A lot of individuals today wish they could start their own businesses. Selling prepaid phone cards would make a nice start to a viable business proposition. Getting into this business should be quite easy and could convert your dreams into reality. However, there is a very wide gap between truth and fiction. Your goals, whatever the may be, can only be achieved with meticulous planning.

As a home-based, online or standard entrepreneur, you will need to have a plan to avoid pitfalls, to achieve your goals, and to establish a profitable business venture. As a phone card seller, you need to create a viable business plan to avoid stumbling blocks, achieve your goals, and build a profitable home business, such as selling prepaid phone cards.

Find Out What Services Your Distributor Would Offer

Before you start selling, it's important to inquire from your service provider if they provide customizable business management, or web-based platforms to the wholesale agents, where you could:

- Set your own rates for their customers.

- Create different rate plans with different billing increments (rounding to seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute etc.), impose connection and disconnection charges, monthly fees and other parameters. Check if billing can be done in a local currency.

- Credit and charge amounts to/from accounts

- Configure postpaid or prepaid billing types for the customers

- View the billing and errors for each account

- Configure speed dial numbers or services for the customers

- Generate pin codes for calling cards

The Mechanism Of Prepaid Phone Cards

Prospective retailers should have a wider grasp of the business they are going into. They should know that prepaid phone cards come in different dollar denominations, or face values, which are often between $5, $10 or $25 per card. They may also be packaged in minutes, such as 30, 60, or 90 minutes per card.

The cards available often charge different per-minute rates. Before you sell cards, ask your distributor the details about how many minutes of calling time in the cards. With some cards, when you buy more minutes, you get a better per-minute price. Instead of minutes, some operators indicate how many "units" are on the card.

A unit equals one minute calling time for calls placed within the continental United States. On calls from territories like Puerto Rico and Guam and to other countries, you may be charged more than one unit for every minute you are on the phone. Knowing these details helps in properly informing the buying public about the characteristics of prepaid call cards.

Phone Cards Use VoIP Technology

The main reason why phone cards are able offer very affordable rates to call local or overseas is because of the unique technology used. Service providers selling phone cards use a combination of VoIP (Voice over IP) and regular lines to get a fairly good balance between call quality and low prices. In addition, since the cards are pre-paid, which means you pay in advance for the specified talk time, other charges are reduced, like the ones for collection charges or debt retrieval.

Prepaid calling cards have been a growing business for the past decade. By judging from its very early beginnings, the services offered by call cards was marred with lots of technical glitches and delays, however the industry has improved today and the quality of services has widened.

At present, consumers can find a lot of prepaid call card suppliers that offer relatively similar rates. As the technology progresses in the coming years, it is expected that this will play a major role in the global telecommunications business

Why Call Cards Offer Lower Rates.

The main reason why call cards offer distinctively low rates for international or domestic calls is because of the different technology used. Most call card providers sell cards using a combination of VoIP (Voice over IP) and regular lines, to achieve a good balance between call quality and low prices. In Addition, since the call cards are pre-paid, which means you pay in advance for the amount you think you'll use, some other costs are cut, like the ones for collections or debt retrieval.

Some Terms You Need To Know When Using Prepaid Call Cards

As mentioned earlier, the mode and quality of service varies with each call card operator. Some providers may charge different sorts of fees, depending on whenever you easily spot them. Some fees may be shown upfront, while others could be hidden.

On of these charges is the Maintenance Fee. This fee is an amount deducted from the calling card's daily, weekly or monthly balance, with the effect of reducing your minutes. Another fee is the Connection Fee, which is an amount deducted from the calling card's balance once a call is connected. The other fee is called Rounding. This refers to the multiple of minutes you'll be charged when making a call.

An example would be: 4 minutes rounding means that you'll be charged in 4 minutes increments, like from 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and so on. A call for 9 minutes and 30 seconds will be charged 12 minutes. It is important for consumers to verify the charging and connection mechanisms of each call card provider, to enable them to choose the ones that offer the most affordable rates.

Callers Should Get A Card That Suits Their Needs

To make sure that a user gets the most suitable phone cards, make a comparison of different providers to ensure that you get the one that fits your calling needs.

A card doesn't need to have to have the lowest rate, or the highest, to be the best. If you generally make long calls or if you make calls very often, you can get a card with a maintenance fee or even one with a connection fee, as these call card types offer the lowest rates.

Even if you have a maintenance fee, and given that you'd make a lot of long calls and eat up the balance quickly, the maintenance fee will be only deducted once or maybe twice, but you get a huge amount of minutes to talk. If a user makes short or seldom calls, a calling card with 1 second rounding and no maintenance fee would be the most suitable choice.

Users then won't have to worry about their balance being deducted if they don't use the card. The notion is to use it whenever you need it, and the money would still be there even in 1 year or more.