Me2Mobile aims to help you make money blogging

February 5, 2008 by
Filed under: Reviews 

The following is a paid review and is my complete and honest opinion. If you would like your own paid review on my blog for promotional purposes, please visit the advertise page.

The mobile phone industry is expanding at an alarming rate. Today there are already more than 60 million people using mobile phones. According to a public source, the mobile phone business had only a $3 million dollar market 25 years ago, but is now close to a $30 billion dollar yearly market. That is a 1000x increase in a short amount of time, so you can imagine why people are predicting that it will be a $3 trillion dollar market in another few years.

Moving past a very brief history of the growing cell phone usage, this paid review is about a site called Me2Mobile, which is a self service website that enables you to develop your own mobile services to tap into this ever-expanding market. With new technical phones like the Apple iPhone gaining in popularity, I predict that soon everyones cell phones will be used like laptops are presently. If this is the case, why wouldn’t you want to start grabbing your piece of the pie?

Me2Mobile allows you to create your own simple applications of your own, and even generate a revenue stream from it. If you are still a bit confused, there is a really good example application called transl8. Translate allows you to text a message to a number and it would decode your message from “SMS lingo” into real words. I would assume by texting the word transl8 to the number, it would reply back with the word translate. In this shown example, the cost of the texts is $2 AUD (Australian Dollars), giving you a real world example of how this application is monetized.

Me2Mobile’s homepage includes a simple easy to read design, with quick navigation. The big options are centered and allow you to easily get started. On the right side includes the featured applications where the site lists all of the applications that the administrator(s) think are cool. So far, three of the four featured applications are extremely basic, but one called Aussie Bloggers Forum says it will send you new forum posts weekly, much like how a blog sends an RSS feed daily. One feature I like a lot is the “view the mobile site” text link at the far top left of the site. This is the first thing that loads on the page, meaning that if you were viewing the site on a mobile phone browser you could easily switch over to the mobile phone compatible site. Very few sites are cell phone compatible, so this is a nice feature that I expect to see on hundreds more sites once cell phones with browsers become mainstream. Me2Mobile also allows for the creation of sms competitions, sms voting, sms chat, and wap push (i.e. Pushing out a link suitable for a mobile phone). Me2Mobile even offers a soap API so you can integrate sms sending and receiving into your applications that you build.

The homepage also displays an updated list of services. At the time of this writing, the homepage displays the following:

Free Services

  • Shared premium SMS shortcodes
  • Create your own keywords
  • Returns the text you specify
  • SMS items from an RSS feed
  • Send SMS with online SMS tools
  • Connect using a simple API

Premium Services

  • Send back WAP push links
  • Run SMS voting/competitions
  • Create an SMS chat service
  • Connect to our premium SMS gateway
  • Set up subscription services
  • Create Url/WAP billing services

On the my account page, you are allowed to create your own service by selecting a keyword on a shortcode and then choosing an action that you want the site to do when that text is received. In a quick example, the keyword “collin” could be told to text back with “is awesome.” There are literally millions of ways to use this site, but right now it looks pretty minimal. It will be interesting to see if people develop applications that are much more useful than what is currently out. This page also houses all of the different revenue sharing options for your account.

From a blogger perspective, I would like to say that there are a few ideas that the site includes here that I find useful. I can see a good amount of people using a service like an SMS voting poll to earn more money on their blog.

The most prominent flaw

The site and their features are currently available only in Australia. This means that bloggers from the United States like myself cannot use it until they expand outside Australia. If you are located in Australia you should check out the site and see if you can use any services they offer to make more money blogging, or else think of something you could develop yourself.

I would also like to say that one of the founders emailed me inquiring about my “1 to 10″ paid review system on how well I would rate his site if I were to write a review about it. In it, I told him my biggest problem with it was the low reach (Australia only), and I thought his reply deserved to be announced publicly:

I know that one of your main gripes is our global reach, but please understand that providing mobile services with revenue share and at the same time providing global reach is not a trivial task. Agreements need to made locally in each country and this is time consuming and has a cost. We think we’ll be able to surmount these challenges as me2mobile’s founders have extensive background in the telecoms field and have already selected regional tier 1 aggregators that will enable us to roll out quickly. The immediate plan is to optimize the business model in Australia/NZ and then, with funding, grow into Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. But as mentioned before, its precisely these obstacles that gives us hope that our offering will find favor with the many others who want to launch global revenue generating services but don’t have the means to overcome the technical and cost barriers.

I hope Me2Mobile grows because I would love to see a neat mobile service like this expand worldwide and become an authority in the mobile service creation industry. Heck, any unique ways I find that allow people to make money blogging are always looked upon highly by me!

If you live in Australia and are interested in expanding into the growing mobile market, go take the Me2Mobile tour or else visit their wiki/blog page.

Comments

3 Comments on Me2Mobile aims to help you make money blogging

  1. James Pong on Tue, 5th Feb 2008 9:15 pm

    2. Only for Australians or people resides in Australia? Too bad. Mobile technology is growing fast everyday, no doubt about that.

  2. Collin LaHay on Tue, 5th Feb 2008 10:15 pm

    3. People located in Australia. =)

  3. Ivo Brett on Wed, 6th Feb 2008 5:37 am

    4. Hi James, me2mobile are working hard to roll out in other countries so watch this space.

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