The basic principles of organizing the reception of SMS payments. Advantages and subtleties of payment by SMS, description of payment SMS systems.
It's no secret that today business on the Internet is developing by leaps and bounds. New Internet projects are opening every day - most of them, however, also close quickly, not having time to develop and attract an audience. Those who drew the audience, begins to think about how to monetize it - turning the indicators counters into money.
Traditionally, there are two main ways of earning money on a project’s audience: selling its advertising opportunities and providing users with paid services.
And if quite a lot has already been said about the first, the second is just beginning its active development.
The services provided to users can be divided into three main categories of sites:
The owners of sites of all three categories, as a rule, offer their users several payment methods, including: credit cards, electronic currencies (Yandex-Money and WebMoney), SMS, as well as a number of other even less common systems in our country. For a number of objective reasons, connecting a credit card receiving system to the site is associated with certain difficulties for the resource, and a fairly small number of users use Internet money today (at least, to call this payment method massive until the language turns around).
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The likelihood of having an electronic payment wallet or credit card that can pay for purchases on the Internet (it should also be noted that not all banks in Russia allow their customers to pay with cards for purchases on the Internet) reduces any audience conversion rate to negligible values.
That is why in recent years they have increasingly begun to resort to the organization of payment through SMS messages. This tool can as well complement a number of already existing ways of payment, and it can easily become the only one on your site without significant losses for conversion.
One of the advantages of SMS payments is that almost everyone can pay - the level of cellular coverage in our country is much wider than Internet penetration. According to various estimates, the number of mobile phone users among Russian citizens is approaching 30 million people (99% of the respondents have a mobile phone among Internet users), these figures are much higher than those of e-wallets and credit cards.
All that is required from the subscriber ⎯ send SMS to a short number. A mobile phone is always at hand and, as a rule, there is always a small amount of money on it, which is usually enough to make a small payment. Pay by SMS can not only subscribers of Russia, but also other CIS countries and neighboring countries.
This method has, of course, its pitfalls and disadvantages. The fact is that the cost of payment is limited to the grid of short numbers of the cellular operator, usually the values ​​are from $ 0.1 to $ 10 in increments of $ 0.5- $ 2. The maximum amount of one payment is $ 10. In theory, you can ask the subscriber to send several messages to pay for the goods, but it’s unlikely that someone would like the idea of ​​sending more than five SMS.
The second significant drawback of this payment method is still a fairly high commission of cellular operators, which can reach 40% and above (it should be noted that modern methods of organizing payments can significantly minimize the operator’s commission - more on that below). This introduces certain restrictions on groups of goods and services that can be paid by SMS. In general terms, these restrictions can be described as follows - this payment method is ideal for goods and services, the production cost of which does not depend on the circulation (sales) and the cost does not exceed $ 5.
One subtle point should be noted here - the very possibility of paying $ 10 appeared quite recently, and not all operators have such a short number. It is noteworthy that the commission from $ 10 is much higher than the commission from the other numbers, and often the amount that the partner receives is only 2-3 rubles. higher than the one he receives from $ 5, and the amount of money that the subscriber gives is twice as high.
It is also important to understand that for the subscriber the actual room rate also increases by the amount of tax - VAT, which amounts to 18%, makes $ 1 of the nominal value of the room $ 1.18, and in fact this amount is written off from the subscriber’s account.
Among the projects on which a similar payment scheme has taken root are online games, social networks and dating services, file download services, paid content catalogs (collection of essays, drivers, clip art), sites with specialized professional articles, digital content stores (music, audio books, films, software), mobile sites and mobile content showcases, affiliate programs and adult sites. With the help of SMS you can work with electronic currencies, pay for the services and advice of various specialists - lawyers, psychologists, system administrators, etc. You can easily make a paid vote on the site, arrange a quiz or collect donations for the development of the project (donations) from visitors.
Let's take a simple example to consider the income that a site owner can receive:
In fact, in order to start accepting payments on your site, you can go two ways. The first is to contact the content provider directly (in this case the term “aggregator” is more appropriate), the list of the first five by traffic volume looks like this:
1. i-Free
2. Infon
3. Incore
4. A1 (“First Alternative”)
5. Plastic Media
Such a path is associated with a number of serious obstacles - this is a complex system of technical interaction, calculations once a month, the need to deeply understand the specifics of the operation of SMS services with all its subtleties, full responsibility for fraud and fraud. They work primarily with legal entities, and sometimes it is very difficult to reach an employee who can connect you.
For the aggregator, it is not of particular interest to work with a large number of small partners, since It is for these purposes that a number of resellers work in the market (for which the term “sub-aggregators” or “payment systems” is more appropriate).
Today in Russia there are several specialized payment systems that allow you to arrange payment by SMS in one day. The main advantages are openness, operational support, ready-made solutions and the complete absence of risks associated with the specifics of organizing such payments. You can work with them without forming a legal entity.
Modern payment instruments make it possible to reduce the size of the commission of all intermediaries in the procedure for organizing payment acceptance via SMS to 20-30%. Thus, the specialized service partner will receive on average 70-80% of the nominal value of the number for the subscriber (the cost of sending an SMS to the short number of the cellular operator, without VAT). So, if the subscriber sent a message to a number costing $ 5, you will receive about 90-95 rubles, depending on the cellular operator.
Calling someone from this list a clear market leader is quite difficult — often the one who speaks the most about his excellence is less significant in terms of actual payments and quality of service. We have tried to provide the maximum objective and independent assessment of market players - in any case, the decision is yours.
Today, most of all payments for services and goods occurring on the Internet are carried out using SMS. Have you already offered a convenient and efficient payment tool to your customers?
Methods of monetizing the audience
Traditionally, there are two main ways of earning money on a project’s audience: selling its advertising opportunities and providing users with paid services.
And if quite a lot has already been said about the first, the second is just beginning its active development.
The services provided to users can be divided into three main categories of sites:
- Specialized online stores and services (software stores, music, video, abstracts, web-design templates, documentation, specialized articles for professionals, message delivery services for users, raffles and quizzes, answers to questions), whose main task is to provide visitors with specific services or sale of content (with payment per content unit). Such resources consider earning advertising revenue as secondary earnings.
- Sites that can be accessed only for a fee (niche and narrowly themed professional resources with valuable information for a specific audience, resources for adults) - usually users are shown only general information about the resource, and in order to access it, it is required first make a payment. Advertising on such resources almost never happens.
- Resources that offer their users additional services and services - for example, on a dating site, users can highlight their profile in search results, and in social networks, give a friend some gift.
Ways of accepting payments on the Internet
The owners of sites of all three categories, as a rule, offer their users several payment methods, including: credit cards, electronic currencies (Yandex-Money and WebMoney), SMS, as well as a number of other even less common systems in our country. For a number of objective reasons, connecting a credit card receiving system to the site is associated with certain difficulties for the resource, and a fairly small number of users use Internet money today (at least, to call this payment method massive until the language turns around).
')
The likelihood of having an electronic payment wallet or credit card that can pay for purchases on the Internet (it should also be noted that not all banks in Russia allow their customers to pay with cards for purchases on the Internet) reduces any audience conversion rate to negligible values.
That is why in recent years they have increasingly begun to resort to the organization of payment through SMS messages. This tool can as well complement a number of already existing ways of payment, and it can easily become the only one on your site without significant losses for conversion.
The advantages of receiving payments by SMS
One of the advantages of SMS payments is that almost everyone can pay - the level of cellular coverage in our country is much wider than Internet penetration. According to various estimates, the number of mobile phone users among Russian citizens is approaching 30 million people (99% of the respondents have a mobile phone among Internet users), these figures are much higher than those of e-wallets and credit cards.
All that is required from the subscriber ⎯ send SMS to a short number. A mobile phone is always at hand and, as a rule, there is always a small amount of money on it, which is usually enough to make a small payment. Pay by SMS can not only subscribers of Russia, but also other CIS countries and neighboring countries.
What goods and services can be sold via SMS?
This method has, of course, its pitfalls and disadvantages. The fact is that the cost of payment is limited to the grid of short numbers of the cellular operator, usually the values ​​are from $ 0.1 to $ 10 in increments of $ 0.5- $ 2. The maximum amount of one payment is $ 10. In theory, you can ask the subscriber to send several messages to pay for the goods, but it’s unlikely that someone would like the idea of ​​sending more than five SMS.
The second significant drawback of this payment method is still a fairly high commission of cellular operators, which can reach 40% and above (it should be noted that modern methods of organizing payments can significantly minimize the operator’s commission - more on that below). This introduces certain restrictions on groups of goods and services that can be paid by SMS. In general terms, these restrictions can be described as follows - this payment method is ideal for goods and services, the production cost of which does not depend on the circulation (sales) and the cost does not exceed $ 5.
Say, if you made an original video clip for a mobile phone and once spent $ 300 on it, you will recoup the costs after the hundredth sale, and everything else will go to profit. However, if you want to sell DVDs, the cost of making each is about $ 4, and the delivery costs $ 3, you will have to earn money at a tiny margin of a few cents.
One subtle point should be noted here - the very possibility of paying $ 10 appeared quite recently, and not all operators have such a short number. It is noteworthy that the commission from $ 10 is much higher than the commission from the other numbers, and often the amount that the partner receives is only 2-3 rubles. higher than the one he receives from $ 5, and the amount of money that the subscriber gives is twice as high.
It is also important to understand that for the subscriber the actual room rate also increases by the amount of tax - VAT, which amounts to 18%, makes $ 1 of the nominal value of the room $ 1.18, and in fact this amount is written off from the subscriber’s account.
Among the projects on which a similar payment scheme has taken root are online games, social networks and dating services, file download services, paid content catalogs (collection of essays, drivers, clip art), sites with specialized professional articles, digital content stores (music, audio books, films, software), mobile sites and mobile content showcases, affiliate programs and adult sites. With the help of SMS you can work with electronic currencies, pay for the services and advice of various specialists - lawyers, psychologists, system administrators, etc. You can easily make a paid vote on the site, arrange a quiz or collect donations for the development of the project (donations) from visitors.
Simple arithmetic
Let's take a simple example to consider the income that a site owner can receive:
- Take a small store selling content, where the average attendance is about 1 thousand people per day. Average audience conversion is 1-2%. This is about 500 orders per month. Suppose that the average price per unit of content (the cost of access for one day to the entire content database) is $ 5, then the site earns about $ 1,800 per month.
- Another example is file hosting, which provides a premium opportunity for a small fee. Suppose his attendance is 10 thousand people a day. The cost of the service is $ 1. The conversion rate is about 2%, which in a month will be about 6000 transactions. The amount of income will be about $ 4,500 per month.
- With attendance of about 20-30 thousand people per day (for example, a dating site) and conversion of about 1% when selling additional services (raising questionnaires at issue - $ 1, gifts to participants - $ 3, etc.), you can make an average profit of about $ 8-15 thousand per month.
How to organize acceptance of payments on your website
In fact, in order to start accepting payments on your site, you can go two ways. The first is to contact the content provider directly (in this case the term “aggregator” is more appropriate), the list of the first five by traffic volume looks like this:
1. i-Free
2. Infon
3. Incore
4. A1 (“First Alternative”)
5. Plastic Media
Such a path is associated with a number of serious obstacles - this is a complex system of technical interaction, calculations once a month, the need to deeply understand the specifics of the operation of SMS services with all its subtleties, full responsibility for fraud and fraud. They work primarily with legal entities, and sometimes it is very difficult to reach an employee who can connect you.
For the aggregator, it is not of particular interest to work with a large number of small partners, since It is for these purposes that a number of resellers work in the market (for which the term “sub-aggregators” or “payment systems” is more appropriate).
SMS payment systems
Today in Russia there are several specialized payment systems that allow you to arrange payment by SMS in one day. The main advantages are openness, operational support, ready-made solutions and the complete absence of risks associated with the specifics of organizing such payments. You can work with them without forming a legal entity.
The systems sites provide all the necessary information. Immediately after registration, you will receive specific instructions for setting up payments on your site, and in some cases also operational assistance from the support service. Funds from payments are transferred once a week (usually on Wednesday or Thursday) to your e-wallet or organization’s settlement account.
Modern payment instruments make it possible to reduce the size of the commission of all intermediaries in the procedure for organizing payment acceptance via SMS to 20-30%. Thus, the specialized service partner will receive on average 70-80% of the nominal value of the number for the subscriber (the cost of sending an SMS to the short number of the cellular operator, without VAT). So, if the subscriber sent a message to a number costing $ 5, you will receive about 90-95 rubles, depending on the cellular operator.
Two extremely important parameters for comparing payment management systems are the size of deduction rates (we take the rate for $ 5 number for Beeline mobile operator) and the prefix format (subscriber’s request is the text that it sends in the message).
- Perhaps the most recent of the most significant brands today is the Russian Billing system, which got its start in mid-2007, starting active promotion on the adult webmaster forums, the system grew very quickly throughout the year, and, judging by the site’s materials, makes a major bet on resources for adults (you can even download the engine of the finished porn showcase) - which is not surprising, because it is there that the sweetest traffic on the Russian Internet. A very significant knowledge base has been published on the site, from where you can gather a lot of information about various methods of fraud. Wide coverage, stable payouts. Prefixes begin with an exclamation mark, plus, point, comma. All impression spoils the trick with the size of the rates of deductions - on the first page of the tariffs they promise 95 rubles. (from $ 5 Beeline), but in fact the new partner receives a starting tariff with low enough for the market 92 rubles ... Sub-aggregator "A1".
Russian Billing system website: www.russiabilling.com - The Rocketbill team has been known in the mobile payments market since 2004, but it acquired a full-fledged brand rocketbill.ru only recently. The system works with a number of partners, relations with which have developed over the years and therefore are not too aggressive in their progress, but they can be recommended for one desire only to help newcomers in this area - the thoroughness with which the support service approaches each new partner. deserves respect. Those who have a large amount of traffic, “Rocketbill” is ready to offer special conditions - on their website there are two tariff grids: the base one with 95 rubles. and the second, for the so-called "premium" partners with fairly high rates of deduction of 97 rubles. and willingness to consistently pay such partners several times a week. Prefixes begin with a pound sign, question, doggy, and other characters. Sub-aggregator of the first “i-Free” content provider in the list.
System site: www.rocketbill.ru - Another new player, the MP bill system, formerly known as Mobile Payment LLC, opened in 2008, works with the same content provider as Russian Billing, relies on payment guarantees, which can be quite justified strategy, because Those who dealt with large volumes of traffic, probably faced the problems of late payments when working with other systems. At the same time, the rates of deductions for partners are low 92 rubles. There is no any scheme for increasing payments, except for the promise to discuss more favorable conditions for well-known brands. Just like Russian Billing, it is a A1 sub-aggregator.
System site: www.mpbill.ru - The SMS Coin system has recently turned 2 years old, today it offers the widest coverage area of ​​its numbers, however, it forces its partners to use the prefix starting with “dam”, i.e. the subscriber’s request will always look like “dam [something]”. This is offset by pleasant payments of 95 rubles.
System site: www.smscoin.ru - The “SMS Lock” system and their product “SMS Kopilka” is one of the oldest market participants; it provides convenient ready-made solutions. Deductions to partners are calculated based on the percentage of the room rate for a subscriber, with a base rate of 53%, with a maximum of 55% - if you calculate even for the best rate, you get an amount not more than 80 rubles.
Extremely informative site of the system: www.smszamok.ru - Another reseller “i-Free” - the system “SMS Access”, offers its partners 93 rubles. and the organization of mass SMS mailings on your subscriber base. Saying something else about the system is still difficult, because it began to work in the market quite recently.
System website: www.smsdostup.ru - The “Virtual Key” service deserves special attention. It is a system that allows you to organize receiving payments via SMS on your website or blog in a few minutes. You do not need to install and configure SMS interaction gates — all you need to do is place a link to the payment page in the system www.virtualkey.ru and make a script for issuing access passwords to the system. The prefix will always be in the form of a lattice sign and a set of numbers, you cannot set the prefix for the service. The rates of deductions here are lower than the market average, but higher than some players - 94 rubles ...
An example of the operation of this scheme:
www.virtualkey.ru/demo your page
get.virtualkey.ru/?p=1&s=1 payment page
Innovative in this approach is the system of protection against fraud (fraud) and spam - dynamically generated codes do not allow to organize mass mailings and deceive subscribers, because The information on the payment page clearly explains the purpose of the payment.
System site: www.virtualkey.ru - There are also very interesting options for systems that work immediately with several aggregators and offer their partners to choose what they like more. An example of such a system: www.smsrent.ru If you look at the lists of short numbers, you can find deduction rates at the level of 80 rubles ... It’s useful for those who appreciate the ability to easily change numbers on their website.
Calling someone from this list a clear market leader is quite difficult — often the one who speaks the most about his excellence is less significant in terms of actual payments and quality of service. We have tried to provide the maximum objective and independent assessment of market players - in any case, the decision is yours.
Today, most of all payments for services and goods occurring on the Internet are carried out using SMS. Have you already offered a convenient and efficient payment tool to your customers?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/29266/
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