Frugality for College Students – 13 Ways to Save Money While In College

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With so many websites and blogs discussing ways to be frugal and save money in any way you can, such as Get Rich Slowly and No Debt Plan, I started thinking about ways that college students could save money and be more frugal.

When you’re in college you don’t really think too much about saving money or figuring out ways to be more frugal. Its more about pulling out the plastic, saying “charge it”, and having a good time. While there are tons of different ways to save money, here are some of my top ones that I tried to do or wished I had tried to do.

1. Don’t go to the bar – Of course this only applied is if you are of the drinking age. But if you are, consider not going to the bar and staying at your place and drinking. Getting a case of beer or some liquor is going to be a lot cheaper than going to the bar and paying a few dollars a beer/drink. Invite your friends over and have a party – for the price of a great night at the bar, you can throw a great party at your apartment/house. When I turned 21 years old, my bank account started dropping by going to the bar. You’re friends will nag you for sure to go out with them, and its fine to do once in a while, but if you can, save the money by getting your own beer and chilling at a friends place or your own. You can take it one step further and not drink at all of course.
2. Don’t have a gym membership – Probably every university has some sort of gym or workout area that, as a student, you can utilize for free. Take advantage of it! There is no point in paying $50+ a month on a gym membership to a place like Gold’s Gym or Balley’s when you can go for free on campus. If you are going to the gym for the benefits of working with a personal trainer, start asking around campus for people to recommend another student to you. I would imagine that you could find someone within the health/foods/nutrition department that is interested in staying fit, working out, and would be willing to help you out. If it makes you feel better, you could offer to pay this person, but obviously not as much as a gym membership! Read more »
   
   Tags: college frugality, family plans, frugal students, insurance, save money, scholarships, student frugality, ways to save money
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The Very First Dorm Room Biz Podcast! It is finally here!

This has been a long time coming that is for sure! I mentioned that I wanted to start doing a podcast a long time ago, but now it has finally come true. I just interviewed Paul Scheiter through Skype about his company, Hedgehog Leatherworks, as well as about student entrepreneurship and more.

Please take a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think! I look forward to putting more of these together and hopefully I will be releasing the next one next week or so. I am looking for any feedback that you may be able to provide on the podcast – about the content or the way it is put together (quality of the recording, ways to improve it, etc). So PLEASE leave some comments!

Here are a couple notes to go along with the podcast.

• Total run time: Just over 28 minutes
• Paul’s company: Hedgehog Leatherworks
• I make mention of my website TheGearHouse where this podcast is also going to be posted; the website is at http://www.thegearhouse.com.
• For the interview, we chatted through Skype (http://www.skype.com)
• To record the interview, I used Call Burner (http://www.callburner.com)
• For editing the recording and putting the podcast together, I used Audacity (http://www.audacity.com)

Download the Podcast Here.

Fake it ’til you make it! Experience? Forget about it!

Many times as young entrepreneurs or even young professionals looking to make a new career move, we get discouraged by the notion that we do not have enough experience to do something, to apply for a job, or to make the big move that you want to make.

Forget about it!
However, as a young entrepreneur, you have to take hold of that notion that you don’t have any experienec and throw it out the window - toss it away. Everything that you have doneup to that point is your experience. Just because you may not have a college degree or haven’t worked in a specific industry does not mean that you do not have some experience that you can apply to the work that you will be doing or the business that you want to start. Personally, I have lots of experience in internet based business ventures but if I want to break into a brick and morter business, say a retail store, some people may not think that I would have any experience that would work in that venture. Yet, for those that know me, they know I have been running an eBay business for the last couple years; which is basically have a retail store, just online. Taking that experience into a real world store front in a shopping center will help me to determine the amount of inventory and stock I need of different items, the reorder points of items to make sure that they are always in stock, the pricing strategy’s to be able to compete with competitiors, etc. No matter what you have done in the past, you can find an expreience that will help you in your future ventures.

There are always other things that can make up for your lack of “experience” when starting a new business venture. If you are starting a new business, you better be passionate about it. Without having a passion for the work that you are doing, people will be able to tell that you don’t feel 100% confident in your idea. Along with your passion for your business, you need to have a good vision in place.

Passion + Vision = “Experience”
In everything that you do related to your business start-up, make sure you share your passion with the people that you talk with; no matter who they are - your friends, your parents, your family, your professors, your classmates. If you can continue to show that you are passionate about your venture, others will believe in you. If you have a strong vision to share with people and help them see what you see in your business, others will believe in you. The key is that you have to market yourself - you are your brand/business!

Once you get others to believe in you, the hard part is over. Now that you have other people believing in you and supporting you, exploit them for anything you can. Now, I know that could sound bad to some, but remember, as an entreprneur, your funding is limited and you are not looking to spend ALL your money on things that you can bootstrap. So, you have all these people believing in you, ask yourself “what can he/she do for me?” When you answer that question, ask that person! Maybe you know someone who does website design, ask them to help you out for free or for a very discounted rate so that you can get something up and running. If you know a lawyer who specializes in working with entrepreneurs, ask them to help you out off the clock to save you some money or see if they will provide private consulting at a discounted rate. Look at the profession of all the people you know and see how they can help you. If you can share your vision and passion with that person and make them a believer, then you can get what you want from that person pretty easily. Majority of people are willing to help someone they know and someone they know is passionate about what they are doing.

Still worried about not having the experience you need for your business? Then if you really want to, look at getting an internship in that industry or a part time job. Even just getting your foot in the door and working in the industry for a short period of time, you can get some experience. However, know that having experience in the industry should not be your final determining factor as to whether you start your business or not!

As you start to build your business and your brand, you will start to gain the experience you need.

“The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch - Are You A Fan?

I had never really watched “The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch on CNBC until just recently. I don’t know if it was the day or the time that the show came on or what the reason may have been, but I must say, after catching a couple episodes and watching a few segments online - I like it!

I think the whole premise of interviewing entrepreneurs and other successful business people is a great one. It is just taking the idea of “Inside the Actors Studio” with James Lipton a step further and focusing it on the business world.  If this was a prime time show airing at 8 PM, I think it would do great, but I don’t know how the ratings are now, so I couldn’t compare it to anything.

Anyway, I started searching around on YouTube and came across a ton of past segments featuring different people from The Wiggles to Alton Brown of the Food Network to Cameron Johnson and Ryan Allis.

I have really liked the parts that I have seen and will be continuing to tune in to watch more segments on business, entrepreneurship, success, and making money!

Do you watch the show? Check it out for some great ideas, insights, and inspiration!

Lawn Care for Local Community – Businesses to start from your dorm room during the Spring Semester

OK, so you are probably wondering – how can I launch and manage a lawn care business from my dorm room? A traditional lawn care business involves lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and all sorts of other equipment, true. So how can it be done?

I am not sure, but let’s figure it out. This is probably not a business that you can necessarily start from your dorm room, but if you do live off campus, it can definitely be feasible, especially if you are in a house that has extra parking available.

First, the service.

What kind of service are you going to offer? Will you offer basic lawn maintenance such as lawn mowing and leaf removal? Will you offer extra services such as gardening and mulching? If you start small, you can always expand. Starting small also helps keep your start up and operating expenses down.

Start thinking small with an expansion plan in mind. If you start offering lawn mowing in the early part of the fall semester and then move into leaf removal, you can also move into snow shoveling/removal as the winter rolls in (if you get snow during the winter). Once the winter month’s end and the spring comes back, look at moving back into the lawn maintenance portion of your services.

Finding Your Clients

Alright, so the next hurdle is finding your clients…your in a college town, most students wouldn’t want to pay for this type of service or it is already included in their rent – property managers/owners probably have someone take care of it for them.

Start with the people you know. Ask around in your circle of friends who live off campus in houses. Find out who owns their property and who maintains it. If you are able to get to the source decision maker, you may be able to make some moves.

If you are able to find students who live in houses that their families own, such as if someone bought a house for their child(ren) and other family members to live in as they went through the university, this may be a great place to find a client. These types of situations usually leave who ever is living in the house up to maintaining the property. So if you can strike a deal with them so that they don’t have to do it, you can start finding more clients on top of them.

You can also look at the actual community members and permanent residents of the town where your school is. Many of them probably already perform the duties themselves or use another company for them. However, many people are more than happy to help support student run businesses, especially if they help out the community that they live in.

So, I’ll let you take it from there with getting the idea rolling and continuing to expand it. There is a bunch of different ways and opportunities that this could be taken…you just have to think creatively about them.

If you had $100, what business would you start?

Can you be a pro bootstrapper?

A lot of business classes at my university and many others are all theory based and there is not much real experience involved in them unless you get into a class about starting and managing a small business or some entrepreneurship classes. Yet, many of them still, are based on theory or other people’s experiences. So, I have been trying to talk to some different professors about changing their class projects to incorporate something like this concept and we are also going to try to implement it within our entrepreneur club here at Radford.

So, if you had $100 cash, what kind of business would you start? $100 is all you have to do whatever you want with it. Would you buy some products to sell on eBay and keep reinvesting any profits from their sales into more inventory? Would you register a domain name and start doing website development? Or would you use to it advertise yourself as a consultant? What about launching a network of small niche content websites and smack them full of AdSense and different ads? Whatever you do, you only have $100 to do it with until you start making more money from your business.

So, what would you start? I’d love to see some other young student entrepreneurs blog about a business they would start with only $100 and how they would stretch the money to get them to the point of where they are making money.

Get writing! Post a comment with your $100 business start up or a link to your blog post about the business that you would set up.

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Spring Semester Dorm Room Business Ideas

With the spring semester approaching quickly, it is time to start thinking about some different business ideas to start out of your dorm room to help you pay off all those bills from your winter break including holiday shopping and anything else.

So, here are a few different dorm room business ideas that you could launch from your dorm room or your apartment and turn some profit with. Over the next couple weeks we will work on expanding each of these ideas into a more in depth post with a little extra research added into them.

Without a further a do, here are 5 business ideas that you can launch while still getting your homework and studying done at college.

• Spring cleaning service – offer a cleaning service in the dorm rooms and around campus; cleaning, vacuuming, trash removal, etc.
• Lawn care for local community and students – although most students who rent houses with lawns are not the ones responsible for maintaining the property, so houses are privately owned by the parents or family of students who attend the school. Contract with them to do the lawn maintenance so that the renters (the students/family members) do not have to.
• Safe ride services (outsourcing the DD programs) – partner with Greek organizations to offer the service to their organizations.
• Beer delivery service – contract with a convenience store (not a 7-11, something mom and pop style) and offer the delivery service. Legal issues with checking ID’s, not purchasing for minors, etc. Stores at different universities already offer this service – do enough research to find out how they make it work.
• Restaurant delivery – many restaurants won’t offer a delivery service because of the expense in maintaining the insurance, having extra staff/drivers available, and the time needed to do so. Offer the service as either a flat monthly rate or even based on a commission of each order.

Of course, if you are looking for something more internet based, you can always consider starting an eBay business, a website development business, or creating niche stores offering products such as custom shot glasses.

So, look out for some future posts coming with more background on the different business ideas above to help you launch them when you return to school after your winter break.

Winter break is the ideal time to start thinking about a business opportunity, start doing the research, and get the planning of it started. When you return to school link up with a couple mentors, business professors, or friends who can give you honest feedback on the business, understand what you are trying to do, and help you expand it. There are so many resources on a college campus to help you start a business it is crazy – you just have to take advantage of them!

7 Bootstrapping Tips for Bloggers Starting Out

While reading through the book “Start Your Own Blogging Business” I noticed many different tips and facts in the margins of the pages. Some of the ones that caught my eye were tips for boostrapping/penny pinching when starting out blogging. So here are the 7 tips suggested in the book for bootstrapping your blogging business when starting out.

1. When first registering your domain name, buy more than 1 year to get a discount on the registration price for purchasing a few years at once.
2. Use free, open-source software and a low-cost web host can provide you with an inexpensive blog setup that has plenty of room to grow in the future.
3. Using your own web host instead of a blogging service will allow you more room for growth per dollar spent.
4. Even free blogging services vary greatly in quality and features available. Don’t assume that all the free services offer the same basic service. Some are quite well-equipped.
5. Finding a web host that bundles a blogging application into its service is not hard to do and could save you some money.
6. Trackbacks, a method of communicating between blogs, can be an effective form of free advertising.
7. Time is money. The more time you spend fiddling with your blog’s coding, the less time you’ll have to produce money making content. Find useful plug-ins to speed up common tasks.

Jump Start Your Home Business, Part 3 - Network, Network, Network

As you all know, it is extremely important to network and spread information about your business. For today, I have put together just a small list of some places and ways to network with others in your area of business or not in your area. It doesn’t necessarily matter who you network with because someone who doesn’t need a website created may know 5 people who do and refer them to you. Be on the look out for opportunities to always network and give out your business cards.

Just a couple quick bullet points for places to network (online and offline).
• Blogs- start leaving comments on blogs that you read or have just stumbled on
• Forums- join and participate in forums relating to your industry or niche. Check out sites like Young Go Getter and SitePoint.
• LinkedIn, MeetUp, and other similar sites are great opportunities to learn about events happening in your local area relating to your industry. Attend an event or conference to meet as many people as you can.
• Check out your local Chamber of Commerce and see what they have going on. Many have weekly or monthly events focusing on home based businesses or small businesses and are a great chance to meet like minded people in your area. This could even lead to some new clients for your business!
• Participate in an organization such as Toastmasters.

No matter how you network, it is important to get out there and do it. Meeting people and making contacts is how you survive in business…especially with a home based business or a local small business.

Where do you try to meet new people?

Jump Start Your Home Business, Part 2 – Find New Clients

My second suggestion for jump starting your business over the next couple days is to get out there and do some old fashioned marketing and selling. Start searching for new clients for your business. As many of you are freelancers or developers, it is always important to continually look for new clients for your business, no matter what industry you are in. If you feel like you have hit a dry spell or can see that you are going to have some downtime coming up because of projects finishing, get out there and start looking for new clients. Contact all your current clients seeking referrals, advertise on the internet through directors, websites, blogs, and forums, or even start cold calling companies! 

For the past couple weeks I have been on the lookout for opportunities to pick up at least one new client for my web development business because I know that with the school semester starting up in a couple weeks I will have more time to focus on the work and being able to produce a quality product for them.  

Whether your business is at maximum capacity or in desperate need of clients, you should always be searching for the next contract or project