I decided to post this for two reasons:

1. I wanted to share my experience.
2. The hope that this will help at least one person out there.

I honestly can't believe i'm here typing this.. it feels surreal.

After: years, consolidation loans, paying half my paycheck to my credit card, none of that working, I started to feel hopeless. It's a terrible feeling to pay half your paycheck and live payday to payday and still watch your credit card go up from a lethal combination of interest and not being able to keep up with your desired lifestyle.

You will notice in that picture as of 8/30 I now have enough money in savings to completely pay off my Credit Card and still have some money left over. I'm going to attempt to tell you how I finally figured it out, and managed to apply it to pay off my credit card in 3 months.. after unsuccessfully trying for over 5 years.

After trying everything I got desperate and took an unconventional route to paying off my debt: Turning myself into a profit center.

Before I begin:

Intention leads to success:

Make your goals and intentions public, because you will be subconsciously held responsible for them. Intentions become perception and perception is reality. This is not a simple theory, changing my thought process to generating intention drastically changed my life.

How you can pay off your debt:
Everyone has the ability to provide a service or product to meet a given need or demand.

The vast majority of people already have the skills provided to offer a service to the public, yet they don't realize it. This service can be ANYTHING. Washing cars, Landscaping, Home improvement, Website design, IT consultation, DJ, etc.

The possibilities are endless, and every single one of them can be self taught. The greatest assets in life are the intangible assets, the ones you can't hold in your hands.

All you need is one skill and drive. Pick a skill you will love doing, when you have self drive it's doesn't matter how terrible you are or how talent-less you seem to be at it. That drive and push to succeed will make you extremely successful over time. Time and pressure makes diamonds, and it works the same for skill building.

Once you've started to offer this skill and generate revenue from it, dump every single bit of gross profit into a savings account (post taxes) and don't even think about touching it until your debt payoff goal has been reached.

Even if you don't possess "skills", you can simply buy yourself a book or teach yourself one within weeks... seriously. ANY skill will work, I mean anything.

This might sound broad, generic, or cliche.. but it's extremely effective. The key is to make the right selection of the skill you will offer and make sure you will have the drive to succeed and maintain self-interest. The second most important key is to identify some kind of demand in your local area.

These two factors are what I've found to lead to success. Your ideas, talent, etc. really doesn't matter at all. Talent only matters in the entertainment and sports industry, unless of course you're in the 1% of business/investment genius group. An idea will only go as far as your self motivation and drive will take it.

If you're in debt, stop wasting your money on tangible assets, long term investments, forex, etc.

Invest everything you have in the development of one skill that will meet some kind of demand, stop trying to generate a profitable radical idea or gimmick. You don't need it in the beginning. You already have the keys to the most effective profit center, and it's your skill-set. You need immediate results to pay off your debt, before you can even think about long term investments. You will be swimming in debt you're entire life unless you do something about it now.

If you're gaffing this off or can't motivate yourself enough to try and apply this, than you've already set yourself up for failure. The problem is you, fix it. Stop making excuses or being lazy, there is no easy way to make money. Generating money requires work. Take control and dictate what form of work that will be with your chosen skill.

Market your skill:

Craigslist, Ebay Classifieds, Local Forums, Flyers, Social Media, Emails, etc.

A wise CMO recently said traditional marketing is now the same as internet marketing.

The great thing about this is that Internet Marketing can be had for completely free (see above). You're only overhead will be your personal time.

The key is no to very low overhead and mass local exposure. All you need is the developed skill and you're gold. If it sounds easy, it's because it is.

How I did it
I identified a slight demand in my area and self taught myself a skill in two weeks. Three months later I have finally paid off my credit card debt of 17k over 5 years of trying.

I did all of this 100% on the side, while maintaining a 40 hr week full time job and a family.

Besides my son's birth and my marriage, this might be the happiest day of my life. I'm just getting started and I'm not going to stop until I see my next monetary goal in my bank account. Join in! What are you waiting for?

I hope someone out there can take something from this rambling and turn their debt situation around, as well as their life and pursuit of happiness.

Cheers!

When is the spam link coming?

And what was the balance of your "share savings" account right after you paid off the credit card? I just want to dabble in forensic accounting.

Spam link? Did you read everything? I kept it very basic and made it very clear the skill could be anything and is completely up to you.

I received another couple payments today and my cc is now paid off with around 5k in my savings.

Ok, can you share with us what your skill is? Because if one's skill is making paper airplanes I doubt your system would work out for them.

The entire point of learning the skill is to do so after you have identified a simple need or demand in your local area.

If your local area has a need for paper airplanes, then yes they can make lots of money building paper airplanes.

You must identify the need, i'm not going to do your homework for you. Pun intended.

you can use a simple tool like google keyword tool to find what people search the most in your area.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

You can also check trends on your local craigslist or ebay classifieds.

I'm curious as to what skill YOU learned.

Why would I create the possibility of direct competition for myself by doing that..

Name any city and i'll show you how easy it is. We'll make this thread a case study.

All we need is a starting point city.

This is really starting to smell like a "Get Rich Quick!" scam.

JTav, we're not morons. In my experience, when someone tells me how much money they're making doing something, but doesn't want to provide details about their own specific case, but would rather tell me how *I* can do it, it's because they're trying to sell me something.

Choose your words carefully, or I'll delete this whole thread and have your user ID banned.

Let's not forget his other thread (with the exact same OP) when we do that

Hilarious. The entire first post clearly went over some heads.

I'm not selling anything or saying how to get rich quickly. So sad when you're really trying to help and you get accused of this, not saying I can blame you though.. i'm sure you get bombarded with these types all the time.

Read the first post again.

It's pretty much the outline of Entrepreneurship. Finding a demand and supplying that demand.

I didn't use any scheme to make this money or quick trick. It's called busting your ass and hard work. Why would I lay out my individual self taught skill for everyone to see? That would cause direct competition for me and only hurt my entire profitability, learn your own skill not mine. I don't want anyone to learn my skill, only their own.

Then I list here real life tools that can be used for trend analysis and demand, yet no one is listening.

Everyone seems to want to have everything handed to them or someone hold their hand. I'm providing an outline of exactly what to do to become successful using ANY self taught skill.

Name any city and we will use this thread as a case study

The second you see any spam link, or get rich quick scam, or anything fishy, delete the thread.

I'm not going to waste my time trying to help if I get accused of this again.

Just knowing what you skill is doesn't create competition. We'd have to learn the skill, AND be in your geographic area (according to your plan) to create competition. If you were really serious, you wouldn't be afraid to tell us your skill.

I can tell everyone exactly how to get rich too, and heck I'll even give more explicit details.

Step 1:
Get $1

Step 2:
Go to the corner gas station

Step 3:
Purchase a lottery ticket with the numbers matching the winning numbers from the next drawing.

Step 4:
You're done.

10,871

That is the alexa ranking on getrichslowly.org

Get a clue.

The odds are extremely high that hundreds of people in my local area view this website a week. I found a demand and learned the skill to fill it in two weeks, not hard.

BTW anyone could steal business from my local area from anywhere my skill is IT based, and that's as far as i'll go.

Also I love how you call it my plan, it isn't my plan. It's called entrepreneurship.

All i'm doing is trying to list out how I became successful, not rich.

I just paid off my $17k credit card, who said anything about being rich. Open your eyes and read what i'm writing. I challenge you to find ONE single sentence I have written that promotes anything besides good ol' fashioned American Entrepreneurship.

My point is to show how easy it is in the digital age using free tools such as craigslist or google keyword tool to analyze demand and trend.

Still waiting for a city.

If you're that worried about competition, why even tell us about this. Since, "The odds are extremely high that hundreds of people in [your] local area view this website a week." I imagine the odds are fairly high that they may identify the same skill as you.

You're making no sense. i'm only worried about direct competition to my skill. There are THOUSANDS you or anyone else could learn.

If you can't read everything I wrote and see that I am directly talking about Entrepreneurship than this thread isn't for you. It's likely you might not have the comprehension to understand about anything i'm talking about.

I'll list it out for you.

1. Identify a need or demand in your local area.
2. Use free tools to search these demands and trends in your area (craigslist, google keyword tool)
3. Learn a skill that fills any demand (supply).
4. Market your skill (Craigslist, Ebay classifieds, Flyers, Radio)
5. Profit.

You could define any skill as an intangible asset. Intangible assets are the true wealth of life.

What are you missing?

The only reason I am asking for a city is to show you how easy this process is.

How is this a scam, scheme, or get rich trick? It's just advice from someone who applied it and became successful.

I've answered lots of your questions, yet you have answered none of mine.

I'm going to bed for the night, i'll be back tomorrow.

Funny. You haven't answered any of our questions, and you haven't asked us any questions. Instead, you just get defensive and make ad hominem attacks.

I'm going to sleep on it, but I'm fairly sure, I'll delete this thread in the morning.