The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Puchasing Online

Howdy,

I have some software I would like to sell online, so that a customer would go in, buy it with credit/visa/master card etc, and be given a special download link to download it, just like FogCreek does.

Couple of questions:
1) What does it take to handle credit card information from users? Are there companies that would handle all the money stuff? If so, how much money would they take from each sale?

2) If I rolled my own, what sort of problems might I face? I am proficient with PHP and .NET, so I could do the web side, but what about the money side? I've never worked with anything like that.

3) I would like to make my own page where the users enter payment details and everything, and then for my page to submit that information to the bank or whatever and have the money transferred into my account.

4) The customers my software is aimed at is other software companies and businesses. Would my sales be lower because I'm making them only purchase via credit card and a download? It will only be like a 10mb download at most.

I also just installed OSCommerce (www.oscommerce.com) on my computer and got it all setup and working, but I've found it has no shipping module for online downloads, which was a real shame :(

Thanks for any information :)

Paul Stovell
Friday, March 5, 2004

>>1) What does it take to handle credit card information from users? Are there companies that would handle all the money stuff? If so, how much money would they take from each sale?

There are many companies providing this service, I use swreg however you might want to look at one of the digital river companies or ShareIt.

>>2) If I rolled my own, what sort of problems might I face? I am proficient with PHP and .NET, so I could do the web side, but what about the money side? I've never worked with anything like that.

The biggest problem you would face is fraud, then currency and tax issues. Unless you are expecting a very high sales volume (more than $500,00) I'd stick with one of the existing providors.

>>3) I would like to make my own page where the users enter payment details and everything, and then for my page to submit that information to the bank or whatever and have the money transferred into my account.

Most of the exisiting providors will transfer the money to your account monthly or weekly if the volume is high enough.

>>4) The customers my software is aimed at is other software companies and businesses. Would my sales be lower because I'm making them only purchase via credit card and a download? It will only be like a 10mb download at most.

Virtually all my sales are to business customers, credit cards are fine for the majority. Occaisionly I get purchase orders although the customers still have to pay up front. I think most businesses are happy with this.

I

Tony Edgecombe
Friday, March 5, 2004

Thankyou very much, I checked out Digital River and they do seem to offer very nice services. But I'm not exactly sure they have what I'm looking for... their CCNow thing seems to be very much user based. I've requested information from their sales team, so hopefully they can clear it up for me. Once again, thankyou very much!

Paul Stovell
Friday, March 5, 2004

http://www.swreg.org

http://www.shareit.com

Jackson
Friday, March 5, 2004

http://www.regsoft.com

10% cut; no sign-up fee or transaction quotas.

Thinking Hard.
Friday, March 5, 2004

Also take a look at www.worldpay.com

James U-S
Friday, March 5, 2004

Thanks for all the links guys!:D

However I have been experimenting with OSCommerce, and I've got it all setup for downloads and credit card stuff. If I get a web server with PHP/MySQL, would you think this is a safer way of going about it?

Paul Stovell
Saturday, March 6, 2004

I am using Kagi to sell a small product (www.maasdigital.com/starpro). It is working fine so far. They take about 10% of the price.

Set-up with kagi is very easy, although you do need to mail them a signed postcard for legal reasons. Aside from that there are no fees or gotchas. You are able to customize part of your order page by default, or the entire page for a fee.

Kagi is flexible with licensing options. I just get the payment received emails and send license keys manually, but you can also set up a license key generator or serial list with them.

Dan Maas
Saturday, March 6, 2004