Hi fat55,
There is an excellent tutorial by Web Monkey to help you get your
business up and going. The Five Lessons are designed to give you a
basic knowledge of what you need to do to get your store online and
operating, including credit card transactions.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/e-business/building/tutorials/tutorial3.html
The eCommerce GuideBook offers a step-by-step guide:
"Here, you will find a step-by-step guide to the process of becoming
eCommerce enabled, a listing of all the known Online Transaction
Providers, and a condensed comparison of the prices and services they
offer, as well as many more resources."
http://www.online-commerce.com/
However, I strongly suggest having a look at Chrislands, a webhosting
service designed specifically for online bookstores:
http://www.chrislands.com/
Chrislands can have you up and running in a week for a very reasonable
rate. If you have up to 2500 books for sale, you'll pay $99.99 for
your store's set-up plus $9.99 per month maintainence fee. This is a
bargain and a fairly painless way to get started selling books online.
The features include a secure online ordering form, an excellent
shipping matrix, help with meta tags, your own web address
(www.fat55.com for example) and best of all, you won't have to spend
endless hours maintaining your site, Chrislands does that for you.
That all said, you will still need a business account with a credit
card company - do some comparison shopping with the banks in your area
and find out who gives the best deal for credit card merchants.
"Behind the scenes, credit card transactions are pretty complex. They
involve a number of independent groups, including you (the merchant),
your bank, the customers, the customers' banks, the companies that
issued the customers' credit cards, and the large credit and debit
"acquiring banks" who manage the whole mess. All these various groups
need to work together before your customers' money can make it into
your account. To make sure everyone remains happy along the way, there
are quite a few things to consider."
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/04/index2a_page4.html?tw=e-business
In the meantime, you could set up a PayPal account to help to get you
started.
PayPal business accounts:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/index-outside
Additional Link:
For your inventory, you can download the free HomeBase program from
Abebooks after registering with Abe. Your inventory would then be
ready to easily upload to your website:
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/docs/homebase/HB21Download.shtml
Lastly, I suggest signing on to one of the bookselling mailing lists,
such as "Insiders" to receive help from fellow online booksellers.
http://lists.bookfinder.com/mailman/listinfo/insider
I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please post a
clarification request before rating my answer.
Thank you,
hummer
Search Strategy:
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