Cellware: Make Your Own Ringtones, and Maybe Some Money, Too

Cellware says it's free everything for your cell phone: free videos, free wallpaper, free ringtones. You can even upload your own MP3s to use as ringtones, and these can be tagged, rated, searched and shared. Sound familiar? Yep, YouTube-ish. Everything is ad-supported, natch.

Of course, there are copyright issues. Anything that's uploaded to be shared is listened to by a human, to make sure it's not copyrighted. If it is, it's removed.

However, if you upload something you want to turn into a ringtone for yourself, Cellware assumes Fair Use is applicable, and lets you do it. After all, if you own the content, Fair Use, as I said, would apply and you should be able to use the MP3 as a ringtone. Of course, Cellware doesn't do anything in terms of confirming you actually do own the song.

There are also some simple Flash tools that let you upload whole MP3 tracks, edit them into clips and even mix several tracks together into a mashup.

Although the site indicates you need to download the ringtone in your mobile browser, for those of us cheapskates who don't have a data plan, you don't actually need to do this. Simply take the email you receive when you click "Get It" on a ringtone (you can, of course, preview the audio online) and download the file in your regular browser.

This service just launched Tuesday, and the FAQ link actually takes you to the forum ... which has an empty FAQ section. And Gmail apparently thinks email from Cellware is spam, as my registration confirmation and first ringtone email went straight to the spam folder.

But I mentioned you could make money. How? As the site says:

Every one of your content pieces has the potential to earn money. Create a Ringtone, Wallpaper, Video, Game or Application. Upload it to the site and watch the cash roll in. It's that easy!! Your content will be offered for FREE to anyone who wants to download it, and we will then pay you cash based on how many times your content is downloaded.

Who knows? Your original creation could get you some decent cash.