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Ask HN: I'm starting a service to send ads via sms. Your thoughts?

1 points by wairagu ↗ HN
Hi, I'm in Kenya. I want to start a service where;<p>Users who would like to to receive sms ads can sign up. Users in turn receive mobile phone credit per sms ad that they receive.<p>Advertisers can then use my service(from the website) to target users with relevant ads. I'll then send this ads to the relevant users via sms.<p>I'll charge advertisers a constant service charge, profit margin plus cost per sms ad sent.<p>Questions 1.As an advertiser what things would you like to know about users in order to determine which users to send which ads to? eg age, marital status, gender etc<p>2.As a user would you be willing to join such a service. If yes, on what conditions<p>3.Any other advice, in biz or your thoughts are welcome.<p>anything,

6 comments

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bediger
Don't ever do this. We've got spam problems enough without getting more rubbish SMS spams. If you do this, you will earn the hatred of the entire populace who gets abused by it, because someone WILL abuse it.
wairagu
How is it spam? Seen that we will only send sms ads to those who were willing. I'm thinking of a max of 3 ads per person per day.
bediger
How is not going to be abused? Every service on the internet gets abused to send spam.

Also, where's your incentive to not spam? I don't know how many emails I've gotten FALSELY claiming that I've "opted in" to this email. I do know how many have actually taken me OFF their email list when I requested: ZERO.

Before no-call-lists, phone spammers were required to send you copies of their own no-call-policy if you asked in the right manner. I asked each and every phone call spammer for some months. Most of them hung up on me when I said the magic words, "Put me on your no-call list." Of the dozens I said this to, I got exactly ONE written copy of their no-call policy.

I fully expect this service, due to lack of incentives not to spam, to end up spamming. Bad luck for you.

wairagu
Hi Bediger, thanks for your advice so far, I feel like I should not start the service.

I don't know why you feel there will be spam, every service gets abused by spammers I know. But we thought of preventing spamming this way: Advertisers do not send the ads directly to users, all they do is indicate to us that lets say 'we want to send this message to women who are between 25 to 45 years old', Then we will perform a search on our database and find the users who match that criteria. And send them the ads our selfs to only those users matching that criteria.

Again thanks for you're opinion, it will help me think about it.

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wairagu
For the guy who had asked about motivation.

Motivation as a user to join is

1.you get to discover products that you may truly be interested in. And

2.you get free talk time on your phone, say something like 5minutes of free talk time for every sms ad we send to you