Member Avatar for enzo420

Hey all, i was wondering how sites such as ebay, amazon and hotscripts allow users to add downloadable products to their site and if there are any shopping carts out there that have this functionability. I have my own site and databases, i dont want to host anything on an external site! Also how do these sites take a commision of the sale? do they do that through the shopping cart or do they use a payment gateway in conjunction with the shopping cart? Im quite confused about how shopping carts work. Do they process the card information or do they just pass the information to the payment gateway? and do payment gateways send back a response so that my site can dynamically offer the site they bought for download? thanks, enzo

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Thread summary and a compact, practical blueprint for a downloadable-products marketplace that expands on the points raised by , and without repeating earlier answers.

A simple, reliable implementation flow

  1. Seller uploads product metadata and places the file in protected storage (self-hosted or cloud).
  2. Buyer starts checkout; use a gateway-hosted checkout or tokenized card fields so your servers never store raw card data.
  3. Gateway returns an immediate success and also fires a webhook to your server—verify the webhook signature before fulfilling.
  4. On verified payment create a short-lived, single-use download token or a time-limited signed URL and deliver it to the buyer.
  5. Record downloads in your database and enforce limits/expiry to prevent sharing.
  6. Provide a clear refund/revocation flow that ties back to order state.

Commission and payout options (pros/cons)

  • Use a marketplace-capable processor that does splits or connected accounts so the platform can take a commission automatically at charge time. See and PayPal marketplace/payout docs such as PayPal Payouts for built-in solutions.
  • Alternatively, accept full payments and programmatically payout sellers via the gateway API, but be aware this increases bookkeeping, tax reporting and compliance burden (KYC, reporting). Do not reinvent escrow/payout logic if your gateway already supports it.

Practical implementation tips
Protect files with presigned URLs or server-side streaming rather than public links; AWS presigned URLs are a common option (AWS presigned URLs). Test thoroughly in sandbox mode, verify webhook signatures, log every transaction state, and use an off-the-shelf marketplace plugin (for example, WooCommerce Product Vendors or Dokan) if you want to avoid building the whole flow from scratch.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for jay 11

Do they process the card information or do they just pass the information to the payment gateway? and do payment gateways send back a response so that my site can dynamically offer the site they bought for download?

You'd probably get the products through some sort of API - in which case payments would be processed on their end. They assign each affiliate with an id, so any sale referred from that ID gets commissioned. And yes - the system is most likely automated and advanced enough where you could send custom notifications to the user who purchased the item on your site.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

Would this process be similar to what NetFlix does in allowing people to view movies on-line via their computer or TV? I see them talk about this on their commercials and it sounds like a paid version of Hulu?

Member Avatar for enzo420

it shouldnt be complicated, all i want is a shopping cart slightly like ebay, where users can add products for sale, except when someone buys their product, i get a comission, i was thinking that they could pay all of it to the website, then i could setup a script that would send 98% of it to the user that sold the item, so i get 2%

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