I’m sure most of you are starving for some more juicy posts and wondering why we haven’t posted that much so far this month. Well Manit and I have a very good reason: We both have come down with the affiliate marketing bug.

Neither of us had really been into affiliate marketing at all in the past which is why we really haven’t covered it but due to some of you requesting information on it and the prevelance of that term in the making money online world we figured we’d go ahead and give affiliate marketing a shot.

So what happended? Well to put it simply we both caught the affiliate marketing bug immediately and have been afflicted this entire week. We’ve been pouring countless hours into our campaigns; optimising, tweaking and creating all kinds of ads to try and bring in the most profit possible.

Through our efforts we have achieved some very impressive success and are currently compiling everything we have learned to show you guys just exactly how easy it is to get started in the affiliate marketing game and to teach you how to be successful at it.

We literally went from 0 to 60 in just a couple days without really knowing much about affiliate marketing to begin with. It was very suprising to figure out how simple it could be to make an extra $20 a day with not too much effort once you get the hang of it.

Stay tuned for some fully detailed affiliate marketing reports in the next couple days that will give you the know-how to start making money right away by starting your own affiliate marketing campaigns.

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As you may know CollegeBusinessmen.com was created on August 1st so we have just completed our first month as a blog and must say it has been a fun and pretty interesting adventure so far.

We have spent many, many hours cranking out posts and responding to comments and have had a great time getting to know, to some extent at least, the fellow students and people out there who follow our blog.

So for those of you who might be curious what was happening with our site the whole month behind the scenes, here’s a little update:

1. Our site was featured on CoedMagazine.com for our ‘7 Reasons to Start a Business in College‘ article. Through this we got a few extra hundred visitors over a couple days.

2. Our site also got featured on CNN.com in the Odds and Ends section for the same article and wound up driving nearly 1,500 unique visitors. This day was huge for us and pretty awesome.

3. We worked out a partnership with GetHundos.com a startup website here in Seattle to have our link displayed on their site which targets college kids. This was moderately successful and was fun because it was our first advertising deal we managed to get setup with another site.

As for our RSS, it has been continually fluctuating between 12 and 17 readers so not much progress there but good to see we have a small base coming out of our first month.

For the ads, we really didn’t make much since we didn’t seriously implement everything towards the end of the month but the Adsense at least should help bring in a bit of extra revenue this month.

So pretty much our blog started off well in our perspective and we’re looking forward to seeing how this month turns out. Thanks again for your support!

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Hey guys, thanks a lot to everyone who participated in the comment posting contest for August. The top 3 quality posters for August are:

1st Prize: m.dinesh - Winning a Ipod Nano, 1 Year Hosting with Domain & $200 Web Design

2nd Prize: Brian Daisy - Winning 1 Year Hosting with Domain & $200 Web Design

3rd Prize: Anoop - Winning 1 Year Hosting with Domain

All the winners will be contacted via email regarding the delivery of the prizes.

If you didn’t win this month, don’t be upset, we are having a contest for the month of September and the contest prizes will be announced soon, so stay tuned and start posting. Remember prizes are given for quality posts.

Again. Congratulations to the winners!

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There are tons of college students out there who attempt to start their own businesses every day. However, the reason you only hear of a few successful college students here and there is because a lot of these businesses fail.

You may think that most of these businesses failed due to lack of money, not having enough experience or simply because they were bad business ideas. But this typically is not the case and in fact the main reasons why these college businesses fail are directly tied to factors that are completely controllable by the student.

It can be easy to lay blame on other external issues but when it comes right down to it most student businesses fail because the student chooses to fail. Not that they didn’t want their business to become a success but that they simply lost focus and let too many other things get in their way causing their business, which otherwise could have been extremely successful.

If you want to run a business successfully as a college student, be sure you can overcome the following issues that have stopped so many other students in their tracks.

Laziness

Many students tend to get into this day to day routine rut where they just go through the motions. You wake up, go to school, eat lunch, go to more school and then come back home. It is at this point where the natural reaction is to relax and take a break and just simply be lazy which causes a lot of students to just throw away the rest of their day to go to bed and wake up and repeat the process.

When it comes to business however there is no time for laziness. You have to train yourself to put time into your business every single day no matter if you are tired, if you really don’t feel like it or even if there is something fun you could be doing instead. If you want your business to succeed you must not be lazy and instead be proactive and continually working to develop your business, little by little, day by day.

Dedication Issues

Having trouble staying dedicated to your business is another potential problem. For a business to succeed you must be completely dedicated to it and focus all of your efforts towards it.

You must not let yourself get distracted by other potential business opportunities because by jumping around from one to another you will never get anywhere or accomplish anything. Dedicate yourself and stick to making your chosen business succeed and odds are you will.

Poor Time Management

When trying to startup your own business you typically don’t have loads of free time and as a college student you usually have school to worry about or a part-time job and in addition have a ton of various social opportunities available. With all this is can be difficult to find the time to put into your business which is why poor time management can be major downfall in being successful.

So if you are gonna create a successful business it is critical to manage your time properly so that you are able to maximize the amount of time you can put into your business. To learn ways to develop better time management check out both of these articles: 11 Time Management Tips and Best Time Management Advice

Losing Motivation

When starting a business it’s extremely rare that you see great success overnight which means you’ll need to put in lots of work with little reward for some period of time which can last months depending on your business. Given the sheer amount of time it can take to make a business successful it is very easy to lose motivation and give up.

You must be able to keep your motivation high and stick with your business because given enough time it will almost certainly become a success. To help yourself stay motivated check out the following resource: Top Six Ways to Stay Motivated

Lack Of Support

The final point I’m going to make here that can kill student businesses before they even get started is lack of support. It is very difficult to start, grow and run a business when your friends and family don’t understand, don’t agree with you doing it and in general won’t support your choice to create a business.

For starters don’t let this get you down at all and keep in mind that this business is really what you want to be doing. Then work to find people and be around people who will support and encourage you. There are plenty of forums online related to nearly every business field where you could find tons of support or you could join the business club at your school where you can find other like minded students to support you and your business venture.

Always keep in mind these five reasons that student businesses fail when starting your own business to make sure you don’t let any of them happen to you so that you can succeed where too many have needlessly failed.

If you found this post helpful and informative I’d appreciate it if you could digg it and subscribe to our RSS to receive more great posts in the future.

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Today I will be teaching you how to make money with Twitter.com. If you don’t already know what Twitter is, it is a hugely popular micro-blogging service. It is basically a blog with a 140 character limit which allows your friends, fans, colleagues, or family to know what you are up to.

Basically it is very similar to the Facebook status update feature, where you can update your status every few hours to let your friends know what you are doing. For example, you can send messages such as “I am at the library studying” or “I am playing basketball”. These small updates may look like a waste of time and seem useless to most people but they can matter a lot to your friends and family, people who are close to you.

Ok so how the hell do I make money with this?

First of all find a niche that you specialize in or something you like. This is similar to finding a niche for your blog. Basically writing about something you love. If you already own an online blog then you are already ahead of most of the people. You basically need to create a reader base by writing something you love.

For example, if you are a Baseball fan, start writing baseball updates like what games are on, what games to watch out for, what the current score is, interesting baseball facts, your opinion on the current or upcoming games, etc. The cool thing about twitter is that whenever you make a post people can get the post either via SMS on their cell phone, via instant chat or via email. So basically if someone wants baseball updates on their cellphone and don’t have a TV next to them they can get the update by subscribing to your twitter feed and receive it via SMS.

You can use the following methods to make money using Twitter.com:

1) Direct Advertisement: If you have a lot of people on twitter following you then you can use advertising techniques such as making product recommendations and promoting and reviewing websites or products. The thing to be careful about here is that you need to limit the advertising to every 10th or 15th post. For example, if your twitter blog is about baseball then once in a while you can post a advertisement such as, “Check out this cool website to buy Baseball gear for cheap”. Of course all these websites will be sponsored sites and you can charge the website money per message depending on your ‘readership’ and ‘reach’.

2) Affiliate Marketing: Similar to direct advertisement where the advertisers directly pay you money per message, you can use your own affiliate links to make money. You can send messages to your readers recommending a website or product with your affiliate link. You can mask these links by using page redirect to your site, such as www.yoursite.com/affiliate_product/ will redirect to your affiliate link.

3) Industry Specific Advertising: If you run a twitter blog notifying your users about new tech job opening in your city which you can find on craigslist.org, local newspapers, monsterjobs.com, hotjobs.com, etc, you can charge companies a small fee to get their job posted on your twitter blog. For example, if Microsoft wants to let your readers know about a tech job opening in the city then they can pay you a small fee to post that job on your blog.

4) Membership Fee: If your blog is a very informative blog giving people top quality tips then most people won’t mind paying a small monthly membership fee to get access to that info. For example, if your blog tells people about the stock market giving constant updates about which stock to invest in and which stock to sell, and people are really making good money from your tips, nobody will mind paying the monethly membership fee to get access to that info. Note: You’d have to verify their subscriptions — and if they haven’t paid for the month, you’d remove them as a friend from your Twitter account.

5) Contests: You can also start sponsored competitions where you can give away free prizes sponsored by your advertiser. An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness. For example, “Give your feedback on this product or service” or “How would you like us to improve this product”. Prizes can be given away for the best feedback or reply.

So guys remember, don’t try to become greedy and overdo the advertising because you don’t want your readers to think you are some kind of commercial junkie rather than someone providing useful information.

Also try recommending quality products, something you would personally use, that way you will maintain the trust of your readers. Twitter is still very new, don’t wait till it’s too late, be one of the first ones to milk it out before their is lot of competition in your niche and twitter becomes extremely strict on advertising.

Join twitter and start following our own twitter updates where we’ll be giving away quick money making tips; just search ‘collegebm’ and click ‘follow’ or click here.

If you like this post be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed and digg it. Happy twittering!

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Starting college as a brand new freshman can be a little overwhelming because of all the new people, new experiences and new living situation. Because everything is so new and different it’s very easy to find yourself spending much more money than you planned on.

I’m here to tell you straight up, having been a freshman myself only a couple years ago, that you can have a great time in college enjoying the gadgets you love, succeeding in school, going out with friends, keeping yourself looking good and doing the things you want all without blowing away your budget.

With a little bit a knowledge under your belt you will find yourself loving your entire college experience without having to worry about going into serious debt or calling your parents every week begging for more money.

Here are the top 5 expenses you’ll encounter as a freshmen and some ways to save yourself a good amount of money. (Even if you’re not a freshman I’m sure you’ll be able to find some useful ways to save money )

1. Electronics

Some of the biggest expenditures when you first come to college will be on electronics and a good portion of kids entering college will opt to purchase a brand new desktop or laptop computer.

There are a few options to look into to save money when buying a new computer.

Assemble Yourself- If you’re in the market for a desktop then you could always buy your computer in pieces and assemble it yourself. The best, most cost efficient place to purchase computer parts online is NewEgg.com. Doing this will save you many hundreds of dollars and even if you don’t know how to assemble a computer yourself, odds are you have a techie, computer geek friend who could easily do it for you.

Find Deals Online- One of the best things about the internet is the fact that you can gain access to some of the best deals possible anywhere. It is simply a matter of being able to track down and find these deals that are out there. Luckily for you I have scoured the net to find two of the best websites for finding great deals on computers (as well as other items) FatWallet.com and SlickDeals.net under the hot deals section. Simply search ‘Laptop’ or ‘Desktop’ on these sites and you’re bound to find some cheap computers.

Look For Sales- Big outlet stores such as Fry’s and BestBuy usually always have some kind of sale going on but especially during the back to school period. There is a trick to buying at these outlet stores though, some of the sales will price computers right at or lower than what the store paid for them so why would they do this? Well they can make huge commissions by upselling all the extra addons and softwares. So don’t let yourself fall for their high pressure sales pitches to get you to do unnecessary upgrades. I guarantee the laptop will be just fine the way it comes and you’ll end up saving some great money.

In addition to computers many students also buy other electronics like sound systems for their room, new cell phones, TVs, and Ipods.

Buy Used- For most of these types of electronics the best way to save money is simply to buy used. Now buying used isn’t as bad as you may think, you can actually get some very good quality only slightly used products for amazing discounts off what it would cost to buy new. Although you may prefer something brand new just try looking for the same product used and compare to see how much money you will be saving and then decide if that new device is worth it or not.

The best place for finding used products is still the same site we refer to so much here at CollegeBusinessmen.com: Craigslist.com

2. Textbooks

Throughout your college career textbooks will undoubtedly add up to be one of the largest expenses you incur. Nearly every single college class requires some kind of textbook and many students end up spending hundreds of dollars every single quarter.

There are four key methods any student can use to save money on textbooks:

Renting- You can actually rent your textbooks just for the period you require them and then return them after you’re finished with Chegg.com.

Bargain Hunting- The best way to find great deals on textbooks quickly and easily is with BigWords.com which will list every single textbook for sale across the internet for you.

Downloading- Nowadays you don’t even need a physical textbook you can simply just download it onto your computer at iChapters.com.

Local Deals- There’s always great opportunity when it comes to finding local students selling the textbooks you need with Craigslist.com.

To get a more in depth idea of what these four textbook money saving methods have to offer check out my previous post: Best 4 Methods to Save Money on Textbooks

3. Food

When coming to college most students have to learn for the first time in their lives how to fend for themselves for an extended period of time. You have to all of a sudden shop for your own food and prepare it yourself. If you could consistently do this your food expenses could easily remain pretty minimal however the convenience, quality and variety eating out provides can easily take over and start consuming a lot of your money. Whether you eat out because your friends are going or because you are simply too lazy to cook, these expenses can add up really fast.

Here are four great ways to save money when going out to eat:

Online Deals- Restaurants are always looking for ways to attract more business so many of them have setup special deals only available through online printable coupons. Check out Restaurant.com and Valpak.com to find some money saving coupons for restaurants near you. The only downside is many of the coupons have minimum order requirements but as long as you know when the coupon applies and what exactly it applies to you can save a good amount of money.

Entertainment/Coupon Book- One of the best ways to save money on all your favorite restaurants is to purchase an entertainment book from Entertainment.com which typically only costs $25-$35 but has tens of thousands of dollars in savings availabe. Just be sure you put it to use and before you know it you will have saved a lot of money.

Many major campuses also have student coupon books which are completely free. Lookout for these at your school and again just remember to put it to use and you could help keep you food budget in check.

Self Savings- By far the easiest way to save money when eating out is simply to pay attention to what you are paying for and learn how to work the system.

The first way to save is to simply not buy a drink which can easily add an additional 20% to the cost of your meal; just get water instead, it’s always free.

The second way is to be sure to get the largest portion possible by adding extra meat. Although it does cost up to a couple bucks more it can increase the amount of food you are getting up to 40% which adds some serious value.

The third way is to plan for leftovers and with the second method implemented you will likely have enough food to split the one meal into two meals, saving you the cost of an entire other meal. Not to mention leftovers can be very convenient those times when you’re too lazy or its too late to go to a restaurant.

Exploitation- This may sound bad but it’s a really great way to save when buying food. All restaurants are different and sell you food in different sized portions and as you eat around at different restaurants you will soon find which ones you can get larger portions of food at. By frequenting these restaurants more often you can save money because you will have more leftovers, cutting out the cost of additional meals.

4. Clothing

Needless to say, style and looking cool are pretty important for most college freshmen. You always want to look and dress your best to make the best possible impression on people. Unfortunately this can get very expensive and put a huge strain on your wallet.

Here are four great ways to moderate your spending while still looking good and having great style.

Be Yourself- Don’t always try to follow the latest fashion trends and switch up styles every season just because everyone else is doing it. Just be yourself and dress the way you feel comfortable even if it isn’t the hot new fad. This alone could help make your clothing budget more manageable.

Discount/Outlet Stores- Although it is not as cool to be shopping at discount or outlet stores, you can find name brand clothes with awesome styles at a fraction of the price of buying the same stuff in the department stores so it is completely worth it. T.J. Maxx and Ross are examples of really good discount stores to get quality clothing.

Don’t Buy Namebrand- Well ok, most students do like to have some namebrand clothing but common, not every single piece of clothing you wear needs to be name brand. All namebrand clothing is overpriced as you are paying a premium just for the name. Try instead taking a look at the clothing selection offered by big retailers such as Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer and Kohl’s. Just because it’s not namebrand doesn’t mean it’s not cool; these stores can offer a selection of really cool, stylish clothes for a much more reasonable price that you may actually end up liking more than the namebrand stuff anyway.

Good Timing- When buying clothes timing can make all the difference. Pay attention to and look out for all the different sales stores will offer and take advantage of them but don’t overdo it; just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean it’s a good deal. Another way timing will help save you money is simply by buying out of season. When clothes are in season they are more expensive because there is more demand for them, buying out of season will usually allow you to get really cheap clearance deals.

5. Entertainment

One of the funnest things about college is having the freedom to go out and do things with friends. There can be all kinds of different entertainment venues around your campus, enough to keep you and your friends busy every weekend year-round.

The major issue however is that all these activities and events do cost money and in some cases a good chunk of cash so here are four ways to help you save some dough when keeping yourself entertained at college.

Entertainment Book- Just as with eating out, the entertainment book found at Entertainment.com can save you huge amounts of money on hundreds of different venues in your local area. Although it does cost a little bit of money, you just need to use a couple coupons from it to completely recoup the cost and get started on your road to saving money.

Student Discounts- Many places, especially around college campuses, will offer discounts to students to try and attract more business. Ask around and always be sure to check when going out to see if being a student can help you save a little cash.

Know People- As a freshman you likely won’t know too many people initially but you will quickly meet many. Lots of students have connections to the entertainment industry whether it be through a job or friends they know and can help get you into events and shows for cheap or even free. The more people you know the better the odds that you’ll be able to get hooked up.

Free Events- Many major colleges will put on free concerts for students or have free movie screenings or any number of other events/shows. Always pay attention to when these events are going down and take advantage of the fact that they are completely free.

If you liked this article and found this information useful please digg it and subscribe to our blog to make sure you don’t miss any of our quality posts.

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There are now officially only 10 days left till our first blog contest is over.

We have the Ipod up for grabs and the hundreds of dollars worth of web design and hosting and the $50 in PayPal cash to the top commentors.

Pass the word around. It’s not too late to claim one of our sweet prizes and hey we may randomly just hand out cash to people who genuinely benefit the site.

You can win by doing anything to benefit our blog (digging, stumbling or facebooking our posts, posting about us on your own blog, subscribing to our rss reader) but most importantly just providing quality feedback via the comments on each of our posts.

Just to make sure you know we’re serious here’s the Ipod for you right here:

Thank you all for your continued support, we’re really looking forward to being able to give something back to our valued readers.

This is a follow up post to: WIN FREE - Apple Ipod, 1 year Hosting with Domain and $200 Web Design

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Just a quick update guys. Since we started this blog on Aug 1, we have got a tremendous response. I have got numerous emails from readers giving me feedback/suggestions for the blog and people from all the over the world telling me how they love reading our blog. Yesterday we officially crossed the 1400 uniques a day mark. Not bad for a 20 day old blog. Hopefully by the end of the month we cross the 2000 uniques a day mark. We will actually start monetizing the blog from next month, after which I will regularly post the sites earnings.

Anyways keep the suggestions coming guys and feel free to email me personally (manit@collegebusinessmen.com) with any Q’s you may have. I hope to provide quality money making tips and advice every single day. By the way if you like this blog please support us by digging our posts and subscribing to the RSS feed.

Ok, so my dream finally came true, earlier than I expected actually. Yesterday I finally got my new car, an Audi A6. I am a big car fan and I especially love luxury sports sedans. It was a tough choice between the BMW 5 series and the Audi A6 but finally I went with the Audi. Not only is the car extremely fun to drive but the car has a lot of punch under the hood. I never imagined I would ever be able to afford one of these at the age of 20, but my hard-work payed off. Now lets start working towards my next car.. hmmm.. lets see.. a Ferrari? Just kidding.. enjoy the pics

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Today my post will be teaching you how to be careful online and how not to get scammed when buying a website or domain and how to watch out for scammers online.

The internet is full of scammers. There are more than you could even imagine and we end up dealing with them more often than we think. Here are the most common places that you may be scammed:

1) Buying a Website or Domain Online: Buying an established website can be a good idea rather than starting a site from scratch, as you don’t have to do all the initial grunt work involved that can be extremely time consuming. You can immediately start-off marketing and promoting the site and start making money. It can be pretty common for a seller to fake the website traffic or income. I actually notice at least 1 in every 3 sellers faking either some income or traffic. So before I go into how to catch these fakers, let me just mention 2 of the most common websites I use to buy established websites: Digitalpoint and Sitepoint

a) PayPal revenue screenshots are one of the most faked by sellers when they are selling a website. So how can you catch them? Firstly, download the screenshots to your computer and examine closely (use a magnifying tool if necessary). Do you see any ‘copied numbers’? Copied numbers can be traced by looking closely at the pixels around the numbers, if the pixel formation looks similar then the numbers are copied. Pixels in a jpeg image are random and no two numbers have the same pixel formation around it. Here is a screenshot that will show you what I mean:

See carefully, both the $96.80 amounts have exactly the same pixels around it. Don’t worry if you can’t see it, it takes practice and experience to point out a fake from a real. But you should always look out for common mistakes like typos, missing commas in 4 digit+ amounts (for example, amount is shown as $1312.20 instead of $1,312.20). A very common mistake is showing the wrong PayPal fees, here is a table you can use to calculate the correct fees. Also another common mistake is calculating the wrong amount for GROSS - FEES = NET AMOUNT in a fake screen shot (for example, amount is shown as $100 - $3.60 = $96.80 instead of $100 - $3.60 = $96.40).

Always keep an eye out for such small errors that can give away a fake from a real screenshot. A good way is to ask the seller to create a video of their paypal account using a screen capture software, videos are very difficult to fake and will give you much better assurance of its authenticity.

b) Starting bid is too low. If you see a site that is supposedly making $1000 a month having a starting bid of $100, its a dead give-away that something is fishy. I would never start the biding for a site making $1000 per month lower than $3000.

c) Fake Traffic Screenshots. Always ask for the direct link to the site traffic stats if you are very serious on buying a particular sites. Just like paypal screenshots, traffic screenshots are easily faked. Always remember to never trust a screenshot. A good idea is to check the Alexa ranking. For example, a site getting 1000 unique visitors a day should have a traffic rank of at least 250,000 or less. Search for the website on the alexa website and click on ‘Traffic Ranking’. Make sure you check the 1 week average to get a more accurate recent ranking. Always look for traffic spikes and drops, and ask the seller for explanation for those. Also don’t forget to look where the traffic is coming for by looking at reffering sites stats.

d) Oops the site doesn’t belong to the seller. So guess what just happened, you just a bought and paid for a site that didn’t belong to the seller. It sucks to be in that situation so it is a good idea to checkout who owns the website by having a look at the site ‘Whois‘. Enter the sites web address you are buying on www.whois.sc and look at the owner’s information. It is a good idea to send a email to the administrative email listed on the whois website. Ask the seller in the email to confirm that it is actually him by replying to your email. In some cases the whois information is private and cannot be viewed. In such cases, go to the websites ‘contact us’ page and write a email to the site webmaster again asking to confirm ownership. You can also ask the seller to upload a test webpage such as www.HisWebsite.com/test.html.

e) Western Union or Wire. If the seller is insisting on payment by either western union or bank wire, don’t even think about it, there is a 99% chance he is a scammer. Always use either www.paypal.com or www.escrow.com to make payments for the website or domain that you are buying. If you don’t know how escrow works, the money is only released to the sellers bank once you have received your product. The money goes out from your bank account when you start an escrow payment but the seller doesn’t get the money unless you confirm that you have received the product.

2) Buying on Ebay and Craigslist: Buying on ebay can be a nightmare. It is a hangout for thousands of scammers. Here are some tips to buy safely on ebay:

a) Look at sellers rating. It is common sense, look at his past feedback before you buy from a seller. For example, If the seller has 100 feedbacks saying ‘Loved the shoes.’ and now he is selling LCD TV’s, probably you should look into it because there is a very good chance that the ebay account is hacked and is now being used by the scammer to sell expensive electronics. If the seller has a feedback lower than 95%, ask the seller for the explanation before you buy from him. It can be a good idea sometimes to contact his previous buyers who left him a negative feedback asking for a detailed explanation of why they left a negative. If a seller is relatively new with a very low feedback (feedback of 10 or less), try talking with him on the phone before you buy, also ask him to take pictures of the product with his name/ebay id next to it written on a piece of paper.

b) Stock Pictures. If a sellers listing has stock company pictures of the product, ask him to take his own pictures with his name next to the product and post it on the ebay listing. This is a very common practice especially sellers selling expensive electronics. I was once buying a $1800 DJ turntable on Ebay, and later I found out that the seller stole the images from an old Ebay listing.

c) Mention of contacting via email in the listing. A lot of scammers usually hack established Ebay accounts and then ask you to contact them directly via a email listed in the listing and not via the “Ask seller a question”. This is a dead give-away that the account is hacked.

d) Item is too cheap. Don’t we all want that 50inch LCD TV for $100. Well if it looks too good to be true then it probably is. If others are not bidding on the LCD TV starting at just $100, then there is something seriously wrong with either the seller or the TV.

Buying on craigslist can be safer than buying on Ebay because you can physically checkout the item you are buying before paying him. One simple rule to remember, Always pay with CASH. No matter what the seller says, no matter what the situation is.

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Lets face it, at some point no matter how entrepreneurial or business minded you are you can still find yourself looking for work, whether it’s to save up some money to invest in a new idea or to help cover the bills while you grow your own business. The biggest mistake that I see happen far too often is that college students will settle for crappy jobs they hate and that pay terribly.

Some of the most common student jobs are on campus where your own university will drive you like a slave for minimum wage if not real close to it with raises of only a handful of cents every few quarters. Plus there’s a myriad other crappy jobs that students will settle for besides on-campus jobs such as working at a fast food place or at a grocery store or at a department store all which typically pay very poorly.

Don’t let yourself waste your time making only half the money per hour you could be making working in an industry that is perfectly suited for college students.

I’m writing this to open up your mind and change your way of thinking when looking for your next job as a college student. Forget all these low paying, inflexible and mind-numbing jobs, the best jobs for a college student are in the food service industry working for restaurants and I’ll explain why.

Positions Available

There are four primary positions available at any restaurant. Each of these positions simply require that you are a diligent worker and that you can be friendly and personable; qualities that most college students have (or can at least fake ).

Host/Hostess: This is a more mundane position that simply involves greeting guests as they arrive, seating them and other basic secretarial tasks. The pay usually ends up being at least a couple dollars an hour more than the minimum wage, beating out many of the crappy jobs out there.

Busser: This position is more intensive and can involve some decent physical labor and is very repetitive however you do not have to deal with the guests at all and simply need to focus on your own tasks. If this type of work suits you then it’s well worth trying to land a busser job because it can easily bring in six to twelve dollars an hour more than minimum wage in straight cash that is tax free.

Server: This position isn’t always the most intense but it can be very stressful mainly because you have to interact with and provide for the guests. You also need to know everything about the menu and be able to stay organized and work and think at a fast pace. For this extra work and effort you put in the payoff is very nice typically allowing you to make anywhere from eight to sixteen dollars more per hour than minimum wage.

Bartender: Getting a bartending job can be very difficult straight off but working in the food service industry gives you an easy access path to being able to work as a bartender. Most restaurants have their own bar and if they need bartenders they typically stay within the current workforce and simply promote a server who is interested. Although this job can get very intense and stressful at times it can be very fun and rewarding for the right person and allow you to make just as much as servers.

With the bartending knowledge gained in a restaurant you could move on to working at an actual bar which could allow you to make anywhere between sixteen and thirty-two dollars more per hour than minimum wage.

Food Service Industry

Working in the food service industry in a restaurant is perfect for almost any college student, here’s just a few of the key benefits:

1. Flexible Schedule- Most restaurants typically have lunch and dinner shifts available and all of them will hire part-time and full-time workers so you have the ability to setup a schedule that works best for you.

2. Great Pay- Although you may still be making minimum wage you must account for the fact that you’ll be making tips which can easily double your pay and possibly make you more.

3. Variety of Positions- As I listed out above there are a variety of positions in the food service industry to suit whatever kind of job you are looking for.

4. Learn Valuable Skills- Working any of the positions in a restaurant will develop your skills for that particular job and allow you to work nearly anywhere you want in the future (The food service industry is everywhere from the smallest towns to the largest cities). You’ll always be able to fall back on the food service industry if you absolutely need a job at some point in life.

5. Grow as a Person- Working with customers day in and day out will allow you to develop your social skills and help you to become better at effectively communicating with people which is a great skill to develop for business and life in general.

6. Meet People- You meet all kinds of people when working in the food service industry and can develop some great connections whether it be with that one customer who takes an interest in you or with some of your co-workers who you become good friends with.

7. Opportunity For Growth- In the restaurant business there is always room for growth from the positions I listed above to actually moving up to management positions. It’s one of the best and easiest places to work your way up the ladder.

How to Land a Job

Now what kind of post would this be without me giving you a little information about actually landing one of these wonderful and high paying food service industry jobs. I’ve got four methods ranging from the most effective to the least effective (from my own personal experience and what I’ve heard from others anyway) to help you land a restaurant job.

Pull Some Strings- Without a doubt the best way to get a job in this industry is to know people. Ask your friends, your family, your acquaintances, if anybody you know is involved in the restaurant business they can easily get you hooked up with a job. In fact most restaurants thrive on finding employees through referrals from current employees. These people can put in a good word for you and I guarantee you will much more likely get the job over a person that nobody working there knows.

Ask In Person- Like most people I’m sure you dine at some nicer restaurants every now and then and you probably have your favorite restaurants as well like that little Italian place down the street. Well this is a perfect opportunity to land yourself a job, all you have to do next time you go out to eat is simply ask if they are hiring and if they are request an application. The fact that you dine there yourself definitely puts you in a better light with the management making them more likely to hire you.

Check The Net- Always search the internet for jobs in your area. Many restaurants will post positions needing to be filled online and will typically provide you with a phone number an email or an address and give you steps on how to apply.

Classifieds- When all else fails it doesn’t hurt to scan through the classifieds of your local newspaper. You never know when a restaurant will desperately need servers and have an ad up in the paper seeking someone like you.

There you have it, virtually everything you need to know about the food service industry: the positions available, the benefits to working in it, and how to get a job.

So next time you are on the hunt for job don’t let yourself settle for that low paying on-campus job or any other crappy minimum wage job, instead put in a little extra effort and get out there and find a nice job for yourself in the food service industry where you can make way more money than most other students.

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