Doing business with your cellphone

A few years ago, I attended a forum on intellectual property and, on my way home, I hitched a ride with someone who was a self-professed inventor. Apparently, he was a member of one of those associations of Filipino inventors.

While driving, he told me of a technology he developed which would allow people to store value in their cellphones using SMS. He said he was trying to sell the technology to the telcos, apparently referring to Smart and Globe. When the concept of load wallet came along, may be months, or a year or so later, I truly wondered whether it was now the man’s technology.

Of course, the original concept of load wallet is telco-based and required a special SIM card or something. If you get that special SIM from dealers, you can store value or load which you may resell. As a result, we started seeing all those sari-sari stores displaying tarpaulin banners of Smart e-Load, Globe Autoload, Talk-and-Text, TM, Sun, etc.

Then, maybe two years ago, I passed by a shop at Star Mall and saw a banner inviting people to sell load of all the networks using just one SIM card. I was totally unconvinced especially that the area is the haven of those networking companies who are quick to promise you millions. How in the world can you do that, I thought.

But that was then. Lately, in my continuing search for other sources of income, I learned about these companies which enable you to sell load of all networks using your own SIM card. You can even sell PINS of prepaid cards not only of telephone networks, both mobile and landline, but also of Internet service providers (ISPs), game networks, etc. They can even sell flowers, and insurance, using text.

What I like about this business, is that there is not much “pr” required. You can get your load by depositing money in the company’s bank account, or their G-Cash or Smart Money accounts, and informing them that you have done so. After verification, they will load the amount to your account and you can then sell that load as cellphone load, Internet dial-up access, game time, flowers, or insurance. Using text, of course, with around 6 to 10 percent profit.

I particularly like the feature of one or two of these companies which allow you to just buy a prepaid card from somewhere which you can load to your cellphone using text and sell as load of whatever network you want. Come to think about it, that’s a prepaid card with load you can use for all the networks, discounted at that.

Of course, these companies differ in certain areas. Some are simply load providers, while others are into multi-level marketing. Meaning networking. Others rely on their bank accounts, while others use Smart Money and G-Cash. There are some with a lot of products available while others only have a limited number. Some have good support, others don’t.

If you want to get into this type of business, you can just visit the companies' websites and learn more. See http://www.loadxtreme.com.ph/, http://www.load.com.ph/, http://www.loadcentral.com.ph/, or www.e-negosyo.ph. You may also email me and I would be glad to tell you more.