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!