OIOPublisher - Earn 90% Affiliate Commission throughout January!

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Affiliates, Take Home An Unheard Of 90% Commission In January

You heard right, OIOpublisher, the premiere blog monetization system is giving away a whopping 90% commission to any affiliates during January. This is the perfect opportunity to help your visitors get the best private ad sales platform on the web and make a nice commission off it too. It is so good many of the big name bloggers use it to maintain their ad sales and keep things on auto-pilot!

OIOpublisher converts extremely well, the average conversion rate of signups to sales is constantly 35% plus. This makes getting sales easy, just point the traffic to the product and see what happens. We provide you with banners as well making putting OIOpublisher on your website easy and quick.

Anyone who has used OIOpublisher can confirm that it is truly the best website monetization system out there for private ad sales.

This wont last long, this unheard of 90% affiliate offer is only valid through January 2009. Get your piece of the OIOpublisher pie, sign up as an affiliate today.

What Wordpress Plugins Do You Use?

I’m always looking for ways to make Dorm Room Biz and my other blogs better - either in search engine performance/ranking, usability, or any other arena. One of the easiest ways to do that when your website is based off of the Wordpress platform is through the use of plugins.

So, what plugins do you use for your site?

I currently have installed:

• Akismet (of course)
• All In One SEO
• DealDotCom
• Gregarious
• OIOPublisher
• Subscribe To Comments
• Text Link Ads
• What Would Seth Godin Do

Share with everyone in the comments what plugins you use on your Wordpress site!

Motive Interactive Powered By Advent 2.0

With so many affiliate networks out there, how are you supposed to know which one to go with? You look towards reviews like this of course! Now, let me forewarn you, I haven’t actually used the Advent 2.0 system, however, I am signed up as a member and plan on working with it more in the future. So, the observations and points that I make here are just from my experiences as a relatively new guy in the game of affiliate marketing. Yet, you should be aware that all of the other popular bloggers such as Shoemoney, John Chow, Tyler Cruz, etc have also reviewed the Advent 2.0 system. So…if you have any doubts about what I say and show you, just check out what they wrote about the program and you will get some good ideas. Another cool review site you could check out is AFFpinions by Ian Fernando. The site features the Advent 2.0 system and a couple reviews.

The cool thing about Motive is that they have recently released the Advent 2.0 system, so it is still pretty much brand new and ready to be used. Motive Interactive has some of the highest payouts in the industry and also offers many exclusive offers for its publishers so it definitely works to provide publishers with the tools to maximize their revenue.

Their lead generation platform allows publishers to launch streamlined campaigns with easy-to-use tools, while ensuring that you’ll be provided with accurate and reliable payouts and attentive customer service. With Motive, you have the power to launch campaigns that will succeed the first time and every time!

Now, it is safe to say that just about every affiliate/CPA network out there considers themselves to be the undisputed champion of the world, much like Hulk Hogan. Well, Motive Interactive is no different and here are some of the reasons they toot their own horn as the industry leader:

• Top performing highest paying offers, if you find a better payout - tell them and they will beat it
• Exclusive Offers
• Most lucrative reward program in the industry! 5.50% GROSS revenue lifetime referral bonus for each Publisher you refer
• Proprietary Technology that works to make you more money!
• Best in class web 2.0 Interface
• Advanced real time tracking and reporting
• Advanced metrics: eCPM, eCPC, eCPL
• Exportable Reports

Like I said, these are just a few of the main highlights of working with the Advent 2.0 system.

For more information about their publisher solutions, check out their site. They also have a couple videos online that are CPA and CPM demos that are helpful and informational!

More contests on the way? Here are some tips.

With the success of my first contest here at Dorm Room Biz, I have decided to run another contest coming up. I had a couple potential sponsors contact me after the first contest and offer prizes, so you should get excited about this upcoming one. It will offer you all, as young/student entrepreneurs, a great prize that will hopefully help to kick your business up to the next notch!

Along that note, Shoemoney posted a bunch of tips for running successful contests the other day. Many of these I followed, but a couple I hadn’t thought about - like what the local laws say about running a contest. Anyway, if you are thinking about running a contest on your blog or website, check out the tips that Jeremy put together!

Issues I had With My Halloween Affiliate Experiement

So I just posted about my little make money online experiment with promoting Halloween costume offers on eBay. It was a big success and if I had started the campaign a little earlier, I probably would have easily broken $200 in affiliate commissions. However, like I mentioned, I had a few issues over the last few days and I wanted to touch on them as they are real problems that you could face if you attempted to repeat this process (with any kind of product, not just Halloween costumes).

Like I said in the other post, I searched for costumes that did not have many active listings, but were selling successfully for any listing that was up. So this meant that I listed popular items and with any luck the demand would be high. Well, the demand was high. Total, I had 26 costume sales on eBay, pretty damn good for about 72 hours. It was roughly $1000 worth of business in eBay’s eyes…to me it was $136.

So anyway, here are the problems I ran into.

1. With my first few sales, the price I listed it the costume at was too low to cover the eBay and PayPal fees and to cover the actual cost of the costume. I lost between 50 cents and a dollar on 4 sales, not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. To rectify the situation, I increased the listing price and added a a little bit to the shipping price the buyer paid. This then covered the fees and cost of the item and gave me now a small profit of between 50 cents and a dollar on each sale.
2. I placed 6 orders with one company whose affiliate program I was apart of one night. Then the next day I processed a few more with no problems. However, before heading to bed that night, I went to place a couple more that had sold on eBay…yet they were out of stock! This put me in a panic. I had to search for another company that was selling the same costume for the same price or less AND become an affiliate of theirs immediately to be able to process the orders that night. Luckily I was able to find another website that I could use and processed a handful of orders with them.
3. The third day my second ’supplier’ was out of stock when I went to process another batch of orders. Well shit on me! I was even more worried about it now because I knew these were hot items and finding another website that had a good stock of them would be a problem. Luckily I got approved for another affiliate program with costume website and I started processing orders.
4. This past Monday (the 20th) I get an email from the 3rd supplier telling me that they were out of stock of everything I ordered (even though their website showed it was in stock) and that ALL of my orders had been canceled…all 10 of them! I called to find out what the problem was because I placed all the orders on Friday, the 17th and the website said everything was in stock. Well apparently it takes up to 6 hours for the website to reflect the real inventory levels and when the site updated to being out of stock, I had already processed all the orders I had and they could not ship any of the costumes. All the charges I had through PayPal and my credit card had been refunded and all of the sudden I had an extra $600 in my PayPal account. Well, it was a popular costume, and after trying another 6 websites, just to process the orders - even if I could not get affiliate commissions from them, everyone was out of stock.
5. I had to refund 10 orders…this hurt…bad. Not only did I have to go through and individually refund 10 people’s money, I had to make sure they all went through, document the refunds (to make sure I was keeping track of everything), and contact them all to let them know what was going on. I emailed everyone and explained the situation, sent the refunds, and then left feedback on eBay for them all. Some have left feedback for me and I hope the rest will as well.
6. I still got charged the eBay fees!!!!!! When you refund money through PayPal, you get the fee refunded as well - so if you send me $50, the PayPal fee may be $2, netting me $48. Well PayPal refunds the $2 fee if I refund you the $50. BUT I still incurred the eBay fees for each costume purchase (this is about $4.50 a costume). So, now I am going to be down about $40 because of the stinking eBay fees. It’d be nice if eBay could follow a PayPal refund and then you could ‘cancel’ a sale within eBay so you are not charged the fees because the transaction was not completed. Oh well. Luckily this is not coming from out-of-the-pocket money, but it will be covered by my affiliate commissions.

SO, if you are thinking about doing this sort of thing in the future, here are a couple tips I have.

• Contact an affiliate manager and make sure that what you want to do is alright with them and does not violate any terms or conditions.
• Contact the company you want to process orders with and make sure they are alright with you selling on eBay and processing the orders through them.
• Make sure the company has enough of the item in stock to fulfill your demand! If you can, get a certain number of the product reserved for you so that you know you have a certain number available to sell. This is the biggest thing I will try to do next time I do something like this.

Good luck with if you want to do this type of making money online experiment in the future and see how much you can earn in affiliate commissions. When I do a blog income report at the beginning of November, I will include this affiliate commission amount, but I will figure out what the real number is (my earnings of ~$136 minus eBay fees) to see how well I really did.

12 Websites You Need To Be Using As An Entrepreneur

What’s up guys? There are literally thousands of websites and services out there that help entrepreneurs and small business owners to run their business, promote and market themselves, and control the chaos. However, deciding which ones to use is the problem. Here is a list of some of the best services out there that you need to be using or at least looking at for your small business.

Twitter
Twitter allows you to update your followers with what is going on, what you are doing, and what you want to talk about. Limited to 140 characters, you have the opportunity to reach a wide audience with your messages. Following people and having followers is the key to success on Twitter -  you need to build your audience. The micro-blogging platform is free and super easy to use via the web or text messaging. Join, start following, advertise your business, services, or products and watch your business grow.
Website: http://www.twitter.com
Cost: Free

Facebook
What - you’re not on Facebook? What the hell are you thinking? Start a profile for yourself, start a page for your business, and start adding your friends. Use Facebook as an avenue to connect with customers on a whole different level. You can also find your friends from college, high school, and former workplaces. Interact with your friends and start talking up your business. Refer people to your business’s Facebook page or group and get them to join it. As people start joining, others will see the notice on their feeds that their friends are joining your group - which may entice them to join themselves. This is a great way to grow your audience and potential customer base. The social aspects of Facebook are also great - upload and share pictures, links, stores, and more.
Website: http://www.facebook.com
Cost: Free

FreshBooks
Looking for a good and easy way to invoice your clients, track your time, or track your expenses? Then check out FreshBooks! The free service will allow you to add a few clients and the paid version will allow for more, but basically you can send invoices to your clients through email and share documents with them as well. The service is great for someone like a web designer or developer that needs to share documents and information constantly with their clients.
Website: http://www.freshbooks.com
Cost: Free or $14/month and up

Basecamp
Project management and collaboration can be a tricky thing when you are small and just starting out. When you are working with a lot of other people on a project, it is key to keep everyone on the same page. Basecamp from 37Signals will help you do that! Basecamp will allow you to customize your management area look and feel, share it with your customers or team members, and share all kinds of documents and information. Anything from 37Signals is a helpful tool for your business, so check out their other services as well.
Website: http://www.basecamphq.com/
Cost: 30 day free trial or $25/month and up

SmartyPig
If you are looking to save up some of your businesses income and hold on to it for a big purchase of new equipment or other needs for your business, then you need to look in to SmartyPig. SmartyPig allows you to set up savings goals and have money deposited into a savings account direct from your bank account each month. I use them for mostly personal savings goals, but business savings goals are definitely a great idea. The people at SmartyPig are awesome and offer great support, so I strongly recommend them - the best part? It’s free!
Website: http://www.smartypig.com
Cost: Free

LinkedIn
If you don’t like Facebook because you feel there is too much info free for searching and not enough privacy, check out the more professional social network, LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been around for a good while, maybe even longer than Facebook? LinkedIn allows you to connect with collegaues, classmates, and other professionals in similar industries…or just random people like Facebook. However, LinkedIn is focused more on the professional side of social networking and growing your connections. You can have people endorse you to help you grow your presence and you don’t have to really worry about any crazy party pictures of you doing a keg stand showing up on your managers Facebook feed (wouldn’t that suck?).
Website: http://www.linkedin.com
Cost: Free

Google Analytics
I could not create a list of useful websites without having at least one Google product on it. Analytics is an awesome visitor tracking program that Google has developed. All you need to do is slap a few lines of code on your site and let it be. Analytics will automatically start tracking your sites visitors - telling you where they are coming from, how long they are staying, what pages they are visiting, and much much more. The best part? Like most things from Google, it is free! There is no reason that you should not be using the program to track your site traffic and evaluate what is working for you.
Website: http://www.google.com/analytics
Cost: Free

YouTube
Social media is a huge part of the web 2.0 revolution and is attracting many more people and businesses to the internet. One way to take advantage of social media and viral marketing is through uploading videos that you create to free video sharing websites such as YouTube. YouTube allows you to upload any video you make (as long as it is under its file size requirements) and share it with your friends, embed it in your website, or post it on other websites such as Facebook. YouTube offers an amazing way to find new customers and visitors for your website. By displaying your website name, logo, or web address in your videos, you will see some traffic come from YouTube…as long as the video is good and people are watching it! If you’re looking to brand yourself and your business, start making some videos and posting them on YouTube!
Website: http://www.youtube.com
Cost: Free

Mint
Looking for a good free way to manage your finances and keep track of your spending? Then you should check out Mint. Mint allows you to link pretty much any bank account, credit card account, and online payment account (like PayPal) to your Mint account and see a summary of your spending and your total income/debt. You can then see trends as to what you are spending the most on and what you need to cut back on. Mint also provides you with different opportunities to save money by switching banks or credit card offers.
Website: http://www.mint.com
Cost: Free

StartupNation
StartupNation is a community website for entrepreneurs featuring step-by-step advice, videos, podcasts, and many resources. The website also features a pretty active forum. StartupNation is definitely a site to keep an eye on as you work on developing your business and have questions you want to try to get answered.
Website: http://www.startupnation.com
Cost: Free

Young Go Getter
Young Go Getter is an active forum for entrepreneurs. You can definitely get the help you need from this group of dedicated people with their knowledge spanning a wide array of industries and technologies. If you have questions about an industry, looking for some help, or just want a place to hang out, then check out YGG.
Website: http://www.younggogetter.com
Cost: Free

Young Entrepreneur
A community of entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs exceeding more than 5000 members strong, YE is a site to visit and visit often. Although some of the content may not always be the most relevant or it may be ’spam’ posts, if you have the time to sort through and find the good stuff, then it is worth it. I talked with the creator a couple weeks back and he says things are in the works to make YE much better in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out! This group of helpful people can definitely be a benefit to you and will help you in any way they can!
Website: http://www.youngentrepreneur.com
Cost: Free

And finally, of course, Dorm Room Biz is always one of the best places to get help as a student entrepreneur!

What are your favorite websites to check and resources to refer to when you need some help?

BlogMastermind Program Launches Tomorrow - Watch the Videos Today!

Yaro Starak, creater of the Blog Mastermind Program will be reopening his blog training program tomorrow, Tuesday, at approximately 10 AM EST USA time! If you have not been following the news that has been generating at other sites like John Chow, ProBlogger, or anywhere else, this is going to be an opportunity that you want to jump on to get serious about blogging. I have been following Yaro’s blog, Entrepreneurs Journey, since pretty close to when he started it and have learned a lot from him in terms of blogging, marketing, and strategies. I saw how effective and incredible his first launch was and am excited that he is going to be reopening the program. This time, it will be open to anyone who subscribes and it will not be closed.

To learn about the program and Yaro, you need to check out these videos. These are just a sampling of the kind of work that Yaro puts together for his Blog Mastermind course students.  These two videos are on how Yaro makes money from blogging and how much money he makes. If you don’t believe in buying any online products or courses, you should definitely think again about this one. The tips that bloggers like Shoemoney and John Chow publish are helpful, the articles that Darren of ProBlogger rights are insightful and full of experience, but Yaro’s program takes you through the step by step process to be successful.

Yaro also just released an interview that he did with a former BlogMastermind student of his who is now a million dollar blogger! That is INSANE! You won’t want to miss this interview with Alborz Fallah.

It’’s time to make serious money from your blog. Get help, join the Blog Mastermind mentoring program.

OIO Publisher is AMAZING and you need to get yourself a copy!

Considered the top and best way to sell private advertising space on your blog, OIO Publisher is amazing! I have it installed here on Dorm Room Biz as well as my other blogs and use it. The set up and admin control panels are very easy to use and navigate through. Another AWESOME key point is that the support for the system is just incredible - definitely the best support I have received from any online company.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you all about OIO Publisher again as I know I have talked about it before. If you are looking to make money online from blogging, you need to have OIO Publisher to do it! So go sign up today and take your blog income earnings to the next level!

May Blog Income Earnings for Dorm Room Biz

About this time every month, different bloggers start sharing with their readers how much they earned from their blogs the previous month. So, since May turned out to be a pretty decent month for Dorm Room Biz, I thought that I would share some of the results with you all. Now, I am NO WHERE NEAR any significant amount for my blog income, but every little bit helps and recording and reporting it like this is a good way to set benchmarks. Here is a break down.

• ReviewMe: $15.00
• AdSense: $15.69
• Private Ads/Posts: $20.00
• Text Link Ads: $5.51
• CashCrate: $22.79

Total: $78.99

ReviewMe - ReviewMe is a great way to make some extra money from your blog by writing sponsored posts. Even though I did not have any high paying offers from ReviewMe to be posted on Dorm Room Biz, I utilized a couple of the different campaigns that came across my RSS feed reader. Had I jumped on more of them and spent time to write more posts on different websites and topics, this could have amounted to at least $50 for the month. However, when I consider different reviews to take on through ReviewMe’s campaigns, I try to keep the content relevant to Dorm Room Biz and the topics that you all are interested in reading about. This helps the paid posts to not be as obvious and to not be obtrusive to you all.

Google AdSense: Although it is not a major earner for me, it does bring in a few bucks here and there. I am going to be working on better optimizing the site to utilize AdSense in a couple different ways which will hopefully result in a higher CTR and a higher payout to me!

Private Ads/Private Posts: This is usually the category that is the biggest earner just because different businesses and bloggers are more interested in working directly with another blogger as opposed to working through a third party service. It also allows the blogger writing a sponsored post or putting up a private ad to make a higher amount rather than totally relying on a service like Text Link Ads. With the installation of OIOPublisher, I hope that I will be able to increase my private ad sales by offering other areas throughout the site that you can advertise in. For the current rates, please email me, but you can get an idea of where they are at right now by visiting the Advertising page. If you are not using OIOPublisher to manage your private ad sales, I definitely suggest you check it out!

Text Link Ads - I didn’t even realize that I had sold any for the month! I got my TLA integrated with my regular links sections and for some reason didn’t receive notification that I had sold one and never noticed it. Anyway, its nothing to quit a job over or even get paid for the month, but will eventually get paid out as more sell. I already had $25 worth of TLAs sell on another site of mine, so the end of June I should receive a combined payment.

CashCrate - I know I have said it before, but I really do love the way CashCrate works and the great system they have set up. CashCrate is a constant money maker for me and I can always rely on it to generate some extra money. If you haven’t already, take a look at the different reviews that I have done on CashCrate here and here and then sign up for the program so that you too can start making money! Once you get your account established and you make your money from completing surveys, get referrals signed up underneath of you so that your earning power continues to grow.

Besides these money makers, I have also joined up with Market Leverage to bring my readers different offers that will hopefully benefit you all, so look at for these different offers around the site. If you are looking to get into affiliate marketing and more serious advertising revenues, I strongly suggest you take a look at ML and sign up. Bloggers such as Zac Johnson, Ian Fernando, John Chow, and Shoemoney have had great success with them and they are a great group of people willing to help you out!

There are just so many ways out there to make money online from blogging that it is hard to test them all out. I am interested in any experiences that you all, my readers, have had from working with any of the companies that I have mentioned above or any others. Now that I am getting into putting more advertising on the Dorm Room Biz site, I am contemplating ANOTHER redesign (I know, I know - I just had it redesigned not too long ago). But, I would like to change up the side bar some and make it into a 2 column sidebar to utilize the space better as well as make for less scrolling just to see the sidebar items. We shall see!

I also have some other cool ideas planned for Dorm Room Biz over the next couple months, so be on the look out for some new releases of different items in the near future!

Here’s to blogging success!
Chris

EntreCard has new features and is giving away free credits!

In case you have not heard, EntreCard is now allowing its users to add more than one blog to their account. I personally feel this is a feature that should have been standard from the beginning. Having to create multiple accounts for each different website you want to run the widget on would be a major pain in the butt, but I am sure some people did it.

However, now you can easily add more than one blog to your EntreCard account and control everything from a single dashboard.

Besides this great new feature, EntreCard also released a new eBook that will allow you to learn all about EntreCard and how to use it. If you haven’t yet signed up for EntreCard or just did, then this eBook is for you! Even though I have not read it yet, I would bet that any EC user would benefit from reading through the book, and heck, it’s only 20 pages, so you should be able to do that pretty quickly! You can download the ebook here.

Although it’s not really a contest, but more of a giveaway, the boys at EC are also running a contest for those who blog about the new features that they have implemented. Just by blogging about the new ebook and new features, they will deposit 2,000 free credits into your account. That is great news if you are looking to grab a nice advertising spot on sites like John Chow, ProBlogger, or Tyler Cruz.