Quote:
Originally Posted by MaDalton
looking at you website i see you pay out on premium sms for example in germany 60 US cent, thats about 46 euro cent. the price for a premium sms for the end user is 2.99 euro? so where do the other ? 2.53 go? and the webmaster i have to pay from the 46 cents.
or: your site says payout for 9 minutes by phone in germany 6 dollars. i assume you charge the highest possible rate of ? 2.99 per minute, thats 27 euro or 35 dollar for 9 minutes - i am getting 6 dollar of that, 29 dollar go somewhere else. again: from the $6 i have to pay the webmaster as well - unless i want to shave those sales from him.
yes, i might make a few cents from some countries where credit cards or direct debit don't work - but the bitter taste in my mouth that others make a multiple of myself with my work and my content is much bigger. and yes, i know that a very high percentage already goes to the phone carriers, but that does not make it any better.
 |
In Germany we do not currently use the high tariff SMS which is why it does not pay more than it does, we will be setting up a higher tariff soon and then the rates will of course be increased to all clients as well. And we will also be able to handle subscription based billing by SMS like we offer in UK.
Also the per minute based billing in Germany only goes up to the maximum rate, the majority of all charges we do is people using cell phones to call in and they are charged less than if a landline customer call in. The rate we are offering is based on what we see collected on average at the end of a billing cycle.
What we are doing is guaranteeing you a payment, without worries of chargebacks, refunds or other issues or payment delays you very often see from big telecoms.
Also whenever you see a price listed anywhere don't forget to remove VAT as well as various telecommunication taxes that exist some places in the world which could be as much as 25% of the price (don't hang me on it, but isn't it 19% or 17% in Germany?)
The micropayments add up in countries in Eastern Europe like Czech Republic, Russia, and Ukraine where SMS is the most popular way to charge things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SwirlsGirl
I really don't have any axe to grind with password by phone on a personal level, its more like the notion of having 70 users and knowing that those 70 users translates into $2100.00 if they were using credit cards.
So somehow psychologically knowing that potentially $2100.00 worth of transactions has been accrued over the past 4 months while we have not received a nickel to this day is a bit of a reality check.
Just kind of hit me like a ton of bricks today btw, many thanks for all of your contributions to this thread.
|
Swirlsgirl, don't stress, you haven't lost all that money. When a surfer buys access to your site via the phone, they are only purchasing access for the minutes you set, not a whole month unless you set it up that way. Typical access is in our system about 30 minutes and the actual payout per call / SMS is on average $2
You have to compare the actual countries from where you made the sales and see what options you have to charge this in country and how much. Also with a phone transaction usually you can't see if it is a repeat customer making 70 purchases over a period of 4 months or 70 different customers.
While I am not trying to answer for PBP, in general that is how phone billing works. You may want to check with them on where you got the sales from and how much access you had at what price.