how to get paid through my website

hello all,

great great site, i've spent the last 2 hours reading threads and comments and enjoyed every minute of it
am new on the forum

i'm building my new website, i own a few already, but none of them deals with ecommerce or demands paying through the sits

i admit i'm fresh concerning ecommerce, my business partner is a computer engineer, so he knows how to write the code etc.

still, we don't really know how to start rhe whole paying system

a few facts about the site:
1. the site will be hosted in the US
2. the site deals with video lessons and teachers having their kessons on video, getting "students" (i.e. members) to pay for it
3. it is very important for us to have control over the whole paying system through every step

your comments would be very helpful
need any help u can give

thnks a lot
chacha

You might as well go with a cart system as they have payment gateways already in place. Pay Pal seems to be the beginners system of choice because opening an account is free, the payment process is secure and there are several options available such as adding shipping costs and taxes at the final process. You can also accept credit cards. For a more professional approach you might want to consider a merchant account with a company such as Authorize.Net. This gives you the option of accepting credit cards without leaving your site which only the Pro version of Pay Pal offers.

There are several free carts available to you such as OsCommerce, Zen cart and version 3 of Cube Cart.

Make sure you are happy with your system before making your final decision. Once you set your shop up, it's not easy to transfer to another system. Most all carts are database driven and transferring a database from one system to another is fraught with problems, so make your choice wisely.

thanks a lot,
as i said earlier, it is very helpful to get these comments and ideas from you

i'll reaearch the 3 cart systems you advised of

a question about paypal - will the account be registered on behalf of our company name? meaning, the student would pay directly to our account (e.g. through his personal account on the site), and we would transfer it, minus our commision, to the teachear's account on the site?

thanks again
chacha

You can open a Pay Pal business account. It's free as well. I suppose you can set your site up to do what you need.

Authorize.net and QuickCom are two great gateway options for these carts. The program we recommend for either of these gateway options and one that is very familiar with these open source cars is Ecom Exchange

http://www.inventorysource.com/merchantaccount.html They also have an option where they will setup your payment gateway settings for you and walk you through the basics of all of your account details.

guys thank again

i'll make the required research
and come for more if it would be needed

chacha