This is a guest post from the fine folks at GreekForMe.com.

Movies like Animal House and Old School are certainly great college movies, but I think we’d all agree that they don’t cast fraternities in the best light. This goes for both fraternities and sororities – there tends to be such a stereotype that Greek organizations are simply about cramming as much partying as you can into a semester, and perhaps being a bit loose with the morals.

All of us at GreekForMe.com are here to change that stereotype. Sure, that stereotype may hold true for a sorority or fraternity here or there, but Greek organizations are overwhelmingly excelling in the classroom and are involved in extensive community service and volunteering endeavors. Men and women now join Greek organizations based on the value system of their chosen fraternity and sorority, and often have some of the highest grade point averages on campus, with many organizations requiring their members to stay above a certain GPA each semester.

If you’re just starting out at college, rushing a fraternity or sorority is the perfect way to get to know more people on campus. Just be sure you’re choosing an organization that embodies the values you yourself hold important, and you can see yourself becoming friends with the other members in the fraternity or sorority. Just go for it!

We’re committed to highlighting the great works of fraternities and sororities, and we hope you’ll follow us on Twitter.com/GreekForMe, Like Us on Facebook, and check out our GreekForMe Blog! And of course, once you do join that fraternity or sorority, you know the perfect spot to get Sorority Apparel and Fraternity Apparel

So tell us, what made you want to join a fraternity or sorority? If you haven’t yet, what’s holding you back?

In April I wrote about the Old Spce Adventure Internship. Now Gillette is sponsoring what they are calling the “Ultimate Summer Job” contest. Here are the details below. Biggest thing to note if you plan on applying is that the deadline for applications is May 31st!!!

For the past few weeks Gillette has been challenging guys across North America to take the Gillette Fusion ProGlide Challenge.  Now that we’ve got some guys out there trying the razor, Gillette is upping the ante with the Gillette Fusion ProGlide “Ultimate Summer Job” contest.

Gillette is offering two guys – or girls – the chance for the Ultimate Summer Job.  The chosen pair will earn $50,000 road tripping across North America this summer in a custom van, attending the most exciting sports and entertainment events, while blogging and sharing their experiences along the way.  Their mission: Convince guys to take the Fusion ProGlide Challenge.

Here’s the deal for those who want to enter – go to www.ProGlideSummerJob.com and upload a one-minute video that includes both team members by May 31, 2010, 11:59 pm EDT.  Up to four teams will be selected to travel to NYC for a finalist event June 15, 2010, where a panel of celebrity judges will help select the grand prize winners.

This is a guest post from Don Garcia at Yellow Fire Marketing. Even though summer is here, there’s always next semester to start thinking about!

More Businesses to Start Out of Your Dorm Room

When you are in college, the urge to stretch out and see what you can do is both an incredible rush, and a kind of humility lesson. When you really consider that Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg pretty much started their billion dollar businesses “from their dorm rooms,” (not technically in Jobs’ case, but pretty close) you start to realize that you might be embarking on a lightly trod path to great riches. And indeed, once you really ‘make it,’ it can be an incredible rush. But whether you are glancing over the reading materials for a couple of franchise opportunities, and seeing if they are right for you, or if you are just practicing a skill you have developed, and keep having this crazy dream that you might change the world, there are a LOT of possibilities you can choose from. So let’s look at a couple of these options.

A toiletries stockpile

A long time ago, a college freshman noticed that a lot of his fellow dorm rats had neglected to bring a few necessary but often forgettable items with them. These items included tooth brushes, tooth paste, toilet paper, and other miscellany. So he took a cabinet, filled it with these things (which he bought inexpensively), and arbitrated these goods for a reasonable profit, while keeping them substantially less expensive than the on campus options would be. Needless to say, that young man went on to do great things. And this might also be the start of your entrepreneurial career.

A social networking web site

While it is true that social networking is no longer new in the slightest, there will always be the ability to niche it down. Consider that while fashion is not always new, it is constantly being tweaked and resold in an innumerable variety of different styles. Now think about the kind of social atmosphere your school has – is it being extremely well represented through sites like MySpace and Facebook? If not, you might just have the start of something big.

A dorm room cleaning business

While this may only come into play during the periods when every college student is suddenly obsessed with cleanliness (think parental visits, trying to avoid studying for finals, and trying not to get charged a fee before they move out), it could also get some play as a “membership” service. Say, for a small monthly charge, you come in one day a month while they are in class, and turn the place from “disaster area” into “halfway decent.” Get a hundred people to pay you $40 a month (which even most college students could probably scrape up), and that is a decent income.

What kind of business do you want to run? One where you are an absentee owner or one where you are an owner operator? Not sure what the difference is? Click here for the long version, or read on! Okay, here we go: an Absentee Owner is a business owner who can leave their business alone and not be involved daily, yet still run an effective business. An Owner Operator business is just the opposite – where you as the owner are down in the trenches working everyday within your business. Interested in learning more about the two types of owners? Then head to www.hands-onsolutions.com where you can find lots of articles and resources on the topic.

I think it’s pretty obvious that we all hope to become an absentee owner where we can just let out business run and not have to worry about whats going on all the time. With techniques such as outsourcing, automation, and utilizing technology, this is more achievable now then ever before. Guys like Tim Ferriss talk about it their books all the time. However, as a young entrepreneur, sometimes it’s hard to set up your business that way from the start and you have to start out being an owner operator and living in your business day to day. Plus, your business is your baby, and at such an infant stage, you don’t want to just abandon it, now do you?

As you grow your business, streamline your activities, and determine what actions make you the best return for your time, you can start to slip into the ‘absentee owner’ mode and start to let your business just run by itself. Think you can handle that? One of the great things about the interenet is that it allows you the chance to make it happen much more quickly then when everything was “brick and mortar” based.

If you want to check out 63 other ways that absentee owners think and act differently than an owner operator, check out the website of Hands On Solutions, a Seatle based consulting services business. They’ve got a great archive of resources and articles on the topic!

Starting a business is fun and exciting. It’s also frustrating and sometimes even depressing. But being the entrepreneur you are, you are constantly thinking of new business ideas that you would love to do. The only problem is how you decide what business you start and how you are going to get funding.

Going to business school, you are taught to write up a business plan. I just want to say this is a bad idea. Sure, it will probably be required down the road for some annoying reason, but not right at the beginning. At this point, it’s a time waster.

All business plans that are drawn up at the beginning of a venture normally just talk about the ‘market potential’ of the business. This means nothing. Especially when you are trying to get some funding to get it off the ground.

Instead of spending your time writing up a business plan, run a PPC campaign. This will truly help prove (or disprove) the market potential you think there is.

There use to be a time where you had to look at market surveys and data available to you to determine whether or not you had a shot or not with that business idea. Turns out, that data is really expensive to come across and just not viable for you to acquire as a Dorm Room Biz person.

Luckily though, you can get that data all on your own. Take $500 or so of your own money and invest it into a PPC campaign. Here’s a short step-by-step way to implement this plan.

1. Get a domain name. Any name related to whatever you are doing, not necessarily the one you will end up using. If you are going to start a cookie selling biz, get cookieseller101.com.
2. Find some cheap hosting and install a CMS.
3. Create a few landing pages. Up to 5 should be enough and ask questions on them. You are looking for answers from the people in the market you want to serve. You can even go ahead and offer your service now.
4. Setup your campaign in Adwords and spend the allotted amount.
5. Collect all the data and read through it. Pour over your keywords and clicks data from Adwords and even send messages to some of the people (your new ‘customers’) and try to get some more information from them.

Once you’re done, you should have some information. And if you didn’t get any, well, you might want to start rethinking that business idea right away.

Then you need to take that data and reflect over it. Find new perspectives that you think the business should take. If you think you need some more information, try running another campaign and see what you can gather from that.

This can really work. It’s how I helped start my Surety Bonds company with some friends.

And it’s also what saved me from wasting 9 months of my life and a lot of my money chasing the idea I had of starting a local textbook buying and selling website.

This is a guest post from Kevin Kaiser, a web entrepreneur and college student. You can connect with him on twitter, @kevinckaiser.

Did your internship last year consist of making coffee runs and placing lunch orders?  Well, fortunately that’s not how Old Spice does things…

Old Spice has launched its search to find and hire two candidates to travel to Fiji or Matterhorn (Switzerland not Disneyland) with a salary of $5,000 and an itinerary of “jobs” (shark diving/snowboarding/etc.) to complete and document while on location.

To help better prepare the interns for their adventure, Old Spice is teaming up with two world-class athletes: professional snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler – fresh from the Olympics – and professional surfer Anastasia Ashley, who are coming on-board as internship mentors.

Applicants for the Old Spice Fresh Adventure Internship contest have until April 15, 2010 to enter!  Learn more about this unique opportunity by visiting www.OldSpiceAdventure.com.

Winners will be announced in May 2010, and the internships will take place in June 2010.

wise management of personal finance is the best way to avoid cash crunch and debt problems. The necessity of wise money management has been urgently felt in the face of a crumbling economy!  In fact, it is very important to cultivate this habit at a young age.

For those of you keen on perfecting this habit, start managing your money now!

To start with it, you may consider investment in stocks as a great option. But you must keep it in mind that smart stock investing for young people differs from that for the veterans. The main reason being that the youngsters in the age group of 20 to 30 years tend to go through spending sprees. Their monthly expenditures are often quite high and leave minimal scopes for savings.

Wondering what smart investment is? Smart stock investment is nothing but investment that maximizes gain and minimizes loss. It is

Some smart investment in stocks can actually secure your finances for future, without having your monthly luxuries curtailed.

Investment can be real time peppy idea and here are some hot tips on investing for all you youngsters:

1. There is never really an ideal time for investment, especially when you are a newbie. But do keep a track of the stocks for at least three years at a stretch, before you embark on first your investment.
2. Smart Stock Investing requires constant practice; while it takes a lot of work, the more you put in the better you get.
3. Try to be extremely logical and analytical while you invest. Do not worry! You will get better at differentiating good investments from bad ones, as you gain experience.
4. Google for a cheap online stock broker to help you buy the stocks.
5. Develop the habit of putting aside some money for investment every month. It can be so that you have to go for a debt consolidating measure and would require making monthly payments. Whether you’re in college or in the working world, you surely save up some extra money each month after paying off your bills. Keep about 10 to 15% of that money for investing in stocks. This percentage, on one hand, will not affect your entertainment/luxury expenses. On the other hand, it would ensure your monetary profits for you.
6. Whenever you zero in on a company in whose stocks you would like to invest, do not forget to do an exhaustive research on that company. Go through its financial statement. And it would give you a fair idea whether the company’s stocks are worth investing in.
7. Check the price of the stock before you make the transaction. For this, log on to your online broker’s website and type in the stock’s ticker symbol on the Stock Trading page. You may also get the information on stock prices at Google Finance.
8. The stock brokers usually charge a commission fee when you book stocks via brokers. The commission fee is usually around 10$ and it gets added to your total stock price.
9. Once you have invested, keep a track of your stocks every day. This will keep you updated about the diurnal rise or fall in the price of your stocks.
10. Developed the habit of reading financial news and statements. This will not only help you learn about the pros and cons of your investment but also sharpen your foresight for possibilities of future investments.

So, you can see investment is not an exclusive area of experienced, grey haired veterans dealing with stocks for years. Youngsters like you too may try your luck at it successfully. All you need is a bit of patience and a rational approach. And you are sure to secure your finances with some intelligent investment!

Guest post provided by: Dorothy Anderson

Are you still looking to make money from your blog? A great spot to start is with a little site called Text Link Ads. They’ve been in the game for many years now and are a solid company to deal with.

Since 2007 I’ve been utilizing (TLA) on my hiking trail website, Virginia Hiker. All I’ve had to do is put up a small widget code on my site’s sidebar and let it run. Every so often I get an email from TLA saying that they’ve sold a link on my site and that’s it – I don’t have to do anything else. The links are automatically added through the widget and there is no maintenance on your end.  Then the following month the check just shows up!

Now, the amount that I’m making each month from Virginia Hiker (which is currently my only site that has sold links through TLA) is not anything to go crazy about and call my self an expert on. However, every amount helps at the end of the month and puts you on your way to growing your business!

Here are a few answers to common questions you probably have about TLA.

How long does it take TLA to review a submitted site?
It can take 24 hours to be approved. Then you need to add the code on the exact same page that was approved, then 1-3 days to get packaged on and placed on the site depending on number of submissions. Another great feature is that you can keep adding multiple sites if you have them and manage all your sites under one account. This can really grow your earning potential!

Can I control what links appear on my site?
Yes, you can choose to be emailed every time a new ad is sold so you can approve it or deny it from being published. This is great because it also helps you keep track of how many links have sold on your site by notifying you that a link has sold.

Can I run Text Link Ads along with other ad systems I am currently running?
If you’re link me, you are trying to expand your money making avenues and running multiple different ad programs on your site, or selling links and banners privately. Well, it’s great to know that Text Link Ads can be run along any contextually served product. They do ask that TLA be the sole provider of static HTML advertisements, as this will protect the value of the advertisements as well as give you the highest payout.

I hope this quick post has given you some ideas about different revenue streams out there. There is so much talk about making money on Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social media sites, that sometimes people forget to monetize their own website!

Give Text Link Ads a try and let me know what you think! Like I said, I’ve been with them since 2007 and have only had great experiences. Their support has been great when needed too, so if you have issues with getting your widget to work on your site, just contact them and they will be quick to help!

Good luck!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony’s Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine.

While in college, I partied, and sometimes pretty hard – hey, it happens. There was a bar that we would all go to on Thursday nights for a great priced beer, a ridiculous long island ice tea, and dancing. On top of that, they sold pizza’s at the end of the night as you walked out the door. For just a couple bucks you could enjoy a freshly cooked pizza on your way home. What a treat!

Well, one day I was in the local Wal-Mart doing some grocery shopping and as I come down the frozen food isle, I see the owner of this bar which sells the pizza with a shopping cart full of Tony’s Pizza. He was buying the pizza’s at Wal-Mart and selling them at the end of the night at his bar! First I thought, that jerk and then I thought, what a great freaking idea. Anyway, I bought one of the pizza’s and it wasn’t as good as it tasted after a Thursday night out at the bar at 2 AM, but it was pretty close.

Now, Tony’s Pizza have released a new line of pizza’s featuring a thin crispy crust. While I haven’t seen one in my local stores yet to get my hands on to try for sure, I’m betting it’s pretty good.

There are a few other reasons BESIDES the good taste to check out Tony’s Crispy Crust.

• First, the price! They are a great low priced item to keep stocked in your freezer – whether at college for students or at home with your family. Nothing like just pulling a pizza out of the freezer and popping it into the oven for a quick dinner.
• So much faster than delivery! Why wait 30-45 minutes for the delivery guy to show up when the solution is right in your freezer?
• They are perfect for game day when your friends are over and hungry. Feed a big group for a great price!

So, now I’ve got a few coupons for a free Tony’s Pizza. If you’re interested in trying one out, leave a comment and I’ll be in touch to get your address and drop the coupon in the mail. I only have a few coupons, so they will go to the first people who comment!

Well, here you are, you little entrepreneur.  I’m pretty impressed with your drive — you’ve got an idea, and you’re working on it a little every day.  Maybe you’re an outright merchant, just “doing it for the money,” or maybe you’re one of those passion seekers who just feels the need to point your sails into the head winds, and rock across the waves to some distant shore.  Either way, you’re making something happen in the world. And, I’ve got an idea that may end up helping you on a couple of fronts.  It concerns your business cards, and how you absolutely DO NOT want to use some fancy, expensive place to print them up.  You need business cards – they’re a lot more professional than trying to scribble your name onto a cocktail napkin when you’ve got a prospect on the block.  And you should never under estimate the power of having your business card be in the right place at the right time – it could be the difference between your next sale, and no sale.  Hell, it might even be the difference between your next repeat client who sends you a dozen referrals… and a really well-organized office, while you wait for potential clients to get back with you.

Let’s review a few parts of the process:

1. You need to figure out what you want your cards to look like.  What kind of card says, “This is MY business”?  Is it a glossy card printed and cut from an 8 x 10?  Is it something on vellum paper, with a crisp, old school flavor to it?  Is it a little more down to earth, maybe printed on watercolor paper?  Is it funky, and printed on thick plastic?  Your card says an awful lot about you… put some thought into what makes your card different from everybody else’s.

2. Are you going to design it yourself, or are you going to farm it out? You can save some cash, and just use a freeware art program (like the Gimp) to put together a design… but it might not be the best.  Or you can hire someone (are you cool with a good designer?), and get it done professionally… for a price.  It’s your choice, either way.

3. Where are you going to produce the actual cards?  You can go to an expensive print shop, a discount printing place, a web site that lets you print (or prints and sends you) your cards, or you can use your own printer.  Obviously, the best option for ease and high quality is going to be a professional shop – they do this for a living, after all.  And if you’ve got a decent printer, and did the design yourself, your only outlay may be a few bucks for some high-quality paper (or plastic, if you’re really funky).  But of course, there’s always the middle ground – you can get really sweet effects by designing it yourself, and then get it printed up glossy (and pretty cheap) at the photo kiosk in a drug store.  Sometimes there’s the pretty ghetto act of having to cut an 8 x 10 into a dozen business cards, but they still look good.