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The Ways the World Pays - The Short Story on Telecom Billing
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There are 800 million netizens, according to InternetWorldStats.com, 23% of whom surfed for sex within the last month. That's 184 million porn surfers. Many of these porn surfers do not live in the "rich" countries of North America and Western Europe, and do not have credit cards. How do they pay you? The way the world pays you is with telecom billing.
In this month's Worldwide Webmaster column, we give a brief overview of telecom billing. We answer your questions:
"How much money can I make with telecom billing?"
"How does a dialer work?"
"What are the new dialer regulations, and what do they mean to me?"
"What's next for telecom billing?"
First, how much money can you make with telecom billing? The answer depends on a wide number of factors. In our experience, clients increase their profits by an average of 20%. Some clients increase by as much as 50%, others by only 10%. It depends on two factors, traffic mix and implementation of telecom billing. Your telecom billing provider can analyze your traffic and give you an accurate estimate of your new profits from telecom billing. Consider speaking with prospective telecom billing providers for a quote.
How did telecom billing get started? 500,000 Americans called the first premium rate line during the 1980 Reagan/Carter debates, not during the 1980 Miss America Pageant, as Joni Vermeer suggested on "Who wants to be a Millionaire" on October 8, 2004. That mistake cost her $25,000. Proof that not knowing about telecom billing can cost you a ton of cash!
The old continent started using telecom billing much earlier. The only payment method offered for the "first" Internet (Minitel in France) was telecom billing. The French have paid for access to sexual content via their phone bills since the 1970's.
Since the mid-90's French end users have been on the Internet, however, they still prefer to pay for porn access via their phone bill for ease and security. The simple one-click, anonymous billing solution is the most preferred payment option online. In advanced technology countries, such as the Netherlands, the broadband option, voice call, provides webmasters 80% of their telecom billing revenue. In Africa and the Middle East the far majority of telecom billing revenue comes from the dialer. What drives interest in this type of billing - whether for broadband or dial-up users - is quick, secure access to premium content that they otherwise would not be able to access for lack of a credit card or fear of using one on the Internet.
There are two primary ways to use telecom billing. The first is a dialer for surfers on a dial-up connection. The second is a voice call solution for surfers who use broadband, or have a second land line or mobile phone. A third type is SMS billing. We will cover SMS billing in detail in a future installment of the Worldwide Webmaster.
The dialer remains the primary method of using telecom billing on a global level, despite strong advances in broadband penetration. How does a dialer work? Remember the CDs that AOL sent out to introduce dial-up access? This was brilliant marketing. They gave unsophisticated end users a simple way to go online and join AOL. They quickly had millions of end users subscribing to their service. Insert the disc, install the software, and your computer dials you into the Internet. And, the end user paid per minute or by the hour.
Think of the dialer as your AOL disc. They click, accept the price and terms, and install the software to dial up to your content. And, they pay per-minute. The money they pay to the phone company is then paid to you by your telecom billing company. It's easy. …A real one-click process. And it's anonymous, because it doesn't say www.tell-my-wife-i-surf-porn.com It's simply a phone number.
How does the voice call option work? Let's take a broadband surfer as an example; when a broadband user hits your join page he will see a phone number to call, to get an access code. The access code is usually a 6 digit PIN. He inputs the PIN and enters your site. When he is done, he simply hangs up and leaves your site. He then pays his phone bill, and your telecom billing provider pays you.
What has been the effect of new regulations? And, why are there new regulations in the first place? New regulations for the dialer exist in about half a dozen of the 293 countries in the world. In these select countries governments have chosen not to allow the use of the dialer except under very strict conditions. These regulations came as a result of end user complaints against a few fraudsters, who were abusing the ease with which the dialer could be used to steal money.
The dialer regulations in those few countries do not affect the broadband - voice call solution. Telecom billing remains very popular in Germany and Spain, two countries which have recently added dialer regulations.
The new dialer regulations have very little impact on a US webmasters revenue. They will have even less as the regulating countries increase their percentage of broadband users. A clear example of the trend of "rich" countries to move towards broadband can be seen in the attached graph illustrating U.S. broadband growth over the last year.
Over the last year, dial-up connections have fallen from 60% of all connections to less than 50%. At the same time Broadband connections have grown from 40% to over 50%. However, the key fact for telecom billing in rich countries is that traffic to the top ten adult sites in the U.S. is 76% broadband and only 24% dial-up.
The "poor" countries of the world are accessing the Internet through dial-up and using dialers. Webmasters can expect increased dialer revenue as Internet penetration grows in these countries.
Consider the entire world as it hits your site, and rather than going in, devours your bandwidth and moves on to someone else's site. Offer telecom billing, let them stay and pay, and watch your revenues grow.
Visit NoCreditCard.com today for more information on programs and services offered to webmasters around the globe.
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