The Month in Review: September Earnings and More

Written by Chris on October 1, 2008 – 1:00 pm -

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September has come and gone and now we get back into the holiday season. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are right around the corner! I am pretty sure Wal-Mart is already stocking the Christmas items, too!

Anyway, with the month finished, its about that time that I sometimes put together a earnings post for the month and all around update on the status of the site. So, lets get started.

SEPTEMBER EARNINGS

Private Ads: $10.00
Sponsored Reviews: $9.75
Text Link Ads: $25.52
ReviewMe: $40.00
Adsense: $14.73
TOTAL: $100.00

Some notes on the earnings and other items…
On top of the $14.73 that I “earned” from AdSense for the month, I actually got my latest Adsense payment of over $100. Since I don’t make enough through AdSense to get a monthly deposit (more than $100), it is nice every couple months when it does come through.

I have sold a few private ads on the site over the past few months and there has also been a lot of interest in purchasing advertising on the site. If you are interested, check out the rates on the Advertise page and then get in contact with me to discuss. All the ad formats are available (text link, image ad, and sponsored posts).

I am happy that I hit the $100 mark again for the month, that is good news. I hope that this month we will be able to get over that and get closer to $150. With two new bloggers on board to help write for the site, I think we will be able to pump out some great content that will hopefully attract some more monthly advertisers and sponsors. Page views and visitors have taken about a 40% increase in September from August and just about doubled from July. I know they are not impressive numbers (1200 visits and 1600 page views) but they are continuing to go up daily and look forward to what October brings.

With college classes back in full force for everyone, I will hopefully be able to put out some useful content for student entrepreneurs - if you have ideas for posts, please let me know and we will write about them! Also, if you have questions you’d like for us to try to answer, email me and we will either email you back or post about it on the site!

Obviously the most popular post from the month was the contest post. As I already reviewed after the contest finished, there were over 300 combined entries and over 80 comments. Some of the other popular posts for the month included:

• 12 Websites You Need to Be Using As An Entrepreneur
• Are You A Toilet Entrepreneur?

We also got out 14 posts for the month, which equates to almost one every other day. October is going to be better - I swear! Keep a look out!

I think that is about all the updates that I have for now. October is a busy month for me (as far as the weekends go) but I should be able to get a lot of posts written while at work…like I am now.

Anyway, keep your heads up, keep hustlin’, and keep making the green!

-Chris

P.S. New Dorm Room Biz design is still in the works - look for it to be launching this month…..I hope! It should be great!

P.S.S. Thanks for continuing to come back and visit the site! Be sure to subscribe via RSS or Email and then follow me on Twitter!

Tags: contest, Earnings, reviewme, September, SponsoredReviews.com, TLA, updates
Posted in Blogging, Website Updates / News | 4 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 »