Dorm Room Biz July Earnings and other ramblings

Written by Chris on August 14, 2008 – 5:01 pm -

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

It’s about that time for me to do I know I am late on this but here is the monthly income earnings report for the past month of July [anyways]. Throughout July, I earned money through the following revenue streams:

Market Leverage - $27.55
CashCrate - $7.88
Sponsored Reviews - $9.75
Text Link Ads - $25.48
Google Adsense - $15.71
ReviewMe - $5.00
Blogrolled - $11.00
Totaling: $102.37

Very close to the $100/month mark again this past month. I had a few different opportunities to make some more money this past month through Dorm Room Biz by doing more paid reviews and sponsored posts, but with being really busy at work, taking a few days off to go to the beach, and now with my desktop computer messed up, I haven’t had the motivation to blog when I get home from work. However, I want to get that changed back around to continue to increase the earnings during August. My goal is to reach $150 for the month if not more.

This past month also saw 20 posts with about 25 comments. The most popular post for the month being Should you show your Categories and Archives within your sidebar?

In other news…

The hard drive in my desktop computer is completely fried and dead. I had to buy a new one last night and will be installing tonight. Hopefully I will have an operational desktop computer by Monday with programs reinstalled. Luckily, as things started to get screwed up, I moved all of my files that was stored on my computer to my external hard drive. However, I did not get a chance to make backup and archive files of my emails - so I have lost pretty much all of my client emails for my website design business and all of my emails related to eBay. My eBay emails aren’t a big deal too much because most of that stuff is backed up through eBay yet loosing all my client emails is a big problem! So…lesson learned…constantly back up your files AND email!

LOOKING FOR SPONSORS! I am compiling sponsors for the upcoming contest here at Dorm Room Biz. If you have any ideas or would like to sponsor something of your own (EntreCard credits, books, money, gift cards, anything) please get at me - chris @ dorm-room-biz.com.

Other big news is that I earlier this week I became a PowerSeller on eBay. That basically means that for 3 consecutive months I had sales over $3000 total. I am happy about this because it opens up more opportunities for me such as better search placement with eBay searches, access to the PowerSellers product sourcing area, and more! Now I just need to keep it up and grow my sales each month!

Finally, I have my new business bank account set up! I am excited about this because I can start to keep better track of my expenses and income. All of my blogging, eBay, and web design related money will flow into this account. I am also waiting on my sales and use tax number and certificate to arrive. This will help me secure products for eBay at discounted prices and tax free; which is nice!

*****
More posts to come soon. However, keep a little more up to date with me by following me on Twitter. I try to use Twitter while at work and interact with people, so follow me and start talking!

Tags: income report, july earnings, july income
Posted in Blogging, Rants / Random, Website Updates / News | No Comments »

May Blog Income Earnings for Dorm Room Biz

Written by Chris on June 3, 2008 – 12:00 pm -

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

Tags: CashCrate, google adsense, ian fernando, income report, John Chow, market leverage, private ad sales, reviewme, shoemoney, text link ads, zac johnson
Posted in Blogging, Monetizing Websites, Website Updates / News | 5 Comments »