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. Read the rest of this entry

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. Read the rest of this entry

What exactly are ring tones and where did they come from?

A ringer or ring tone is just a sound that a phone makes to tell people that they have a phone call. Of course ringtones have been around as long as telephones have been around, it’s just that a long time ago every phone had the same ringtone. They came with the phone. Of course we’re talking about fixed land phones here.

But even in the early days of mobile or cell phones you just got a ring tone with the phone. No options. It sounded like a normal fixed phone ringer too.

But as time progressed things changed. In 1998 in Finland the first commercial ring tones came out. A new service came out called Harmonium. Harmonium allowed users to create monophonic ringers so people could create and download their own ring tone.

That was just the start and it didn’t take too long before large companies saw commercial mileage to be made from ring tones for cell phones and the revolution in ringers began.

By 2005 the ringtone industry generated over $2 billion in revenue, a staggering amount of money for something as simple as a sound made by a mobile phone when someone calls it. Read the rest of this entry