Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone on here could possibly help me with a few questions I have about starting up a text message chat service that would include picture messaging as well. A good friend of mine has already written up the majority of the programming, and now I have to find out just how I'm going to get this off the ground.
First and foremost, billing. For each text message sent from my program, I'd like to charge somewhere in the range of 50 cents to $1, and probably $2 for each picture message. I don't want to rely on credit card billing, as that will probably turn away a lot of potential customers. What I'd really like to do is be able to directly bill their mobile account, just like how the existing chat/ringtone services do. I've searched around on the web a bit and haven't been able to find very much out about how they do this. I'd like to try and involve as few "middle man" companies as possible, but if it isn't, are there any out there that will bill their accounts at a reasonable price to me?
Second question is about advertising. What I'm doing is one of those "text 'flirt' to 55555" things, but that caters to a variety of niche markets, which could include BDSM, gay/lesbian, fetishes, etc. Ultimately, I'd like to have a T.V. commercial, and I've seen things from Comcast offering commercial slots to small businesses. I'm just not sure where I would get something like this shot, the models I think I could find pretty easily.
I think that covers just about everything for now, but if anyone sees any holes in my idea, please tell me!
Thank you!
I was wondering if anyone on here could possibly help me with a few questions I have about starting up a text message chat service that would include picture messaging as well. A good friend of mine has already written up the majority of the programming, and now I have to find out just how I'm going to get this off the ground.
First and foremost, billing. For each text message sent from my program, I'd like to charge somewhere in the range of 50 cents to $1, and probably $2 for each picture message. I don't want to rely on credit card billing, as that will probably turn away a lot of potential customers. What I'd really like to do is be able to directly bill their mobile account, just like how the existing chat/ringtone services do. I've searched around on the web a bit and haven't been able to find very much out about how they do this. I'd like to try and involve as few "middle man" companies as possible, but if it isn't, are there any out there that will bill their accounts at a reasonable price to me?
Second question is about advertising. What I'm doing is one of those "text 'flirt' to 55555" things, but that caters to a variety of niche markets, which could include BDSM, gay/lesbian, fetishes, etc. Ultimately, I'd like to have a T.V. commercial, and I've seen things from Comcast offering commercial slots to small businesses. I'm just not sure where I would get something like this shot, the models I think I could find pretty easily.
I think that covers just about everything for now, but if anyone sees any holes in my idea, please tell me!
Thank you!
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