penalty still stands for certain drug related offences.

Criminals devise all manner of sneaky techniques to smuggle drugs: tunnels are dug right underneath the US/Mexican border, Meth Amphetamine is soaked onto postcards… one Columbian gang even tried implanting liquid heroin into live puppies.

* Shudder *

One South African, Nobanda Nolubabalo raised the stakes in the creative smuggling front by using her dreadlocks to try and smuggle cocaine into Thailand.

She was arrested in Bangkok airport after officials noticed a peculiar white flecking in her hair. On closer inspection they found 1.5 kilograms of cocaine stashed in her dreadlocks wrapped in tubes. She had taken a flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Bangkok via Doha and had been hired as a ‘drug mule’ by a Thai based businessman.

How much had she been paid? Just £1,200.

Apparently the street value of the cocaine was around £93,000…

Depressing stuff. This comes not long after a fellow South African was caught and afterwards executed for trying to smuggle 3kg of Crystal Meth through Ghangzhou, China.

For genuine (and legal) money making tips and advice please check out the news and reviews sections and make sure you sign up to the FREE Insider’s Edge eletter below.

They’re alien, warmly lit worlds where logic and reason fog into obscurity and all the odds are stacked in the shop keeper’s favour. You’re in their environment now. They know the lay of the land and have all the clever answers…

However, this is one area where modern technology is your friend. If you can keep you head and get to a smartphone, laptop or a nearby Internet café there are several things you can do to give yourself the edge.

1. Use your mobile phone to quickly scan items and find you a better price online

There’s an ingenious little app you can get on your iPhone, Android or Windows phone called Red Laser that cross references some of the best prices available online for you for most items which have a barcode.

It’s free and easy to use. You simply open the app on your phone and it’ll instruct you to place the item’s barcode under your phone camera. Once it’s ‘locked on’ it’ll check major retailers and websites for the best price. It can even pinpoint nearby shops where the item is available on the map. Magic.

If you find a better price on your phone let the salesperson know about it and ask them if they can beat it. You may find they suddenly have some bargaining leeway.

I did this in my local electrical store and while they didn’t beat the price on my washing machine they matched it and threw in free delivery.

2. Check price comparison websites for an instant breakdown of the some of the best deals online

Sometimes you can’t get to an items barcode or it’s inconvenient to scan… or it simply doesn’t have one!

In these cases it’s worth hitting the price comparison websites. Two of the best, most recognised price comparison sites you can find online are:

1. Price Runner 2. Kelkoo

Both of these are excellent.

If you know the model number of the product you’re after, great, if not enter the brand and the product type (for example ‘Smeg fridge’) and you should see a list of the various models on offer.

Click on the relevant one and it’ll give you a breakdown of the highest and lowest prices currently available. You can usually drill down further to include the cost of delivery.

Tip: Google also have a price comparison tool called ‘Shopping’ which I’ve circled and arrowed in this screenshot here:

3. There are an Aladdin’s cave of deals to be found on Amazon and eBay

You’d be surprised what you can find on eBay and now, Amazon Marketplace – it’s no longer just for collectibles and old books.

They really are home to some of the best bargains but they don’t usually up on price comparison searches.

Make sure you visit both sites to see if anyone’s selling the item you’re after. Be a bit broader in your search term in case the seller hasn’t included the exact model number in the total.

Remember it’s not just second hand goods on offer, brand new ‘buy it now’ goods are now just as prevalent.

4. Get off the Internet and into the auction room for the very best deals!

Ever wonder why the teams on TV auction shows like Bargain Hunt almost always LOSE money trying to sell their car boot ‘bargains’ at auction?

It’s because auctions are where savvy shoppers go to pick up a bargain. If you really want to save money (and in fact if you want to make money as an online trader) you need to take advantage of auction houses. We’re lucky in this country in that there are literally dozens taking place across the UK every week.

Often you can pick up outrageous bargains up for a fraction of their true resale value. A good place to start is the UKAuctioneers website which gives you a list of upcoming auctions and events.

5. Why pay at all? See if you can get it for free, a swap or a knock down price by checking these 2 websites

When people move house in a hurry or don’t want to go through the hassle of auctioning everything off on eBay, they often turn to a website called Gumtree. You can find some truly amazing offers on here. In fact often you can get items for free providing you can arrange transport and pick the item up.

Freecycle is another great resource where you can pick up items for free or for a swap. Search for a community near you and register to see what items are being offered.

Please note: Be careful when using these sites (particularly Gumtree) because there is no buyer protection in the sense that you’re dealing direct with the seller with no middleman or payment gateway like PayPal. Try, where possible, to look at the goods on offer in person first.

6. When you pay for something online make sure you get a kickback where possible

I’m a huge fan of Cashback websites. They really do offer you money for nothing and for incredibly little effort. I’ve covered this at length on Insider’s Edge and you can find out more information about this here.

I’ve personally saved several hundred pounds using Cashback websites and use them for everything from booking holidays to doing the weekly food shop. It’s well worth doing.

That’s it! 6 ways to give yourself the insider’s edge when shopping.

Have you used any of the techniques listed above? Or have you come up with any useful price comparison tricks of your own? Please leave a comment below.

This is such a simple 2 minute fix but instantly helps unify your online presence and brand

I’m not kidding, doing this will instantly help you add credibility to your website or blog.

You only have to it once, it takes 2 minutes and it’s free – the rest is automatic.

In fact you don’t even need to have your own website to get use out of this. If you leave comments on blogs or websites this is still worth doing because it will ensure your chosen image will show next to any comments you make online. It’s a free tool called Gravatar and it links your email address to an image of your choosing.

Now before we go any further let me quickly show you what I’m talking about.

Here’s a screengrab from one of the article comment threads on the Insider’s Edge website. As you can see the first comment has a little personalised image next to it (that’s the ‘Gravatar’), whereas the second one shows a default placeholder.

And here’s an example of an author box from a post on this site – which also uses a Gravatar…

This icon that appears under every article I post on Insider’s Edge. It marks out the article author and helps brand the page. These boxes are also excellent for SEO (pleasing Google) as you’ll see.

Now while there’s nothing wrong with having the default, placeholder image showing on pages and comments (it’s FAR better to get posting and commenting than not) having your own image does 3 great things:

1) It instantly brands your content – It’s a great way to build rappor with website authors, bloggers and other commenters because your comments and blog posts will be instantly recognisible thanks to the little image displaying alongside them.

2) It brings together your presence online – Your articles, comments, forum posts and any site that uses this technology will be instantly identifiable as yours. By using that same image for your Social Media profiles you can keep that consistency going even further.

3) Authenticity and credibility – People will start recognising your work, whether your posting on your own blog or website or guest posting elsewhere. It can also help ensure any comments you make get through without a hitch. I get at least 100 spam comments on Insider’s Edge a day from automated bots although 99% of these are blocked by my software. Your Gravatar (author image) is linked to your email address and therefore instantly helps to show websites, forums and comment threads that you’re a real person.

Now you may be thinking “I don’t want my picture showing anywhere!”

Well you don’t have to. You could use an image of anything (as long as it’s clean!). So for example it could be your website logo, a picture you’ve taken… anything that appeals to you.

Let me show you how it works.

How to add your Gravatar

Creating your own Gravatar is pretty straightforward and you can set one up for free simply by going here:

Gravatar

Let’s go through the setup step-by-step quickly:

The next two steps are pretty straightforward. You’ll be asked to enter your email address and then check your inbox to confirm your new Gravatar account.

————————————————————
Having trouble entering your email? If, when entering your email, you receive a message in red box that says ‘The email address youremailaddress@example.com already belongs to an account in our system” don’t panic! It just means you’ve already had a Gravatar account set up previously – probably from setting up a WordPress.com account in the past or from installing a plugin. It’s nothing to worry about, if you can’t remember your password simply hit the ‘Forgot your password’ link and you’ll be able to retrieve your login details, log in to Gravatar and skip to the next step.
————————————————————

The email you receive should look something like this (I’ve marked the confirmation link for you).

After clicking through you’ll be asked to create a username and password. You don’t need to stress too much about what username you choose in the sense that you can control what name appears on posts and comments yourself. With that said I’d avoid anything too controversial.

Now comes the important bit…

After clicking the link you’ll then be given several options as you can see in this screenshot:

Now in most cases you’ll have an image on your hard drive (maybe a photograph of yourself) so you can just choose the first option. You then just need to locate it on your computer.

Tip: If I’m uploading an image I normally copy or move it to my desktop to make it easier to find.

(By the way if you’ve got a webcam or a fancy computer with a camera attached you can choose the third option. It’ll activate your camera so that you can take a self portrait there and then to use as your image).

This is the next screen:

Yours will look a little different (I hope!). As you can see for the purposes of this tutorial I’ve uploaded an image of a stick man.

Now it might be that you don’t need to resize your image here but this preview screen makes it handy for you to see how your finished Gravatar will look online. The small preview is perhaps the most useful one as that’s the size it will most frequently be seen at. Move the corners in and out (I’ve circled them in red above) until you’re happy and then click the ‘Crop and Finish!’ button at the bottom.

You’re almost there!

The next screen will look like this:

This is essentially where you have to rate your image. i.e. is it suitable for children?

If you’ve chosen a picture of a severed head for your Gravatar or something a bit controversial, I’d consider going back and choosing a different image. The rating of your Gravatar will affect where it can appear and you don’t want the image to be blocked on certain websites simply because it’s too risque.

This next bit is essential:

You need to actually click on your image here and then click the ‘confirm’ button in the pop up that follows for it to register your choice.

That’s it! You’re done.

Now when you post articles on your site, or guest post on other people’s site your image will display in the author box (provided the site supports and has Gravatars enabled – and most do).

The same applies to any comments you now make. On websites that supports Gravatars (like this one) your image will display next to your comment. You just need to make sure you use the same email address that you registered your Gravatar to above.

In case you’re wondering, you can add as many email addresses as you like to your Gravatar account. Each can have its own image or they can use the seperate images, it’s up to you. To add an new email address to your account simply click ‘add a new email’ when logged in to your Gravatar account and repeat the steps listed above.

Why not give it a go now and see it working for yourself? Simply follow the steps above and try leaving a comment below!

Right, here’s another nasty email scam to watch out for.

I have to say this is one of the cleverer ones I’ve uncovered on Insider’s Edge. It’s an email that appears to come from amazon.com (they’ve completely masked the ‘from’ address) and tells you that your recent order has been ‘cancelled’.

The exact wording is:

Your order has been successfully canceled. For you reference, here’s a summary of your order: You just canceled order 102-5121-954 placed on May 2, 2012

If, like me, you use Amazon regularily to buy items online it’ll make you double take.

Here’s a screenshot of the email:

It’s clever because even if you realise that you haven’t ordered the item listed, you feel compelled to click on one of the links so that you can log into Amazon and rectify the issue.

Don’t do it!

This is another phishing scam designed to steal your private data, try and sell you dodgy sex pills and generally make your life a misery.

In this case there’s a subtle clue that this is a scam…

When you hover over any of the links it shows you the destination website which is somewhere completely different from the Amazon website. The address is a series of numbers which ends with the word ‘obliterated’. Hmmm…

If you receive an email like this delete it – or better still ignore it. Believe it or not the simple act of opening an email can alert scammers that your address is a ‘live’ address.

At last, someone’s invented a gadget that fixes this very irritating problem – and it works!

Cold calls, wrong numbers drive most of us mad. It’s now so cheap for telesales marketers to call random landlines that it’s become a curse.

I’ve had readers who’ve written to say that they regularly receive between 5 and 10 unsolicted telephone calls to their home phone every single evening.

When I wrote an article about how to stop cold callers pestering you I was quite taken aback by the response. It seems that a lot of us are taking sensible measures to try and prevent cold callers… but to no avail.

The Telephone Preference Service, was set up to help tackle the problem and while it’s certainly a brilliant help, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It’s powers don’t extend to cold callers and telesales marketers operating outside of the UK. Furthermore there’s very little they can do to clamp down on rogue, illegal operators.

There are a couple of alternatives, including a service called ‘Anonymous Call Reject’ from BT which is supposed to block any calls from witheld numbers to your phone. However it gets mixed reviews and costs £4.30 a month. Alternatively you can choose to go ‘ex directory’ – but this is a pretty drastic (not to mention expensive) solution.

That’s why I was intrigued to find this clever gadget from a company called ‘TrueCall’. It’s called ‘The Nuisance Call Blocker’ and it’s currently available here.

What is TruCall (The Nuisance Call Blocker) and how does it work?

TrueCall is a gadget that you plug into your phoneline that acts as a sort of secretary between you and your callers. So for instance if I were to call you completely out of the blue my call would be answered by the device and it would ask me what my name is and what my call is regarding. This information is then filtered back to you and you decide whether to take the call. So if you don’t believe that I’m a bereaved beneficiary who wants to hand you 75 million dollars, you can block the call and permanently blacklist the number I’ve called you from.

For people whose numbers you add to the device as ‘friends and family’ or other trusted numbers (for example your bank manager or local takeaway delivery service) they will get straight through to you without being questioned and your phone will ring as normal.

TrueCall is, in my opinion, a very elegant solution to a tiresome problem. I’ve taken it for a spin and it really works right from the word ‘go’. Let’s do a quick overview of some of the features….

- You record the message that callers will hear. So for example you could tell it to say: “Hello you’re through to the Smith household, please could you let me know your name and what this call is regarding”. That’s a terrible example but the point is genuine callers will know they’ve got through to the right number. Genuine callers will only be screened by the service once because you can ‘whitelist’ them so that they instantly get through on subsequent calls.

- You can ‘zap’ unsolicited calls without picking up the phone. You no longer have to make awkard excuses or listen to the phone endlessly ringing. Most telesales marketers will give up once they get through to the TrueCall answer service, but for those that persist you get the need to know info (their name and purpose) and can decide whether or not to take the call with the push of a button.

- It gets smarter over time… The more you use it the smarter this device comes. As you whitelist (or ‘friend’) genuine caller numbers and blacklist (or ‘block’) dodgy ones you soon get a situation where hearing the phone ringing means you’ve got a genuine caller trying to get through… while TrueCall works quietly in the background blocking the rest.

- It has a built in answerphone – The only downside I could come up with was the price which isn’t cheap (although considerably less expensive than using BT’s monthly service after just over a year of use). This is a one-off cost. It’s worth bearing in mind that you also get a built in answerphone with it and this makes the cost considerably more bearable.

If you’ve been plagued by nuisance calls I’d definitely recommend taking a look at this. Right now on the Amazon review page for TrueCall you can see over a 100 reviews from people currently using it.

Highly Recommended

TrueCall – The Nuisance Call Blocker

I have to say it’s nice to test something that’s actually in profit for a change!

This one first caught my eye a few months back when I saw a flurry of impressive testimonials coming in from members.

Here are a few:

“…awesome result… 4 tips won me £154.00!…”
Gavin

“…Returned £923 – great stuff cheers…”
Steve

“…another £350 profit…”
Richard

It’s called Live Sports Profits and you can see full details here:

Live Sports Profits.

The really unique thing about this is that it’s compiled and run by several experts (not just one) with a combined 168 years experience in sports betting.

Each has their specialist field and they debate and run a system of checks and balances against one other before releasing their final tips to members.

(In case you’re wondering you don’t need to know anything about sport for this one whatsoever).

I thought this was an interesting approach so I grabbed myself a spot to see what all the fuss was about. Without giving the game away too much I have to say I’ve been really very impressed.

So what is Live Sports Profits about exactly

It’s a tipping service with a bit of a twist. Most of the tipping services and systems I’ve come across and tested to date have focused on just one of the major betting sports – horse racing or football.

Live Sports Profits is refreshingly simple and different.

It’s simple because it unashamedly hones in on some of the less ‘mainstream’ betting sports (and in fact this is where the service has enjoyed the most success thus far).

Often they’ll be a bet or two on the football but then in the same email you can have a bet on the marathon and the darts.

Maybe I’ve become numb to seeing the same old rubbish but I think this makes for a pleasant change. I get a bit of a buzz finding out that that odd little bet I placed on the darts the other week has bumped up my Betfair balance.

The tips themselves come from a variety of sports specialists (Peter Mac, Brad Hayward, Greg Caskie, Chris Whittle and Matt Nesbitt) and it’s headed up by Mr X – no that’s not his real name unfortunately. They cover everything from F1 and cricket to American Football and tennis and seemingly everything in between.

I like that you get all the information you need to place bets at the best odds and the staking plan is foolproof

The staking plan is EASY. No calculators needed here, you just decide how much you want to bet ‘per point’. In my case I’m betting £10 a point.

Here’s how it works…

Next to each selection they tell you how many points to bet. It’s almost always 0.5 points but occasionally I’ve seen it go up to 1 point. In my case this means I’ve mostly been betting £5 a time (at 0.5 a point).

Now bearing in mind there are probably less than 10 bets a week at £5 a pop it means my risk (or liability) is pretty low. So far my bank has been steadily increasing and if this continues for another month I may consider upping my stakes. I’ve had one reader write in to say that they haven’t had as much success on this one and hit a small loss. Obviously I can only comment on the experience that I’ve had and to date that’s been very positive as I’m running a healthy profit. It does serve as a reminder that it’s worth paper trading on this and any new service until your comfortable with how it’s going. There will always be up and down weeks.

Frequency of the tips and emails…

Most weeks you’re sent two emails, one midweek and one just before the weekend. These are sent well in advance to give you plenty of time to place bets and I’ve not missed selections due to late receipt of the email unlike some services I’ve tested (ahem).

Here’s where some people might get unstuck. Next to each bet they also list the best odds and a variety of bookmakers where you can grab those odds. Now personally I’m a die hard Betfair fan and don’t really like using other bookmakers…

90% of the time this hasn’t caused a problem from me because it’s easy enough to find the same or similar bets on Betfair. However on occasion I have had to alter the bet slightly and once or twice in the last couple of months I’ve just had to ignore a bet. This is just me being lazy. Sensible folk will use the bookmakers on the occasions they find the odds are better – I just like keeping everything in one place.

So realistically how much can you make from this?

Obviously it depends on how much you stake and I do advise starting out small to begin with while you find your feet. When I very first started testing this service my heart sank because it had two bad weeks and I had that familiar ‘here we go again’ feeling.

However it did seem to be a blip and it didn’t take too long to recover and race into profit.

Below is a screenshot for a week’s bets from my Betfair account (only trading Live Sports Profits) to give you an idea:

(I don’t know if you can make out the TINY writing but that’s the best I could get it. Honestly it took me longer to work out how to find and bring up that blasted screen that it did to place the bets!)

So this week, betting with £5 stakes I came up £34.98 profit. This is the net profit after Betfair commissions and I reckon these bets took me around 10-15 minutes to put on in total. I don’t think that’s too shabby at all.

The week before was less impressive because I made a £5.05 loss – although this was partly because I missed a winning bet. The week before that I made £17.08.

These figures might not sound like much but remember I’m betting with small stakes and it’s only taking up 10 -15 minutes a week ‘work’.

Live Sports Profits has quietly impressed me and I’m staying on with this one. If you’re interested in giving it a go you can get a 28 day guest membership on it here:

Live Sports Profits – Guest Membership

Oxon Press (the publishers) are an honest, reputable company who do due diligence on their products and always offer refunds.

In other words, if you do want to get a guest membership you can rest assured that your guarantee is absolutely watertight.

I’m marking this one up as: recommended.

For the latest hints, tips and reviews make sure you’re signed up to the free, weekly Insider’s Edge eZine below.

It’s a nasty trick certain credit cards companies use to quietly ‘bump up ‘ your credit card interest rates. Here’s you can stop them dead in their tracks

This is an issue that makes me furious because it affects ordinary and sometimes vulnerable people who might not know or understand their rights.

I’m talking about credit card companies bumping their interest rates up, often on a whim, to improve their bottom line. For many of us a small, unforeseen interest rate hike could play havoc with the household budget.

For example a 5% hike on a £5,000 debt would amount to additional £21 every month in interest alone.

How does it happen?

You normally receive a letter from your credit card company which says something like this:

“We’ve recently been reviewing your credit card account. As a result we’ve decided to increase your standard interest rate to 20.95% p.a.”

“But hang on!” You cry, “My current rate is 15.45%!” … What’s going on?

It continues…

“It’s important to us to make sure that you’re on the most appropriate interest rate and so we regularly review your credit card account including your credit file held by the credit reference agencies. We’ve noticed that the status of your credit file has changed. This led us to review your credit history and how you’ve managed other products with us including any loans, mortgages or current accounts. As a result your personal interest rate will be increasing.”

Quite a lot to swallow there so let’s unpack it…

What’s heavily implied in this letter, behind a lot of careful wording, is that the interest rate is going up because the recipient of the letter presents a high credit risk. This is the exact wording of a letter Halifax recently sent out to hundreds of thousands of their customers (including myself). I should point out that I’m not just picking on Halifax here, a number of credit card companies do this.

Apart from the shameful fact they’re trying to increase your debt, here’s what’s wrong with this practice…

Often they’re making a complete shot in the dark simply to squeeze more money out of you. I know this to be true in my case because I happen to have a copy of my credit score which shows that I haven’t missed a mortgage payment or credit card payment in several years. Armed with this knowledge and well versed in some of the tricks credit card companies played I was able to sort the situation out in 2 minutes.

But what if you don’t know your credit rating or your rights?

The problem with these types of letters is that they prey on two very powerful things, fear and forgetfulness.

* Fear that when we hear bad news we simply accept it, go “Oh well” and do as we’re told. This is nothing more than bullying and we shouldn’t tolerate it.

* Forgetfulness (and inaction) – Most of us are busy and have a thousand other things to deal with… work, family, personal matters. The credit card company knows that a) A large proportion of people who receive this letter will not read it or take it in properly and b) A larger proportion still will read it, make a mental note to do something about it and then forget about it until the deadline passes. They win both times.

Unfortunately this kind of thing is happening more and more. The good news is there are a couple of simple things you can do to stop it happening to you. Remember, there are very few situations where you don’t have considerable power as a consumer.

So how do you deal with the problem, stop the interest rate hike and stay in control?

Here’s what to do if you receive a letter announcing an interest rate hike.

1. Contact your credit card provider immediately. Be firm and polite and tell them that you would like to close down your credit card account with them.

2. Insist on the same rate. When they ask you why you want to close your account (which they will) explain to them that you received a letter out of the blue which announcing an interest rate hike. Now here’s the legal bit – if you close your account at this point they have to keep you on exactly the same rate as you’re currently on for the life of the balance. With the account closed you won’t be able to use your card for future purchases but don’t worry, we’re not quite finished yet…

3. Wait and see what they have to offer you. Unless you’ve got a particularly bad credit rating (i.e. if you’ve had a lot of late or missed payments in the past) the adviser on the phone will most likely present you with a new option. Keep your credit card at its existing rate for a guaranteed period of time – free from rate hikes.

Either way by the end of the call you should have a resolution which involves keeping your existing credit card rate for the life of the balance.

The worst case scenario is that you’ll have to cut up your card to get it but frankly your best off out. If they can raise it on a whim now what will they do in 12 months time?

Please leave a comment below if you found this article helpful, or if you’ve encountered a similar situation (and how you dealt with it).

When in doubt with debt it’s best to tackle the situation immediately (that way it can’t get worse, only better) talk to your bank and find out what’s going on. The longer you leave it the less recourse you’ll have for action. You can also contact the Citizens Advice Bureau for free advice. If you want a copy of your credit rating you can get one by post for £2 from Equifax or Experian.

One Minute Commissions is the latest major release from Mike Auton (and Rebecca Roberts) to hit inboxes.

The first thing to note is that it’s sold via a ClickBank rival called ‘ClickSure’ who are based here in the UK. More than one Insider’s Edge reader has written in to say that they’ve used ClickSure and claimed a refund with no problem. However, this is a still a relatively new digital marketplace, which is worth bearing in mind.

On with the review…

If you haven’t already, you can see the promotion for One Minute Commissions here.

Now unless there’s a subliminal message in this video that I’ve missed you’ll have probably, like me, come away from it wondering what the system involves. I mean it sounds wonderful… all this automated dosh… and there are lots of testimonials from beta testers (who look suspiciously like they’re reading off a script)… but what’s it all about?

Well, before we get to that I’d actually like to run through a few of the figures quickly (you’ll see exactly why in a moment).

The story goes that a few months ago they set up a new ClickBank account to test out an idea – with the ambitious target of making $10,000 per day, from scratch.

So what happens during their ‘experiment’?

They reputedly cleared $6,361.77 in day one, an eyeball popping $36,770.69 in day two and… well I’m sure you can imagine the rest. Think dollar counters that endlessly swivel upwards while Rebecca Roberts whispers obscene cash numbers into your ear.

It was at this point that I first hit the panic button. They claim to have deposited vast amounts of money during this experiment into their brand new ClickBank account – and the implication is that it’s from using the exact same system we’re being shown.

I did a bit of digging here and the timing of this ClickBank extravaganza coincides very conveniently with another launch from this company this time for a product called: ‘Quick Click Commissions’. Blimey, well isn’t that a coincidence?

Probably not…

The headline figures used throughout the promotional video are almost certainly from a launch they did push another of their products that has nothing to do with the system their showing us.

Ok ok, so it looks like they’re using some pretty low rent marketing tactics here – but does it actually work or is One Minute Commissions a great big scam?

The system is actually based on a pretty simple premise:

You make affiliate commissions (through ClickBank, Amazon, or in fact any affiliate deals you may have) via YouTube videos. The idea behind One Minute Commissions is that it automates this process.

Now to be fair I have to say it does kind of deliver on this front – sort of. There’s a fairly decent member’s website and you can find the training videos easily. Also the system software (which is called Accelero – I love that name) is genuinely simple to use. The only thing you need to bring to the party is an affiliate link and it pretty much automates the rest. In that sense this is not a scam – they don’t take your money and run and there is a ‘system’ here.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is the videos it creates.

They. Are. Rubbish.

I’m talking seriously rubbish. They’re short, worthless looking videos that just display one image accompanied by some awful background music. If I stumbled across one of these videos I’d be confused, annoyed and likely to hit the ‘Flag as Inappropriate’ button.

I suppose you could potentially make some money using this system IF some poor lost Internet soul found, clicked and purchased a product using one of these links. However, I would be absolutely flabbergasted if you made a fraction of what they claim you could make in promotional material.

In fact I can’t see any real difference between this and any of the other ‘Black Hat’ strategies that Google hates, like Auto Blogging for example.

But if it makes money who cares right?

Even if you’re OK with the trashy element to this One Minute Commissions this approach is almost certainly a fast-track way of getting your YouTube account shut down. Google hates trickery or junk content and they dedicate a huge amount of resources tracking down spammers and bots and getting them closed down. If you do give try this one whatever you do, make sure you use a brand new YouTube account that you don’t mind losing.

Not Recommended

I have to say, hats off to them. This is a really fantastic product – you can see my review of it here.

Hopefully it will bring Bonus Bagging to a wider audience which can only be a good thing. This is an example of smart marketing – taking a great product giving it a fresh promotion. It’s a good lesson for any budding online entrepreneurs, internet marketers or copywriters.

So what’s the difference between ‘The £500 in 30 Days Guarantee’ and ‘Bonus Bagging’? There isn’t one (which is a good thing), it’s the same product and Agora Lifestyles are just taking the payment on it. If you’ve dealt with Agora Lifestyles you’ll know that they honour their refunds, so if you do choose to buy it through them your trial period is safe.

You still buy this product on ClickBank here if you’re more comfortable dealing with their payment system. As I said it’s exactly the same product and of course you’re covered by ClickBank’s ironclad guarantee. It’s also a tad cheaper because depending on which country you select in the checkout section you won’t be liable for VAT, which saves 20%. Obviously I only endorse doing this if you’re genuinely ordering from abroad!

Can you really make ‘£500 in 30 days’… guaranteed?

To be honest it always makes me wince a bit when marketers use the ‘guaranteed money’ slogan. However there’s a whisper of truth in this. Mike Cruickshank’s Bonus Bagging system is a form of arbitrage with a clever twist and so in that sense yes, you can make guaranteed money from this. He shows you how to take advantage of the vast array of online bookmaker bonuses on offer. I’m sure you will have come across them before: Betfair offering £25 for your first bet, William Hill offering the same.

Mike has figured out the best way to place secure bets which release that money risk-free. Now whether you can say that you will absolutely, unequivocally make £500 in 30 days ‘guaranteed’ is another matter as everyone will have different time schedules. I made just over £400 in my first month as I mentioned in my review, others might make more, or less. As I said it depends how much time you’ve got to dedicate to it.

To sum up, I highly, highly rate Mike Cruickshank’s Bonus Bagging (or ‘The £500 in 30 Days Guarantee’ as it’s called here). His customer service is second to none and I think you would struggle not to make money using his brilliant system. You can pick up a trial copy here:

Bonus Bagging

If you haven’t already, make sure you sign up to the free Insider’s Edge eZine below for the latest reviews.