Hotscripts style shopping cart

[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

[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.

[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?

[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%