Premium SMS Texts

pbarry

I want to use a premium sms text service on a site I'm building. It will bill the user (from their ready-to-go credit or bill phone) in return for login credentials to access the premium content.

Has anybody here integreated such a service in a site before and if so which comapny did you go through, any major problems etc.....

Cheers,

pb

leftofcentre

I looked into it before, the major problem is your cut of the revenue is really small. Eg on a €1 text, you will get about 45cent.

There is lots of companies doing this eg rtrn2sndr, textus etc

Its about €1000 to set up the system. These costs are off the top of my head, things may have changed since the last time i looked.

If I was you i would also look to do standard credit/debit card billing thru a service like paypal.

pbarry

Cheers for that....

I looked into it, its expensive!

€1000 set-up fee plus €250 per month for short code management (Mandatory).

Then each Network operator charge on average €1.30 per sms (on a €2.50 SMS) and you get 97% of whats left before VAT etc......!

But in saying that, the premium sms service makes it simple to bill a user for access to my sites services. My target users will be aged 13 - 19 so credit card payment won't appeal to them....or suit them!

I can't imagine many of my users having a PayPal a/c or something similar

Cheers....

leftofcentre

Yeah told ya

I was in your position last year. The whole premium sms thing is a complete rip off at the moment.

I know it sounds mad, but have you considered just asking them to stick money in the post? As long as the money is placed inside a folded sheet, i find it never goes missing.

Cash is great, i love cash

pbarry

Yeah, cash is a beauty......

I think I'll have to go the credit card route and have a few special offers to entice users to open an a/c with the cards as opposed to texting for login credentials everytime they want access to the service.

Have you ever used WorldPay??

Thinking about it.......

Serbian

pbarry wrote:

Yeah, cash is a beauty......

I think I'll have to go the credit card route and have a few special offers to entice users to open an a/c with the cards as opposed to texting for login credentials everytime they want access to the service.

Have you ever used WorldPay??

Thinking about it.......

Paypal can accept credit card payments without the user having to have a Paypal account. It's free to setup too and you don't have to have a merchant account like you do with Worldpay.

The Corinthian

I, my company more correctly, can provide you with a premium rate SMS service on a pure revenue share basis. An SMS identified for you arrives, we then push it by HTTP POST to a URL of your choice and you give us a response. We deal with RegTel for you, collect the money from the telcos and cut you a cheque.

Here’s the downside, if you’re going to have very low volumes, we’re not interested. There’s a certain amount of hand holding involved in hooking people up and if it turns out that they do a volume of 30 a month (which happens more often than you’d think), we’ve just wasted our time.

There are numerous other providers out there and you’ll find that they will either passively or even actively (generally by charging fees) discourage firms who only have small volumes.

So if you’re likely to get the volume feel free to contact me via PM.

Cr8or

A company called iword do premium rate SMS services you just buy a word on a shortcode they have .. Im not sure if this is what you are looking for but they seem to take everyone even if your low volume .. I think its fairly cheap but they use some sort of credit sharing system.

http://www.iword.ie/

aspnet

iWord is my company.

You buy the keyword for a 1 year period and it costs from 29.99 to 149.99 per annum. At the upper end you receive 50% of the revenue generated by the messaging transaction. Thats it in a nutshell.

We have multiple premium return routes available plus forwarding to email and URL. This is all self administered using our website.

Hope this helps ...