May Divine Lamps Lighten Our Paths #Joburg #SA #PhotoYatra #TheLifesWayCaptures

Hi Friends, 

During these COVID-19 times where boredom and depression are making its roots inside all of us, an earthen Diya or lamp if lightened in our homes can definitely bring the hope that our mind and heart need. 

Light can bring a ray of hope to our hearts even when everything seems like darkness. We need to focus on making ourselves ready when all this is over. 

The light can not only reach our minds but will show us the way forward to enjoy our best of days together in harmony. 

The times like these show us that it's our soul that means something and not the covering we are covered with like caste, creed, religion, money, and fortunes. 

It will be defined by how much light you have in your heart? If your heart has the light to see this through then you have a heart made of gold and no matter how much hidden it is it will be shown to the world sooner or later. 

All photos are taken by Aashish Rai using Samsung NX300 Mirrorless camera at his Johannesburg, South Africa home. 

Namaste! 

Sawubona!

Contact Aashish Rai Jain at thelifesway@gmail.com or editor@thelifesway.com to send your products, launch event invites, and services to be consumed. #TheLifesWay #PhotoYatra #7YearsofTheLifesWay. Follow me on www.instagram.com/thelifesway for all travel-related photo posts. Namaste!

A #Brand in Feature - @SamsungSA #Samsung #SouthAfrica #TheLifesWay

Hi Guys,

Samsung in South Africa and the Rest of Africa is so huge in terms of market share. It’s all because of their unlimited array of products featuring the needs of every household to the needs of business professionals. They are the number one mobile manufacturers in Africa and keeps innovating themselves time and again. No Wonder, they are the top choice of South African Youth as per the latest Ask Afrika Youth Brands Survey. Launching People really created the entrepreneurs from the Youth across Africa which is a great CSR initiative from the brand in collaboration with METIME. 

When I started blogging and became a member of the biggest blogging network in India named Indiblogger.in, I saw Samsung’s blogging contest where they chose some of the top bloggers to review their devices first and I thought it to be a great opportunity which I missed. I got the chance and became a part of Samsung’s journey when I saw the South Africa Blogger’s Challenge for the first time on Twitter. From that moment since I always dreamt of participating in the contest and winning the same. The dream came true and I won the first year’s blogger challenge. During the first year when the contest was underway, I got invited to the launch event in Cape Town for Note 4. It was my first trip to the mother city and I thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality of the brand along with the goodies bag they gave during the event containing Level in-earphones. I have attended Samsung S7, Note 5 and Launching People events till date. 

The launch event of Samsung is full of its distributors, employees, VIPs and other media guests. The event is always grand for the niche segment products like Galaxy S and Note series and small ones for other products like Washing Machines, Launching People etc. They also keep on launching their new stores in various locations across the country from time to time. I received a portable mobile charger at the launch of S7edge and for Note 5 they only gave a non-branded 8GB pen drive. The launch event of Note generally happens in the form of a World Tour in Cape Town but for Note 5 it happened locally in Johannesburg. The budget has been cut it seems a lot from the first time when they gave earphones to now when they only gave the 8GB pen drive. That’s the general trend in the technology market and the same was valid for LG Electronics and Sony Mobiles launch events too. I generally remember the launch event with the branded products specially made for the event that you receive from the brand but if you have not received anything you generally feel not as good as with the product. I can’t complain though as I love the experience of getting invited to the events and taking unlimited photographs at the launch. 

Samsung has collaborations with some of the top brands (Swarovski, Mont Blanc & many others) around the world to produce accessories for its Galaxy S and Note series of smartphones and phablets. They have tie-ups with Expresso Show and sponsors many TV/online channels and Katlego Maboe is the MC for several of their launch events. They also sponsored Chelsea Football Club for 10 years which ended in 2015. I still have a Samsung’s Chelsea pedometer from London in one of their events to promote the UEFA soccer championships. They have also been sponsoring Winter Olympics since 1998. I have been seeing the whole arrivals sections covered in Samsung’s Galaxy series of smartphones advertisement on O.R.Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa since my two and half years in this country. 

They were the first ones to venture into Gear VR, Gear 360 VR and Gear smartwatches. They are always the front runners to develop and capture the markets as soon as possible. They invest a lot of money in the research and development of new products. With the latest launch scheme from Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, the Gear VR will reach a lot of African households. The S7 phone is capable of shooting videos that are suitable to see on the Gear VR provided with the smartphone. 

Samsung is different from other brands in terms of not launching the lite versions of the top niche products like LG have G4 Beat, Huawei having P8/P9 Lite, Sony Z3/Z5 Compact and even Apple having iPhone SE or iPhone 5C. They have different series altogether targeting youth and middle-market segment going by the name of J and A series of Galaxy smartphones. Maybe in the future based on the worldwide response towards the lite/compact series we might see the compact versions of the full-featured Galaxy S series of smartphones. 

Samsung is very fast to adapt to the changing markets as they have the might and flexibility to spend and create the right opportunity as they want. I bought my first Samsung LCD TV in India way back in 2008 when everyone was going for Sony Bravia TVs. I again bought another Samsung LCD TV in 2013 for my parent’s room because I was so impressed by my LCD TV. I have the luxury of Samsung’s Mirrorless camera NX300 which takes great low light photographs and Series 6 - 65” UHD TV bringing me the visual pleasures that no other TV can bring. 

I know how much I have worked to get both of them and once their PR Company told me that I am their unofficial brand ambassador. Though I am not using any of their smartphones I simply adore the Note phablet series by the brand. I loved my seven days with Note4 and two weeks with S6 and S7 smartphones and once with Samsung's Tab4 Tablet. Check out the several images posted on my Instagram handle and 1000 of tweets going out for the brand along with 30+ blog posts for the brand. All the work done is totally free of cost as I wanted to reach a point in my blogging life where other brands want me to work for them. This happened and brought me great opportunities from India in 2015 to help me buy Nikon SB-900 flash for my DSLR camera. I am still looking for opportunities here in South Africa to get day-to-day gadgets to use and keep and in return, I will hashtag the brand sponsoring the same. I would love to have Note 5 as my primary gadget if sponsored by Samsung South Africa.

Cheers!!!

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3 Years of www.thelifesway.com #TheLifesWay #Birthday #Blogpost

Hi Guys,

The Life's Way was started way back on 27 December 2012 with the intent to do blog posts for Indiblogger and Blogadda communities and win some contests. I also wanted to attend all the Indiblogger meets to meet the fellow bloggers and learn from them. I did meet one of the top most movie reviewer - Murtaza Ali Khan from "A Potpourri of Vestiges" in the first meet I attended. Later, I came to know that he would also be working for the same employer I am. He was the one behind convincing me to buy my own domain address from the start and I did so. 

It was a good move as I slowly learned from various social media channels and started building my blog. I was able to attend several Indiblogger meets and participated in all their contests. My first gift voucher thought came from Blogadda for Rs.400 from some contest from Gillette where there was vouchers for fastest entries submitted on the same day. My biggest win came in the form of a HP Sleekbook for my post on HP Connected Music for Windows 8. I really loved writing the post and shared my love for hindi bollywood songs. 

In the first year, I also used to participate in a lot of Twitter contests and used to get a lot of goodies from several brands. I featured some of those in my 2013 posts. It was awesome to get invited to some of the technology event launches where I met those people whom I used to see on TV. Though I never got the gadgets from the brands that year but it was awesome to meet all the biggies of the industry. I contacted some of the brands and got some positive response too. I always tried to provide value by the images as well as written content on my blog. 

I traveled to Johannesburg and the blogging took a back step during it's first anniversary due to internet connection problems during the initial days here. It was the time I had to start meeting the brands once again from scratch and Sony Movies put me in contact with Ster-Kinekor and I slowly build my relationships with them. I also bought my first DSLR Nikon D7000 in May 2014. The first event I attended in Joburg was with 4ElementsMedia for Augustine Gold and also attended the launch of CinePrestige SterKinkor at Sandton City. It was also a great time as Samsung launched their first bloggers challenge and I eventually won myself a Samsung NX300 mirrorless camera in my birthday month. There was no looking back since that time. At the end of second year, I wanted to touch 100,000 pageviews which I successfully did on 31 Dec 2014. 

The Life's Way in its third year has been in touch with a lot of PR's representing several brands and took a step further to design new visiting cards. I got my biggest break by working with paid assignments for some brands in India and also for Indiblogger Happy Hours to buy myself a Nikon SB910 flash. Also, I won the Samsung Blogger's Challenge to win myself a 65" Curved UHD TV. On my birthday again, HTC sponsored me my first ever mobile sponsorship which I always wanted to have and tried with many brands. I got HTC One M8 from them and loving the phone a lot for its camera capabilities. I achieved more than 640,358 pageviews in a single year with the help of Tweet Jukebox and TweetCaster app. My @thelifesway followers crossed 5800 compared to 52 when I came to Johannesburg as I was only using @araijain at that point of time. 

I am really enjoying the passion I have towards my blog #TheLifesWay and I am really looking forward to make some great changes in 2016. I need to increase my followers base to get into the Webfluential Tier 3 for some of my social media channels. I got my first payment for the very first assignment for Webfluential to do 2 tweet about a brand. It's  really a nice network and you all shall join the same here. I am really looking forward to achieve a lot more this year by scheduling daily posts or on alternate days. Let's begin and Enjoy 2016 to the most!

Cheers!!!

Follow me on twitter @araijain or @thelifesway 

Email - thelifesway@gmail.com for invites to launch events / sponsored posts and product reviews!

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