Hello, the company that I`m reselling from offers me a merchant account and a shopping cart. What more do I need? I also have strange feeling that the two services are very alike? :-)

Well, the two services are tied to gether in some ways but they aren't alike. The Merchant Account is what you need to accept payments (ignoring gateways, etc. for a second), and the cart will allow you to have certain items (products/services), added together automatically on the site and totaled for purchase.

What site is this service at Haakon???

So is the merchant account what you call credit card processor, or do I have to get one my self?

It`s Liquidweb.com

What I`m realy asking is: When I signed up with Liquidweb.com I ordered via their order form (realy), and I want such a order form my self, and I also want it to work. How do I get it?

Haakon, there isn't *one* way to accept orders. You really need to decide what you need for what you are trying to accomplish.

If you back up a bit and consider how the transaction is being processed, this is where a cart comes into play. Some carts are limited in what they can do, or how you can add products (meaning they really aren't good solutions), and some are better at certain things. Besides the point anyway...

The cart just organizes your product/service offerings and allows the customer to choose more than one thing off the list and tally the totals.

Then you enter into processing the order. Chances are your merch. account will combine the gateway and provide you with the end account to deposit funds into. This can be shifted to another account (say you have a local biz account).

For an easy, no fee, no fuss method of accepting orders you can check out services like instabill or revecom. They offer 'the form' all ready to go. They generally take a higher amount though as well (percentage of the sale).

Thank you for trying to help Chicken.
What I`m trying to accomplish is just to take orders from those who want to make me their host. Just a simple order form with credit card payment. I think it`s wierd that there is no step by step toturial on this(?). I figured that the shopping cart has no part in what I`m trying to accomplish, but does the merchant account have it?

Regards

Some merchant accounts have order forms some dont if I was you I would look at http://www.instabill.com they offer merchant accounts and have the online order form you can customize to fit your needs.

Yes I`ve visited them, and I would have done it if I weren`t a reseller. You see I`m going to offer them free shopping cart and merchant account so It`s best for me to do it the hard way so that I can help my customers.

Thanks for clearing up the things I need, I`ve now sent some specific questions for my host to answer.

Haakon - If you're just taking info to setup hosting accounts doesn't sound like you need a shopping cart, just a secure form page.

A shopping cart is used more for e-tail sites where people can buy more than one product at a time.

Though it could be used to sign up for:

a merchant account, a cart, domain registration *and* hosting :)

If you are selling this product (or going to be), then I suppose it is best to go through the process and use it, eh?

That`s it Jaiem, but where do I get the secure order form, where can I learn to make one.

I`m going to get familiar (use the) merchant account and shopping cart, but one one thing at a time. I got confused you see Chicken.

Hi,
To offer a shopping cart to your clients you will need a script to run it from or for your clients to run.
Go to
http://www.hotscripts.com and
http://www.cgi-resources.com
And they will have a list of shopping carts made is Perl wich you can use. (Remember to look at the licence of each one to make sure you can resell it.)
A secure server (SSL encrypted)to run you script on. You can:
A) Use a shared dedicated server, where the script is run under someone elses domain. This can be found at http://www.SSLspace.com (I think!)
B) If you want the script run under your own domain name
eg. https://yourdomain.com , prepair to pay out!
The cheapest I found was Don Host at £14.99 a month although remember that you have to fork out £150 for a secure server certificate from http://www.thawte.com or http://www.verisign.com (Thawte is meant to be cheaper)

I hope this helps,

Regards,
Robert Kerry