MobUser

Mobile content in the United States today is traditionally sold directly by carriers via their WAP decks (referred to as “On Deck”). The advantages to this approach is that the content developer need not be concerned with managing the financial transaction or providing the physical infrastructure required for provisioning. The downside is that the carriers often take as much as 60% of the revenue and pay you the remaining 40% every 90 days. Add to this the fact that you will likely not be able to have a direct relationship with the carriers and will be required to distribute via an approved publisher who will extract another 20% - 30% of the revenue before paying you whatever is left over. This dismal arrangement begs the question: “Is there no better way for me to distribute my content?”

Premium SMS or PSMS
In Europe most mobile content is sold “Off Deck” (e.g. not directly by the carriers). Premium SMS or PSMS is the de-facto standard for receiving payment for content. PSMS is the SMS equivalent of a 1-900 number. The user sends an SMS to a special 5 digit “short code” with some text in the body that indicates what content they wish to receive. Use of the short code results in a fee being charged on the user’s phone bill which is collected by an SMS aggregator and later payed to you, the content developer. The advantages to this are similar to that of the “On Deck” distribution model with the added advantage that the carriers need not approve your content. The downside is that you will still get nickel-and-dimed by SMS aggregator and the carriers (who charge the SMS aggregator for the PSMS message).

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
One way to get around the charges of the carrier and the SMS aggregators is to use an IVR provider to host a 1-900 number that a user can call and using their touch tone phone provide the information required for you to provide the appropriate content. Companies like BeVocal provide hosted IVR systems that can be easily adopted to provided exactly this functionality. The advantage to this scenario is that you collect a much larger piece of the transaction because you remove the carrier and the SMS aggregators.

Direct from Internet
Another option, for those that are capable of hosting the physical infrastructure required for provisioning content to a device (which is non-trivial but not impossible) there is always the option of selling your content from a web site. Setting up a merchant account is pretty strait forward and turn key. In this model you will save the most on expense and keep the lion share of the transaction.