Ok, well I am a new "online" merchent. I guess what i'm horribly confused on is a few things: First off I was looking to get liek an all inclusive deal, like hosting, domain, shopping card and payment. I was looking at the yahoo Merchent progrma, just b/c I have seen yahoo stores and can deal with my storefront looking like that. THe only qualm that I have is that they charge 1.5% and then I'm unclear past that. They make it semes as if you also need a payment gateway or something else like that. Anyways I guess my question is what is the correct course of action for me to take to get this ball rolling? I sell sports equiptment and I do not have alot of room for outrageous % for CC transations and other things of that nature. Can someone break this down for me/ point in a right right direction.


Thanks.

Welcome to the forums Spectre32!

Yahoo charges a percentage on top of what a merchant account processor is going to charge you. Most gateways either charge a flat rate or nothing at all. And in this case, Yahoo is acting as the electronic payment gateway that is compatible with the First Data platform.

Yahoo can be great for some people. We have a number of clients that use them and a lot are overseas. They email me from time to time to ask them to call Yahoo for some help. The times that I have called them - their support was good. They helped me to get the client set up with all their extra features. But they do seem to nickel and dime a lot of their clients with all the extras.

I would first take a look at your competition that is on there. How much are they charging for things? Can you beat that? What can you offer as well - maybe a toll free number for customers to call? Maybe no shipping charges?

Hello Spectre32 ,

Personally I do not recommend Yahoo because all the extra charges they have. I believe is better to have your own store like osCommerce type and hosted whereever you would like.

Then you can get a merchant account that will cost you something like:

2.2% discount rate per transaction
$5/month

And the gateway is the one that connects your merchant account with your shopping cart, if you use authorize.net the cost of that can be as low as $7.5/month

The problem with yahoo is that on top of the merchant account charge they also charge a fee and there is where things can get high.

Ah Ok i see. Well why would i not just use paypal? THere rates are in the 2.x% and they do not charge me a monthly usage. When you say "2.2% discount rate per transaction
$5/month" That does equate out to 2.2% per transaction as well as a 5 dollar monthy charge....correct? As as as my competion goes, i sell Ice hockey equitment so i'm going to get beat on some thigns just becuase of the nature of the market. I can,as of now, beat or meet most of my competitors prices. But in terms of addtional costs let me break it down for you:

Lets say a hcokey stick costs 150.00 dollars. Sinc ei buy from Canada, i gotta pay 3% for using my creditcard to purchase these items, so there a 3% increses right of the bat. Second shipping from these people is around 4% of my total order. Then once i get it here it under goes my mark up with vaires depending upon what the item is. Now not to metnion it will under go another 2-3% mark up for CC tranaction online. That is around a 12% mark up before it even gets to my price so i can turn a profit.

Paypal has some major problems:
1. Not everyone will buy at a Paypal only site.
2. Paypal provides little protection from unfair chargebacks (and are very picky about
the conditions they will offer protection--shipment to confirmed addresses only...)
3. Paypal has very poor customer service.

So if you are small enough Paypal makes sense (as it does for me), but if you plan to have a reasonable amount of sales from your site then the traditionally merchant account is better. You need to plug in some numbers--you might find the break-even point is $1,000 a month or so in sales.

Ok so i guess my next question is, in order to get things done correctly I need a E-commerance webite, A shopping cart, Merchent acount and a payment gateway. Is there anything like a lower grade yahoo services avaible?

It depends on what you mean when you say lower grade? Yahoo provides more services than just hosting, merchant account, electronic payment gateway, SSL, actually.

I usually use Yahoo for shopping as well as shopping.com and froogle for comparing prices. The merchants though on Yahoo have been a lot better when I order products. I usually get the products within a couple of days - which is worth it to me.

Lets say a hcokey stick costs 150.00 dollars. Sinc ei buy from Canada, i gotta pay 3% for using my creditcard to purchase these items, so there a 3% increses right of the bat. Second shipping from these people is around 4% of my total order. Then once i get it here it under goes my mark up with vaires depending upon what the item is. Now not to metnion it will under go another 2-3% mark up for CC tranaction online. That is around a 12% mark up before it even gets to my price so i can turn a profit.

well if your being charged the cc cost on top of the purchase price then u can very well transfer this & the new cc processing cost to the customer and have them pay it. this way you can still keep your prices low. also, your customers can do a phone order in order to lower the cc processing fees - although it'd be more work for you.

also maybe you can come up with some sort of deal with your suppliers if you are a regular customer, buying enough quanitty from them etc. and get your prices lowered a bit.

not to mention the rising canadian dollar must have had an impact on your pricing as well. :smash:

Well if I was to negate yahoo and go with my own "stuff" Then to host my website i would need what? A dedicated IP? SSI certificates..etc etc etc? Not ot mention i would need to intergrate my shopping cart and make sure its compatable with my payment gateway..corrrect?

That would be correct Spectre32 - most shopping carts are compatible with the majority of electronic payment gateways.

The dedicated IP address would be needed with the SSL cert. But if you are not even ready - wait until about two weeks prior before getting your merchant account. Usually it only takes a couple of days to be approved - if that.

Plus you need the design as well, I would imagine?

Yeah i would need a design i'm just trying to figure out my options.