eCommerce Tycoon

**msaz87** · 07-23-2008, 06:24 PM

Hey all,

I'm working on a business that will be partially driven by SMS notification subscription. In other words, users will sign up and receive a daily text message regarding the content.

My question is: does anyone have experience with SMS gateways? Is there a specific one that is cheaper... are there any free services that add advertisements to make their own profit?

In the future, the plan is to tag our SMS messages with advertisements, but until that point, we're trying to find the cheapest way to send daily bulk messages without cutting too much into our profit.

Any advice is appreciated -- thanks!

**ECSuite_Russell** · 07-23-2008, 06:59 PM

Does the payment method need to be through the mobile or just the service that's offered?

There are sms billing providers out there but I don't know more about them than you could learn from a google search. If the service doesn't need to be billed through the customers phone you could always set up a normal online gateway and collect info you need on a website then send the content to their phones.

**msaz87** · 07-23-2008, 07:50 PM

The service would be billed online... customers would go to the site, pay via my merchant gateway, then their phone number would be added to the distribution list.

The question is how to offset the cost of sending bulk SMS messages each day without them cutting too much into the bottom line. From what I've researched, it seems like a lot of SMS gateways charge on average $0.04/message... and if my service were to be low cost ($3/month), the SMS messages would cost roughly half of the monthly profit.

IE:
200 customers x $3 = $600
200 customers x 30 texts (1/day) x $0.04 = $240

Any ideas?