You would benefit a lot from heading over to the Rebuilding room and asking them for help with your collection. Tell them you'd like to learn more about a Pay For Delete.
Also get yourself hooked up with tools for pulling all your credit reports for free. People here can tell you how to do that as well.
In maybe 2-3 months from now (maybe after you get the collection removed) look into the SSL technique:
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Adding-an-installment-loan-the-Share-Secu...
You only need to read the first 2-3 posts on that thread. Wait till you learn more about scoring before you try to understand that.
