I've been doing business online since 1999. In that time, I've looked at several different options for ways to sell things online, and finally, in 2003, decided that I had wasted too much time in doing things the old-fashioned way (having customers call me with credit card numbers or mailing me a check), and that I was long overdue to finally use an online shopping cart as a way to sell products and services online.

But, there seemed to be so many options out there. Where should I start?

The first thing I had to do was find a merchant card provider. Since I do little face-to-face business, I chose a provider who deals almost exclusively with professional coaches, consultants, and speakers, Practice Pay Solutions., http://www.profcs.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=127926 I generally advocate that you need to be processing at least $1000/month in credit card charges to make a merchant account financially viable for you, as you will be charged a setup fee, a percentage per transaction fee, as well as a monthly statement fee. Merchant Warehouse, www.merchantwarehouse.com, is another option for your merchant account.

Practice Pay Solutions also provides a virtual terminal to permit you to go in and manually enter transactions via an online interface, as well as a secure payment gateway, which allows your customer's credit card data to be secure as they place orders. The other aspect I love about Practice Pay Solutions is that fact that I can do a batch upload of transactions. For example, I have a number of clients who pay their fees monthly, outside of the shopping cart system. All I have to do is maintain their information in an Excel spreadsheet, and update it on a monthly basis (changing the invoice description or amount, as applicable, for example), save it as a tab delimited file and upload all of my charges at once. This is a wonderful time-saving feature over manually inputting 10-15 charges each month.

After securing my merchant account, the hunt began for a suitable shopping cart system. Several friends tried to interest me in some open-source shopping carts, like OS Commerce, www.oscommerce.com or ZenCart, www.zencart.com, but I found the learning curve too steep for these carts. I like to be able to go in and tinker with my products and not have to call a programmer every time I make a change. Additionally, these carts lacked some features that I had seen in other shopping carts. Ultimately, I decided to go with Kickstart Shopping Cart, http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?pr=31&id=59401

Here are the money-making features you'll want in a shopping cart:

1. Calculate shipping and tax. Make sure you have several options for calculating basic shipping, including overnight shipping.

2. Sell hard or electronic goods. If you sell physical items that must be sent to a consumer as well as electronic items (audio files, ebooks), your shopping cart should be able to handle both types of products in the same transaction. In addition, when your cart is delivering an electronic item, it should generate a webpage for the downloadable file that disappears within a certain time-frame so that the purchaser doesn't provide the download link to 100 of his closest friends.

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