We're here to help

Here we tell you all about AQA2U in fine detail. You're welcome to read it all, but you might want to skip to the relevant section if you're interested in becoming a publisher or subscriber.

General Q&A

What is AQA2U?
AQA2U is a commercial micro-publishing service, based on premium texts.

AQA2U allows anyone with a mobile phone to make money publishing content to fans and followers, using premium text. It's easy, and free, to set up. All you need to do is sign up as a publisher, and within 2 hours (maximum 24 hours) you can be ready to get fans and followers, and start publishing your content.

Anyone can subscribe to content provided by AQA2U's publishers safe in the knowledge that it complies with the AQA2U Publishing Policy which guarantees that you'll never be spammed, never be over-charged, and never receive offensive texts.

How does it work?
Publishers either log on or text their messages to AQA2U. These texts get checked to make sure they comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy and they are then sent to subscribers by premium text. Subscribers are charged 25p for each text received. That revenue is collected by the network operators, and passed on to 63336. 63336 then pays the majority of the net revenue to the publishers.

How much money do publishers get?
7p: Between 1 and 9,999 texts to subscribers per month.
8p: Between 10,000 and 19,999 texts to subscribers per month.
9p: Over 20,000 texts to subscribers per month.

Charity accounts receive 12p per text, regardless of volume.

What are topics?
Topics are subjects of interest that customers can subscribe to. Topics may be about anything, but must comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy.

What is the AQA2U Publishing Policy?
AQA2U is designed to be used by anyone, regardless of age. Guidelines have been put in place to ensure texts are not likely to cause offence, upset, or harm to any subscriber. These guidelines include regulatory conditions that are requirements for premium text services.

Who publishes the content?
A publisher can be any person, business or charity with access to a UK mobile phone.

Who can subscribe to the content?
Anyone with a UK mobile phone can subscribe to a topic created by a publisher. Whilst you can browse the topics on the 63336.com website, the only way in which you can subscribe to the content is by texting 63336 with the topic name. ie text NICE2U to 63336 to subscribe to the compliments topic.

How much does it cost?
Anyone can create a publisher account for free. It costs £1 to subscribe to a topic, thereafter 25p per text received up to a maximum of £3.50 per month per topic. Subscribers can stop their subscriptions at any time at 63336.com or by texting stop and the topic code to 85558. Texts to 85558 are charged at the standard rate.

How do subscribers find out which topics they can sign up to?
All topics can be searched for on 63336.com. Of course, publishers will be marketing their own topics in various ways.

Who, as a publisher, is AQA2U of most benefit to?
AQA2U is likely to benefit any person, company, or other body which has even a small group of people who are keen for targeted, frequent updates and information. This could perhaps be an up and coming band, football team, a charity, a school PTA, an existing blogger, a newspaper or even a group of friends going climbing.

Publisher FAQ

Who can be a publisher?
A publisher can be anyone with a UK mobile phone. A publisher can be a single individual, a company, or a charity.

How do I sign up to be a publisher?
You can only become a publisher by joining the 63336 Club. Once you are a member you'll need to create your publisher account, set up contact details and bank details, set up administrators to the account and set up authors.

All details entered into AQA2U will be checked to ensure they comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy.

How much does it cost?
It costs nothing to set up as a publisher. Once you start authoring content and attract subscribers, AQA2U sends out your texts and you start earning money. AQA2U ensures every text you send complies with the AQA2U policy by checking them against the AQA2U Publishing Policy, this cost is subtracted from your revenue. AQA2U charges 10p per text submitted for approval, independent of the number of subscribers you have, set off against future revenue. Such approvals will typically take less than 2 minutes.

How quickly can I set up as a publisher?
We will approve all publishers' details within 24 hours during normal business hours, but will normally aim for under 2 hours.

How much money do I get?
7p: Between 1 and 9,999 texts to subscribers per month.
8p: Between 10,000 and 19,999 texts to subscribers per month.
9p: Over 20,000 texts to subscribers per month.

Charities which sign up as publishers, receive 12p per text they send, regardless of volume.

A publisher with 25 subscribers, sending 14 texts per month, will get over £275 per year, a publisher with 250 subscribers will earn close to £3,000 per year.

AQA2U only pays out on revenue received from the mobile phone network providers. If, for any reason, a text doesn't get delivered to a subscriber (their handset may be turned off, or they may not have enough money on their phone) neither AQA2U nor publishers will receive revenue for that text. We rely on the network operators to supply us this information, which they do at the end of each month but only for the total texts delivered across all topics. Therefore, we will assume that the percentage of undelivered texts is the same for every topic.

The actual number of texts delivered will vary each time you publish a text. A good rule of thumb would be to assume that 3% of your subscribers will not receive the text. So if you had 100 subscribers you could plan on 97 of them receiving each text you send.

How do texts get sent out?
Texts are sent out from shortcode 63336. Your subscribers will see the topic name, followed by your text. For example "LOTTO2U: Today's results were….".

How do publishers get paid?
Publishers are paid direct to their bank account. We pay publishers when we receive money from the network operators, which means that publishers will get their revenue 8 weeks after the end of the month, subject to a minimum payment of £50.

If publishers don't earn £50 within a month, it is carried forward to the next month, until they do.

Publishers also have the option of not receiving any money, in which case it's retained by AQA2U, or donating their revenue share to charities that are themselves publishers with AQA2U.

Which charities can publishers donate to?
Currently, publishers can choose to donate their earnings to the Samaritans, WellChild, or Straight Talking. Others will be available shortly.

I'm a charity, can I set up an account for people to donate to?
Yes. If you set yourself up as a charity publisher, you have the option to allow other publishers to donate their revenue to you.

How do you work out the revenue payments?
From 25p, after network operator revenue share and VAT, AQA2U receives about 12p. Publishers get the majority of this, from 7p to 9p depending on volume. Charities get 12p. Total revenue payment in any one month is the revenue share from texts, minus AQA2U Publishing Policy text approvals at 10p each.

What is an administrator?
When you sign up for the first time as a publisher, you also become an administrator. An administrator is someone who can alter any details in the publisher account, including appointing authors, changing bank details, setting up and editing topics. There can be up to four administrators for one publisher account.

What is an author?
An author is someone, authorised by an administrator, who writes the texts for your topics. At the very least, for each publisher, you'll have one person who is an administrator and one who is an author. Often, this will be the same person. There can be up to 20 authors for any one topic.

How do administrators or authors log in?
All administrators and authors must have a UK mobile phone. They must either be members of the 63336 Club, or verify their phone by joining the 63336 Club. They will be able to log in using their phone number as their identification and by using a password, personal to them.

Will my publisher account be secure and what will stop other people logging in and sending texts in my name?
Your account is secure and access is restricted to approved phone numbers and also requires a password. Only named authors may send texts. If you suspect your account has been tampered with please email us at support@63336.com

Who owns the copyright in content I submit?
Publishers own the copyright in all texts submitted to AQA2U to be sent to subscribers. Publishers do, however, have to assign the right to AQA2U to send the content to subscribers and to format it in such a way that it fits in the text message.

Creating topics

What is a topic?
A topic is a subject of interest to your fans or followers. It has a name, ending with 2U. The name can be anything from 7 to 10 characters, and consist of uppercase letters, numbers, or dots. It cannot start with a dot. It must comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy.

Can I have any topic name?
Yes, but they need to be approved by AQA2U and are subject to availability and AQA2U Publishing Policy guidelines. This approval, which doesn't cost anything, will typically take place within 2 hours, but definitely within 24 hours during business working days.

How many topics can I have?
Initially, we're limiting a publisher to two topics each to encourage a wide number of publishers to join, and to discourage publishers registering for topics that they aren't committed to publish content for. This restriction can be waived by AQA2U on application.

What are the rules on choosing topic names?
Our rules are designed to make it fair for everyone and to guard against unreasonable practices.

A topic name must:

• Be 7 to 10 characters (including the 2U suffix),
• Can only contain uppercase letters, numbers and if required one full stop ("."),
• Must start with a letter or a number,
• Cannot be a name already in use,
• Must comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy,
• Must not violate the rules on squatting, impersonation or trademarks as set out below.

Impersonation, squatting and trademark policy

What is Impersonation?
Pretending to be another person or business as entertainment or in order to deceive is impersonation. Any publisher may be guilty of impersonation if it confuses or misleads others – accounts with the clear INTENT to confuse or mislead will have their accounts suspended.

What is trademark violation?
Using a company or business name, logo, or other trademark protected materials in a manner that may mislead or confuse others may be considered trademark infringement. Accounts with the clear INTENT to confuse or mislead will have their accounts suspended.

What constitutes user name squatting?
Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be name squatting are:

• the number of accounts created
• creating accounts for the purpose of preventing others from using those account names
• creating accounts for the purpose of selling those accounts
• using feeds of third-party content to update and maintain accounts under the names of those third parties

Mass account creation and inactive accounts
Mass account creation is a spam violation and is not allowed. Accounts created in a serial fashion will be suspended, and user names will no longer be available. To protect against this we have restricted each publisher to no more than 2 topics.

User names for sale
Selling free user names is against our rules. If someone has tried to sell you an AQA2U user name, please let us know by emailing us at support@63336.com.

What happens to the infringing account?
If there is a clear intent to mislead people into believing the account is affiliated with the company/business in question, the account will be suspended. Accounts created to help a community or provide information will be contacted with the appropriate steps to take to keep the account.

Creating texts

How do I write a text?
Authorised authors can either log in to 63336.com and write items to be sent to subscribers on the website, or text them straight from their phone.

If texting from their phone, the phone number needs to be the one that's registered with AQA2U as an author for the topic. You send the item to 85558 (standard rate charge). The text must start with a full stop, followed by the topic code, followed by the item you want to be sent.

For example, if your topic is 'BILLY2U' you would text:-

.billy2u we're meeting at the lock tavern tonight at 8.30. First 20 guests get in free

Since the text will be sent as:-

billy2u: we're meeting at the lock tavern tonight at 8.30. First 20 guests get in free

As the full stop is replaced with a colon, you can ensure that your text is not too long by using only one text messsage of 160 characters.

All items will be checked to make sure they comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy, and will then be delivered to your subscribers.

Don't forget to prefix the topic code with a full stop.

How often can I send texts to my subscribers?
You can send up to 14 texts per month, and no more than 3 per day, per topic. We believe in protecting the consumer. 14 texts a month will cost the consumer no more than £3.50 which is a manageable cost for most people

What can I send out under my topic?
AQA2U is a text based system, and a text is limited to 160 characters including your topic code as a prefix. All content is checked by AQA2U to ensure it complies with AQA2U Publishing Policy. Typically, this check will take a few minutes.

When can I send out texts?
Texts are allowed between 6am and midnight. However AQA2U recommends 8am to 10pm.

Is AQA2U responsible for the content in my text?
No. You write the content. We don't alter this in any way. We just have a check to make sure the text meets the AQA2U Publishing Policy before sending it out to your subscribers.

Why do my texts have to be checked?
It's a consumer safeguard we have to put in place that incorporates the way we believe customers should be treated, and incorporates the mobile phone companies' and government regulatory guidelines.

Will approval be done promptly?
We have over 1,000 researchers working 24/7 who provide answers to questions on our 63336 service. Any texts you enter to be sent to subscribers will typically be approved within a few minutes. We expect that 80% of texts will be approved in under 2 minutes and the remainder within 5 minutes.

How will I find out if my text has been rejected by AQA?
Logging into 63336.com you can see which texts have been sent out, and which texts have been rejected.

How can I write anything useful in one text?
63336 has answered over 17 million questions in one text. It's easy and straight forward to do after some practice.

Can I write in txt spk
Yes, if you feel it is appropriate for your subscribers.

Can I add adverts?
You can write anything you want in your texts, subject to the AQA2U Publishers Policy. Be mindful that people are paying 25p to receive each text, sending them adverts is a sure fire way of losing subscribers quickly.

Can I send pictures ?
No. AQA2U is a text service only. You can, however, put hyperlinks in to pictures stored on the web or elsewhere.

How can I get subscribers to my topics?
You can market your topics in any way you wish. You will find them listed here where people can browse your content. The only way in which someone can subscribe to your content is by texting the name of your topic to 63336. i.e. text LOTTO2U to 63336 to subscribe to the lottery results.

How can I market my texts?
You can market your texts in any way, but as they are delivered on a premium short code there are some simple guidelines that you must follow if you're doing formal advertising. The guidelines can be found in the terms and conditions or a publisher guide which you can download here. If you're marketing by word of mouth, you can just tell people that to subscribe they should just text your topic name to 63336. It costs £1 to subscribe and thereafter 25p per text, subect to a maximum of £3.50 per month.

Can I market to your 63336 user base?
No. We do not SPAM our customers in anyway and will not use their details to promote third party services.

Can I have the names and telephone numbers of all the people subscribing to my service?
No. This is confidential. We will of course give you the total number of people subscribed each month and the total texts sent out on each of your topics. These details can be found in the reports section of your publishers account.

If I have any concerns about my publisher account or have further queries is there some way of contacting AQA?
You may send email enquiries to support@63336.com. Please state your publisher account name and topic name[s] and we will endeavour to respond within 2 working days, hopefully sooner.

AQA2U Publishing Policy

Why do you have a publishing policy?
AQA2U is designed to be used by anyone, regardless of age. Guidelines have been put in place to ensure texts are not likely to cause offence, upset, or harm to any subscriber

Only texts that comply with the AQA2U Publishing Policy will be sent to your subscribers.

All registered details with AQA2U, as well as all texts submitted to be sent to subscribers, must not:

• result in any unreasonable invasion of privacy,
• induce an unacceptable sense of fear or anxiety,
• encourages any person to engage in dangerous practices or use harmful substances,
• induce or promotes racial disharmony,
• cause grave or widespread offence,
• debase, degrade, or demean,
• promotes or facilitate prostitution,
• encourage or assist illegal activities,
• contain material indicating violence, sadism or cruelty, or be of a repulsive or horrible nature,
• involves the unwarranted use of foul language,
• be of an explicit, adult nature.

Furthermore, as texts are checked by English speaking researchers, only content that can be understood by an English speaking researcher will be published.

What happens if a text is submitted that doesn't meet the AQA2U Publishing Policy?
The text will not be sent to subscribers. AQA2U operates a three strikes rule against a topic. If three texts are submitted by authors that are rejected under AQA2U publishing guidelines then a strike will be recorded again the topic. If a topic receives three strikes it will be suspended and no more texts will be delivered.

What happens if a topic is suspended?
AQA2U also operates a three strikes rule with publishers. If a publisher has a topic or topics suspended three times then the publishing account will be suspended. No further activity will be allowed for that publisher.

Can a publisher appeal against an AQA2U Publishing Policy infringement?
Yes, by contacting support at support@63336.com.

Subscriber FAQ

What can I subscribe to?
AQA2U is a micro-publishing text service that allows anyone with content to publish it to 'subscribers'. You can browse all content available from publishers here. To subscribe to any topic you must have a UK mobile phone and text the code name of the topic to 63336.

How much does it cost?
It costs £1 to subscribe to a topic plus 25p per text thereafter. We limit the texts sent out per topic in any month to 14 so the maximum you'll pay for the texts is £3.50 per month per topic.

How many texts will I get?
You are only charged per text you receive. If the topic you subscribe to only sends out 4 texts in a month, you get charged £1. We expect that on average you will get 10 texts per month, costing you £2.50 per month, but you could get up to 14 texts per month, representing a maximum cost of £3.50 per month per topic.

How do I stop subscribing?
You'll be sent instructions with a welcome message when you subscribe to any topic. To stop a topic, text "STOP TOPICNAME" to 85558 but leave out the " characters. i.e. STOP LOTTO2U to 85558. This will cost the price of a standard text message. Alternatively you can login to your 63336 Club account here where you can manage your topics for free.

I've subscribed to more than one topic? How do I stop them all?
To stop receiving texts from AQA2U text STOP ALL to 85558. This will cost the price of a standard text message. Alternatively, you can login to your 63336 Club account here where you can manage your topics for free.

Can I text 63336?
It costs you £1 to text 63336, but you can ask us any question, including about content that you've received from publishers.

What about privacy?
We never reveal to third parties, including publishers, which topics you're subscribed to. Anything that you text to 63336 is covered by the normal 63336 terms and conditions.

Can I subscribe to more than one Topic?
Yes.

Who do I contact if I've a problem?
Please contact us either by email feedback@63336.com or call 02074839094 (normal business hours).