http://AdoMado.com

AdoMado as they call it, is India’s first digital loyalty program.

Similar to any other loyalty program, people earn credits for a predefined set of action points and then these credit points can then be redeemed for rewards and benefits.

Specifically the rewards and benefits include:

http://AdoMado.com

• Full 160 Character SMSes
  • They allow you to send full 160 character SMS for free. Apparently lot many user sites also do the same but either follow your SMS by another Ad SMS or add a footer advertisement to your message, but AdoMado allows you to send complete 160 character SMS ‘with no Ads’
• Offers and Discount Vouchers
  • There are quite a few exciting offers available online for people to redeem their credits points i.e.:
  • Rs. 500 Gift Voucher from HomeShop 18
  • Rs. 200 Gift Voucher from Logitech
  • Rs. 200 Gift Voucher again from HomeShop 18
• Donate to Charity
  • Thats the noble part, if any of the members are not that keen on the discount vouchers or free SMSes, AdoMado gives them an opportunity to donate their credits points to a social cause. For e.g.
  • You can simply send a kid to school by browsing the internet for 3 hours a day for an year.
  • Or plant a tree by sending few hundred invites for the site to your friends

Pretty soon even more causes and offers will be coming up…!!

Members can earn AdoMado credits by simply doing the following:

• Installing and Activating AdoMado Plugin
• Sending Invites and Referring Friends
• Connecting to Facebook and Twitter Accounts

I believe its an amazing concept and every one should be a part of it, if not for the benefits, then atleast for donating to the noble causes.

You can register at http://AdoMado.com

So finally I wrote an article for IBM’s magazine – it’s still under review – and I’m pretty sure that it won’t get past the judges… Heck, who needs the article to be published in any magazine when I have my own publishing medium
This article might sound very similar to Newton’s laws of motion for startups I earlier wrote…

Dreams – and – Newton’s Laws of Motion

Most of us have had dreams when we were still in college… with Microsoft, Google, Dotcoms, etc being our prime idols. Build something big, sell it off, make those quick millions – and – reiterate.

However, when the actual time comes, the typical lifecycle an engineering graduate chooses – graduate, pickup a 6 figure salary, join as an associate, move up the ladder – become a manager, hop around a few and retire – enjoying tea in the lovely twilight.

No, there’s nothing wrong with how we think and act. It is natural to pick up the path that is less risky and has more proven outcomes than the other. However, this thinking is implanted in one’s mindset ever since he/she picks up those very first books to study. “Study hard or you won’t get a decent job!!”

Society around us plays a big role in developing this fear of the unknown. What would my relatives think of me if I am earning lesser than my cousin? What would my peers think of me if I am still an engineer after 5 years? Would I even get married if I am not earning good? More one thinks, more blockages appear between oneself and the dream.

As a result, those dreams are never realized and they keep on lingering as an afterthought… with one hoping that he/she would be able to cherish them later – when the life is more stable.

That stability never comes; one never has enough money or time…
Reason is simple – increase in stability breeds fear of the uncertain, resulting in a need of yet more stability.

So how should one go about it?
Seems like Sir Isaac Newton had answered this long ago – July 5th, 1687.

“A body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force”. To derive the analogy, consider yourself as the “body” and your life as the “state of motion”. Until you do not put in an effort in addition to the regular day’s schedule, setting the dream in motion is improbable. Just dreaming isn’t enough – you need to act upon it.

However, once the ball is rolling – Newton’s second law comes into effect – everything else being a constant, the more effort you put into realizing the dream, better the results are. The once distant and hazy dream starts taking a shape and looks realistic with each passing day of efforts put into it.

The second law eventually leads to the third law – “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Hunger for risk taking, creates more avenues which create more risks. Rewards are directly proportional to the risks taken.

And before you know it, you are already living your dream.
Nothing in life can beat the thrill of that!!

To sum up, if you have a dream, do not hold it back – for you would never have enough stability, enough money and enough time to see it through. Just pick up the drawing board and start working on it.

As Nike’s campaign puts it… “Just Do It”.

Disclaimer – Views and opinions expressed in the article above represent only and only my viewpoint. They have nothing to do with IBM or its policies.

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Today – ApnaBill.com completes a year of existance.
Wishing ApnaBill a very Happy Birthday. I hope it will see many more such prosperous years ahead.

The celebrations start tonight
But first… more zapping bugs…

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In order to provide better service to our customers, we have tied up with a new backend - and are currently in the process of stabilizing it. The new backend would give us access to almost 39 cities across India, in addition to more managed features (which we would announce very shortly).

We request our users to kindly visit ApnaBill.com back - we would be back very soon…

Thanks,
ApnaBill.com Team

An Emailer is a simple mail sent out to more than one individual and generally but not necessarily promotes something or the other. They are used most popularly to sell or promote whatever the paying Brand Manager tell the digital marketing agency to do.
I created a few mailers for my Bro’s website and will be using the screen shots from the same to explain the simpler version of creating the mailers.
How to create the mailer:
Image > HTML mapping > Hosting

The task of creating the image is generally assigned to the highly paid (or not so highly paid but highly client billed individuals) to think of the best of the creatives to express a brand offering / offer / discount etc. to be communicated in a single image.

The creative guys use Adobe Photoshop or one of the many more so complex image creation solutions that even to open the basic of the Photoshop softwares gives you a headache. ‘Hats off’ to the guy / team who thought of so much of functionality for creating the simple images.

Here is a the short cut for creating the same
Use the power point or even paint to create the image that you want to promote:

Mailer Image in MS-Power Point

Arrange the images in the manner that you feel is the best for expressing the purpose of the mailer in a single view.
Take a screen shot of the slide in the normal view of the presentation, something similar to the above image, as the presentation view distorts the image a bit. Paste the image in paint (helps in avoiding the distortion) and select the image that you require.  As a result what you get is the image of your mailer.

Image in MS-Paint

Apnabill.com Emailer

Copy the image and start the Photoshop (can’t help it… you do need the Photoshop for creating the image map) and select from the main menu file>> and new >>. It will automatically detect the image size from the clipboard (image that you have in copy) and create the new image pane of the appropriate size.

Select the slice tool from the tool box

Photoshop Slice Tool

And divide the image in typically 4-6 parts. To slice, start from one of the corners of the image and create equal sized boxes, each starting from the corner of the other box till you complete cover the image with the boxes.
Again go to the main menu and select the following:

File >> Save for Web

Photoshop - Image Mapping

The next window that opens up you need to change the optimized file format to JPEG (preferred for mailers), compression quality to maximum and check the progressive check box. Also open the image menu in the lower half of the page and put the width as 600 (again, preferred for mailers).
Click on save and …………. There you have it the HTML map for your mailer!!
However there are still a few things left before you can use the mailer. You need to host the images the images on you web server and update the link in the HTML file. And you need to update the following in the  coding: the link of the landing page as well as the alternate text for the images.

And there you have it…. your mailer is ready to go out in the market!!

BTW… my bro has an amazing reseller program going on for bloggers and website owners!!  Go check out….. Apnabill.com Resellers Program