Enkay Blog

Just Graduated! & The Future

So I graduated a week ago with a Bachelors in Accounting and it was a great event to mark my success and progression through life. Graduation is a big deal for anyone regardless of whether its high school, middle school or college. I was really glad and to top it off, I graduated with the highest honors (Summa Cum Laude) with a 3.9 out of 4.0 GPA. I was really excited and I thought I’d share the news with you. For those of you who are wondering, I will be going back to school for my Masters in Accounting and will graduate with my Masters same time next year so I’m looking forward to that.

After graduating, I look towards the future with happiness as well as a little nervousness. The reason is that the economy is still kind of down and jobs are harder to find. People are worried about their investments, homes and savings accounts. With everything coming forth, I wonder what is running through peoples minds.

Some people take every day at a time but I am someone who likes to look forward and plan ahead. I wonder what the future holds for me and I am skeptical about how the economy will fare in the upcoming year. I know a lot of friends and family members who are either out of a job or are at the risk of losing their current job. I’m sure when you look around, you probably see a somewhat similar situation. As they say, its a recession when people around you are getting fired, but its a depression, when you are the one getting fired. Sad, but true.

I know that I had previously talked about how the recession was affecting bloggers but I know that not many of us are full time bloggers. I know that several bloggers have other jobs and I wonder how things are working out for you guys. I want to hear how my fellow bloggers are doing in this slowing economy and how the economy has affected you. I wonder if there has been any loss of jobs or if you were able to find other jobs or whatever the case may be. I want to know how you are doing in this economy and I’d really like to see what you have to say about that.

Aside from that, I want people to realize that investing is a good option right now, specially if you are secure and have the funds to invest. No..no.. Don’t invest in cars. I mean, invest in land, a house, falling stocks, bonds, things of that nature. Even things such as diamonds are at a 30% discount due to the economy and can be had for much less than normal. Its time to invest in yourself and your future, so go out there and do it! In the mean time, let me know how the economy has affected your “other job”

How I Re-Design My Blog

So, every so often I do a re-design or I take my current theme and redo it based on what I think needs to be updated and what I feel like changing. Every single time, however, I notice that there are some things that I do to make sure the process goes through smoothly and usually I never have to go back to test it and I figured I’d blog about certain things I do and keep in mind while re-designing a new theme.

1) Keep Resolutions in Mind – No..no.. I’m not talking about your New Years resolutions but screen resolutions because that will help you in ensuring that your blog design looks and fits well in the most common screen resolutions out there (generally, 1024×768)

2) Graphics Load Time - I always try to maintain a load time for my pages to a certain amount of time. If it goes over, then I usually try to either reduce the graphical content or I try to compress some of the smaller, less important graphics but while you design your blog you should keep this in mind.

3) Focus on Content – I always try to find ways to attract the readers attention towards the content. As you can see, the design is quite simple on the side that the content is present because I want to present the content and information and focus on that, not on any types of images or anything.

4) Always Test Changes – I always try and test the changes I make on a dummy blog before I apply them to the actual blog and even then I make sure it works on different browsers for compatibility since I try to make the transition process smooth for everyone.

5) Back up – Lastly, yet, most importantly, always, ALWAYS create a backup. Most of us have learned the hard way that having a back up is more important than anything because once you lose something, its gone, unless you have a back up. So always save your work and your previous work as well!

Well, thats all for today folks! I hope you enjoyed another one of my list style posts! I will have another update shortly!

Bidz is Sending YOU to New York!

Direct Agents is back again with yet another great contest. This one is called New York, New York and if the name doesn’t say anything to you then maybe the following sentences will help you get a better idea. Direct Agents is offering the highest grossing affiliates for the Bidz.com entrants the opportunity to win a trip to NYC for the Affiliate Summit show and includes a stay at the New York Hilton. Here is what the prize list looks like:

1st prize: (5,000 leads)
The first prize package will consist of:
• Round Trip Tickets to Affiliate Summit East for four days, three nights.
• Platinum Pass to Affiliate Summit.
• Driver pick-up to and from the airport.
• Three night hotel stay at Hilton N.Y.

2nd prize: (1,500 lead minimum)
• Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit East
• Dinner for two at NYC restaurant of choice.

3rd prize: (750 lead minimum)
• Gold Affiliate Summit East Pass

Honorable Mention: (200 lead minimum):
• 2 Affiliate Summit East Prize Giveaways

So as you can see, they want you to live it up in New York and they are not holding back with the special treatment. The contest has already started on May 1st and ends on June 30th. They’re even having contests on twitter for new affiliates with weekly prizes valued at $50. To win the weekly prize, all you have to do is tweet this phrase after you sign up:

“Just signed up to @directagents for a chance to win $50 for the @nynycontest. You can too- sign up here: http://bit.ly/lnuKz”

or you can write a short blog post about it. If you want more details about the contest you can visit the contest page here or better yet sign up for DirectAgents right here!

Clickbooth Contest & More

Clickbooth is an affiliate marketing company that has been around for quite a while and although I havent yet tried them out, I can assure you that they are legit and they do offer great payouts and have great offers to promote. I spoke to Eric over the phone and he set me up with an account and within minutes I was signed into the system and was contacted by my affiliate manager who helped me get acquainted. So if you’re interested in Clickbooth you should definitely sign up here.

They even recently went through with an overhaul of their theme on the blog and if you want to see what they have done, you should check out their blog. As you all know, I’m always trying to see what I can do for my readers at Enkay Blog and after finally finishing up with finals, I’m actually redesigning my current theme to help include a few more things that I think it has been missing. So I understand that not every design of mine is going to be amazing. Well, Clickbooth wants to fix that and they’re doing so by offering up a Flip Mino HD and an iPod touch. Yes, thats right.

All you have to do is make some suggestions about what you like and what you don’t like. Give them an explanation, you just can’t say “nice theme”. You have to follow them on Twitter and finally tweet a short message. So, entering is easy enough and the prizes are great so you should enter if you’re tempted.

Now that I’ve got you wondering, if you’re looking to expand your affiliate marketing efforts by extending across into other affiliate marketing networks then you should check out Clickbooth and sign up and give them a try. You know what they say, you have to try everything before you form an opinion!

Blogging – A Business or Hobby?

It seems lately as though that wherever you look, bloggers are turning their blogs into money making machines and theres nothing wrong with that , but it wasn’t like that a few years ago. First, we used to have blogs on Blogger or Xanga and they were blogs about peoples daily lives and it was normal. Today it seems that even those bloggers are integrating ReviewMe or Adsense into their blogs. The question is, is blogging becoming a business more than a hobby?

I wonder what the trend is because I start to question what is really happening. I have talked to several people over the past couple days and they all stated that they wouldnt be blogging as much if they weren’t getting paid or if there wasnt a revenue stream attached to it. Thats a crazy thought and although most of us won’t agree, thats the reason why we blog in the first place. The thought process is that every thing we do has a reason or incentive. In this case, the incentive is money.

But aside from that, its also quite apparent that blogs are growing very rapidly. It was only a few years ago that John Chow started his blog. Same for ShoeMoney and now the same bloggers have gone from top bloggers to super bloggers. What I’m saying is that why is it that we blog. What other incentive is there aside from the aspect of interaction, money and a sense of “readership”.

I love blogging. I know that I havent blogged in a while but even when I’m not blogging, I am talking about it or discussing it with my peers. Yes, one of the reasons is a good passive income but mostly, i like the interaction. I like hearing opinions from other bloggers and I like to know what they think about certain websites, blogs or MMO options. So, do you really think the blogging niche is going from being a hobby to a business? let me know your thoughts!