Affiliate programs can be great. Sure, you might not become rich overnight like some ‘gurus’ claim in their 19.95$ e-books (actually, we have one of those, except it’s doesn’t feature any wild claims and it’s free), they can be a great way to make additional income, or, if you are really dedicated, they can even grow into a steady full- or part-time business. But, just like in life, the main requirement for becoming successful in affiliate marketing is patience, dedication (did I already mention it?), and hard work.

We know that there’s a lot of you out there who are either considering or already using Fortumo Affiliate Program - we received a lot of feedback and questions ever since we launched it back in February. And since you asked, we gave you some tips and finally created a growing Affiliate Advice section that sits right in your Affiliate account. The response was positive, and we figured there’s never too much of a good thing, so we’ll continue with the practice of publishing tips for affiliates – this time, I’ll try to focus not so much on our own affiliate program, but some of the best practices and general advices that should work for anyone trying to be effective in affiliate marketing. Read it all after the break.

Yap, it’s summer again. The days are long and warm, and everyone just wants to get away from the city and spend a couple of weeks swimming and relaxing on a beautiful sea shore somewhere. Don’t get me wrong – we all like too get away and just chill with friends somewhere nice (actually, we just did that a couple of days ago ) – but who says that your SMS-services cant go to the beach with You?

Introducing Croatia, the newest country on Fortumo’s coverage map. It’s a beautiful country on the Mediterranean Sea, with rich culture and history, and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. But medieval cities and 1200 amazing islands are not the only reasons why Croatia should be your next travel destination – there’s more than plenty of business opportunities for the adventurous entrepreneur out there, like:

• Croatia is one of the most tech-savvy countries in the SEE region (checkout some illustrative numbers in Branimir’s last report),
• More than 50%, or 2.5 million Croats use internet on daily bases,
• Mobile penetration, or the mobile phone per person ratio is at whopping 133% – well above average in the region,
• More than 11 million foreign tourists visits Croatia every year – and they need their SMS-services, even on vacation

Your SMS-services in Croatia will be available to users of all Croatian mobile operators, and you can choose from 2 different price-points.  All your favorite Fortumo services are there, completely free, and active in 5 minutes – it’s still as easy as creating a blog.

So enjoy your summer, and if your heading to the beach, don’t forget to bring the essentials – your swimsuit, sunblock, towel and most importantly – your Fortumo SMS-service.

This service can be a nice trick to send easily big and small files to your mobile when you do not have chances to use bluetooth or memory cards.

This Beam It Up Scotty is a free Web-based service that leverages SMS to send just about any kind of file to your phone. It works in quiJust browse your hard drive for the desired file–document, photo, MP3, movie, or whatever–and then choose a compression setting. Beam It Up Scotty can automatically optimize video and audio files for mobile-phone playback and can compress other kinds of files for speedier transfer.

Finally, enter your cell-phone number. Within a few minutes you’ll receive a text message containing a link to download the file straight to your phone.

Enter Beam It Up Scotty, a free Web-based service that leverages SMS to send just about any kind of file to your phone. Just browse your hard drive for the desired file–document, photo, MP3, movie, or whatever–and then choose a compression setting. Beam It Up Scotty can automatically optimize video and audio files for mobile-phone playback and can compress other kinds of files for speedier transfer.

Finally, enter your cell-phone number. Within a few minutes you’ll receive a text message containing a link to download the file straight to your phone.

We have been lately getting really positive feedback from Malaysia where we launched month ago. And I just wanted to share customer feedback with you, since it is great to see we can help so many people to do their business.

Its quite a creative concept and I’m trying to get my hands on it for learning new things, and plenty more info to know about Content Provider.

Fortumo blows my mind, and it is the first I’ve ever seen of its kind. Nice work!

We’ve already written on a previous occasion about TelePizza and its service enabling food ordering via text message. Always happy to see a good idea spread, I was recently pleased to note that the big sandwich chain Subway has enabled text ordering in New York City.

Users of Subway Now begin by entering their address online to find the Subway shop nearest them. They then create and save their favourite orders, each of which is assigned a number. To order by text message, they simply text the word “menu” to Subway’s shortcode, and the service sends back a list of their favourites. They reply with the number they want, and Subway Now responds with a text confirmation and pickup time.

It may sound kinda complicated, but it’s quite simple, and the popularity of this service is based on some strong points of this service:

• It takes only one, max two text messages for ordering
• All orders are paid via credit card information saved on the Subway Now site
• With no need to pay in cash and with a priority service, customers can skip the line entirely when they pick up their food
• The service itself is free (i mean, you pay only for the messages to the shortcode ).

The service is getting more popular with the day. As a result, I would expect to see Subway launching the service in other metro areas in the near future, possibly also in Europe.

There’s nothing we like more than offering super-easy SMS services in new and emerging markets, and by popular demand, we have done it again. So without further ado, were happy to announce that from this month on, everybody will have the opportunity to set up their own SMS service in 5 minutes in Czech republic and Malaysia.

Czech republic has one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, and a staggering 130 cell phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Add that to positive approach that welcomes foreign entrepreneurship and growing numbers of internet users, and were sure You’ll share our enthusiasm in no time – and best of all, it’s available through Fortumo right now.

Malaysia is just as fascinating – the new rising tiger of Asian economy, with it’s open attitude towards new communication technology and its passion for SMS (more than 2500 SMS sent per user annually) is the perfect place for anybody interested in expanding its web or mobile business in Asia. You will need an invitation right now, so if you want to have the head start over competition, here’s your chance – just ask for your invitation at my.fortumo.com!

Stay tuned, because more counties will be coming very soon, and in the mean time – stay mobile!

Hi there,
I come back on the topic of ordering food from home via SMS. Although there are not many scenarios currently running, one of those is quite successfull and has a consolidated activities since already  3 years and more. Let’s have a look at the german food company TelePizza and its sms service. You will easy discover that, although the system is rather extended and works in the same way for all their networked pizza shops, it can be easily reproduced with simple tools and applied to a local busines

So, how it works?

STEP 1 – First, the user has to register its mobile phone and home address – It can easily do so via internet, but also simply texting to the TelePizza shortcode its own home address right after the keyword ADDR

• Example: ADDR Marino Bresciani Huettenstrasse 48, 40125 Duesseldorff
• Reply (translated): Thank you, Marino. Your address (Huettenstrasse 48) has been registered.

STEP 2 – And after register, you just need to make up your choice. Easy easy, especially due their website but also to some nice flyer-based door-to-door campaign with all the weekly listing and the weekly specials. Give it a look here – how many choices?

And then, after you made your choice, it is time to order, simply by texting all the codes related to the items you would like to buy.  For example, if I want to order a chi

• Example: TELE 418 74
• Reply (translated): Thank you, Marino. The order will be delivered to Huettenstrasse 48. The cost of the order is EUR 9.20

Payment is done directly to the pizza-boy, while you will pay also for the SMS sent to the TelePizza number

This service was successfull due to a series of good points:

• Good food at competitive price, even with a minimum order of 7.50 EUR
• Food comes straight to your home without any delivery costs
• The comfort of choosing calmly your favourite meal with the brochure
• A wide choice of food, not only pizza, but also meat, pasta, salads, drinks and desserts

So, if you are a owner of a restaurant or foodplace which provides also delivery service, and you would like to expand your business, this is a business case to take as very good example

Most of you know how important is to be able to act fast in case of big health emergencies. Attending a First Aid Course is of course a great thing, but in moments of panic, especially if it is a loved one that is in trouble, this knowledge can easily vanish.

This is one of the reasons why it came to attention how the use of SMSs could have quite interesting perspectives. There are already concrete examples. The Australian Red Cross provides a service where for a small fee, you can download instructions for CPR (=Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to citizens’ mobile phone. The Australia Red Cross is aiming for the instructions to be on one in every five phones. At the time of writing this, there have been 5000 downloads.

And if you think this is a kind of case where just institutions can take part into, then you might remind how – some days ago – a British surgeon in the Congo made full of SMS to get instructed on how to remove a gangrenous collarbone and shoulder blade from a teenager. This perilous amputation is only done a handful of times each year in the UK, and the colleague doctor at home texted him the entire procedure and signed off with a cheery, “Easy! Good luck.”

Using Fortumo can not only be a way to monetize traffic, but just a good system to simplify the practise of your favourite hobby. Let’s make an example on this post.

Let’s say you are leading a group that organises dancing events on Saturday nights.  And you would like to contact other members who love dancing. You can use a mailing list, write a post, inviting members to attend.  Then, you complain that not everybody reads your mail or pays attention all the time. So, some would miss out on the event.

Well, as event organiser you can inform “Registered and Interested” dancers via a sms system.  Here’s how I think it can be done.

1) YOu create a SMS-info service from Fortumo.com
2) You use a service for sending Bulk SMS, for example Clickatell Communicator

This way, handling your event is a matter of two steps

a- You write a post on the dance event, on your mail list. If needed, you can send an sms to inform the registered dance group.
b- All members who love to be informed of any dancing event can register their names with the Fortumo service. Those who do not register will NOT receive the SMS. You can easily collect the name of the registered user from the Fortumo service page

It’s not a automatic procedure, as it requires some manual operation and some good Office skills. But if your service becomes popular you can make a Premium service out of it. Why not?

Great news everyone – Fortumo has upgraded the SMS-chat service type to use a Flash interface. As most blog engines support Flash objects, more people can now add a chat-box to their blog.

SMS-chat is a basic service type that requires no technical skills from the creator. It allows you to add a *chat-box* or *advertisement column* to your homepage, blog or portal. Visitors of your site can add new messages by sending an SMS and you will *earn revenue* from each SMS sent. In addition, your site will be resistant to spam as sending an SMS requires a small financial input.

Let’s have a closer look on the new features that this upgrade provides:

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