First time downloading a ringer? Don’t quite know how it works?

Downloading a free ringer, or any ring tone for that matter, is a relatively simple process, but for someone who is new to it the first time may be confusing. Lets have a look at the different ways you can download a ringtone onto your cell phone.

There’s a number of ways to get a ring tone onto your mobile phone. There are probably 3 major ways to do so though. The first is to download the ringer directly onto your cell phone from a computer. To do this you need a data cable that connects your phone to your computer, usually now through a USB port.

Alternatively, and now popularly, is to have your ringtone sent to you by the supplier of the free ringtones, and that is done by SMS. You give your mobile phone number to the supplier of the ringer when you order it, and it is then sent to your cell phone by SMS message and installed on your phone.

It is also quite possible to enter a ring tone into your phone by typing a certain code directly into the phone by use of the keypad. You need to find the ringer you want and then find the right keypress sequence for the ring tone that you want to add to your phone.

The catch with all of these is that your cell phone needs to have the right software and computer chip configuration for each and any of these to work. Older phones may have no capability to even change ringtone at all.

How do you determine which one your phone will support? Read the manual, that should tell you how that particular phone supports ringtone downloads. More on But How Do I Get The Ring Tone Onto My Phone?

If free ring tones are free how does the company make any money?

Cellphone ring tones are big business, worth billions of dollars. There’s a stack of companies out there selling ring tones and ring tone subscriptions. They turn over big bucks.

So why are internet ring tone consumers able to download free ringers? If they’re free doesn’t the company go broke? How can they make a profit buy offering cell phone ring tones for free?

Well the answer to that is that there are very many different business models out there. The internet is a fabulous resource, and it allows so many companies to exist, and to make a profit, by making their money in so many different ways.

There are a stack of companies doing very well by offering to give stuff away. They do it because they can attract a large number of visitors to their website when the visitors are able to get free stuff. If they don’t have to pay they come in droves to get something that they have to pay for elsewhere.

A website that attracts large numbers of visitors can make money without selling anything. They do this in a number of ways, but the main one is hosting advertising. They get paid for the advertising you find on their site. And sometimes they can make more money selling advertising than selling, say, ring tones. More on How Come Free Cell Phone Ringers Are Free?

There’s lots of sites offering free cell phone ringers.

But are they really free?

Now we’re not saying that all those free cell phone ring tone downloads are a scam. Not at all. If you search free cell phone ring tone download on google you’ll find quite a few sites that offer downloads of free ring tones. And a lot of them really do offer free downloads.

But quite a few don’t.

There’s quite a few tricks that they get away with that allow them to offer a “free” download of a ringtone when it isn’t free at all.

For example. What about a site that will give you a free download, but only after you’ve purchased something else from them, perhaps some other gadget for your mobile phone. Is that a free ringtone or not? Well it’s not a free ring tone in our book. You’ve paid for it by buying something to get it.

Now maybe you would have purchased that item anyway, but either way the visit to their site has cost you. And if you had gone to a genuinely free ring tone site you’d have got the ringtone for nothing.

Not a free ringer in our view.

Beware of what getting into. For example if you’ve decided to download a ringtone and it’s supposed to be free, and you’re being asked for your credit card number, then be wary. Maybe the ringer really is free, but if so why do they want your credit card number? More on Are Those Free Cell Phone Ringers Really Free?