E-commerce Website Problem

[loopers]

I wanted an e-commerce website. I plan to sell games that can be downloaded online. Let us say I got the whole website written in HTML and Javascript and I put it in geocities.com, I still face two big problems.

1.   When the consumer or visitors to my website wanted to buy the products from my website using credit cards, how can they do so? Do I need to apply for a special software from the bank or something like that?

2.   If I only upload my website on geocities.com, how can I make sure that it appears in the yahoo.com and google.com search engine when sombody search for the word "games"? Sometimes I wander how can some website maintain their number 1 position in those 2 popular search engine

My idea of doing this website so that I can make some money to finance my own studies in IT. I wish I can get through this problem by creatig a good website all by myself. This is because my family is really struggling financially.

Thanks for anybody who can answer my 2 questions.

[Calum]

my answer is to your number two question. a little known secret is that you should visit selfpromotion.com and make use of it as a sort of central kick off point for your search engine and index promotion needs. read all the docs, and be prepared for a lot of boring pointing and clicking, but you really get the goods with that site. He tells you honestly all the tricks and things you should NOT do as well. you get a whole lot of extra stuff if you donate $10 a year or more to him and i have to say i think it's well worth doing so.

[pkd_lives]

For Q1.

You should probably contact your bank first. They will  put you in touch with companies they deal with for credit cards. What happens is you provide a business plan, and lots of details about you business and then they will provide you with a special piece of software, for accepting cards. You get charged on every transaction made, and you will have to make an upfront payment for the software and probably signing on to their service.

For Q2.

Do what most of those businesses do to maintain high positions, buy you place.

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: Linux Frank ]

[loopers]

Any other ideas where I can do the transaction without involving the bank's software. This is because if I use their software, I have to pay a sum of money upfront. My initial ideas of e-commerce is not have to pay anything upfront. Is it possible? Can this be done?

[choasforages]

using monopoly money i guess

its going to take some cash to get it hosted, and nobody is going to by shit from a site hosted on geocities

[Calum]

that's true anyway...  

[emh]

You could also use PayPal.