Second, try to pay off all or any accounts that are currently in collections or make payment arrangements with the creditor to pay off the balance monthly.

Third, any credit card that is over 50% of the available credit line should be paid down to under half of your total credit line. Your credit score is lowered when your available balance is over 50% of your total credit line.

Finally, if you have bad or no credit and have no credit cards try to obtain two credit cards and make sure all of your monthly payments are made on time. This will help increase your credit score. If you cannot be approved for a unsecured credit card, obtain a secured credit card.
References :
http://www.consumerbadcreditguide.com/repairingcredit.html

You should contact a consultant who would help you remove the negative items from your credit report. You can get some useful info on this from http://financeguru.consumerspot.info . Good luck!
References :

1. Payment history-35%
2. Total debt outstanding vs. Available Credit 30%
3. Length of time establishing credit 15%
4. Types of credit established 10%
5. Inquiries and New accounts 10%

With that said, here’s some tips on how to repair your bad credit:

As you can see, #1 & #2 are the 2 most important factors to your score. Where you can start is by gathering reports from all 3 bureaus (Equifax, Transunion, and Experian) look them over carefully for anything that you don’t recognize and dispute them with the bureaus.

It would help to locate all the accounts you’ve fallen behind on that’s went to collections and try to make payments to get them removed from your report. I posted a step-by-step link on how neogtiate with the collectors (http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/settle_debts.shtml)

It helps to read the entire section in order to get a good understanding of what you’ll need to do.

If you’re successful in getting rid of the bad credit, you’ll need to replace it with good credit what I mean by that is that by opening up a couple of credit cards making small purchases that’s paid off on time every month will do the trick. Now, applying for a regular card won’t be easy since you already have bad credit, so with that in mind, a secured credit card may be a better option. The best way to explain secured credit cards is building credit with a savings account, since that’s basicall how it works. A deposit is placed upfront usually linked to a savings account that’s used as collateral to back the credit limit of the credit card. The beauty of this is that you can start small (like $200) and work your way up by adding to the deposit to increase the limit which will look good on your credit the higher you raise the limit. The deposit won’t be used to pay for any charges on the card unless it’s not paid and then it goes into collections. Usually after 9-18 months of paying on time and keeping the balance that you owe at 25% of the available credit, the card will either covert to a regular card or a better card’s offered altogether and most importantly, you get the deposit back with some interest added to it.

If you’re sucessful in doing this, then more offers for credit should start coming to you which at that time, You should apply for one more major card and a department store card. My suggestion would be to simply open another secured card. That way, you lessen your chances for getting declined from the application losing precious points in the process, because anytime that you apply for credit, regardless if you’re approved or not, you lose several points from your score. So it’s important to pick and choose the accounts that you apply for wisely.

If you already have credit card accounts open, then it would help to pay them down as much as possible to where the balance you owe is around 25% of the available credit or less. The scoring system allows anywhere up to 25% of your available credit before it start to have an effect .

Hopefully, these tips will help you out!

Good luck!

P.S. I also posted link(s) to some secured credit card companies too.
References :
credit analyst/underwriter

http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/settle_debts.shtml

http://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/cardDetail.do?screenID=940

http://www.bankofamerica.com/creditcards/index.cfm?context_id=marketing_detail&offer_id=ECOMM090XFEQ00400800121983EN001

https://www.wellsfargo.com/credit_cards/secured/?_requestid=92101

http://www.usbank.com/cgi_w/cfm/creditcards/secured/usb_secured_card.cfm

https://www.hsbcapply.com/start/orchardbank?pf=PLApply&media=O1AF18_84288651

You can write to all three credit bureaus and dispute everything on your record. The bureaus have 30 days to investigate each dispute and respond. If they run out of time and fail to get an answer to you in a month, they have to remove it from your report.

I disputed something like 30 one time and only one was dropped off but one is better than nothing.
References :

There are credit cards for people with bad credit as long as someone has a monthly income that meets their requirements. These cards come in unsecured, partially secured, and secured. They usually charge a "participation fee" for these programs (in the area of $150 paid in installments), and they have high interest rates, but they do give the person with bad credit a chance to build a new, good, payment history.

Some people recommend putting money in a savings account at a bank and then borrowing against that, which means getting a bank loan with the savings as collateral. After you’ve paid up the short-term loan you’ll have a payment history AND access to the money in the savings account.
References :