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Premium content dialers make money beyond porn
Friday, October 20 2000
by Bernie Goldbach


You're on IEP16,000 hoping to go to IEP32,000. Answer "What does Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire have in common with sex sites?" If you say, "Both use premium
phone lines", you've named yet another example of mainstream porn technology.
And you would've won the average annual revenue from a medium-traffic dial-up
number.

While some observers would dispute whether sex provides the number one use for
premium phone dialers, no one denies that dial-for-sex is a definite money-maker.
If you use a phone in Ireland, you've probably bought some kind of information
when you paid your phone bill. Nearly 100,000 callers paid RTE when answering
questions to see if they could sit with Gay Bryne and win a million pounds. At
IEP.58 a minute, those 100,000 calls generated more revenue than the first show
segment gave away as prize money.



It's relatively straightforward to program a premium call number to ring a modem.
After the modem answers the incoming call, the caller begins to pay a premium
rate. Jonathan Downey, a programmer with Zenark in Dublin's 

Christchurch, explains. "If you program a premium rate dialer to sit on a
Windows Desktop, it's easy to encourage people to click on it and use it," he
says. "The biggest design challenge is making a recognisable icon to remind
people that premium content is just a click away."



The core technology is the premium content dialer. A dialer is a small file that
you can download. After downloading and installing this file, you can connect to
a paysite and enter the member section. If the site developer updates the content
every day, customers will pay the small fee required to dial up and see (or
download) the new material.



What sorts of steps are involved in premium content dialers? As expected, your
Web site must have content that entices a viewer to download your dialer
software. You can get a local developer to hand roll your own (perhaps to tie it
into a good deal from an Irish teleco) or you can check 

out UltimateDialer.com for some generic dialers.



Following a restart after downloading and installing your dialer, a customer
would click on the application and a phone call starts that handles the entire
Log-on process. Behind the scenes, the computer logs onto your premium call
number where you start to run up a bill. Based on 

how you programmed the dialer, the customer could see premium information that
you've availed for authenticated visitors. The dialer contains the
authentication.



Once visitors finish browsing the premium content, they simply disconnect from
the dialer. Most then receive an option to automatically restore the original
dial-up connection for normal Web browsing. The dialer remains on 

the surfer's desktop for future use. It works as a premium rate service.



Premium rate services are charged on a different basis to ordinary telephone
calls. While peak charges may vary, these dial-up services always cost more than
a standard national rate.



Revenue from premium rate services splits into three piles. The telephone company
whose network is used to initiate the call is paid for carrying the call. The
phone company whose network terminates the call is also paid. Finally, the
service provider is paid for the content. Because customers 

pay for premium rate calls through their telephone bills, there is little concern
for credit card fraud. In fact, premium call dialers open up an e-commerce link
for those without credit cards.



Most premium rate calls in Ireland cost the customer IEP.58 per minute (including
VAT) and the Service Provider, at the end of the month following that which the
call was made, earns a Revenue Rebate of approximately IEP.30 per minute.
Low-traffic sex sites attract 30,000 visitors each month. These sites feature
heavy graphics that compel visitors to remain on site for at least five minutes
at a time. Third level students who operate dial-for-porn Web sites can earn more
monthly pocket money from their dialers to sex lines than the Minister for
Education gives them in grants each year.



Most businesses make premium rate phone calls during telephone consultancy,
accessing financial services, and voting to evict residents from the Big Brother
House. The concept of paying a bit more for phone charges has become an accepted
practise. It enables content creators to immediately see a trickle of revenue for
their work.



Revenue from dialers comes faster than typical sponsorship deals.
WebmasterCommerce.com pays approximately IEP.20 for each minute of use of their
dialer. If you have compelling content that people return to see, you can
sequester some of it behind secure directories. Make directory access 

only through the dialer and you can view your deposits fortnightly in your
current account instead of chasing advertisers for cheques.



Premium Rate Dialers have emerged from the porn industry and now are firmly
entrenched in other content-rich areas of the Internet. If you travel the Warez
World, you could be getting tomorrow's software through a dial-up arranged by
XamoDial.com. Like WebmasterCommerce, payments come weekly at IEP.20 per minute.
As expected of proper e-commerce initiatives, the commercial dialers can be
accessed in more than 50 countries. The services normally offer real-time
statistics on minutes generated by the dialer. Payouts are normally sent twice a
month.