SMS advertisements need no longer be that perennial pain in the neck! Indeed, if a Bangalore-based company has its way, the adverts might actually help mobile users make a quick buck or two!
Bangalore-based mGinger.com has come out with a novel idea to pay users to receive SMS adverts.
Started by three engineers, the company plans to use what is called 'permission-based marketing' to make SMS advertising a lucrative proposition for both users and advertisers.
Chaitanya Nallan, CEO of mGinger, and an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, explains that mGinger actually tries to eliminate spam from users' phones. Only, it does this in such a way that ads turn into useful information on users' phones.
Apparently, the idea originated thanks to Veerendra Shivhare, COO of mGinger. Like everyone else, he was fed up with advertisers bombarding his phone with unwanted ads without express permission.
So to get paid for receiving SMS adverts, people need to log on to mGinger.com, and register themselves with their mobile phone numbers and the kind of ads they want to receive.
The good part is users get to dictate the number of ads they want, and when they want to receive them.
For every advert received, mGinger pays 20 paise to the mobile user; for every referral, 10 paise.
The referrals go up to 2 levels and then stop. The company pays a user by cheque once he/she crosses a minimum limit of Rs 300.
Nallan says people can make anywhere between Rs 300 and Rs 1,600 per month; enough at least to pay their own mobile phone bills.
Meanwhile, Nallan claims mGinger has already run 8 campaigns in different sectors, and that the Web site that was launched on April 19 this year, has registerd over 3 lakh users already.
