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I was wondering how to start a ringtone business here in the united states, not a business website. But a business that would enable users to send a text messege to a Number with a code in it and later the user would recieve the ringtone, picture or game. Greatly helpful for any help offered. Thank you.
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Posted: 2005-07-18 20:35:49
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you will need a LOT of initial capital to start such a thing and it is a pretty saturated market.
first of all, you will need licenses for using the songs since they are copyrighted and owned by studios. these are pretty costly and will be the bulk of your expenses.
2nd you'll need hosting which is cheap.
3rd you'll need a shortcode to which people can send SMS's to. a lease for a shortcode runs ~$500/month so it is big cost for a startup business.
4th you will need SMS servers capable of recieving SMS's from the rented shortcode, processing the data/code for each song, then sending it. receiving and sending SMS's will have to be done in bulk and can then be lowered to ~$0.04USD/SMS.
this is not easy to do so unless you have a lot of coding experience in PHP or javaserblets or some kind of dynamic content creation language, you'll have to hire programmers to do this for you. that is not cheap either.
5th you'll need a service which can bill customers for SMS's they send to your shortcode. this currently passes through many hands so you may only end up getting 70% of what you charge per ringtone because of costs associated from the carriers and such that can bill these charges to customer's accounts.
there is a lot more to go into this such as registering the business to begin with and such but the above is the bulk of it.
it is pretty much impossible to do without some sort of initial investor funding. i would suggest you find another idea. not to say that this can't work, but the market is pretty saturated even in the US as it is and profits margins are a joke after all costs, i'm talking RAZOR-thin, so you have to be making it all up in A LOT of volume. that takes a lot of marketing and advertising which is also $$$.
i know its not what you wanted to hear but it is the truth.
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Posted: 2005-07-18 22:03:18
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hi there I am willing to invest upto 30-35% of the investment.private message me.
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Posted: 2005-07-18 22:07:13
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@ mustu - i can't believe your being serious!! Well good luck to you, your going to need it.
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Posted: 2005-07-18 22:08:31
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good luck guys....i own an SMS business myself catering to small businesses to use SMS as a marketing tool. i know the industry pretty well.
again, good luck. you will need it.
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Posted: 2005-07-18 22:13:04
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I wanted to try it out too, to see if there was any money involved.
I just used ebay to see if I got any interest. I offered 5 Java Games, 5 Ringtones and 5 Animations all for 1 penny buy it now. I offered the auction over 10 Days. I did not have a single buyer, the listing was open to worldwide bidders too!
I'd say you are gonna need a lot of luck lads!
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Posted: 2005-07-18 22:19:29
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You will also need IT technicians and musicians - there's an awfull lot of people who still have phones that dont support so-called 'real tones' and there are absolutely NO programs out there that can make a decent job of converting .wav / .mp3 or CD tracks to midi / monotone.
That's not to mention the admin / support side of it - what about when people don't recieve their tones for whatever reason? Or the inevitable idiots who ring up because they don't know how to use their phone:
'Ive downloaded the ringtone OK but how do I set it as my ringtone on a nokia xxxx.....'
Ok, this all sounds very negative and I'm fully supportive of anyone who wants to start a new business but ask yourself this question:
Why do the likes of Jamster effectively con people into signing up for a 'club' that is rather difficult to get out of? So that they can legaly get their money and run, that's why...
If you have the capital, contacts and facilites to do what Jamster do then you're in with a fighting chance. Other than that, I'm afraid that I'd have to say that you've missed the boat by a long way
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Posted: 2005-07-18 22:28:51
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Thank you guys, time to go back to the drawing board. any Ideas are welcome.
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Posted: 2005-07-18 23:03:47
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Starting a ringtone business sound difficult. But what if you had the ideas but not much initial capital onhand, whats the best way to go about getting that???
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Posted: 2008-02-10 10:17:44
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On 2008-02-10 10:17:44, redstripe5 wrote:
Starting a ringtone business sound difficult. But what if you had the ideas but not much initial capital onhand, whats the best way to go about getting that???
you do realize this thread was from 2005, dont you?
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Posted: 2008-02-10 10:47:36
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