Got my new flip video today!

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The other day I placed some bids on a Flip video camera on eBay and won one for about $50 less than retail, not too shabby! Anyway, because it was used, it didn’t come with any instruction booklet or anything that is supposed to come with it except for the case. Anyway, so far I like it and think that it will work really well for putting together videos. I’ll be making some while down at the Outer Banks this coming weekend for sure!

June Blog Income Earnings for Dorm Room Biz

You guessed it..it’s that time of the month again when everyone starts talking about how much money they made from blogging over the past month and any other statistics they wish to share. So, just like I did in the beginning of June when I reviewed the month of May, I will now review the month of June.

For the month of June, I made money blogging the following ways:

• AdSense - $14.41
• SponoseredReviews - $38.35
• CashCrate - $6.65
• Review Me - $30.00
• Text Link Ads - $25.06
• Blogrolled.com - $7.50

In a nice pretty chart, the total of $121.97 looks like this:

ReviewMe.com worked out to almost be this past month’s largest income provider. I had accepted a bunch of smaller reviews (around $10 each) but only managed to complete 3 of them and 1 got canceled before I could make the post. If I had crunched out the another 2 or 3, this amount would have doubled.

The same idea goes with the amount from SponsoredReviews.com, which was the biggest earner. I accepted a few different reviews and applied for others but only 2 were accepted by the advertiser. But, $38.35 is not too bad for writing 2 posts.

The amount that I was not that happy with for the month was my earnings from CashCrate. I personally only completed a survey or two which did not amount to much and the referrals underneath of me earned me about $5.50. If you are looking for an easy way to earn a decent amount of money for an easy task, I highly recommend checking out CashCrate. I have written about it a bunch before as well.

Finally, Blogrolled.com is a new service I signed up for and tested out. The premise of the business is pretty simple - like Text Link Ads and other services, they sell text links on your website. However, unlike other sites where you need to put a widget or code on your site, when Blogrolled sells a link on your site, all you do is add the link to your own blogroll until you are told to remove it (the advertiser cancels).

A couple other facts:

• 20 blog posts
• 22 comments throughout the month
• Besides Google and direct visitors, Bobbyhash.com and Collegebeing.com were the biggest referrers of visitors for the month.
• Most popular posts:
  • Did you choose the right major during college?
  • May Blog Income Earnings
  • Frugality for college students

No time for video updates…

I know I had previously mentioned that I was going to be trying to do some videos for my project updates instead of writing it all out and leavnig reading for you guys. Well, I just haven’t had enough time to get it recorded and edited, so I am going to go ahead and write up the updates to be posted over the next few days.

I like to do these updates to show you all what I am working on and also share my experiences, and hear your experiences! So, be on the lookout for some project updates coming over the next couple days.

Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to the fathers out there reading Dorm Room Biz! I appreciate your time and wish you all the best of luck with everything!

On a side note, if you have not heard/read, Darren of Problogger had his second child today - congrats goes out to him and his wife!

I hate to break radio silence but…

It is about that time. I know I haven’t posted much in about the last week and it is time to get back to it. The couple posts over the weekend were submitted guest posts that got timestamped for their publishing. Now, it is time for me to get back to writing!

What have I been up to?

This past weekend, I got the opportunity to head out to Mill Run, PA to go white water rafting on the Lower Youghiogheny River. It was a great weekend camping with my local Boy Scout troop that I am apart of and a great time to run the river. The water level was just over 5.5 feet, so it was a quick ride, but the rapids and holes that we were able to hit were huge! I got back on Sunday to unpack and relax. Courtney, my fiancé, came up Sunday night and Monday, Tuesday, and today (Wednesday), we spent time hanging out and also talking with different photographers and florists for our wedding. We have set the date for August 15th, 2009 and have the location set as well. For being more than a year ahead of the game, we are moving right along. It is funny to hear about people who are still trying to line up photographers and florists for weddings THIS August.

So, now that Courtney has departed home to Northern Virginia, it is time for me to get back to some work! I have a couple goodies planned for the rest of the week for all my readers. Hopefully tomorrow, Thursday, I will be launching the second Dorm Room Biz podcast where we discuss deciding how and when to expand your business. If you’d like to be apart of a future podcast, please feel free to get in touch with me! On top of this, I am going to attempt to put together a VIDEO POST as an update to all my projects. This will be a big step for me because I’ll have to jot down different notes for each project and then record everything I want to say as well as edit it to get it up on the site. We shall see how this works out! Do you guys like video posts or video blogs? I think if done correctly and not overwhelmingly they can be great - I am shooting for ‘good’ for the first one.

I also have some traditional posting in the works as well for the weekend. I start my full time JOB on Monday, so I will be preparing for that and will be sure to blog about that first day to share my experiences. I have been having such a great fun and relaxed summer so far, it is going to suck being stuck inside in an office for the rest of it!

Now, to please your longer reading needs, FreelanceSwitch has a great article posted today titled “8 Things You Should Include In Your Terms of Service Agreement”. This is a great read for freelancers who write their own agreements/contracts and are wondering if they covered everything! Check it out at FreelanceSwitch!

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Dorm Room Biz RSS Feed so that you get all of our posts delivered right to your feedreader! Its FREE and QUICK!!!

Harper’s Ferry, WV - A great day trip!

Friday I got the chance to head out to Harper’s Ferry, WV with my fiancé for the day. We weren’t really too sure what we would do while we were there (it’s not that big of a town) because we were not sure if we would get some hiking in or not. For those that do not know, the Appalachian Trail runs right through Harper’s Ferry and most hikers consider it the half way point.

You can read about the trip and see the pictures by checking out the post I put up on TheGearHouse.

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

Looking for a logo designer!

Just a quick note - I am looking for a logo designer that is interested in some quick work. If you are a designer or can make a recommendation, please leave a comment or email me. I have a logo that I put together for TheGearHouse but I want to get something new and fresh created.

This is paid work, but I am on a tight budget! Thanks for any interest!

Met with an accountant yesterday; here are some of my thoughts!

Sunday I blogged that I was going to be meeting with an accountant and listed a few questions that I was going to ask him to dive deeper into the realms of setting up a business entity, such as an LLC or a C corp. The basis for the meeting was because with the amount of money that I had been bringing in recently from ebay and my website development business, there was some money that was not being reported as income and instead was just being deposited and not being accounted for. So there were some worries about the possibility of getting audited or having different problems with paying state taxes.

So, I wanted to learn more about my options, discuss my ventures, and see what may be the best idea for me as an entrepreneur. Now, before I go any further, I want to STRESS that this is advice that was given to ME and is specific to my case. That being said, it is always best to get your own advice from a certified professional such as an accountant or lawyer or both! So, with that, I am going to just talk about some of my different options, the answers to some of the questions that I asked, and what the future holds for how I do business. Read more »

Talking to an Accountant tomorrow, what should I ask?

So, I know I have talked a bunch before about starting a business, different types of businesses to start, etc, but now it is time for me to actually do it. Tomorrow I will be going and sitting down with my parents Accountant and Financial Planner in search of some advice as to what to do relating to my web design business income and my ebay income - ie start a business to funnel it into or not.

However, I want to make sure that I am well prepared with a list of questions - so I am looking for more ideas as to what else to ask or look into. Here is what I am thinking so far:

1. What is the best type of entity to launch in order to run ventures under different names (doing business as [DBA] names) and funnel all profits and expenses into the parent company.
2. What kind of protection does a parent company offer when operating under a DBA? Does everything fall onto the parent company?
3. If operating with a DBA, does a new company (say a LLC) need to be launched in order for the parent company to have ownership of it or can multiple DBA’s be filled for the same parent company?
4. What can be written off as a business expenses and where should the line be drawn (as far as deciding what to submit and what not to)?
5. How should internet income be reported (individually from each company [like google, cashcrate, etc] or just as one lump sum)?
6. What is the best way to report blogging income which would break down into the following categories: advertising (google, private ad sales, paid reviews, etc), networks/affiliates, miscellaneous.
7. Can meals and other items be written of as a tax deductible/business expense if they are written about and reviewed? Such as restaurant reviews or camping equipment reviews?

That is about all I have for now, any one have other suggestions or questions they may like to try to get answered? I am already there, so I’d be happy to try and ask any question you may have! Leave a comment! My meeting is at 3 PM tomorrow.