A new feature: Submit a Guest Post!!!

I've just added a new feature. If you feel there is a topic that needs to be discussed on dormroombiz.com, simply click the link on the right, above the blog archive, and send me the post via e-mail. I'll review the post, and if I feel it is relevant, I'll post it on dormroombiz.com. You can have your very own post on the Internet!

If you are seeing this on Facebook, visit dormroombiz.com to see the full post.

My Dad Has a New Website

Quick post this time. First of all, my phone comes Monday, so I'm going to be very excited on Monday. Secondly, my dad just launched a new website to help preserve memories. Here's the write-up on the site. His website can be found at www.eventcollage.com

"When you take pictures at family events or vacations you end up with many photo's of the event. We will take your individual photo's and turn them in to a beautiful Collage to commemorate the Event.

We will resize and crop photo's as necessary so they will fit on an 8x10, 11x14 or 16x20 inch Collage. See the sample at the right. Click on the picture to see more examples.

We can work with digital photo's or if you send us photo prints we will scan them in and create the Collage. We offer several Collage sizes as well as other services. See our Products page for details. If you want something specific that you don't see here we also offer custom services.

Call or email and let us know what you want.

We look forward to doing business with you." [www.eventcollage.com]



Again, if you want to see his site, go to: www.eventcollage.com

If you are reading this blog on facebook, the full blog can be found at www.dormroombiz.com

Sorry For The Lack of Posts

I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while (15 days to be exact) I've been quite busy. I had a paper and two tough quizzes on Thursday; an incredibly difficult mid-term yesterday, and a final for a half semester class today. I think I performed decently well on all of them, but it still wasn't fun; it also required quite a bit of studying. My marketing professor is very proud of the fact that no one has gotten a perfect score on his midterm in 6 years, I wanted to kill that statistic...I don't think I did.

With better news, I'm getting a new phone and I am absolutely psyched about it. It has built in GPS, a full keyboard, and too many features to count. It's an HTC TyTn II (AT&T Tilt). It has everything I want, and then much more. I hear a Google phone might actually be on the horizon, but I don't want to wait for it, so I'll just get this now :) I'll post pictures when I get it, and I can even blog from it if I want to. No one knows how excited I am about this.

Also, I'm pretty fed up at HP right now. I bought an ink cartridge last year, and when I used it, it didn't work; it was a defective cartridge. I went ahead and contacted them, and was told I would receive a new ink cartridge. I never did, so I contacted them again, tried the troubleshooting steps again, and was told I would be shipped a replacement. I still have not. HP is a few days from losing a VERY loyal customer, and that is NEVER good. When you lose a loyal customer, that is not just future revenues lost, but all other revenues lost by my friends potentially. Why is that bad? That's terrible. We'll see if they step it up in the next few days. I'm also sick of the Indian customer service representatives who speak "English" but are just copying and pasting from a script. I'll let you know how it goes.

During the writing of this post, I learned that my new phone has been ordered already; WOOT!

For those of you reading on Facebook: the full blog is available at www.dormroombiz.com

Dorm room Business is going to get a store

All I need to be working on right now is the store design. I'm a little rusty on my web design skills, so this is taking longer than anticipated as I relearn everything I've forgotten. If anyone would like to volunteer their skills, I'm sure I could make it worth your while. Anyway, I'm also looking to get glow shot glasses. You squeeze them, and they produce a neon glow for hours. It looks like a lot of fun, and I know that many kids in my dorm alone would LOVE those. I still haven't decided for sure whether I will be targeting kids or adults. I originally thought I would target those mothers who are sending their kids away and want to buy them everything, but there's only so many products you can sell to them, so I started looking at selling to college kids who may not have money, or the drive to order something.

I've been a little lazy lately, partly driven by the new highs in October. People should be wearing sweaters, not flip flops. This heat isn't pleasant in my non-air-conditioned dorm room either. It is supposed to dip tomorrow though so I will probably see an increase in my focus. I know it sounds crazy, but it really does affect me...the weather/temperature that is.

Other than that, there's not much to report, I'll make a big deal at the next break through. I'm still VERY pleased with my logo, and the other buttons/designs I've made. I think it looks like it fits with the name I've chosen. As always, I love your feedback.

If you are reading this on the imported facebook notes, you can find the full blog at www.dormroombiz.com

Dorm Room Business Update

I've been up to a lot. I'm working on the website which is going to be somewhat difficult. I'm going to need to spider it all together, and make sure everything works. It'll be a ton of pages. I also need to work out how I'm going to use a shopping cart, figure out what product options I'll offer, and research total shipping costs. I actually designed a logo for the website, and it's pretty cool, but I don't want to publish it until the store is up and running (and the domain is purchased) I don't want someone to see it, and buy the domain and try to sell it to me.

I'm currently working out the details for hosting as well. I've found a few websites that will host pretty cheaply. I'm leaning mostly toward host monster, since it seems to be pretty legitimate, and has most of the features I would want. It is 5.95 a month, but you have to pay ahead of time, so it's a $100 investment before the store actually opens. I'm working hard on this, and always looking for new merchandise. Let me know what you think of the product photos I've already put up by the way.

This is the add to cart button I think I'll use...any suggestions?

Product is up

I've finished developing some of my products. It's a photo holder, and I think it's pretty helpful. It can easily hang 5 pictures with just one piece of tape/thumbtack. I'm uploading some pictures here. I also am creating magnets with big school colors, they look pretty cool. Here's some pictures.

Guest Poster: Matthew Wolfe

I recently imported all my blogs into Facebook. There Matt Wolfe took some interest, and was generous enough to send me some tips on the DVD rental idea. Although I can't personally run a business like this, I thought his points were WAY too good to pass up, so I asked if I could post his message to me as a guest post. I hope you all enjoy it.


"Hi Paul! I haven't seen you in a while. I saw your note and decided the opportunity to offer my two cents was too good to pass up.

I think it's awesome that you are contemplating the merits of a business venture. I haven't run or began my own business yet but I offer my advice because I read about businesses every day in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, thestreet.com, etc. I encourage you to seek out the advice of actual business owners/creators, to read columns and articles online about starting your own business, etc.

(By the way, I checked deep discount's website, and they are cheap and have free shipping. For instance, the movie October Sky is only $8.59 w/ free shipping. You've Got Mail is 6.62 w/ free shipping. Not bad. However, there are better deals if you look at amazon, half, ebay, froogle.com, etc. and are willing to accept a used copy, although there are sometimes new copies for even lower than the used copies.)

Here's a non-exhaustive list of questions to answer before you begin with this venture:

What are the limitations of your client base? Just your dorm? Just the people you know in your dorm? Or anyone with a pulse on campus?

What will constitute a "day" of rental? If the person accidentally keeps the movie for 13 days (they owe you $13), have they automatically bought it? Will you offer to buy/trade movies from other people? How many copies of each movie will you have on hand?

The movies in the highest demand are new releases (new's). How many copies of new releases will you buy? What is the cheapest source for new's? It's not Deep Discount - they don't sell The Pursuit of Happiness or probably any new's.

Why will clients choose your service over Blockbuster's or Netflix's mail-service? It is important that you identify how you provide value beyond what they offer and then capitalize on that.

Just as an idea for the extra value you provide, you offer the benefit of being able to watch the movie you want that day/immediately. With mail-service, you have to wait at least a day or two for the movie to come in. Then again, are you familiar with Netflix's instant online viewing once you've rented the movie? They let you view the movie online even before the DVD has been physically delivered to you.

What forms of payment will you accept? Cash, check, credit card, anything else? My inclination is cash only at first, but you should certainly look into the cost/benefit of accepting credit card payments. Anyone can do it, I think I heard one guy tell me he has a wireless credit card machine that he pays $70/month to use (plus prob. a percentage of all transactions).

What about your competitors? If your business were not in existence yet, what would most people do to rent a movie?

Read about your competitors, I think Block & Net are operating at very thin profit margins, if any at all. Why is that? Was Block ever a very profitable business, and why did profitability decline drastically? What does that mean for your business.

Those are just the questions on the top of my head; I could think of several times more. I wish you the best!

Regards,
Matthew"


I think everyone can take away something from that message. I have invited Matthew the opportunity to guest post on my blog in the future if he so wishes.

If you wish to be posted as a guest poster on dormroombiz.com, just send your write up (blog) to recchiap@gmail.com; I'll review it, and there is a good chance I will post it if it is relevant. Then you could be a published writer online :)

Thanks again Matt, and thanks to everyone reading this.

Again, if you are reading this on the imported facebook account, you can view my full blog at www.dormroombiz.com

New Business Idea

So while I was looking for some wholesale DVDs I had a business idea that I can't really pursue, but many people out there probably could. It takes a small investment, but it could pay off. If you bought a bunch of movies wholesale, then rented them out of your room, you could make some good money. I figure you can get most DVDs for $10 somewhere. If you rented them out for like $1 a day, you could easily make the money back. Start with the movies you already have, and maybe buy a couple real popular ones.

You could make a list for people to see what you have, and you could even find a way to mark whether it's in stock or not. The main issues would be dorm rules. You would need to make sure there's no stores with really cheap rental fees. The dorm just to the south of mine rents out DVDs to students for free. Is this the norm at most colleges? If not, you might be able to make a fair buck. Make sure you write down who has what DVD, DON'T rely on your memory, that is futile, you'll forget, and someone might steal your DVD. Also write down what room they live in, in case you need to go get them. You might also have a policy in case someone breaks a DVD (ex: you break it, pay $15 to buy it)

Beyond that, you could offer to sell the DVDs to the people for like $13 after they rent it (SPECIAL: Buy the movie and get your rental fee back!) You still make a profit, and have enough to get a new DVD to replace that one.

Well, just a thought; I wanted to get it out there before I forgot the specifics I had cooked up in my head.

Some Products Found

I've found some products to use. I'm making customized magnets (fridge magnets). I'm also making these really neat photo holders. I've made 2 of them so far to hold pictures of my god daughter. I also plan on selling temporary tattoos (great upseller) and glow shot glasses. Any other ideas out there? I'm working VERY hard on getting these products going.

I'm also starting to think about store design; I'll need a shopping cart, but I can use Paypal for that. I do need to find a webhost, as well as a clever name for the store. I could use some ideas on that too. I'm pretty excited about this. Even if it doesn't take off, it's still something I did, and that's a good feeling. I tried hard with e-bay many years ago, and was rewarded for that, hopefully this will pay off as well. I wish I could find like wholesale DVD's and sell those, that would be great.

Well I just wanted to keep everyone updated on my current progress with the store.

The Business is on it's way

I've been working on finding products, and so far it's going pretty well. I've decided I will be selling clever/cool looking magnets. I ordered a sample of magnetic ink jet paper, so I can see if it will work in my printer. I'm also making a thing that can hold like 4-8 pictures, so people could get one or two of these for their dorms.

I'm currently figuring what else to sell. I would need to dropship most of the products, and ideally I find a site that can dropship most of the items, so I don't have like 4 different shipping charges. I found a site that can send out DVD's, but it's based in Europe, and after the exchange rate, it's not as much of a deal as you would think. I'd like to send like laptop accessories, ipod accessories, stuff like that. I just need to figure out how I'm going to do this. I can't hold any inventory really, so I've got to work hard at getting very small items, or finding an affordable dropshipper.

I also ordered some shipping supplies, mostly priority mail. I think I"ll send most products via priority mail, since it has free shipping supplies. It costs a bit more, but it is much easier to ship out.

A business I can get behind

So I finally decided that I'm going to open a small online store selling things that would be useful in the dorm rooms. I'm working on a list of items right now, and now I need to find vendors. This will not be fun, but it's necessary. I figure the people I'm targeting with this blog would be likely to buy some of these things, and since I'll be going for low margin high turnover (VERY risky for a small business) I'll need to get word out. However, with low overhead, I won't be out too fast if it fails, since I'm not paying any sort of monthly fee. My goal is to make $5 in the first month, $20 in the second month, and $60 in the third. I think this is all plausible, and that's profit numbers.

Any tips? Anyone out there know a good way to find vendors. I know Neville from his financial blog has houseofrave.com and he doesn't even keep most of that stuff in stock, just handles the orders. Maybe I'll try to ask him how he got his vendors in line. Ha, he runs one of the most popular financial blogs out there, and I want him to answer my question...think he'll respond.

Well that's all for now, just wanted to let everyone know what I'm up to. Short one. Hopefully next time I post I'll have some sort of store going.

I'm all moved in

Well, I'm all moved in, wired up, and ready to go. I still need to get printer paper, I didn't think I needed it, but I do. That's easily remedied though. I like the setup of our room, and getting up to the loft is more doable, since I'm in better shape (and 40-50 pounds lighter) than I was at the beginning of last year.

Early night last night, I was incredibly tired, probably from shopping all day. Went to bed about 1:30 ish, so it wasn't too bad. There was a concert going on across the street from my dorm, so I was able to listen to some music too by just opening my window.

Big news, my family apparently has started talking about going on a cruise for my grandma's 80th...that would be so much fun. You're basically 21 when you're on a cruise, gambling and drinking. A-Woo-Hoo!

It's about time to start the business ventures up. I think I'll start with a small online store selling "The Day You Were Born" certificates. It should be simple to set up; $8 for the domain and that's about it. I'll type more later, this was just a quick blog to get everyone caught up.

Roommate, part 2, plus much much more

My roommate seems like he'll be really cool. I checked out his facebook, and he likes most of the same shows I do, and quite a few of the same bands. We're pretty similar. He's also pretty chill, which is good, and it means he'll probably be laid back a bout these little money making experiments.

I just today changed my schedule, instead of taking Financial Bank and Money Markets, I'm taking racquetball I. I want to take the Econ class, but I looked up the professor, and he has a crazy hard curve. This way, I have 12 credits, which means easier 4.0, and I save like $600 when you factor in the book I don't have to buy. I'm pretty excited about this, it means I will be starting every morning Monday-Thursday with exercise...awesome!

I go back the 23rd, and move in the 24th. I'm pretty psyched because my grandma is making my mom and I food on Thursday...WOOT! I love the breaded chicken, I can't freaking wait. I'll miss my friends here, but it's time to go back. Hopefully all my friends stay friends while I'm gone, so I don't have to split myself up between them...I also need to find a way to start making money soon. I'm gonna spend around $1500 on school fees/expenses I think, just when I get back.

My Professor I'm working with on research already contacted me so we can make a time to meet and start working again. I think it was easier when we hadn't made contact yet last year, and I got paid for august for doing nothing :) I guess I don't get that luxury this year. I get paid the 15th, plus I still have like $100 from my summer job at LISD, which NEEDS to hit my account soon.

Anyway, I've kept you for a while, so I'll be gone.

My roommate

So MSU made a little mistake. The kid I was gonna room with (Phil) is going to Cornell instead of MSU. We signed up to room together, and when he dis-enrolled from the school they said it would be terminated, but it wasn't. However, he called, and it's been fixed; I was already assigned a new roommate. Hopefully he's a tolerant kid.

I sent him a quick e-mail, but he hasn't responded...maybe he doesn't know to check his new MSU e-mail address? Any suggestions on that? Anyway, thought I would say that, I'm pretty excited to figure out what this kid is about.

I also found out how to make my website work with www.dormroombiz.com as well as dormroombiz.com (That's with and without the www)


PS: If you need advice on how to do this if you have a blog and use godaddy, send me a message, I know it was very difficult for me to figure out.

e-Bay Forex Arbritage

I noticed something recently when trying to figure out a way to make money on e-bay. It's another idea that requires some capital, but it looks to have fairly consistent gains.

When I was coming home from Austria/Italy last year on a choir trip, I looked on e-bay to see if maybe people on e-bay would pay more than the exchange rate I could get anywhere else (and with astronomically lower fees). I discovered that they did purchase euros for about $0.05 more per euro than at the services. This number varied based on the denomination. Unfortunately, I used all my Euros to buy chocolate and other duty free items.

I have thought about this for some time, and have looked again, only to find that e-Bay buyers are willing to pay about $1.43 per euro, whereas the accepted change rate was only $1.37 at the time I checked it. So...if you found some low commmission currency converters, you could theoretically make a pretty penny selling euros on e-Bay.

One tip I would have is to charge a handling charge; you will have to go to the post office to buy insurance, you need to go to your currency conversion agency to get the currency, and you have to put up some currency to start. I would suggest getting the Euros in fives, and then charge around $1-$2 more than shipping for a handling charge. This way, you will likely make up your money you pay in commission fees.


I want to try this, but I can't do that until I have all my fees paid for fall semester. I'm looking at about $2000 in fees/books after all my scholarships are used. I should be able to do this, with about forty-seven cents left over for other things.

Sorry it's been so long

So it has been a very long time since I've posted, and for this I apologize. I've been busy with work, and putting my room back together (I just painted it and moved everything around) I do have a few things to say though.

Experiment 1 is taking a little break until I can work up some capital to do everything necessary. I was thinking I might just wait until I get back into the dorm, since this is Dorm Room Business. I also tried another money making idea. It was obscure, but fun...and ultimately unsuccessful.

I went to a gas station locally with a "quarters" game with the slides that push quarters over the edge, with $25 in quarters. There were various prizes, including a $20 bill and a $50 bill (plus smaller denominations) on the quarters. I was not, however successful in winning either of these, although I came quite close to the $20, probably another $5 and I would have had it. Either way, this was probably a stupid idea, but it game me and my friend about 2 hours of fun, so it wasn't a total loss. I also won a girls watch...that's useless, but I won something :)

I'll admit, so far, my ideas have resembled gambling, and I need to get more solid ideas running; I don't however feel like doing this before I get back to the dorms. I get back the 27th of August, I leave to go back to Michigan on the 23rd, and hopefully I will have a cool roommate (I'm staying in the dorms, and my roommate request decided to transfer to Cornell)

My job ends on Thursday, which means my steady income is done, so I need to find a better way of making money. I start my job as soon as I get back to school, which is good. I need income.

One thing I want to buy when get the money is the AT&T 8525, which in my opinion is better than the iPhone. Someone at the AT&T store told me she thinks a lot of the iPhone ideas came from the 8525. It works on 3G, which is faster, has windows mobile, and a full keyboard that's easy to type on. The data plan is $40 a month. I figure I can afford $30 a month with my current income, which means if I can raise it by $10, I can safely do it. Any thoughts?

Good Day.

Experiment 2: Can you make money on Lottery Tickets?

This one was for 7-7-07. I'm still working on Experiment 1, but I was reading Neville's Financial Blog (www.nevblog.com) and I saw an experiment he had (http://www.nevblog.com/2005/03/lottery-experiment-itch-to-scratch.html)

I decided to try my own experiment in honor of the date. I went to a local grocery store and purchased one type of lottery ticket, all at this one business. I spent $53 on one type of $1 ticket alone.

I also bought a "7-7-07" ticket, just because I had to. I then purchased one each of the other $1 games, and 3 other $5 games. I scratched off all the tickets, and just as Neville indicated, it is not as much fun to scratch off all these tickets as you would think. Before midnight struck, I finished scratching all the tickets. I won mostly $1 prizes, with the big winner being $10. I was disappointed; a few of my friends did this with me and the rule was: if any of us hit it big and won $1000+ they would pay the others to make them even for the day.

So in the end, I spent $77 on lottery tickets on 7-7-07. Gotta be lucky right? Wrong. I ended up winning $32 back from the money, which was ok because I was ready to lose all $77.

The Winners

So when all was said and done, I spent $45 on entertainment. Since we did this in lieu of going to the track to bet on horses, or the casino, I consider this a win. I will get $32 back; if I had gone to one of those places, I probably would have lost all $77, since the $32 would have been regambled.

$1 Winners:12
$5 Winners:2
$10 Winners:1
Total Winnings:$32
Total Spent: $77
Win/Loss: -$45
Entertainment Cost:$45
Net Gain/Loss:$0

Ok, so that might be stretching it, but the first numbers are right. Here's my conclusion: You can do this experiment, and unless you get lucky, you will lose about 3 dollars of every 4 spent. If it's worth it, do it, if you feel lucky, go for it. I was just doing this because I couldn't make it to the casino or track.


By the way, I was told by my friend who used to cash lotto tickets "Scratch off the ticket to show the little box with four numbers in it, it makes it easier and faster for the cashier to cash it"


Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Saving Money in College 1: You don't need to eat so much food!!!

I'm a big guy. I weigh around 350 pounds, but I used to weigh above 400 pounds; I have actually lost weight in college, which spits in the face of the "freshman 15". One of the reasons I lost this weight is that I chose to walk everywhere for classes, another is I realized I don't need to eat so much...at least I don't need to buy so much food. I had friends who purchased boatloads of food; mac 'n' cheese, popcorn, chips, pizza, etc. They were also broke all year. I did this too at first, but eventually I realized I could live life without all the food.

I stopped buying popcorn, chips, pizza, easy mac, burgers, I would buy a few snack foods, and then sneak food out of the cafeteria. I made a small investment in some disposable Tupperware and used them to sneak fries, chips, burgers, anything I thought would be good leftover out of the cafeteria. I kept track of my finances before that, and I was spending $150-$200 on food each month. By doing this, I saved around $100-$150 per month. I still spent some money, but I saved tons of money. Imagine making $100. That's basically what I did, was increase my spending power by $100.

I had friends who refused to do this, even after I told them about how effective this was. There's nothing wrong with that; they did have more flexibility in the food they ate, but they also spent much more money than I did.

At Michigan State they don't feed you on Sunday's for dinner (they will this upcoming year, but last year they did not) so we had to figure out dinners on our own. I either took some foods that would be good heated up in the microwave (burgers, hot dogs, etc.) and saved them for Sunday evening. Sandwiches were particularly good, as I could make them on Sunday at lunch, wrap them up, and eat it for dinner. I saved about $10-$15 each Sunday night by not buying dinner and having delivered.

Just remember, if there's something you really want to buy, then buy it, eat it, and enjoy it. If you don't truly want something, you don't need to buy it. Every time you don't buy something, you save money. Every time you save money, you increase your spending power by that amount. That is the exact same as earning money, it's that simple (or, in other words: A penny saved is a penny earned)

Experiment 1: How to make a million dollars

For a few weeks, while I'm home, I'll be doing this blog from my room, but with the same constrictions as a dorm room. My room at home is basically a dorm room anyway. Even though ideally the ideas can transcend the dorm room/apartment, the goal of the blog is to find ways to make money in the dorm.

Idea: Place classified ads in paper/flyer's around town that offer the secret for earning a million dollars. The cost of this information is $1. This money may be mailed to me or paypal may be used.

Execution: I'll need to find some newspapers to place my ads in. This is going to cost something, but not much. Ideally I'll find some papers with free classified ads. I would also like to set up a website for this, to make it look more official. Something along the lines of "makeamilliondollars" or something like that.

How it works: So when I get the dollar, they get the information...place an ad somewhere telling people to send one dollar for information on making a million dollars. Then get a million people to do it.

Variations: This could work with flyer's, classified ads, and maybe even places like e-bay.

Welcome to Dorm Room Business!!!

I have just started this blog because I know there are thousands, if not millions of people out there who are sitting in their dorm rooms because they don't have any spare cash to do anything fun. Well I'm here to say it doesn't have to be that way.

I figure, while you're sitting in your room, why not be making money instead of just watching TV or watching another stupid video on YouTube again. If you take that time and make it even slightly more productive, then you're likely to make a few bucks.

I plan on trying different money making experiments in my dorm, and I encourage you to do the same in your own residence hall. If you are trying any new experiments, please e-mail me and I will post the details on the blog so everyone can see how it works. If we can just get a little creative, I think everyone can be making some good cash in their dorm rooms.


The next step to making money, is saving money. I'll be posting any neat little tricks I come up with to save money on anything, from supplies, to booze.

I hope you'll come back to visit again, and read about some of these experiments. Who knows, maybe you'll get a couple ideas and wind up a wealthy college student (you could be one of the 58 of them)