Hi, I'm sure that I'm not the first to ask these questions. I just haven't been able to find them digested anywhere and my head hurts trying. I originally started out wanting to create some e-commerce sites for some businesses. Then I thought to myself, why not get a hosting account and host them myself. Cool. Now what I need to know is how do I go about managing all this. I want to be able to set up a complete package for my clients; hosted solution, set them up with SSL certs, billing each account, payment gateways etc. I am having a little difficulty deciphering each element I need to make this work. As a scenario, here are my thoughts: I need to find a hosting reseller since I don't have the time to manage a server on my own. Say I get a small addaction.net account with plans to grow. OK, say I get that and I want to use osCommerce for my clients. Fine, got that. I need to setup a SSL cert, I go to verisign or godaddy and purchase one for each client. Now I need a payment gateway. Most will want authorize.net and PayPal as an option. Good so far? What else am I missing? I see people talking about reocurring billing with authorize.net through CDG. What is this? Is this something I need now? What is it's function?

Any help would be great.

Recurring billing - bill them every predefined period, automatically . The key word is automatically.

If you dont have time to support your customers, you might want to consider new resellers who have started business by offering anonymous support to your clients. HostingZoom gives you that through ticket support. Varhosting gives you ticket AND chat support for technical AND sales . I bit out of the ordinary, but it is good , but as I said, they are NEW. So if anyone has any reviews on them , regarding their uptime and stuff, it would be kind of interesting to see, if the product offering is as good as the reliability of the product offering.
That was just for part 1 of your queries

The second part about SSL , payment gateway .... If you are in US , you have abundance of choice. If you are not in US, then 2 checkout and paypal and possibly iKOBO is your choices. There are small players around, which I dont see their names appearing much here in WHT , but they do come in once in a while , eg. yowcow.

As for OSCommerce and setup ecommerce site, pls make sure you got security taken care for your customers. If you intend to give them the software, without detailing their risk (assuming they know nothing), that would hurt a lot if their business is affected by code vulnerability (hacked by hackers).

Joshua

Thank you for the response. I do have time to support my clients, I just don't have time to admin a dedicated server. What security issues might you be refering to with osCommerce? I guess what I'm asking is what are the components I need in order to get my business going? This is my list so far (I think)

Reseller Host - I don't think I need anything like modernbill at this time since I will not have that many clients. I am not looking to start an "anonymous" resell of sites. I will manually setup each account and install the developed site myself.

SSL Cert - for each of my e-commerce client's IPs

Merchant Account - this is a little fuzzy. I want to be able to have a one bill/statement solution for my clients. I don't want them to have to deal with renewing SSL certs or anything like that. I will probably use PayPal as my payment for my services but I need to be able to either setup or instruct my clients on how to setup a merchant account if they don't already have one.

Payment Gateway - From what I understand 2CO is for lower volume sites and authorize.net for higher volume. I'm using these as examples only because these seem to be the reocurring theme in the forum.

How do these services interact with each other? You have a SSL that encodes transmitted data to a payment gateway. The gateway returns a response and the payment is authorized to the merchant account? Seems like a lot of fees along the way. Is there a "basic" formula or rule of thumb for calculating fees for each transaction? What does it cost to process a typical transaction for say $20? How would or could I incorporate this into a single billing solution for my customers?

Am I missing anything that would prevent me from getting started?

I really appreciate the help.

Scott, welcome to Web Hosting Talk!

You need a helpdesk for your clients.

Before you get into the web hosting business spend some time on Web Hosting Talk and ask a lot of questions.

Thanks for the reply. My helpdesk will be my cell phone and email. This is a very small, personalized operation. I'm not looking to quit my day job and devote 100% to it. My clients know that and understand. I have approximately 40 clients, most with low volumn needs but a few with potentially high to very high volume. I'm trying to determine the best options for all. I would like to offer them a turnkey solution hence the thought of a reseller host. I figured it would be easier to mange the sites and provide support as well as provide a monthly inflow of cash. The scope of my project is very small in comparison to most here.

Thanks, it's nice to know that no one actually read the content of my question and just spewed some random advice. This has been most helpful.

Every merchant account provider has different fees. You will also have to look at the gateway fees. Those come extra. You have to expect about $30 - $40 in fixed fees before you even process a single payment. Processing fees or transaction fees can run from $0.20 - $0.60 - depending on the provider, your credit score, etc.

TheFish is correct about the electronic gateway charges.

Authorizenet.com is usually around $15-20 a month and about $.10 per transaction, about $25 a month to use their recurring billing module. LinkPoint is about $15-$25 a month but no transaction fees and no extra charges to use their recurring billing module. Verisign is about $20-$80 a month and you get some free transactions a month.