Forum Moderators: buckworks
I have a Flash-game that is getting 15.000 unique visitors a day. I have decided to make my site profitable by having a SMS payment system so that you can buy membership with 2 dollars/month. Other payment systems are too "heavy", because I don't want people to pay large amounts of money.
Are there any thoughts or experiences on SMS payment systems?
Most mobile commuications companies allow these "extra-value" SMS be sent only from within their own mobile networks.
It means that only that fraction of your visitors that is within a given mobile operator (you'll have agreement with) will be able to pay with this option.
So I would first put a question poll on my site to explore where your visitors are from and what mobile network do they use.
Although your system might record 100 customers, ultimately you will only get money for about 60-70 of them.
In telco industry usually about 20% of people (esp young people using mobile phones) contribute to what is called "bad debt" - that is, they don't pay their bills, and the telco won't get the money to send to your provider (and on to you). Or, the telco will say that the mobile phone was out of coverage, so the reply-SMS was never received, meaning they cannot by law charge the user's mobile.
At the end of the day, if the telco doesn't get the money from the customers, you won't.
Generally, the telco is on the side of the consumer when it comes to charging them.(its the same with merchant accounts for credit cards).
But don't let it discourage you. Also, with some SMS providers who can handle many countries, you will be waiting 60-90 days before you see the money from your sale. This is because the overseas telco has to send the money to your SMS provider (who generally should immediately forward to you).
You can assume, depending on how hard you force the user to buy, that 2-3% of your total visitors will buy. But keep some free stuff available so that the visitors keep coming back. (Don't force them all into the pay situation, if possible - this just kills the traffic).
The last thing is this - in each country you want to offer premium SMS you will need a premium rate number. You have to pay a monthly rate for this. The more of these the very expensive it can become! It may only be worthwhile to set up numbers in countries where most of your traffic is coming from (to start off with). Remember, for the first 3-4 months be prepared to pay for this out of your pocket, because money from sales won't be in your hand for a while.
P.S. Telco = mobile phone telecommunications company (eg Vodafone, BT Cellnet, Cingular, etc.)
Can you give any numbers, how much would that monthly pay be?
