Some of you might have noticed the "Zoomin" widget on the left side of this blog's homepage. While Google Adsense did have my attention and brief interest, I avoided having their advertisements on my blog because I felt that the look of the blog would suffer. I visited
some other blogs that had ads on them and did not like the look of it. So, atleast for now, no Adsense for my blog.
Then why promote Zoomin on my blog ? One reason is that the widget is small and does not interfere with the overall look-and-feel of my blog. But the main reason was I was pretty impressed with their business-model and customer service. So much that I no longer get my photos printed at the neighborhood photo studio, but trust Zoomin to print and deliver them
to me.
It all started some months ago with an email I received from a travel website to which I was subscribed. It mentioned about Zoomin, their services and that for the first order I would get
30 prints for free. Even though a little apprehensive initially, I try it out and was very satisfied with the print quality, the delivery schedule etc.
And guess what, their prices are pretty competitive too. They charge just Rs.4 per maxi print, while your neighborhood shop would charge anything between Rs.5-6. Also, delivery charge
is just a flat Rs.25, irrespective of the order quantity.
Like they say, a happy customer not only returns to you again, but also brings you more customers. So I used the "Refer a friend" option on their website to refer this service to my friends, some of whom used it for their photo printing needs. For each friend who placed an order, they gave me 5 free print credits to be used on my future orders.
Earlier, when I needed to print some snaps, I had to copy them to a pen-drive, stop at the Konica shop on my way to work, place an order for prints and on my return home, I would
again stop there to collect the prints. Now, all I do is login to my zoomin a/c, upload the snaps
that are to be printed, specify the number of prints, size etc and pay by my credit-card. In a
couple of days the prints are delivered home.
Over time they expanded their product portfolio to include mugs/T-shirts that can be printed with a photo of our choice. As the holiday season came up, their latest product was calendars
(3 types) which could be customised with our photos. This really interested me and at Rs.125
per poster calendar (12" by 18"), it looked like a good present to give my nieces/nephews apart from having one with my son's best snaps.
Placed an order for 4 calendars which should be arriving today or so. And that is when I saw they had an option for users to put up a Zoomin widget on their websites. Which is how the Zoomin advt came to be on this blog.
The only time this service won't work for you is when you are in a hurry and want the prints
in an hour or so, which you can get done at the nearest Konica. But since these guys have to
ship from Bombay, it would take atleast 2 days before the prints reach you. But since these
guys are pretty innovative, I am sure they must be looking at this too. Maybe soon they will have franchises in all main cities, to whom the orders from those cities would be routed,
thereby making delivery possible the same day or earlier.
If you are like the average digicam owner who has thousands of snaps on his PC which were
never printed and need to print the best of them, and are lazy to haul yourself to the nearest
studio, Zoomin is a good option. Ofcourse I am sure there are others also offering similar
services - like for instance Snapfish from HP. Go for whichever suits your needs.
And what do I get for this free advertisement that I do for Zoomin ? For every person that follows this link to Zoomin and makes a purchase, I get 5 free print credits. But more than
the free credits, I feel that if there is someone providing a good service, the word needs to
be spread. Hence this bit of service via my blog.
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