We have to negotiate every day, with customers, credit card companies, the boss, the family. Here are sites with advice for doing better in the art of the deal.

Better offer. For job seekers, here's a report on how to negotiate a higher salary offer than you might get otherwise. "Failing to negotiate a compensation package can cost you," it says. The article is from SmartMoney.com, though we found it posted at Yahoo Finance. It provides a key link to a government page, www.bls.gov/OCO, where, for negotiating leverage, you can look up the expected earnings and required training for all sorts of jobs.

http://go.philly.com/negotiate

Cooperative style. G. Richard Shell is director of the Wharton Executive Negotiation workshop at the University of Pennsylvania. This Web page at the Associated Content site outlines some of his tips for winning bargaining strategies. Shell says individuals have to understand their own negotiating styles, and being pushy isn't necessarily a negotiating asset. One study he cites showed that, among a group of lawyers, "75 percent of the effective negotiators in the group had cooperative styles, whereas only 12 percent had competitive styles," the article here says.

http://go.philly.com/grshell

How to. Blog-style postings here suggest how to remove fear as an obstacle to negotiating and muse on subjects such as the effectiveness of compromise in political negotiations in Washington. A "negotiation dictionary" covers bluffing, desperation, dress, role playing, winning, and many other topics. The site is connected with a management-consulting firm that specializes, in part, in conflict resolution.

www.how-to-negotiate.com

Look out, creditor. Entrepreneur.com provides this book excerpt on negotiating with your creditor, and even suggests that one result of a good negotiation could be a less-harsh report on you to the credit-reporting agencies. Tips include not getting intimidated, being patient, and taking your negotiations up the creditor's food chain.

http://go.philly.com/entrepreneur

Contact staff writer Reid Kanaley at 215-854-5114 or rkanaley@phillynews.com.