JeffjEllis.com

Premium SMS Text Updates & Microbilling

I’ve talked about text messaging before, but I’ve never discussed how to monetize a blog with premium SMS content and microbilling.

Before I dig in to the exact steps you can take to get set up, I want to define microbilling.

By microbilling, I don’t mean in the Sense Russell Brunson uses it…

Rather, I mean billing a person via their cell phone bill for providing content via text messaging… you know the way all the big mobile content providers do it.

There are several services out there that let you use Premium SMS Billing, but none of them give you the ability to automate it without special coding.

Examples of Premium SMS Service Providers are:

• Go Live Mobile:  http://www.golivemobile.com/index.htm
• ZayPay:  http://www.zaypay.com/public/en/docs/overview
• Zong:  http://www.zong.com/zong/product

If you don’t want to code a special Premium SMS solution… here is a simple (not pretty) way to provide Premium SMS based content.

1.)  Sign up for a Free Textmarks account and setup your first Textmark (i.e. keyword).  Unfortunately, Textmarks only serves US residents.

2.)  Request a Textmarks API Key. (Required for the Wordpress plugin to function properly)

3.)  Download and Install the Textmarks Wordpress Plugin.  The wordpress plugin uses Textmarks to automatically notify your subscribers via text anytime you add new content to your blog.

4.)  Download and Install the Wordpress Mowser Plugin. This will ensure that your mobile content displays properly in your subscribers mobile browsers.

At this point… your automated text updates are set and ready to go… now all that’s left is the billing and getting people onto your text list.

5.)  Create a simple sales page offering real time blog updates via text for “X” dollars.  Include an order button.

6.)  Create a thankyou page that has a Textmarks Subscribe widget on it.  To create your widget click on the “Manage” tab in your Textmarks account, then click on the “Widgets” button.

7.)  Cut and past the textmarks generated widget code into your thank you.

And that is it… you are done.  You can now provide automated real time text updates anytime new content is added to your blog… or any blog you want to monetize.

The possibilities are limitless!

You could create a very small niche blog on classic 63 Continentals and update that blog automatically once or twice a day using RSS feeds, after which your premium subscribers are notified via text automatically as well.

The text message they receive contains a link to your blog, where they go to access the story / content / etc.

There is a downside to this particular Premium SMS Billing setup.  It requires 2 steps on your subscribers part to both cancel their monthly billing and unsubscribe from your text list.

I’ll close by saying thank you for your time and that if you find an ideal Premium SMS Content Microbilling solution, I’d love to hear about it.

ce1 – Text Marketing Strategy

How to incorporate free 100% opt-in text messaging into your marketing…

Text Messaging Video 1 – Introduction to the Textmarks SMS / Text Messaging Service

Text Messaging Video 2 – The Single Step Dual Subscribe Method

Text Messaging Video 3 – Automatically updating your SMS / Text Subscribers when you post to your blog

Text Marketing Implementation Steps

Just follow the steps below and in about 30 minutes you should be up and running.  If you have any questions, just let me know.

1.) Set Up Your Free Textmarks Account and Textmark/Keyword

2.) Request an API Key from Textmarks.com in their “Developers Section”

3.) Add a phone field to your subscription form.  I recommend using the following code… it will simplify things.  (Note: If you don’t use the following code, your ‘phone field’ cannot have spaces!)

<  input name=”phone” type=”text” value=”Cell Phone for Txt Msgs”  >

4.) Verify that your autoresponder is passing form variables to your ‘Thank You’ page.  You will know this is working when you see additional variables included in the address bar.

Example: http://www.jeffjellis.com?phone=555&name=etc…

5.) Get Your Single Step Opt-In Solution – Thank You Page Code

6.) Paste the Single Step Optin Code into your thankyou page.

7.) Change the extension of your ‘Thank You’ page to .php

Your thank you page should be named thankyou.php

8.) Test and Verify functionality with your own information.

9.) Download the Textmarks Wordpress Plugin

10.) Install and setup the Textmarks plugin

11.) Make a blog post and verify that you are receiving automatic updates.

12.) You are finished.