Slide 24 of 26

If your site does less than$200/month in e-commerce, the cost of hosting e-commerce can exceed any revenue generated. Security certificates cost$150-$400/year. Most e-commerce hosts charge a setup fee of $100-$400 and monthly fees of $50-$100. However, it is possible to do e-commerce for free (not counting transaction fees, which everyone charges). Free shopping carts are relatively rare, but www.1shoppingcarts.com will provide a free cart (with banner ad). The cart is restricted to 10 items, with shipping excluded. The paid cart is unrestricted and is relatively low cost ($100/year). However, a secure shopping cart is just the beginning of e-commerce. Besides a cart, you need a means to process the credit card information you received from the cart. The easiest way to do this is through www.ProPay.com. Once signed up with Propay, you can use the "Personal Pay" feature to enter credit card information to get paid. Account balances can be transferred through their "Send Cash" feature to your bank account. Transaction fee costs are slightly higher with ProPay, but the lack of setup and monthly service fees is significant on a low volume e-commerce site.

PayPal is another online shopping cart and credit card payment site. They used to make the shopper sign up before processing credit cards. However, this is no longer necessary, making it much more acceptable to web surfers on the run.