How hard would it be to set up a business like freeconferencecall.com?

[jbischke]

I've always found this business really fascinating:

http://www.freeconferencecall.com/

It's a great value-added service and free to all participants. I don't quite understand how they make money though. Also, if one were looking to start a service similar to this any idea what would be involved?

[Dwane J.]

Nothing is free, there is always a cost and it's not always monetary.

I've never heard or used this website but here are some opinions on how they make their money.

Collecting your information and reselling it to marketers or trying to up-sale you on other sites they manage.

Reselling phone services from fly by night phone companies. The site gets paid X for getting so many customers.

Pushing some type of affiliate products.

Actually the concept is simple. Create a webpage that's a portal to these services, write some copy and get people to register. The work comes into getting the traffic, design, marketing and coding.

If you are interested then sign up for their services and see how it actually works.

[Elenny]

Seems like just another reseller to me. Plus when you put the word "free" in your URL people can smell the scam a mile away (i.e., freecreditreport.com).

[Mayo]

Try Asterisk VoIP software.... start from basement "office"....

[jbischke]

First of all, just to clarify, I have used the service. And I *love* it. No cost, they give you an MP3 file of your call, allow playback, it's really, really good.

In terms of business model, the way that I *think* they're either using the free service as promotion for their paid services or they are using one of the FCC subsidies to rural areas (like this company was trying to do)...or both.

And I like the idea of VOIP and Asterisk but would also like to make the service available for people who don't have VOIP set-ups. We'd also like to record the calls. Is this possible with an Asterisk server?

[Mayo]

Asterisk as most documented and developed VoIP software enables you what ever you want...
Some developers used Asterisk for Kathrine dispersed people around US to get voice messages to each other, now if you want to enable live voice conference you have to invest in low ping connection servers (below 100ms ping), if you want to have only voice recording then you can choose any fast server config w/ relatively fat pipe - that depends on how many users you want to cater, and how much cash you have at hand. (^_^)

[jbischke]

Excellent. So if one wanted to create a clone of freeconferencecall.com using Asterisk any sense of the cost/time to develop this? I know that's a tough question but any insight here would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

[Mayo]

Well it measures in thousands of dollars, but it can go down to hundreds or even less if you use rented dedicated machines.

Here are the links:
Asterisk :: An Open Source PBX and telephony toolkit |
http://www.digium.com/
and something for "real" hackers:
YXA

Ask questions at their forums/mailing lists...

Best of luck