ForumsInternet/eCommerce

Thanks, that's helpful information. I would like to get some information about them if you have it.

I was mainly looking to get the sitebuilding and shoppingcart bundled together but I wanted to get the merchant gateway account and hosting solution separately since I have some companies in mind that have been recommended.

I was actually planning on going with authorize.net for the gateway, it's definitely the one I've heard the most good feedback about. Would love some preferred pricing:) As far as the host, I was going to go with HostGator, they come highly recommended from a friend that pretty much made hosting a business for himself, and they're very reasonable.

My thought as far as going all the way when I first start the business is that I don't want to go through several phases of upgrades and redesigns later. I believe that the design as well as functionality and usability of your site is a large contributor to your success so I'd rather do it right from the start. Also, I have worked in online marketing for the last 6+ years so I'm hoping I can use my skill and experience to bring the sales up pretty quickly to start earning money. Unfortunately, I'm a marketer, not a tech person, which is why I need a solution that's easy to implement:)

Here is the link to SBI I promised: http://www.sitesell.com/Barry40.html
Note they provide EZ facilities to build your own web site even if you know little or nothing about the process (I am living proof of that) plus they do the hosting as well. They also provide excellent service and support as well, as well as on-going search engine upgrades and maintenance. I am very happy with them. Take a tour of my website...I did that all by myself and I know ZERO about web design, HTML, etc.

If you'll provide me with your email address, I'll be happy to provide authorize.net preferred pricing details. I hesitate to do so publically. My address is amspcs@juno.com

I'd like to make a few comments on nMoncrief's post. I am not familiar with free Magnento shopping cart provider, so I can't make a judgement one way or the other. In reviewing their site, I note they claim compatability with both Paypal and authorize.net, so that's good. So I would ASSUME they're probably OK. I just like GoDaddy because I KNOW they work. Makes no difference to me as long as it works..

Not sure I totally agree with the negative assessment of Paypal. Yes, they may not be the most glamorous name in payment processing, and to be sure they should be considered as only a starter temporary solution. But frankly I have not been witness to all the degree of nighmare scenarios the nMoncrief outlines--in fact I have used them many times myself to collect for invoices with no problems at all. And upgrading from Paypal to a more sophisticated system is not nearly as complex as you seem to think--in fact it is quite simple and elementary. Understand that Paypal is basically a competitor and strong detrement to anyone who sells traditional merchant services as a living, so I suspect this reality might play a strong roll in the negative commentary of Paypal. As I have stated, Paypal is not a permanent primary payment solution, but it IS a very viable and beneficial temporary starter payment processing solution. That's it's role, and in all honesty it must be admitted they fulfill that limited role very well. Paying standard merchant account fees AND gateway access fees AND shopping cart fees when a merchant is doing minimal initial business volume is just suicide.

I also must respecfully but strongly disagree with nMoncries' views on approaching a new business with an optomistic viewpoint and going first-class from day one. Making an intellligent expense-control decision such as going with Paypal initially until volume justifies otherwise is not about being negative and planning for failure. To the contrary, it is all about managing your business off the ground in a responsible manner and avoiding failure by putting the odds of success in your favor. . A sure-fire way of guaranteeing failure is biting off more than you can chew and running out of opoerating money prematurely. As I said before, I'd love to sell you a merchant account today, that's what I do and how I make my living. But I think you'd be foolish to do so unless you are positive orders will come in droves from day one. I know all new businesses think this will be the case...I've heard it a million times. Guess what? It doesn't work that way.

Finally, lets clear up a little confusion. nMoncrief refers to authorize.net as 'expensive' and a 'payment processor'. I don't think the mis-info was intentional, but I can see how it might be confusing to some.
First of all, they are not unduly expensive. They are not free to be sure, but they ARE the gold-standard in gateway providers. You get what you pay for, and on that basis I can't imagine why any ecommerce vender would even consider anything except authorize.net. Secondly: They are not a payment provider or processor, they are a gateway solution. Very different things. So lets make sure you are clear on the following: As a ecommerce business you will need three separate and distinct entitites all tied together: (1) a payment provider, which is your merchant services account provider, (2) a gateway such as auth.net and (3) a shopping cart solution (unless you sell only one product, not different products, different colors, different sizes, etc.) . If you only have 1 of the 3, or even 2 of the 3, you won't process a dime over the internet. Authorize.net does absoutely nothing without a tie-in to a merchant services provider.

Hope this helps. Please provide your email address to amspcs@juno.com and we'll discuss Authorize.net options. Thanks.

B. Godofsky
www.MerchantServices-help.com
amspcs@juno.com

Sorry for the misunderstanding about what you meant to say in referring to authorize.net as a 'payment processor'.. Your quote was "I DO NOT recommend going directly to A.net for payment processing" So I took the sentence at face value. Easy to see how that could be very confusing to a merchant who doesn't understand the difference between a payment processor and a gateway. Thanks for the clarification.

You are absoutely correct in stating that merchants who take the approach of setting up a gateway first then using the merchant provider that the gateway 'suggests' (or vice-versa--either way we're probably talking about proprietary solutions which are always a mistake) usually results in the merchant over-paying on both ends. A better way, again as you correctly suggest, is to set up the merchant account first, , then let the merchant account provider set up the gateway account _on authorize.net._and not, repeat not, some off-the-wall proprietary gateway, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Anything 'proprietary' almost alway means 'trapped whether you like it or not' which invariably leads to price gouging..

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Hi there all,

A rather interesting thread- I'm interested to learn what you end up going with and how it works out for you. I'm still in R&D and expect this phase of preparation to come up for me further down the road. I've had great success with GoDaddy in the past. As far as Merchant Services, I used NOVA from Costco and despite fielding near constant offers, no one could compete with our rates.

I'm building my simple website off Microsoft Office Live- which is free. They have all the e-commerce tools. I've glanced at them and I think they are worth my first consideration when I get to that stage. In terms of the broader logistics aspects, they also have Microsoft Dynamics CRM modules you can pick and choose from- apparently- with free trials and pricing appropriate per size of business i.e. 1-50 employees etc. The MOL is very user friendly and I've managed to play around with some of the advanced formatting options to come up with something I like. I believe they also have options to use as a straight FTP upload from your computer/ server- thus actually "hosting" free of charge. The basic layouts aren't too bad in themselves. However, I kind of like the idea of making what I am doing appear paid for!

Maybe you should look into that. Now for my own benefit, please do not hesitate to "correct me" if I am off point somehow and not talking about the issues and solutions you just discussed. I'm operating off the impression I've got these things pretty well covered, but am open to finding out anything I may be misunderstanding or missing. PPPPPPP!

Thanks!

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