1. New Site Design! If you only read the site via RSS feed, take a minute to stop by http://www.dorm-room-biz.com and you will see a new website theme load up. I felt like it was time for a change. This great theme comes from our friends over at WooThemes. Over the next couple weeks I’ll work on make some modifications to it.

2. New Guest Posts! We’ve had lots of great guest posts submitted over the past few weeks, if you haven’t caught up on your reading, be sure to check them out. Also, if you are interested in contributing to the site, please feel free to leave a comment and I will get in touch with you.

3. New Dorm Room Biz sponsors! We welcome aboard Promo-Lanyards.net as a new banner sponsor. You’ll find their link in the right sidebar. If you are in need of lanyards for name badges at a conference or for your business, be sure to check out what they have. There is a huge variety there for sure!

Be on the lookout for more great posts and articles coming soon. We’ve got a few book reviews in the works as well.

Stay classy San Diego (and the rest of the world!),

Chris

With a new year upon us, it’s all about setting goals, making resoultions, and planning for the rest of the year.

So, what are you doing to prepare for the next 12 months? What goals have you set for yourself or business? Share it here!

I’ll have a post shortly about my goals and resolutions for the year for myself and my businesses!

Talk to you all soon!

Chris

Definitely go check out the full post for a list of all the sites and hopefully you will find some new ones to follow. But, also, thank you to you all for continuing to support Dorm Room Biz and help to build the site up to what it is today!

Happy New Year,

Chris

So, I encourage you to head over to Guide To Online Schools site to view the full list. There are some great resources on there for students and future college students! Dorm Room Biz is listed under the Campus Life section at#59.

Pictures from our trip to Colorado and the wedding will also be coming soon, so watch out!

I hope you all have had a productive two weeks and are continuing to grow your businesses!

Thanks for reading and subscribing!

Chris

This is merely just a quick post to give the update that the wedding is on Saturday and Sunday we’re traveling to Colorado for a few days of rest and relaxation – so I wouldn’t expect any posting, except for maybe a short update with some pictures.

While in Colorado (we’re staying outside of Denver), we’re planning on going white water rafting at Cleer Creak, hiking at the Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak, and checking out the other sights, while relaxing and sitting pool side if the weather permits!

Anyway, keep a look out for some tweets on Saturday and throughout the week since I probably won’t be posting! I’m going to attempt to live tweet the wedding and reception if she doesn’t throw my Blackberry against the wall! haha!

If you are on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flikr, Youtube, etc and are making money and growing your business, by being social, then you’re the people we are looking for. You don’t have to be Gary Vaynerchuk, John Chow, Joel Comm, or Shoemoney to get interviewed. If you’ve had success with growing your business and company on social media sites and with social networking, then here is your chance to share some tips, tell your story, and get some more exposure and followers!

Come One! Come All! Social Media Consultants, Coaches, Marketers, Affiliates, Personal Branders, Authors, Designers, Developers, Programmers, whoever you are – drop a comment here and we’ll be in touch to set up an interview to be posted here on Dorm Room Biz!

But, we couldn’t jump directly into it and just drive off the lot with one, we spent time planning for the purchase, doing research, and finding out what the best price we could get was. Now, if you haven’t realized it, now is a great time to buy a new car – any type of car. With so many dealerships closing up, trying to shrink their stock, and merging together with other dealerships or bringing on more brands, they want to sell you a car and will do almost anything you want them to do to get a sale.

We didn’t have a lot of money saved up

We were not completely expecting to just go out and buy a new car when we moved into our townhouse (which we rent), bought a bunch of furniture, and other necessities, so we didn’t exactly have all the cash saved up that we wanted to right away. So, we set a plan and decided on when we would want to make the purchase – at the end of June. So for 2 months we cut down on other expenses, saved our pennies, and moved money around. If we were the more frugal types, we could have completely cut extra spending AND saved up for many more months. But, with the situation we were in, we most likely could not have waited through August before her car would just completely drop dead…which is not something anyone wants!

Now, after doing research, checking out different sites, and negotiating with the dealership, I’ve got a few tips to share and sites that you should check out if you are a first time car buyer or just looking for some extra ‘backup’ that you could take with you to the negotiation table when dealing with a sales associate.

To Trade In or Not To Trade In

That is the question! With Courtney’s car we knew we didn’t want to mess with trying to sell it to someone else, deal with transferring the title, etc. We just wanted to trade it in, get what we could, and knock our payments down a bit.  To get an idea of what your current vehicle may be worth, check out the Kelley Blue Book website.

Once you have a price in mind from KBB, then head to your dealer or CarMax to see what trade in value you can get. At the same time you should be looking at comparable vehicles for sale in your area to see what prices they are fetching. When you get an idea from your dealer, CarMax, or similar car buying service you can decide if you want to trade it in or try to sell the car on your own. This could be a major money make for you depending on your vehicle, the condition, and the mileage. I know someone who was offered around $1000 for her car by CarMax (a 2002 model) and then sold it to someone from Craigslist’s for around $4000. That extra money will sure help make your new car payments!

American Automobile Association (AAA)

AAA is actually a membership based organization that provides services like car towing, road side assistance, travel information, and more, but they also have a great car buying resource. If you head to their website, http://www.aaa.com, they have Car Buying Tips and Car Buying Tools sections that are very helpful. Within these, you can do new and used car buying research and get online quotes. If you are a AAA member, then you can get exclusive AAA discount prices from 3 local dealers. This is a great advantage to have on your side. After I got 3 quotes, I printed them off and took them to our local dealership that we were going to buy from. This immediately let me say “Your price needs to be less then this or we’ll go someone else.” It worked and instantly dropped $2K off our price. Just don’t show all your cards at once!

TruCar.com

This is another great site to check out…especially if you love bar graphs like @CollegeTownMenu does! Basically, it lets you see what others really paid for their cars.  Just start by putting in your zip code and then select the type of car you are looking at. You get to see what a “Great price” is, the actual dealer cost, the average paid price, the factory invoice, and the sticker price. This is a great tool for negotiating!

So there’s a few tips and sites to check out when you go to buy your next vehicle, new or used. Also be sure to shop around for financing if you need to get it. Check with your bank as well as the dealership. The dealership wanted us to finance the car through them so bad that they dropped the rate almost 4% from what they told us originally when I told them that we were going to go through our bank at a much lower rate.

Just remember – it’s all a game. They want to sell cars and you want to buy one. There are tons of dealerships in every city, so if you can’t get the price you’re looking for from one, just walk out the door. I’m sure they will stop you!

Good luck! Leave your car buying tips here if you have some to add!

Part of redesigning this website was also to get a new logo created. Right about the time I was thinking about working on a theme for Dorm Room Biz, I got an email from someone within the LogoInn.com logo design service. They were offering a free logo design, so I knew I could not pass this opportunity up. This takes us all the way back to March. About 2 months is a very long development time, but most of the delays were on my side of the action and not on the designers side.

So, how was the process you’re wondering? It was good and pretty normal; basically as I suspected it to be. I’ve worked with many web and graphic designers over the years and pretty much new what to expect. I was emailed a small logo design questionairre which had different questions such as the style of logo I like, what colors I wanted the logo to have, etc. So after going back and forth for a few emails, we finaly got the details laid out and were ready to hit the ground running.

The logos that I was first shown were along the lines of what I asked for in realtion to the questionaire that I filled out as well as some different examples I sent to the person I was working with. The nice thing about this process was that they were more than happy to make as many revisions as I needed. Now, I don’t know if that is part of their normal service or not, but it worked great for me. I’m the type of person, like many of you probably are, that likes to have a TON of revisions done to designs to try to make them just right. However, there is a point where you have to realize you will never be able to achieve a perfect logo because you’d never be happy with what you had if you went for perfection. So, I’m very happy with the current logo that the site has, I think it goes very well with the theme and colors and look forward to utilizing it for a while to come.

I’d rate my experience with the guys at LogoInn.com pretty well and would consider going back for future logo work. I know there are a ton of options out there when you are looking for a logo design like running a contest, hiring a firm, or checking out a logo desing company like LogoInn.com. Using this type of internet based service may not be for you, but for this type of project, it was the perfect fit!

Check them out if you are in the market for a new logo design!

However, the story really starts a couple weeks ago when I moved and posted a tweet to Twitter looking to connect with other locals in the area, entrepreneurs, and businesses. One of the companies that followed me was 123Print.com, an online printer similar to OvernightPrints or PrintPlace.

When I went and look at their website, I saw they had 100 business cards for just $3.95, a pretty good deal. Most places would charge you at least $9.95 for 100 cards, or you may not even be able to order that few. So I was happy with the price and wanted to try out the service.

One thing I have been doing for a couple years now is including in all the packages I send out for eBay or Amazon sales is including a business card that basically says ‘Thank You for buying from us’ and asks the buyer to leave positive feedback for us. I had been printing them on just regular business card stock that you get from your local office supply store. Yet the last batch of paper that I bought I was not happy with and just printed the cards anyway – the perferations for where the cards pull apart is not that good and would always tear. But, putting a half assed business card with torn edges was not a good representation of my business – nor should it be one of yours.

So I quickly uploaded the design to the 123Print.com website and within 5 minutes had my order placed. Well, the cards came and they turned out great. The service was incredibly easy to use and fast. The shipping time was decent (the shipping price was high – $7 for a very small and light box), but the cards turned out nicely.

If you are looking to pick up some cards for yourself and get just a small number of them, then 123Print.com is definitely a great place to check out. You can’t beat the price and with hundreds of templates online, you can easily make your own design.

Here is a couple pictures of the box and cards!

Business cards in the box from @123print

Cards with discounts on them

The actual cards that I got printed