Enkay Blog

TWIN : This Week In News

So, I have been gone for a while so I figured a good way to get back on topic is to cover a few things that took place during my hiatus. I looked to the news, the blogosphere and ofcourse money making websites for the latest in news and so lets take a look!

Microsoft Fined A Record $1.3 Billion
The European Union has apparently fined Microsoft $1.3 billion for failing to comply with an antitrust order. Over the course of several years, Microsoft has been fined around $2.4 billion by the EU. The fines are with regards to the fact that Micosoft charged unreasonable prices for information that servers need to work with its Windows operating system. Some might say the fine is a little too much but it may be appropriate based on the circumstances and to me it also depends on what is considered “unreasonable prices” but this is certainly an interesting issue.
Source: MSN

Kontera Gets A Facelift
Kontera has revamped their publisher center and includes a great graph that represents monthly revenue over the past 30 days. It now also includes detailed reports which are similar to prior reports but are a little more organized and easier to browse through. They have a keyword report which breaks down, by percentage, the keyword that gets the most clicks. It also reports on the pages on your blog that bring you the most clicks and revenue which is very interesting. You can also change your ContentLink color directly from the Publisher Center. Overall, I am happy with the changes Kontera has made as they made essential changes so high five to them!

Smorty Slows Down
Smorty has been a popular source of income for most bloggers but over the past 30 days I have noticed that there haven’t been as many new ad campaigns. There are still 4 campaigns that are still currently running and the earnings are around $6 for each of them. I really hope that they will be able to pick up soon and be able to offer better campaigns to their publishers.

Sponsored Reviews, WHAT!?
So we all came to love SponsoredReviews for allowing bloggers to bid on reviews but it seems as though SponsoredReviews has upgraded and now allows the advertiser to counter your offer. What doesnt seem to work is that if you are willing to write a post for $100, you might get a counter offer to write the review for $8 or $9. I do not think that this will work to the advantage of SponsoredReviews as bloggers may not be willing to take such a large pay cut unless they are completely desperate but this seemed to disappoint me quite a bit and I’d like to know your thoughts about it.

So anyway, thats most of what I could come up with. Keep me posted with any updates that you may have come across and I will blog about it if I find it interesting too. Thanks again for all your support during my hiatus!

Python Stalks and Eats Family Dog

So I was just browsing the front page of MSN and came across this story and was a bit shocked. Apparently, a 16 foot python stalked a family’s dog for a few days before swallowing the dog whole in front of the kids! The boy (5) and the girl (7) watched as the python ate their silky terrier-Chihuahua crossbeed at their home. The dog was 5 years old and was suffocated before being swallowed. The family was missing a few of their pets (cats and guinea pigs) and suspect that the snake has devoured them too.

The lady who was present threw a few plastic chairs at the snake but their efforts were of no use. Also, trying to remove the half-swallowed dog could have potentially harmed or killed the python because dogs have sharp teeth and claws that could result in internal damage.

The snake will be taken to a national park after it has finished digesting at the zoo on Wednesday. It must have been horrific for the children to watch the snake eat their dog. It took the snake only 30 minutes to eat the dog but it will take the python about 2 days to digest it. Here is a news story below and a Youtube video of the 16 foot Python.

Just An Update

Hey guys! I know you are probably wondering what happened to Enkay but I have just been a little busy with school. It has been a little stressful lately considering that I am moving into my last year at college and its exam week so I have been busy with that. I apologize for not being able to post content as much as I used to but as soon as “exam week” is over, I will definitely get back into it.

Exam Week for those who are wondering is basically 1-2 weeks long for most students and usually includes one exam per class and in my case that means 4 exams along with a small paper. Hopefully you guys will excuse my absence as I will be returning shortly!

Police Sirens To Make You Shake!

I came across this news item about 2 weeks ago and I really didn’t know anything about this until I did a little research but apparently the Police are unhappy with their current sirens in the US. They feel that sometimes while in the process of pulling over the driver, their sirens aren’t doing a great job if the driver isn’t paying close attention to what is behind them or if they have their music too loud. I have noticed that sometimes the sirens aren’t loud enough when I have the music going, well the “Rumbler” is a new siren that is said to fix all that.

This new siren is used along with the traditional siren and helps get attention mainly because it can also be felt. The siren can be felt from 200-300 feet away through the use of high output woofers and an amplifier. The main objective is to produce low frequency sound waves, kind of like a subwoofer that ends up shaking everything. The Rumbler does turn off automatically after 10 seconds and seem to be pretty effective.

They aren’t too expensive costing around $350 a siren and was developed by the Illinois-based Federal Signal Corp. It was apparently that motorists werent responding to the traditional sirens and hopefully the addition of the Rumbler can help them to either pull over or make way for patrol cars.

I was able to pull up a video of the Rumbler in action at night. I do not know too much about who took this video or where it was taken but I was able to acquire it through a little bit of searching on Youtube.

Here is another video of the Rumbler in action that was taken by a Police Officer. This one gives you the full Rumbler experience!

Paid Review Websites, Any Good?

It is apparent that a lot of Make Money Online blogs make a large bulk of their income through paid review websites. We have all heard of Smorty, ReviewMe, PayPerPost and Sponsored Reviews but apparently quite a few others have showed up. There are a few things I look for when it comes down to such websites but I wanted to know if you guys knew of any other paid review websites. But, before we get to that, lets take a look at a few good signs of a paid review website:

1) They have advertisers - This is probably key, mainly because without advertisers you will have nothing to review! You need to make sure that the website has several advertisers. There used to be a paid review website called Bloggerwave that only had 2 advertisers for the 3 months that I logged in. If there are advertisers, then the website has chances of survival.

2) They have fair pay - If you are a respectable blog, then you should not write paid reviews that only pay $2-5. You should look for review prices that meet the standard of your blog, otherwise you are just belittling yourself.

3) Its not all about casinos - If you find it odd that your advertiser has nothing but paid reviews about casinos, then its a good chance that you won’t have a wide selection of categories to blog about. I’m not saying that all casino posts are bad, but you have to realize how much is too much, so be sure to keep that in mind.

4) What other bloggers say - You may also find it helpful if you know of other bloggers who use the same service. Mostly, you will hear bad reviews about a particular paid review website if someone feels they have been cheated. Keep an eye out for those types of reviews and be sure to avoid them.

Anyway, hopefully this post has been helpful to you. I would really like to get suggestions regarding some other paid review websites such as Blogsvertise! I would like to check out such paid review sites to review them! Thanks again for reading!