Thanks to both for the words of encouragement. I guess I just need to be more patient and keep working on removing the negatives from my report. Hopefully I’ll be able to boost up my score with the new secured credit card.
@Amy:
– My current Revolving Credit to Debt Ratio according to Experian is: Credit: 88%, Debt: 12%, which I think is pretty good. I just don’t have enough credit right now.
– My oldest account age is 8 years, though this specific account is now closed.
Also, thanks for the good article. I had posted this link on the blog some months ago, but it’s good to come back to it. 
Sorry for the confusion I think I was not very clear. The 580 score I mentioned is my FICO score, I’m currently monitoring my report and score through experian. My Fako score is something like 644 (MyCreditInform).
I was able to negotiate two deletions, one of them has already been removed, but there was no change at all in my score. The other will be removed in the next few weeks, hopefully I’ll see some improvement after this as I would not have any accounts in collections any more. This were both medical bills and some people say they don’t affect your score much. I’ll know in a few weeks.