Can someone explain "dialer"
 

I've been getting a small amount of revenue from this program segment from one of my sponsors. I sort of have a general idea of what it is, but would like to know more. Isn't it mainly a European thing?

Mainly I think it is yes. Dialer is when a surfer uses their phone number for billing rather than a credit card or bank account. Not 100% on this but I believe it is correct.

Dialers usually require download of a sponsor specific application that the user must installed that in turn dials in via the phone at a per minute rate to access the desired content.

Europeans are much more accustomed to billing items to their phone.

These dialers were also used for some pretty serious fraud in the past, so they have a bit of a bad stigma.

I promoted a dialer program from England years ago, and somehow managed to install the dialer on my backup PC. It all went fine until I had to use my backup PC on a dialup connection for a couple of days. While I thought I was hooking up to my local ISP I was dialing Tristan da Cunha in the Indian Ocean every time I went online.
Got a nice phone bill for around $1200.
To make things even worse, the company never paid me, though they did send me a Christmas card.

ofc they didn't pay you, you cheating bastard hihihi :D

Oh yes and I do believe dialers are also those things where you have to dial a phone number (which has a special cost) to get a password for a certain site.

Thanks. I've noticed a lot of sponsors pay on a "dialer" option, but never paid too much attention until I started getting some revenue from it. Nice to know what it is if they're paying...:).

Of course we're taking $2.00...:(

Well, largest payment I have ever got from a dialer program was $5-something, and that was basically a thrown out money, because that did not cover banks commission for cashing in checks.

At some pint in past dialers was all the rage for those who would want to pay for porn, but either did not have credit card or did not want it to show up in their bills. For webmasters that meant mostly any traffic outside the US of A. Also, that was more like for dial-up users. When broadband over cable and DSL started to reign, it was not working like that. As far as I remember, it was possible to call up certain number, and you would get access to a site as long as you don't hang up the phone. Your phone bills would be ridiculous of course. Like $2 per minute or so.

As far as Europe goes - nowadays indeed you can pay through your mobile phone with SMS for a lot of things - from parking to access to porn sites :)
The problem with SMS payments for porn sites still remain:
1. There is no way to confirm your age. A presence of credit card is used as a confirmation of age (although not always true), because normally you have to be 18 to get a credit card.
2. Network limitations - Its complicated to set up a billing system that is working on multiple networks over orders.

HTH

In theory, the dialler is the ideal billing mechanism to convert international surfers into paying customers. End-users would simply download some software onto their PC’s, which then reconnected to your members area via a premium number, and they would pay you on a per-minute basis. In practice, however, the dialer-era was short lived for a variety of reasons.

When they first emerged, surfers worldwide (most of whom do not have a credit card) finally had a way to pay for the forbidden fruits that the Web had to offer.

Not surprisingly, webmasters that implemented dialers were delighted also – a brand new revenue stream overnight from surfers who were visiting their sites anyway.

Unfortunately, several crooks were also drawn to the money making potential afforded by diallers; they started creating variants with malicious code that would either make it difficult for the user to disconnect or, worse still, would then reconnect to a premium rate number every time the user would connect via modem to the Web – leading to horrendous phone bills as Sheepguy's post bears witness.

To compound the problem, a range of viruses were making regular unwelcome appearances throughout the Web, leading to surfers becoming suspicious before downloading any software onto their PCs from third parties they did not trust.

Furthermore, increasing broadband penetration had rendered the old-style dialler obsolete anyway. For broadband customers, voice diallers billing now exists whereby access to a website is granted as long as the customer stays connected to a premium rate line by phone.

So whilst the dialer may have died, the underlying billing mechanism on which it was based is still alive and well - thus allowing webmasters to still make money on a global scale.

However, as with mobile, things are different in USA which remains a difficult country to bill by phone so, yes LusciousDelight, it is more of a European thing lol

Contact the sponsor, but I'm going to guess that it isn't a dialer.

Dialers have disapeared, with dial-up connections. Mostly everyone is now on DSL, Cable, wi-fi connection.

I bet you that it is an SMS or Bill to Cell Phone transaction. These transactions go for as little as $1.00 depending on the biller/country they are billing and I can't imagine what your commision could be.