Earning Money

I was walking into the bank today to get some checks put into my checking account because I needed to pay off my credit card when I began to think of ways that I wanted to monetize Dorm Earning. And I began to think about what I already use on the site. Adsense and Adtoll are currently the only ones I use and unfortunately, the second one is going to be getting the boot soon because I am tired of receiving no advertisers and all of that rubbish. But, that’s for another post.

What today’s post is for is whether you should sell your advertising yourself or if you should just stick to companies to do it. For instance: should I sell the 125×125 banners myself that I want to sell as well as the links to other sites that I would love to sell? Should I sell the reviews myself? OR! Should I sell the links through Text-Link-Ads and sell the reviews through ReviewMe? And I began to think about it for a little while and there are really pros/cons for both sides.

Pros for Selling Private Advertising:

• I get to keep all the money.
• The amount of money that it costs is based on what I feel it should be and I can make more.
• No commission which goes with the first bullet.
• I don’t have to be afraid of getting banned from that company.

Pros for selling using a company:

• They sell the advertising for you, thus giving you more time to blog and the such.
• Their marketplace is so much larger, you are bound to find an advertiser or two more.
• They are experts so they know what is a good price for your site rather than what you THINK it deserves.

Those are just three pros for each of them and the cons are just the anti-parallels of that. But, what do you think? As a blogger, should it be our responsibility to go out and find advertisers and the such or should we rely on companies to make our money? Should we, as bloggers, give them such hefty % of our earnings or should we do it ourselves? I’d love if some people posted their opinions and let me know what they think. I have been leaning towards finding the advertisers myself, but who knows? I may change. Let me know.

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I was sitting in a meeting tonight because I am on school senate (and which is why this blog post is so late) and we were talking about Spring Weekend. Basically, it’s a weekend where we have $45,000 to throw a massive party and everyone gets drunk and it’s a lot of fun. Only…We, as the senate, need to really determine what sorts of activities we want to hold. Do we want to get a comedian or get a band? Do we want to do this or that? There are twenty of us in that room, or close to. With twenty different people, getting everything heard can be tough.

And that’s where the importance of working together comes into play. This post doesn’t really have much to do with working online, but the truth is, the things you learn from working together are things that will help you if you ever go into a venture with a few other people or if you are working for a company and have to go to a meeting. I know that there have been times that I have discussed business in a chat room and I had to keep myself in check because I was on the verge of potentially offending someone. You don’t want to offend anyone, especially if you’re working.

So, what are some things that you can do to try and work best as a team? I’ve compiled this short list of things that I think will allow for the most productive teamwork out there. It’s what we did tonight when I was meeting with the school Senate and it’s what I recommend to everyone:

• When one person speaks, only allow that one person to speak. Cease all side conversations.
• Designate one person as the head of the meeting. They don’t have final say, but it is their job to ensure that only one person is speaking at a time.
• If it is taking place in a chat room, end your sentences with -d- or something to signify that you are done so that someone can respond to you. I know that there have been times, especially in AIM chat rooms where I needed to send three or four posts and people have started replying before I was done.
• Respect the people that you’re working with. You have no idea the importance of a bit of respect. If you respect the people you work with, you’re bound to find that success you want.

I intend on, one day, starting a blog network. I am going to need to hire bloggers and there will come a time when there are meetings, I am sure. We’re all a team and we’re going to need to work together to grow the network to become much bigger. I intend on following the above rules because the way I see it, what I have just provided are some real basic, but important guidelines to make a meeting work wonderfully when you’re working as a team. Try it out. Let me know how it works. Maybe it’ll make you even more productive. Who knows?

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