Competitions by text - How do they work?
Discussion
The competitions organisations promote, where you have to text to a five figure number in order to enter. Anyone know how they work, how one establishes this service, who gets what (revenue) when they charge £1 per text (plus normal mobile text charges)? Also, do you have to register with any body, since this could be essentially deemed gaming or gambling? Any info greatly appreciated.
Im trying to do this at the moment.
A lot of hoops to jump though.
You need to let payphoneplus know who you are, they are the regulatory body. Thier site is very helpful.
Typically, at £1 a text, you will get about 54p back. Virgin mobile bring the average right down. Tight fisted Branson!
In order for it to be legal, you have to offer a free entry method or the winner must win as a result of considerable skill.
Failure to do one or the other will make your competition an illegal lottery.
Look at both textlocal and textanywhere for sms short codes. textanywhere have a helpful downloadable brochure if you sign up (no obligation)
There is a huge handbook you can download from payphoneplus that outlines all of their rules etc.... its about 2cm thick on a4 paper.
Im still trying to get mine off the ground so it will be interesting to hear how you get on.
ETA: worth adding, you must already own a prize in order to offer it. You cant wait for enough entries to cover the cost, then buy it.
A lot of hoops to jump though.
You need to let payphoneplus know who you are, they are the regulatory body. Thier site is very helpful.
Typically, at £1 a text, you will get about 54p back. Virgin mobile bring the average right down. Tight fisted Branson!
In order for it to be legal, you have to offer a free entry method or the winner must win as a result of considerable skill.
Failure to do one or the other will make your competition an illegal lottery.
Look at both textlocal and textanywhere for sms short codes. textanywhere have a helpful downloadable brochure if you sign up (no obligation)
There is a huge handbook you can download from payphoneplus that outlines all of their rules etc.... its about 2cm thick on a4 paper.
Im still trying to get mine off the ground so it will be interesting to hear how you get on.
ETA: worth adding, you must already own a prize in order to offer it. You cant wait for enough entries to cover the cost, then buy it.
Edited by simple101 on Tuesday 30th November 16:54
Edited by simple101 on Tuesday 30th November 17:07
simple101 said:
In order for it to be legal, you have to offer a free entry method or the winner must win as a result of considerable skill.
I got the impression it had to be blindingly obvious - every text competition I've seen goes somethign like:What's the capital of England?
a) London
b) Bondon
c) Dondon
Simpo Two said:
simple101 said:
In order for it to be legal, you have to offer a free entry method or the winner must win as a result of considerable skill.
I got the impression it had to be blindingly obvious - every text competition I've seen goes somethign like:What's the capital of England?
a) London
b) Bondon
c) Dondon
A major point is that the free method of entry must be advertised equally as much as the paid method.
YRRunner said:
The competitions organisations promote, where you have to text to a five figure number in order to enter. Anyone know how they work, how one establishes this service, who gets what (revenue) when they charge £1 per text (plus normal mobile text charges)? Also, do you have to register with any body, since this could be essentially deemed gaming or gambling? Any info greatly appreciated.
On the techie side, an aggregator like mBlox will receive the message from the network and pass it to you in some way .. e.g. HTTP POSTYou can then send reply (billed) messages via the same route and bill the customer.
The aggregator gets paid by the network and then pays you a percentage. The pair of them take a big cut.
You can sometimes get a cheaper deal by registering a prefix on a shortcode instead of renting the whole shortcode (so text YRRUNNER A to 84700 ..). This lets one shortcode get split across multiple operators. The downside of this is any bad debt gets shared between you all (if someone else spams a load of people and they all complain ..)
There are lots of things to be aware of, e.g. PhonePayPlus rules, competition rules as mentioned above, the delay time between sale and payment, strict rules related to billed subscription services, compliance with STOP requests, and the fact that you might not get the money even though you think it's been sent successfully (PAYG customers without credit, for example)
simple101 said:
Closely followed by: enter for free online at *insert website here*
A major point is that the free method of entry must be advertised equally as much as the paid method.
Ah right, ta. A major point is that the free method of entry must be advertised equally as much as the paid method.
(though the point size of the latter is invariably far smaller than the former!)
My view is that the easier the question the larger the reposnse and therefore the lower probability of winning, so I don't bother, but I'm probably just boring like that
Simpo Two said:
simple101 said:
Closely followed by: enter for free online at *insert website here*
A major point is that the free method of entry must be advertised equally as much as the paid method.
Ah right, ta. A major point is that the free method of entry must be advertised equally as much as the paid method.
(though the point size of the latter is invariably far smaller than the former!)
My view is that the easier the question the larger the reposnse and therefore the lower probability of winning, so I don't bother, but I'm probably just boring like that
I worked at a Premium Rate Telecoms company a few years ago, when I wanted to set up my own competition I seem to remember it being fairly easy to do so.
www.dataproservices.co.uk 01375 398111, ask to speak to Martin.
www.dataproservices.co.uk 01375 398111, ask to speak to Martin.
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