May Blog Income Earnings for Dorm Room Biz

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

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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 »

April Fool’s Day Around the Blogosphere

Written by Chris on April 4, 2008 – 4:20 pm -

I always find it great to read the posts that come out on April 1st, April Fool’s Day. There are some pretty good posts that high profile bloggers and writers put together that really convince people that they are true.

So, today, I wanted to post some of the ones that have come across my feed reader in the last 48 hours (have to account for the time zone differences).

1. Tim Ferriss of the 4 Hour Work Week, “The Grand Illusion: The Real Tim Ferriss Speaks” This was probably the first April Fool’s post that I read this year. Tim claimed that his blog for the last full year had been written completley by two virtual assistants that he outsourced from the Far East. His post made the claim that all he did with his blog was contribute a couple post ideas, some pictures, and some videos. He couldn’t even wait 24 hours before exposing the post, following it up only a few hour laters with his post wishing everyone a Happy Japanese April Fool’s Day. His post reached 140 comments and more than 280 diggs.
2. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, “ProBlogger Launches PayPerTweet” Darren’s post was the second one to come to my attention and it came through, surprise surprise, Twitter. His post talks about how he has come up with the idea and launched a service called PayPerTweet, close to PayPerPost. The concept is that people get paid by advertisers or whoever to tweet about news or about a post, or to retweet what someone else said. Darren even provided some hints within the post that pointed to it not being a real service and even included the email address 142008@problogger.net as the contact address. Darren also did a follow up post “TweetBait, April Fools and Jokes on a Blog.” Darren explains that he was offered $20 to tweet about a website. He denied, but after talking with a friend, decided it would be a good prank to launch on the site. Darren’s original post brought in 100+ comments, 18 serious enquiries, a bunch of blog posts, and many tweets.
3. John Chow of John Chow dot Com, “John Chow Cola - The Official Blogger Drink” John had a pretty good post last year when he announced his “Last Blog Post” and said he sold TTZ Media for a lot of money. Anyway, as far as I remember, last year’s post got mixed responses - some believing it and some noticing right away that it was April Fool’s. This year’s post I must say - it is a little out there. I would fall for him stopping the blogging game and traveling over him becoming part of the Coca-Cola brand. Oh he still pulled down 140+ comments with the post.
4. Jeremy of Shoemoney.com, “Make 1,000.00 in 1 hour” I also caught this one through Twitter but was hesitant to check it out figuring that it would be a nice April Fool’s post. Anyway, I wanted to see what it was about so clicked through to it. Having a video posted up attracted more people to actually check it out I believe. Shoemoney took the great approach of the different radio and tv commercials that you see that are advertising something and then the static pops in and you are upset because you missed the phone number, address, or other important information. Some of the people commenting even asked him to upload the video to try to remove the static from it. I found his approach to the post to be the funniest out of the ones that I came across. Shoemoney got 120+ comments on the post, from people being pissed that he would do such a thing to people asking for him to reupload the video, to people wanting to know more.

Did you guys post an April Fool’s post on your blog? Did you encounter any other sites that had good posts to help celebrate the day? Comment with a link and I will expand on the list!

Tags: april fools day, darren rowse, John Chow, problogger, shoemoney, tim ferriss
Posted in Blogging, Rants / Random | No Comments »