Hi, I am making an auction site (think general stuff - just like ebay). I want to charge a sales comission (every item sold will owe a percentage to the auction site).

I would like to have a seamless charge process on the site (nothing like 2checkout or shopping cart dependent). The person will enter their card number, and pay their invoice comission amount. Invoices will probably be low (about $5.00-20.00 range so maybe a low flat fee rate would be good?).

When the the credit card clears I want to be able to instantly clear the comission debt of the customer. I used php to make the site.

Could you recommend something that would fit my description above? Thanks. Also, I do not have any SSL installed on the server, can you recommend something to enable https please. Thanks again!

Check out: http://www.ev1servers.net/english/index.asp for security certs.

As far as paying the seller, you might check into transferring the money yourself. I think that ccbill or ibill does something like that, but it would not be beneficial since you have low transactions.

Wow this SSL is cheap $20:
I would just need chained SSL to get https to work?

There is the $50 Professional SSL
If your transaction volume and value warrants an SSL certificate from a known brand and/or you require a non-chained root SSL certificate solution, or you require more advanced site seal technology than offered by ChainedSSL, please refer to our Professional Level SSL certificates section.

Would that mean if I ran a site like amazon which sells books and cds? My site doesn't really sell anything it just sells a service basically. Example: the auction seller sells the item for $100, on the site there is a final value percentage owed--say 2%--, so the auction seller would pay the auction site $2 (or they could put it on their tab and sell it when their invoice reaches $20 or so).

Well that is another debate :) ChainedSSL & Geotrust. But yes, the ChainedSSL will get your the https. Some prefer one over the other. Me, I like Geotrust. For some of our smaller clients, I tell them ChainedSSL is good for them. And of course, a few want Verisign (most expensive).

As far as billing your merchants, these are things to consider when writing your business plan. Who is the buyer going to be paying - you or the seller?

I think I won't use chained ssl after reading http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=297863&highlight=chainedssl

Maybe instantssl is good http://www.instantssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/ssl.html from reading http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=297814&highlight=chainedssl

Anyway, the buyer will be paying the seller directly through their own paypal accounts, money order, check etc. The buyer won't have to the pay the site anything. I'll just be charging the seller a small comission percent of the final value.

I want the seller to be able to see their balance (it's stored in mysql) and then they're balanace can be paid through my merchant account (they enter their cc, and don't visit any other websites [2checkout did this and I cancelled them]), then they are directed to a page confirming that they paid and their comission balance is cleared.

Well as I said, that is another debate just like ASP & PHP. One I will not participate in. If those are the only two that you read, that's fine. But remember, there is no unbiased website that compares SSLs certs right now.

Well you can have the seller deposit a certain amount of money into their account to sell their items. This might be better for you in the long run since you will be charged a discount rate & transaction rate & most merchant account providers are not bult for micro-payments.

Originally posted by coreybryant
Well you can have the seller deposit a certain amount of money into their account to sell their items. This might be better for you in the long run since you will be charged a discount rate & transaction rate & most merchant account providers are not bult for micro-payments.

Yes, that would be good. But the cheaper accounts like 2checkout say not to make an "credits" in their signup area. Plus with 2checkout there's no way I can make it instantly appear. I would have to look at the email invoice 2CO sends me and manually type in their "credits".

When you say they're not designed for micro payments do you mean they can't handle it or I wouldn't end up with an optimum amount of profit since there are so many flat cent fees with every payment?

You would not end up with optimum profits. If the sell is $100.00 and your rate is 1%, that is $2.00. Paypal is going to charge you 2.2-2.9% plus $.30 (this is about 17%). So that is about $1.66. Going thru 2CO, that woud be $1.34 (this is about 33%)

2CO works with membership sites: http://www.2checkout.com/memberoverview.htm - so you charge $20 membership fee. With this fee, the seller gets to sell up to $2,000 in merchandise. Then once they have sold this amount, they need to 're-up' their membership.

Yes, plus with 2CO there's no monthly fees as with merchant accounts. But still, ebay wouldn't be the company it is if did it like the way you're describing. It would be good if I were catering to sale companies but it's for just common people wanting to selling their cd collection. And I may not even charge unless the comission invoice is at least $5.

Well e-bay is a pretty big company. They get special rates because of what they bring in.

If you business plan calls for more than $1,000 a month, it is usually a better idea to get a merchant account. Usually your merchant account rate is about 3.5% compared to 5.95% with 2CO

Yes I agree. Also we don't make any customers currently, but we will when the site goes online. It will be all free initially, but when we have a heavy amount of traffic I will have to implement a merchant account. Do you think the customers will react badly to that (demographic 18-30 year olds m/f ratio same).

Well usually when I am getting something for free & then I have to pay for it, I wonder why. I understand that it is for the company to stay in business but why do I have to start to pay for it?

If anything - you should put on there "specials" & prepare people that they have to pay for it at some point. I think that is a lot better

That is a good idea. I probably won't use ssl for a while (I may need a new host) --what do you think of freessl.com?

I will mention that selling is free until January 2005, and hopefully by then I'll have the SSL setup to go etc. and I won't unprofessionally upset people.

Personally, I would not use it - because when I think of Free, I think that it might not be good, buggy, problematic. But that is only my opinion.