5 Ways To Make An Empty Ad Slot on Your Blog Work for You on ProBlogger.net

7 Reasons Not to Have Empty Ad Spots On Your Blog on ProBlogger.net

Sold My Advertising, Now What? on Retire@21

Finding Your First Advertisers For Your Blog on Retire@21

5 Ways to find Direct Advertisers for your Blog on ProBlogger.net

If you are looking for an affordable and easy way to manage ads on your blog or website, I suggest checking out OIO Publisher. OIO Publisher is a plugin that I have used on some other sites of mine and will be implementing on the new release of Dorm Room Biz.

Earnings:

• Private ad sales – $90
• Google AdSense – $12.46
• Text Link Ads – $18.00
• Reviews – $100
• CashCrate – $8.93

Total: $229.39

More than a third of the income from this month earned by the blog came from reviews that I wrote for another website. This was a great arrangement that came up. I was contacted by the site owner who was looking to have a few reviews written that he had in backlog. I wrote them and got paid, but did not have to deal with any interaction with the companies or with posting the reviews. If you can get yourself into this sort of paid posting arrangement, goo for you!

A Major Thank You To Our Sponsors!

This month, many of our sponsors were back again. That is because they were smart and prepaid for multiple months instead of going month by month. This move will save them money over the next few months as advertising rates have already increased and probably will ago sometime soon. If you’d like to advertise on Dorm Room Biz, check out our advertising page for more detailed information. You can also contact me with any questions.

If you are looking for an affiliate marketing company to gets started with, then I suggest you check out Motive Interactive. You can read the review we wrote on them. They have an awesome system in place to help you be successful.

If you happen to be in the United Kingdom and looking for any kind of virtual office locations, services, or help, then we highly suggest checking out Regus. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to their people a few times and it seems like a great operation that they have. Even if you want to make your presence known in the country and are not really based there, a virtual office is a great way to get a local phone number and answering system set up.

Finally, if you are looking for ways to make money or credit cards for your college expenses, we have recommendations for that too!

If you’d like to be a sponsor of Dorm Room Biz, I’d love to talk to you! Check out our advertising page for rates and details and then get in touch with me via email, Twitter, or leave a comment here!

Calling All WordPress Theme Designers!

I’m looking for quotes for a WordPress theme. If you’re a WP theme designer, please drop me an email and I will give you details on the project. I don’t want to share much more in public to ruin any surprises! Thansk

Finally, if you do not already, please follow me on Twitter. This is the best way to keep up to date with what I am working on and talking about. It is also a great chance to get links to other articles and stories you may find interesting!

Be sure to keep updated with Dorm Room Biz posts if you are not already subscribed by hooking up with our RSS Feed.

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.

We started off by just discussing the differences between setting up an LLC and a corporation such as an S corp or C corp. Besides the initial set up costs, another major difference was the tax filings that would have to be done. In my particular case and with my particular accountant, if I were to set up an S or C corp, the corporate tax filings would be an additional $600-$1200 on top of the standard $300 to file the normal state taxes. That’s a lot of money when I am only talking about generating say $10,000 over the next 7 months. However, I’ll save all the talk about the different types of entities for another day or for another blogger. Check out the SBA or SCORE for more related resources.

When figuring out if you are going to start a business and move from being a sole proprietorship to a more formal corporate structure, you need to determine how much money you think you would realistically make/earn. In my case, by the end of the year, by goal is to reach $10,000 through website development projects. That being said, in the scope of things, that is not really a lot. And IN MY CASE we decided that it would actually be better to stay a sole proprietorship for the time being rather than setting up a business such as an LLC in the middle of the year. So, come the first of the new year, I will be reevaluating and at the point, for sure, be registering a company to roll all my business assets, income, and expenses into. However, the nice thing that I liked about staying a sole proprietorship is that I can still obtain a DBA (doing business as) name. That way, I can do business as ProfessionalGFX and have clients make payments to ProfessionalGFX instead of me personally. This is nice to keep the income separate. Another nice thing with this set up is that it is very easy to move from one business structure to another. In my case, the progression will most likely be: sole proprietorship > LLC > C Corp.

Many of the questions I had for the accountant were focused on my business and the type of things that I am doing, including ebay and website development. So one thing we discussed was the legal protection that each structure offers and the suggestion was made to have a clause in my web development contracts that clearly states that any clients who decide to take legal action can only sue for up to the amount of the contract (say $1,000 or $2,000 as opposed to being able to sue and go after all my personal assets – car, money, etc.).

Another question I had was about different deductions that can be taken when operating the business. Even as a sole proprietorship, I will still be able to start taking different business deductions including travel, conference registrations, eduction (seminars, training, etc), meals, and entertainment. One major question I had was about deducting different meals or equipment if I were to write reviews on the restaurant or piece of camping equipment on one of my blogs such as Dorm Room Biz or TheGearHouse. The determination was made that if the meal is for entertaining purposes (such as a lunch or dinner meeting with a client) 50% of the total would be deductible because it falls under the category of meals and entertainment. However, the loop hole or catch to this is that if you were to provide a meal to your employees or contracts while working on a project (say you had to work late on something and worked through dinner time) you could deduct 100% of the total because it deals with the employees welfare. With purchasing different items and equipment for reviewing, it was my accountants belief that as long as the review that was written was publicly available (posted on a website) and was in depth and thorough then you should be able to deduct the full value of an item as a business expense. This is good news because that is something I am going to be looking to do in the near future

Isabella commented on my previous post:

I would add to that: as far as expansion thoughts go, is it better to add on new people as employees, or as 1099 independent contractors and b) does the answer change based on the business structure chosen.

These are also questions that I had and were answered for me as we discussed my future plans for my development business and how I thought it was going to expand. I mentioned that I would mostly be using contractors or outsourcing different work to others as opposed to hiring new employees. If you can get away with using independent contractors, this is a better option, because as long as you have a solid agreement/contract in place with that person, you can get away with out having to pay any health insurance, medical benefits, or workers compensation for that person. These are some of the biggest expenses that businesses face, so if you can avoid them, try to! You would just need to state in your contract with the independent contractor that you are in no way responsible for any insurance or benefits and you as the business are not liable for anything that may happen. This puts the responsibility on that contractor to find their own insurance, retirement accounts, etc, etc. Then, all you have to do is send them a 1099 for the amount of work that they performed and it becomes their responsibility to file that correctly. Also, that answer should not change based on the business structure you have set up. My suggestion is to avoid hiring employees for as long as you can to avoid all the added extra expenses. However, as you expand and grow your business, that may be hard to do and you will eventually need to bring on employees and incur those different expenses.

I think that pretty much sums up most of the meeting that I had. My accountant did pass along a business card of another local web development company that I am going to network with and see if there may be any possibilities for collaborations or outsourced work in the future! On top of that, he also gave me a copy of a version of Quick Books to start using to manage the income and expenses for my business.

So what’s the next step? I’ll be filing my DBA forms and then setting up a separate bank account to use for my income and expenses to keep everything a little better organized! After a few months, I’ll be able to evaluate where I am at and better gauge the need for a corporate entity.

Got any accounting related questions? We also discussed other deductions like home office space and similar items. Leave a comment and maybe I can pass along some more information that was brought up during my meeting!

Best of luck everyone! Now get out there and make some money!

Yesterday, I got another check from CashCrate for participating in surveys and for referring new members. My pondering began because I thought about how when I signed up for the program, they asked for my Social Security Number for their records and their own reporting.

So, to any affiliate program users and money makers out there, I want to know if you report your blog income. I can understand if you are making more than a couple hundred dollars a month and how it may look a fishy if you do not have a business entity set up to report it as income to. But for the average blogger who may make say $30-$100 a month off of affiliate programs such as Commission Junction and CashCrate, do you report that income with your income tax?

I figured this would be a good time to pose the question since the deadline for taxes just passed…which was also my birthday!