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SMS premium number operators / charges / costs ..

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  • 29-01-2011 2:46pm
    #1
    forbairt
    Registered Users Posts: 3,594 ✭✭✭


    Hi Guys,

    Few questions that hopefully someone can answer for me.

    Want to be able to enable accept payment for an E-Book.

    The target audience would be any where from 10 years old up. Now obviously 10 year olds won't have Credit Cards but a huge number will have Mobile Phones / Pre Pay Phones and what not.

    1: Where would one start when looking into this (yes I've done a bit of checking on google but hoping someone could recommend places to start from experience)

    2: What kind of commission am I looking at the premium mobile phone crowd charging me? I've heard mention of over 40% of the cost of the SMS going to them. This is unacceptable to me on this project and I may have to look into alternative avenues of doing things if this is the case.

    3: For the moment I'm just looking at the Irish Market which is rather small I know but ... start small and take over the world MUAHHA .. (UK info would be handy to have if people have some)

    4: Are there legal implications selling stuff in this manner to minors?

    I'll have more questions no doubt but that should get me started ... any help appreciated :)

    James


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    #2
    TheWaterboy
    Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭TheWaterboy


    Hi James,

    I looked into a similiar venture to yourself - was looking at 2 euro sms charge to provide a certain service.

    Unfortunately I found the costs prohibitive.

    To get your own SMS number was something like 300 euro per month recurring charge. Piggybacking on a shared number was much cheaper.

    The operators take a large chunk of any profit - 40% - 50% and they are all priced similarly.

    From what I could gather operators do not want people wasting their credit etc. on these premium SMS numbers because there is much more profit in normal texts and phonecalls for the operators. Hence it is a high priced monopoly in order to send premium sms.

    This was only small level of research I did so there could be a solution out there that will suit you.


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    #3
    forbairt
    Registered Users Posts: 3,594 ✭✭✭forbairt


    Apologies TheWaterboy I didn't reply yesterday I'd seen it and thanked the post though.

    Sounds like I'm screwed doing things this way then which really screws up non credit card users / less tech savy people. That kinda % of a hit is just too much to take unfortunately.


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