Ok....E-Commerce...what is it and why do I need it?

The definition of ecommerce is conducting business on-line. This includes, for example, buying and selling products with digital cash and via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and or accepting credit cards on-line.

Now that you have a better idea of what ecommerce is, you will need to make a decision as to how you are going to process payments for your customers. We recommend accepting credit cards through a secure server.

There are many options for this. One is to purchase a shopping cart cgi-script, and apply for your own secure server certificate, and last but not least, apply for a merchant account, which will have monthly fees. This could add up to hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

One way that we recommend, that could save you some of this expense, especially when you are just starting up your site, is to use a third party merchant account.

A third party merchant account is a company that is allowing you to use their credit card services. In exchange, they will charge you a small percentage of your sale, along with a small per sale transaction fee.

Now, I don't know how you feel about it, but I would rather pay a little at a time, as I'm collecting money from my website versus having a monthly fee that goes to the merchant company, paying for expensive shopping cart software and then have to worry about whether my site is bringing enough money in to recover the money that I have put out.

Now, I can see as your website is making thousands, but initially, a third party merchant account is the way to go. The company that we recommend is 2checkout.com, as you get everything you need to sell your product or service to a customer. It comes with an online shopping cart that is easily integrated into your website, along with a merchant account that has no contracts, no leases, no expensive equipment to buy, and much more.

There is a one-time setup fee of $49.00, and they charge $0.45 per transaction along with 5.5% of the transaction amount. For example, let's say you are selling a product for $19.95. 2checkout.com would take 5.5% of this amount, which is $1.10, along with $0.45 for the transaction, totalling $1.55. You would then receive $18.40 for this sale.

Not too bad, considering that they are incurring all of the expenses, supplying the secure server and the shopping cart.

They will deposit your funds in your bank account on the first and sixteenth of each month. To learn more about this, visit 2checkout.com.