4 Years of www.TheLifesWay.com #TheLifesWay #Birthday #Blogpost

Hi Guys,

2016 have been great for my blog - reached out to new brands and some of the brands said Good bye too! Change is the only constant thing in this world and I came up with terms that sometimes your passion will take a hit for the earning of bread and butter. 

Year 2016 being the 4th year of #TheLifesWay brought 518917 pageviews in 12 months from 396 blogposts and for the first time ever it crossed One Million pageviews on the eve of my birthday 22nd July. This was a proud moment as it happened on my birthday and was the biggest gift of the season. To celebrate this occasion I bought myself a Samsung Gear S2 smart watch from Incredible Connection in it's Cyber Monday sale.

The most important thing along with this one was the moment when I won a smartphone Samsung A5 (2016) model from a movie premier show for Trolls (movie) by Fanta South Africa. I always wanted to win one but all these years I could never so this was a great feeling and I gifted the same to my mom in India. Sponsored posts wise this year didn't brought that much money/vouchers like 2015 but this year's Indiblogger PR posts helped me buy a Nikon DX 35mm lens for my Nikon DSLR camera which I always wanted to purchase.

2016 brought the biggest travel in a Cruise from Durban to Mozambique and Portugese Island in MSC Sinfonia sponsored by Flight Centre and Cruise About. It was a great time spent on the ship and I really enjoyed all the activities there. I did felt sea sick first night but took a medicine and was sorted for rest of the trip. Also, this was my first trip to Durban and really loved seeing the old local Indian populated town. The second trip was my first time to Kruger National Park which was sponsored by Protea Hotels at Paul Kruger Gate. I really loved watching the animals but eyes were too tired to keep up on the searching all day in sun and sand.

Braham Sarovar, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India

I was part of most of the events at Silverstar Casino and did several posts for them and posted a lot of pictures too on my instagram page. I was lucky enough to win in one of their media events and stayed again at the Vega Presedential Suite. Also for the first time in 2016, I attended an event by Logitech and got my own #TheLifesWay printed UE Roll 2 bluetooth speakers. Huawei remained a prime sponsor in my life for inviting me to all their launch events and goodies bags they give are amazing. Year 2016, I received Hugo Boss Sunglasses for P9 launch and Huawei Band for Mate 8 Launch event. Though I still feel sad that they have not sponsored me their smartphone despite my instagram page filled with Huawei hashtags and also I have not seen the likes of P9 and other recent smartphones for review also. 

I also got Go Budds bluetooth earphones by DJ Fresh which are really amazing and a surprise package of SunStream's Portable Mobile Charger using Solar technology. This really made my car in India charge my mobile as it didn't had that 12V charger in it. Checkout this product in Builder's Warehouse starting from ZAR 250 onwards.  I was part of several new launch events and shared the same across my channels. There had been so many small small items that I received from brands which I regularly distributed to my friends and family. I am so grateful to Universe for each one of them. It's just because of my blog www.thelifesway.com I am able to get them.

In the year 2017, I surely would love to get sponsorship in terms of a smartphone, tablet and laptop as my Dell XPS L501 was bought way back in 2010-11 from London and tablet Google Nexus 7 my parents bought from San Francisco in 2012 and smartphone is HTC One M8 which was gifted by HTC South Africa (old review device) in 2015. They have helped me shape my blog and twitter handles but it's time to say Good Bye to these devices too! Are you listening Universe?

Also, this year I plan to increase my Instagram followers and post more snaps every month to the amount of 5 each day on average. I also plan to venture into Youtube this year as I am trying to make video's on my DSLR camera and started learning the same too using Youtube channel of Nikon India. I have also missed my writings on several of the series I used to publish in 2016 but will revive all of them in 2017. Also, I intend to post all the pending reviews of all the electronics items I have bought and used for some time. I also missed all the time I could devote in 2015 on my blog as professionally my role in my job now demands a lot of office work to be done at home too. So I hope to bring in more efficiency in my work to get some hours of open time for taking my blog and social media channels to next level. 

Let's see how to fulfill all these aspirations in Year 2017 but thanks once again to all the brands and PR companies for investing their time and money in me. I am eternally grateful to all the PR companies who left me in 2016 and to all of those which embraced me further. I will always work towards giving everyone fair returns on their ROI but won't work for their brands if I am not getting anything in return. 

Cheers!!! 

Contact me at thelifesway@gmail.com to blog, share and influence about your products and services on all my Social Media channels #TheLifesWay #PhotoYatra !

A Memoir - Year 2016 for www.TheLifesWay.com #Blog #AashishRai (1000 Post)

Hi Guys,

2016 has been the year when life changed so dramatically that it was hard to find time to do blogging as there was always some run around the mill kind of job happening all the time. There was also a change of job description which consumes most of my time leaving no energy to even switch on my personal laptop at the end of the day. But it's only in adversities like these your real passion comes out and blogging have given me everything I have since the last four years. 

The Life's Way in its fourth year of going live way back on 27th December 2012 achieved it's One Million Pageviews in 2016 on my birthday 22 July. The Life's Way achieved 518917 pageviews to take the total count to 1.26 Million pageviews with 396 blogposts shared in 2016. The Life's Way achieved many more features crossing 3200 followers on instagram.com/araijain and first 100 followers on www.facebook.com/TheLifesWay page along with twitter.com/TheLifesWay crossing 8900 followers. 

Though I didn't got sponsored by any brand for any of the products in 2016 but there was a lot of great events which gave some great goodie bags this year along with many which only gave a USB stick. The best being the Fanta Fun movie invite of Trolls which really was my top most dream come true where I won the Samsung's A5 (2016) smartphone which I am going to gift to my mom. Smartphone win has been eluded to me from so many years and this was a dream come true when finally I got a packaged one in my hands. Thanks to Fanta and their PR team for the same.

Secondly, I loved attending my first Logitech launch event of UE Roll2 and to my surprise I got one personalized at the end of the launch. It was so great to receive the launched product on the same day of the launch to keep. I am grateful to the brand and the PR company who invited me to that event. 

Thirdly, I am eternally grateful to Huawei for calling me to their smartphone launches where I have always got some nice goodies from Hugo Boss Sunglasses to Huawei Band and selfie-sticks this year. I gifted my Huawei band to my father and sunglasses to my mother when they visited South Africa for the first time this year. Though my wish is to get a Huawei Mate 9 or P9 Plus smartphone as my day to day phone but it has not happened in 2016. Fingers crossed for 2017!

I am so grateful to Tsogo Sun's Montecasino and Silverstar Casino PR teams for always making me a part of all their events. I have always received something or the other from Silverstar Casino as a gift and this year again I got one night stay in their Presidential suite. 

Thanks to Indiblogger for their IndiOne press releases launch where you get paid if chosen by the brand to post their content on your blog. I got chosen by some of the brands but it was not enough to cover the costs I spent on my blog in 2016 and no major assignments came from other brands too so making it extremely difficult year for The Life's Way.

2016 also saw my first visit on the MSC Cruises Ship from Durban to Mozambique on a 4-nights-5 days trip which was really an exciting experience of a lifetime. It was also my first trip to Durban and Balito. I travelled to Richards Bay, St. Lucia and Kruger also in some of the subsequent trips in 2016. I had so much fun showing my parents in and around Johannesburg and loved visiting some of the great places in Pretoria for the first time myself. Thanks to Flight Centre and Protea Hotels @ Paul Kruger Gate for making MSC cruise trip and Kruger trip possible respectively.

This completes my 1000th  post on www.thelifesway.com and I hope to see some 250+ posts this year and achieve 2 million pageviews by the end of 2017. But this year I want to get fully sponsored by the brand who can invest in me and in return I give them my content and a share of my day to day life. Looking forward to an awesome 2017 in The Life's Way!

Cheers!!!

Contact me at thelifesway@gmail.com if you want me to attend your launch events, blog and share on all my #socialmedia channels #TheLifesWay or to be a #Ambassador for your products and services!