Spring Semester Dorm Room Business Ideas

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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

Jump Start Your Home Business, Part 1 – Expand Your Product Line

Alright, so here is the first way to help jump start your business over the next couple days. Depending on your business, this may not work for you. But if you are in any kind of retail or product supplying- whether that is a retail store, an e-commerce/auction site, small wholesale supplier, etc., then consider expanding your product line.

As many of you know, I have been selling on eBay as a business for over a year now. We have been pretty successful in the sense that we continue to sell at least 2-5 items a day. However, we want to bring this up to more like 5-10 items a day. If we can reach this goal, we know we have the potential to make a lot of money.

So, I have been continually looking to expand our product offering. I have been researching wholesalers in the camping equipment industry and have had some success in finding new suppliers. Of course, as with most wholesalers/distributors, there are higher minimum order quantities then I would like for there to be, but that is just the way it goes sometimes.

On top of finding new suppliers, I have also found some a new drop shipper that offers a wide variety of products for a small monthly fee. After doing a decent amount of research about the products and their success rates on eBay, I have decided to give it a shot and start listing their products in the store format auctions, instead of a normal 7-day auction (it saves us upwards of $0.75 - $1.00 for each item listed). With drop shippers, it is a very easy way to quickly expand your inventory. Our eBay store currently has about 20 items listed in it, over the next few days, this should rocket up to about 50. Then I am going to let the products sit and see what sells.

What markets can you expand your reach into and offer products or services to?

How Are You Jump Starting Your Home Business This Week? 4 Part Series

Is your business continuing to roll smoothly or have you been hitting some bumps in the proverbial road to success? If you keep running over speed bumps, then it may be time to evaluate what you are doing to jump start your home business this week.

Here we are, middle of the week, so hopefully you have been doing some things over the last couple days and plan on doing more over the next couple to round the week out. No matter what your business is, it is important to continually work towards success, so over the next few days I will be posting some different tactics that have been working for me to jump start my home based businesses and you could easily implement yourself.

Feel free to follow along and try these out yourself. If you have any other ideas for ways to jumpstart your business, feel free to share them with everyone else by leaving a comment!

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Part 1 - Expand Your Product Line

Part 2 - Find New Clients

Part 3 - Network, Network, Network

Part 4 - Get Traffic to Your Website

Monday Morning Linkage

I just wanted to drop off a couple good links for you all to check out when you get bored throughout the day. These came across my feedreader either over the weekend or this morning.

Prepare for Success - ProMoneyBlog: A nice little motivational post about preparing your self for success and how to get there.

5 Steps to a Rock Solid Promotional Plan - StartupStudents: A post going into the importance of a promotional plan and 5 ways to make sure that yours is a great one.

5 Top Notch Services for your Startup - MindPetals: David put up a great post looking into different services for startup entrepreneurs and listed 5 of the best. Great for the bootstrapper!

And for those of you who have not been following it, Darren at Problogger.net has been running a series over the last week about Getting Your Blogging Grove Back. He talks about writing posts that include lists, ask your readers questions, answer reader questions, telling a story, and more. I suggest you go check it out if you are fallen into a blogging rut!

 Enjoy!

Bootstrapping Tip: To rent or not to rent?

Is your business expanding rapidly? Or are you just starting out and can’t decide where to locate your business? Many young entrepreneurs face this problem: do I rent office space right off the bat or not? If you are going to be considering this, here are a couple things to think about and consider.

Is it necessary?
Is taking on the extra expense of an office space really worth the benefits? Sure it is nice to have a place to “go to work” but what’s wrong with a room in your house or apartment? With an office comes the expenses of: office furniture, electricity, internet, water, heat/AC, phone line, fax line, etc. The list really can go on and on. If it is not necessary to expand into office of your own, then save the money for other stuff!

Will it meet your needs?
Look at your business and its needs. If you business is close to my eBay company, then you may have other options. Our first thought was to get an office space to allow people to bring items to us. However, the main reason for the space would be storage. Being able to store everything their, package items, and ship out sounded great, but the costs didn’t! If you are looking for just a storage area and won’t be doing remodeling, then a small cheaper rent office may be an option for you. Yet, think about the alternatives. With our eBay business, we have been looking at the costs of a climate controlled storage unit. Renting a storage unit can be very cost effective if you are just strictly using it for storage. Rent a decent sized unit, add some shelves, maybe a folding table, and rock and roll! If you were to get a storage unit, look for a climate controlled unit so that you can keep your products or whatever at the right temperature- not too hot and not too cold. Also, be sure to look through the renting agreements for the units, some storage companies specifically say that no business can be conducted from a unit or modifications can be made to it, so you have to consider your options (don’t have people meeting you at the unit, make sure everything you add can be removed).

Split the office with others
Do you know another small business or entrepreneur who is looking to expand into an office? Strike a deal with them to split the costs of the rent, internet, electric, etc with their business. Depending on your location, you could easily split your rent/office costs down to a couple hundred dollars a month. If the space is big enough, split it between 3 businesses – it gets cheaper and cheaper!

The best way to bootstrap on office expenses is to not have one at all. If you are able to set up shop in your parents basement, your dorm room, your apartment, or a spare bedroom, your office can be real cheap!

Who else has thought about saving money on renting office space? An advantage for keeping your business close to your home is the opportunity to work whatever your want – day or night.

So, who has experience renting an office space? Is it fun? What kinds of costs are you looking at?

Understanding Branding for your Small Business

Via HomeOfficeVoice:

A brand is so much more than your well-researched business name, a flashy logo, your well-designed letterhead and that stylish business card. No, a brand is all that and more.

I’m no brand expert and I will not pretend to be one here, so … instead, I’ve roamed the vast expanses of the Internet and come up with a bunch of articles, definitions and ideas that will make you into a branding expert.

It’s a read … but I recommend all those serious about making their home business (heck, any business for that matter!) last for the long-term to take the time and to really understand what branding is all about.

This article is a great one for those looking to expand your knowledge on small business branding and getting your business/organization/website/self/whatever more known.

Check out the full article over at HomeOfficeVoice!