Password By Phone... Off the chart stats!!!!

I tried it once, it was crap.

That sucks balls

Just shows you that when something sounds too good to be true it usually is!

bad for you

damn =\ throw those fuckers away then!

Absolutely,I have removed their buttons, and will not be using them ever again. What a waste. Now after this thread I would be surprised if they even pay me the measley 60.00 bucks we have earned in 4 months. 70 users in 4 months... thats about 17 users a month accessing our members area for 4 months and us not seeing a dime!

Sure just rape my surfers($39.95) then take 95% of the point of sale, and when merchant "a" bitches and gripes,or comes to gfy to spill the beans... just clean out the few crumbs left in the pass by phone account and that my friends is how you leech and live well off of someone elses blood & sweat!

Between junk traffic brokers, and parasitic processors, they sure have a way of doing great when the rest of us are struggle to stay afloat.

I was going to try it but read some negative reports, I'd rather have surfers buy with visa/mc or just find a rip. =p

Guess I don't understand the business model. You actually only get 5% and you agreed to that?

Yikes! Check out Global Acces gal, and compare 'em apples to apples. Global Acces offers 200 premium phone countries as well as 23 SMS countries and are fully integrated with NATS. They also offer translation in 60 languages based on the user's browser.

The part that you will like is they don't hold your payouts until they get paid by the carrier which is what their competition does. They pay you WEEKLY, every Monday, after the sale is made, even if it is made on Sunday. Their minimum payout is $25. Just by coverage and their rates you will see faster, better payouts, with no chargebacks.

Plus, when you start sending traffic, you get this handy-dandy retro bluetooth handset



Hit me up if you need any more info, and I'll make sure the GA guys take good care of you

Hey Jenni I actually was going to go with global access but after signing up and following up with a few emails they never responded.

Thats what led me to pass by phone, I signed up with them and after several follow up emails they responded and activated my account.

I agree I saw the stats and was more impressed with global access platform and rates, however they never responded. Hey have someone get in touch with me I'd be happy to give them a try. Thanks

Hey gal, I shot them a message, they are in Andorra (EU) so they will probably receive it tomorrow (with the time change), so be on the lookout for an email to the one listed in your sig.

Hello,
Not sure what happened and why you didn't get the help you needed to get up and running, I do apologize for that. Can you forward me the last mail you had to [email protected] so I can take care of it for you, please include your account number or username if you already have an account in our system as well to speed up the process :-)

basic line with all telephone billing is that as site owner you make the smallest percentage while carrier, billing company and webmaster share the rest. you pay for the bandwidth, the content, marketing and support and others make money while you are left with peanuts. phone billing sucks.

I can't say that I agree to that.

Using our phone and SMS billing you can decide yourself how big a % you are paying your webmasters, you can price your content yourself by choosing how much access time to allow for the various billing events and/or transaction values that our system support.

As phone / SMS billing is a micro payment platform we have also designed our access platform to work based on minutes and days vs normal normal credit card / ach that usually work based on days and months.

If you want to increase sales from especially eastern europe that is getting more and more buying power you need to offer them the payment options they can use, some of our popular SMS countries such as Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland etc is countries you would hardly see sales from if any at all if you based your business model strictly on card based transactions.

To me paying by phone is not a good idea.

For a start, how do you tell if the person is 18 or older.

Also surly you do not get re-bills.

I think card payment is best option for paysites.

OK, you could say what about those without cards? But I say are those few worth the hassel?

The age verification is a tricky process I agree to that, in general you can't get a phone number without someone over the 18 signs a contract, at that time they can block access to premium services (high tarif sms, premium rate numbers and international calling)

You do get rebills, it's only in the UK we can do automatic rebills by SMS at this moment, in other countries they have to either send a new SMS message or call again, and people actually do that and it will work for everybody that do not base their business model on people that forget to cancel their CC rebills

You are the only one that can decide if the few people without credit cards (minimum 85% of all online surfers) is worth the trouble of setting up an alternative for them or not. With free setup, no holdback on payments, no refunds or chargebacks it certainly doesn't hurt giving it a try

good points, but any kid can buy a pre-pay phone in the uk.

and any kid can use there parents phone.

Heck i used to phone sex lines when i was 13 to see what they were like. I thought they sucked, never knew (even now) why people phoned them.

In those days they did not have itemised billing.

And surly you would not be able to use it on the affiliates tour as suly the affiliate promoting your site would not benafit.

ps

i wish ccbill would take solo/maistro debit cards for the uk as it would make a huge difference.

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.

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.

I Co sign MADALTON! My thoughts exactly.

CC Bill now offers the option to "Cascade to URL" so if the CC Bill affiliate wants to put Global Access as a secondary processor, Global Acces can pay the program owner and CC Bill still issues the checks to the affiliates.


Otherwise they work with NATS, MPA3, and custom affiliate backends.

Are you sure about that?

We are looking for a way to convert Philippines traffic. Are all of the phone billing options 5% or so??

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.

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.

Confident, CCbills new affiliate system allow us to post back earnings of your affiliates so they can pay them.
They will reduce the payment made to your affiliates from your check and we will pay you directly every Monday
We can convert in the Philippines and guarantee that you get more than 5% of what the end users is charged as well

i think its extra money, These people would never have used a creditcard.

You seem very confused about how phone billers work. For many regions the surfers pay for blocks of time, and do not give a full months access to the members area.

In any case Gxbill is awesome.

Just had a disgruntled client from italy email me saying he paid 21 euros for and his access was cut off after 20 minutes. I think it's time I cancel Password By Phone though I am going to really miss that $50 every 4 months. Going to miss that new pair of shoes at Big-5.

Another way of looking at this password by phone program which is pretty disgusting is for a domestic premium password to your members area from an american telephone subscriber.... the caller is billed $39.95

Thats right you read it right $39.95 so of that $39.95 I have earned $8.00 So the other $32.00 that is collected from the subscriber goes where exactly and specifically. When you really examine it they have cleverly figured out away to leech your subscription price of $29.95, add 10 bucks to that charge and you get $39.95

So they have hi jacked your subscription and paid you $8.00 for you outsourcing the transaction. Basically they pay you 8 bucks to bill your customers $39.95

In the sales pitch lies the cleverness of convincing you that you have nothing to lose but everything to gain... "you know $8.00 is money that you would not have had anyway" not realising that these credit cardless surfers can send cash or money order to a p.o. box to get a login and pass. and best part is you get to keep the entire $29.95

I have had similar experiences with them.

That is extra money.

Hey Sara,

As I pointed in my email to Julian yesterday, PbP and phone billing in general is not suited to billing for monthly subscriptions but is designed to grant access to your content for lesser periods of time.

Remember : we don't dictate the end-user costs, rather the phone companies with whom we have interconnects do. And in countries where there is no domestic 'premium rate billing', the surfer has to make a regular International call, so the revenue needs to be split with two phone companies, not one and the payouts sre subsquently much less.

For example, on 22nd Feb at 14.09, someone in Saudi Arabia accessed your site for thirty minutes, and then again at 19.09 the same day (probably the same customer, since you have sticky content lol) - from these two transactions for a total on one hour access, you earnt $1, but you must bear in mind that this person probably did not have a credit card and/or did not want to use one online. So such revenue shold be regarded as extra money.

As you can see, you also made several sales from France. The French love premium rate, not least since the high rates are capped which is why payouts are not high there either.

It is important to bear in mind that when comparing rates from the various processors, all is not as it first appears. A case in point would be when comparing the outpayment rates for Switzerland, which supports up to 5.55 Sfr per minute, but we bill at 4.23 Sfr/minute instead.

Some processors automatically elect to serve the most expensive premium number available in each country, thus at first appearing to be offering the best rates. This strategy can, however, be counterproductive since it can be an instant ?turn off? for most prospective customers. We believe it is far better to employ more realistic price-points where possible so that surfers are far more likely to pick up the phone to pay you lol

As for USA, 900 billing sucks for several reasons (see http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=898766 - which is why I suggested that you do not use us in your home market.

But as you can see, your last sale was from UK for which you recieved $5.80, not a bad yield for limited access, with no chargebacks (apart from US!).

I realize that this can sometimes seem confusing, but remember phone billing should be regarding as additional revenue - and if you are worried about it canibalising your core (credit card) processing, you can always deploy it just for countries with neglibe credit card penetration.

So please regard the money that you made with us as additional revenue that you would not have gotton any other way.

As for why you have not recieved payment, we pride ourselves on paying our partners like clockwork and to this end I shall be investigating this with accounts department first thing tomorrow morning.

Nothing personal, I respect you guys starting a company and trying to generate your own revenue while simultaneously offering my surfers an extra join option but consider this....

Try looking at it from the perspective of running a restaraunt to really see how warped this concept is...

Lets say I am running a restaraunt, and the average dinner plate is $29.95
Our policy is to accept cash or credit card. But soon we say we want to offer more patrons a chance to dine here.

So lets allow patrons to pay for their meal with their telephone bill. In order to do this we need a phone billing company to do the billing...

Now if the partons are from the usa and they eat in my restaraunt.... a typical meal of $29.95 is now priced at $39.95 remember the credit card patrons will only pay $29.95 for the same meal!

Now the cook has preped the food.... the waitress has served it... the bus boy has cleared the table, you get the point, so after the patron has left my restaraunt of the $39.95 he paid to eat in my restaraunt I as the restaraunt owner am only entitled to a whopping $8.00 of the $39.95

Now the insanity comes in to play when I have to take a portion of that $8.00 and pay rent on the restaraunt,pay my staff,pay for restaraunt supplies,pay for restaraunt related services,etc

When normally a $29.95 meal I can spend half of that on operating expenses...15.00 and may profit the other $14.95

I don't think a restaraunt will stay in business very long if all of the operating expenses have to come from the $8.00 you recieved and not from the $39.95 that the customer paid.

So offering this option actually costs me more in the long run, because of the increased use of ingredients...(more surfers using more bandwidth,etc

I am sorry it took me 4 months to really see how unprofitable the pass by phone experience would be.

geez what a rip...

That's like saying affiliates are unprofitable since you make less. Were you also splitting the pbp sales with affiliates? Most programs just keep that as extra money.


$29.95 - (processing 14%) = $25.75
50% standard split = $12.88
pbp = $8.00

Then you have all the operating costs associated with running a site/program. Whatever profit is left over can be reinvested or saved.


None of this makes a difference until you generate enough revenue to pass your nut. Do yourself a favor and get a list of countries that your current credit card processor DOES NOT process for. You might be surprised how many countries are on the list. Not defending pbp at all, if you're unhappy try Gxbill or one of the other phone billers.

That list would probably look something like this:

> | AF | AFGHANISTAN |
> | AD | ANDORRA |
> | AR | ARGENTINA |
> | BD | BANGLADESH |
> | BR | BRAZIL |
> | BN | BRUNEI DARUSSALAM |
> | BG | BULGARIA |
> | BY | BELARUS |
> | KY | CAYMAN ISLANDS |
> | LK | SRI LANKA |
> | CL | CHILE |
> | CO | COLOMBIA |
> | CR | COSTA RICA |
> | CZ | CZECH REPUBLIC |
> | CN | CHINA |
> | DO | DOMINICAN REPUBLIC |
> | EC | ECUADOR |
> | SV | EL SALVADOR |
> | EE | ESTONIA |
> | FJ | FIJI | |
> | GR | GREECE |
> | GD | GRENADA |
> | HU | HUNGARY |
> | IS | ICELAND |
> | IN | INDIA |
> | ID | INDONESIA |
> | IL | ISRAEL |
> | JM | JAMAICA |
> | KZ | KAZAKHSTAN |
> | JO | JORDAN |
> | KW | KUWAIT |
> | LB | LEBANON |
> | MY | MALAYSIA |
> | MT | MALTA |
> | MU | MAURITIUS |
> | OM | OMAN |
> | NI | NICARAGUA |
> | PK | PAKISTAN |
> | PA | PANAMA |
> | PY | PARAGUAY |
> | PE | PERU |
> | PH | PHILIPPINES |
> | PL | POLAND |
> | PT | PORTUGAL |
> | PR | PUERTO RICO |
> | RO | ROMANIA |
> | RU | RUSSIAN FEDERATION |
> | SG | SINGAPORE |
> | SI | SLOVENIA |
> | ZA | SOUTH AFRICA |
> | ZW | ZIMBABWE |
> | TH | THAILAND |
> | TT | TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO |
> | TN | TUNISIA |
> | TR | TURKEY |
> | UA | UKRAINE |
> | EG | EGYPT |
> | UY | URUGUAY |
> | VE | VENEZUELA |

and all African countries.

8cents per minute are better than no cents per minute

Or the alternative is to block/redirect traffic for all of the countries you can't bill for. Since if you can't monetize that traffic it's only costing you $$$

I think that a lot of the guys make some very good points here. Phone billing is best for per minute access, this can be for site access or alternatively for specific content. Many people use our TUBECASH solution in order to mnonetise video content on a per minute basis. Generating 8-10c per minute for content in countries where $20-30 is a huge chunk of cash is a good way of generating extra revenue.

For subscription monthly billing we use an SMS platform that offers a recurring billing option this is after all how most sites generate their revenue as obviously once you have made all that effort to aquire a customer why just throw them away! We charge the end user the additional cost of this service which in most countries is 15-20% and that way you receive the same from SMS sales as you do from traditional methods like card sales, furthermore this means that you wont be canablising your card sales but purely increasing your conversions.

Hope the info helps any one interested in knowing more feel free to hit me up!

Basically I think that many people do not realize what phone billing is good for.
It is an ALTERNATIVE billing method, that being said, it allows you to capitalize on NON-CC traffic, obviously for an affiliate/pay site CC in most profitable, use phonebilling in places where CC billing is not an option. On some or the european countries with premium rate numbers, os SMS premiun options, the payout is not bad at all. check out our rates.

http://www.global-acces.com/rates.php

I think many people also forget about the bandwidth used by surfers from countries who's only billing option is phone but dont actually signup by phone. It might be better for sponsors to just send that traffic to a different sponsor , let them soak up the bandwidth cost , and you make roughly the same profit anyways.

As far as I can tell you keep about 50% on your SMS billing. For Nordic countries anyway? Norway $0.97 and Sweden $0.80. And price for customer is 30 SEK/NOK? If it is 30 SEK/NOK you should get at least $2 from telecoms... Is this correct?

All valid points, I can't be mad at the pass by phone model... I realize there are several companies that provide it... I suppose my final point is this ...maybe this option works for some business models, but for my specific model it was really far less productive then I had hoped.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong Idea, the pass by phone people are courteous,professional etc... I am not accusing them of anything malicious...

I am saying that the whole Idea of pass by phone was presented and pitched to us as an extra cash stream no brainer, and after 4 months Its been a bitter disappointment.

I mean You tell me maybe I am over or under reacting ... 70 Freaking users with multiple logins.... after 4 months.... total cash earnings for me $60.00 That calaculates out to $0.85 cents a password.

Hell I have exclusive Hi def content on my site and the thought of someone accessing that multiple times for less than $1.00 just leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth... and I have had some bitter tastes in my mouth over the years...LOL

Sorry it does not matter if they have a card or not, does not matter that they are not in the usa, 70 unique multiple logins to my members area and total earnings amount to 85 cents a password... I should have passed.

at least you kept your humor