Those text-message win cash tv advertisements

WiltOnTilt · #1 09-10-2007, 03:34 AM

So who is making money off these things? I'm seeing more and more commercials for these things and I feel like there has to be someone out there making bank on these. People are dumb and love to text. Seems like a goldmine.

For instance there was one I saw today where you had to unscramble the word, text it in and if you gave the right answer you were entered to win 15k.

the puzzle was exactly: L O H I D A Y

obviously easy on purpose, just just hilarious to me. (switch 2 letters and win!)

Also it appears there might be a few primary companies with the infrastructure to run these and offering individual investors pieces and tracking them by the text # or by other codes people send in (saw an ad saying text "game3134 and the answer blah blah" -- assuming 3134 is the ID of the person buying into and likely paying for the TV advertisement.

Anyone know much about this type of money making venture?

KoW

Phresh · #2 09-10-2007, 05:00 AM

When you text their number with the secret word or whatever, you are being charged for a chance to have your number/name drawn and called back or whatever selection methods they use. The prize is something [censored] like $500, which is easily covered by the 3209767986 people calling in trying to solve the N _ G G E R S puzzle.

WiltOnTilt · #3 09-10-2007, 05:48 AM

Yea I get the premise, but do you know how to set these up? Any data on how much these people are making?

Seems like it could be very lucrative.

Phresh · #4 09-10-2007, 06:53 AM

Sorry, read your post wrong.

#5 09-10-2007, 07:04 AM

soko · #6 09-10-2007, 07:08 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Is there a fee charged when the person sends the text message, aside from what their carrier charges them?

Possibly they work out a deal with the cell phone carriers where they get $0.01 per text message or something.

[/ QUOTE ]

Quite possibly more.

If you text a code to certain numbers owned by ring tone companies you are automatically billed $10 a month to receive these cheap ass ring tones. To answer the question of how much money I can't say but I can say that the overhead for such enterprises is most likely very small and there is a large profit margin.