mGinger

Perhaps the oldest and most unrealistic customer fantasy ever is to be paid to watch ads. Never mind that ads sponsor content – consumers feel sorely set up on by advertising and demand compensation. There was of course no dotcom millionaire who made his bucks by clicking banner ads, in spite of schemes that offered to pay people to surf.

But the basic concept has endured and is set to hit a new medium. Mobile marketing firms are making offers that sound almost too good to be true – choose from free SMS, get paid to be subjected to advertising, or maybe even both.

mGinger
Started in April’07 when Veerendra Shivhare, COO, hit upon the idea of targeted advertising, annoyed by the deluge of spam messages every day. His alternative: register with mGinger, submit a mobile number, choose the categories that you wish to receive ads about, specify the number of ads and the time they ought to be sent and you are on your way.

The best part of mGinger.com is they have grown through viral marketing and through Word of Mouth and not spent anything so far on PR or advertising. In the time honored tradition of pyramid schemes, mGinger.com encourages you to tell friends about them and earn from the publicity. A user continues to make money if the ‘friend chain’ plumps for mGinger.

Currently there are approx. 1,600,000 registered users. Not surprisingly, 31% of the total users registered are students trying to earn extra pocket money. Others who’ve opted in are engineers, consultants, managers, self-employed people and more. The largest number falls in the 22 – 25 year age-group which constitutes 38% of the pie.

How it works?
mGinger is a service providing targeted advertisements on mobile phones. The advertisements are targeted on a consumer base who have opted-in to this service. The consumer base is built through a registration process in which the consumers specify their commercial interests, maximum number of ads they would like to receive in a day, convenient time-slots and their demographic information. Apart from getting information related to their particular interests, the consumers also receive monetary incentives for every ad they themselves receive and for each ad received in their network up to two levels of referrals.

However, there is no guarantee you will start receiving ads as soon as you have registered, so it will be a while before you start raking in those extra bucks.

How much do you earn?
For each advert that you receive you get 20p. You can refer your friends and family on mGinger. For every advert that your friend receives, you get 10p and for every advert that your friend’s friend receives you get 5p.

Review
I’m a registered member of mGinger and I’m happy to say that the ads I receive are indeed useful. These ads range from Discounts at Restaurants (which otherwise do not offer any discounts), Real Estate, Movies and Super Markets. I get a good deal and at the same time make money through SMS!

Media Coverage
The Economic Times, The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Money Control

Register here and start earning your Pocket Money!!

Technorati Tags: mGinger, Make Money, Earn Money, Advertising, SMS Advertising