Things You Should Know About Starting A Wifi Business

The WifiGator Billing System was bourne out of necessity. Most people get the idea to start a wifi business because they either A) already have a captive audience at a given location such as a Hotel, Motel, RV Park, Convention Center, etc... or B) they have already achieved the wifi network distribution aspect and are already transmitting wifi to their target area, and now they are searching for a method to control access to the network and bill their existing customers.

The general school of thought on setting up a wifi network is that you build the network and establish the radio coverage of the target area. Then you spend a Sunday afternoon Googling for Wifi Captive Portal Billing Systems and you find a $0 - $50 program to download and install and handle all of your wifi billing and credit card payments, and then you open for business... Right?

WRONG!!!!!

By the time you read this page, you will already know this fact, or you will soon become well aware of it. I started my wifi business with these same original principles in mind and, in the end, I learned that wifi network billing has much more to it than meets the eye. I would like to share some of my aquired knowledge and experience in this field with those who are eager to learn.

When you began to search the web for information on this subject, you probably immediately came across the big players in the wifi billing business, such as Sputnik, Worldspot, HotspotSystems, Meraki, etc... I don't mind mentioning these services, as when you do your study of them, like I did, you will probably come running back here immediately, in order to get as far away as you can get from the business models which every single one of those services offer.. Let's break them down and compare them..

Comparing these other services is actually pretty easy, because they are all based on the same model.. They only differ in price and other small aspects, but for the most part, they all operate the same way... Not a single one of those services allows you to fully modify your server and have complete root access with the ability to install your own additional software packages and fully rebrand and customize the server to your own needs. They also are very expensive when you do the math on each hotspot location.

For myself, the very most important features I need in a wifi billing system are:

1) Full control of the system with root access to the server so I can fully rebrand, modify and customize my own system to suit my specific needs..

2) No Revenue Sharing... The revenue sharing models these other companies offer is such that you will be lucky if you even make a dime off any of your access points.. The amount of revenue they skim off the top is about equal to what the AP will earn, leaving you with little to no profit, so forget that idea right now... Don't even consider any system which does revenue sharing..

3) Fairly Priced Monthly Fees... Many of these companies are beginning to figure out the we simply are not going to buy that service, so they are opting to replace revenue sharing with extremely high monthly fees for each hotspot and / or access point which you connect to their control panel and billing servers..

After doing my homework, I discovered that not a single one of those companies offers the services that I needed at a price that was reasonable and allowed enough profit margin to make the business viable.. I also discovered that none of those companies offers the full billing program that would allow me to have full root control of the system... This was simply not acceptable for my needs...

So I set out to build my own billing system based on the Chillispot tutorials that are all over the web, as many of you have also attempted, only to find out that these tutorials are almost impossible to follow and they leave out critical pieces of the puzzle, with the intention of leading you back to their website in frustration, at which time you will throw up your hands in submission and just pay them to set it up and continue to pay for pre-paid tickets to issue at your hotspot, or some other crude method of doing business...

None of that worked for me either... At this point, I had enough knowledge of linux server systems that I went back to dd-wrt and started the discussion again, and this time we completed our first crude wifi billing system, which we called "PayPal Chilli-Dog"... This name came about because the system would do paypal billing using a system which was comprised of the best parts of Chillispot and WifiDog Captive Portal Systems, which we pieced together ourselves..

The Paypal Chilli-Dog Billing System did suffice for myself to build, operate and ultimately sell my citywide wifi network business and I did achieve my goal.. Next I decided to save my work from that past several years so I would not lose it as I switched gears into some new business, which I was still undecided as to what that new business would be this time..

So I fired up this forum and website and started giving out the server software to those who could help me further develop it and also took donations from users like yourselves in order to finance even further development of it.. It turns out that I am not the only person who has these same requirements in setting up a wifi business and this website and billing server software have now been fully developed into a system that completely dwarfs the capabilities of all of these other competitors combined, and does so at a reasonable price..

Once you get past these issues I discuss above, you will next run into the problem of the steep learning curve required in order to get operational with any of these other wifi billing systems.. You need considerable knowledge of routers, networking, ip addressing schemes, linux command line programming, and things that you probably do not even want to know.. If you are like me, you just want to start your wifi business and not have to become a linux programming expert to do so.. That didn't work out for me, but since I have gone ahead and developed the system, you can skip all of that and hit the ground running without needing to learn or know ANY of those things.. Just cut to the chase and get this thing up and running... No need to become a linux server expert..

Once you settle on a wifi billing system and get that up and running, the next thing you will quickly realize is that there is much more to operating ANY business than just wifi billing.. You also need customer tracking and management, inventory tracking, invoicing, scheduling, cash registers for point of sale, etc... And last but not least, you will need a commercial phone pbx system to handle the office phones extensions or to act as the complete phone system for Hotels, Motels, or any other venue which requires phones in conjunction with wifi network distribtuion and billing..

The WifiGator Billing System includes additional free downloads of all of these other business software packages which are preconfigured to work with your business just like the Wifi Gator Billing System does.. When you sign up for our service, you get the phones, cash registers, and ecommerce system downloads and all necessary instructions to set them up at no extra charge.. This is because these are the softwares that you will actually need to start your business.. Wifi billing alone is not enough.. We put the whole package together into one comprehensive system that has been tried and proven to work for this business model and it is all available in our User Discussion Forum..

Do your homework before you jump into this business and get started on the right foot.. It will mean the difference between success and failure.. After considering all of these issues with respect to your own needs and business model, I will look forward to working together with you to achieve your goals and get your business started on the right foot..

Take care, and I will meet up with you somewhere down the information highway,

Loren Wolsiffer
WiFi Gator Billing System

 

 
     
 



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