Is Dorm Room Business Legal

Here's something everyone should consider before trying to run a business out of your dorm room: Is it even legal? I don't mean as far as the actual laws go, but read your housing contract, see if you're allowed to run any sort of business. I just read an article about an NYU student who sold beer paraphernalia out of his dorm room; he was kicked out of student housing. You can find it here: Click Here

I think some businesses should definitely be allowed in dorm rooms, provided they don't get out of hand. This is an example where the University may have been justified in their actions, seeing as he was apparently over-running the mail room with boxes of merchandise. I encourage everyone to read that article, it's a good one.

I would love to hear about any dorm businesses any of you have started out there! Small or big, anything would be great to hear about. Click on the submit a guest post on the right hand navigation bar and send an e-mail detailing your dorm room business. If you would like to keep it confidential just let me know and I won't post it online.


Well, it's tax season! I was thinking about volunteering with an organization on campus that helps low income and foreign students with their income taxes. It's a community service, and it seems it would help with my interests. I figure it would be a good experience, and it's a good looking community service. Any thoughts?

This is going to be a short one, I just thought I would throw out a few thoughts for today. Looks like my e-Bay auction didn't so well...I didn't really expect it to, just taking a little gamble.

Have a safe and wonderful day.




As usual, if you are reading this on my imported facebook blog, you can find my full blog at wwww.dormroombiz.com

A Note on e-Bay Forex Arbitrage and Risk in General

For everyone who read my post on Foreign Exchange Arbrirage on e-Bay, I would suggest you do not try this right now. Since the Dollar is so uncertain right now, and foreign exchange rates are going nuts, this is not the best time to do this. If you have Euro's, now may be the time to sell, but I would not suggest purchasing Euros from a third party to sell on e-Bay currently. This is still a decent strategy, but in this uncertainty, there is a much higher risk than there would normally be.

Whenever you are looking potential business deals, or exchanges, always look at the risk. Higher risk usually means higher reward, but this is not always the case, so you need to consider both risk and reward. If you need to risk $100, but stand to make another $600, that's a much better risk than say risking $100 to make another $100. This is more apparent in the bond markets; higher risk doesn't always guarantee a higher potential reward. Furthermore, a lower risk does not always mean a lower reward. There are safe investments that can produce 4-6% returns, which is not as high as many high risk investments, but it is still ahead of inflation.

I know I must sound like I'm strictly talking about Equities, Bonds, Forex, etc. investing, but in any business, you must consider the risk. With a new restaurant, there is high risk (something like 98% failure rate) but do you stand to make a lot of new money? Not really, unless you become wildly successful and can create a chain. Why do people do this then? Usually because of a passion: I would not typically view a restaurant as a wise investment (excluding chain restaurants)

I just thought I would throw out a few thoughts on risk. It never pays to be cautious, but it can be even more costly to be overly risky. If you have a desire to learn more about managing risk in the markets, there are MANY good investment books out there; check out Amazon.

I finished reading the book Liar's Poker recently, and it was great, it was basically a narrative of one bond trader's excursion through the industry; how a bond trader is part investor, part gambler. It's quite a good read, I would suggest it for anyone interested in learning about the behind the scenes of the Bond market in the 1980's. He also discusses in detail the formation of Mortgage bonds at his company (Salomon Bros.)

That's all for today; I really like being able to write about other things besides just starting businesses in your dorm room, it gives me much more to think about.

Products online now!!!

I've now got some products online. Admittedly this is not a huge product line, but it's a start, and hopefully it will motivate me to start doing more to get stuff online.

I put my 5 photo holder online, on e-Bay, but online nonetheless.

You can see it here! 5 Photo holder

I would really appreciate anyone who would look at it. This really is a great product, and I use multiple copies of this product, I think it is absolutely great! I can hang tons of photos on the wall without having to buy frames or stick the photos directly on the wall like I did last year.

I have developed a website that I hope to have up and running by the end of the month.

Well, that's enough of that.

I'm really sorry I haven't been posting lately. I have decided that from now on, this blog will be more dedicated to business in general, instead of just business in dorm rooms. I think this is a better, broader topic, and brings me out of my myopic focus. I simply didn't have much to post blogs about, since I haven't been developing my business lately. I hope this will change.

I've purchased a few books and gotten some from Christmas that I hope will be really great. I have

• The Book of the Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
• The Book of Family Traditions by Yagyu Munenori
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
• The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene

These are all meant to help with business, The first 3 are more about battle, and business at a higher level. The world is flat is the new bible in business it seems. Every class talks about this book sometimes. The Art of Seduction is supposed to help with sales, however, I don't think I'll read this in public, that could look kind of embarrassing. I'll go ahead and stay in my room when I read that one.

I got thinking about the role of these books. I have read a few books based on business in the past couple years, and they really are much better than any classes I've taken (with the exception of my International and Comparative Dimensions of Business class). Why do people choose not to read these books. There is a definite edge in the business world based on knowledge. When someone knows more about the business world and can react faster, there is undoubtedly an edge, and I don't think anyone would doubt that.

"It's not what you know, it's who you know!"

That could not possibly be true, it is important to have connections, but unless you're just going to work a nothing job for a relative, your connections can only get you in the door. Please don't get me wrong, connections in business are important, because you DO need to get in the door, but that's as far as they will go. Without the ability to impress an interviewer, and the knowledge to excel at your particular job, you will not last long. Just remember, you do need to know something about business, and economics, and psychology, and how to work with people, and many other things. Your dad's a CEO? Well you better know something about that business to get a job with him, because if you don't, a good CEO will fire you without hesitation.

I get so sick of people relying only on their connections in business for jobs. No one cares if you know more executives than they do, you can only get an interview with your connections, so go to class, stop wasting your opportunities in life. If you're in school studying business, YOU'VE DONE SOMETHING RIGHT! Don't let the seat in your class go to waste. That fact goes for everyone really.

Anyway, that's enough of a rant.

I watched the Detroit Auto show today, quick review: My award for coolest car goes to the Audi R8 (look it up)

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.