I've been looking into this for a few days, and have come to the conclusion that, for those of us selling prints online, there is no good solution. Options that allow us to sell from within out own websites are too expensive for occasional sales (which is all most of us can realistically hope for), and those photo gallery sites such as Smugmug are too amateurish and low end.
To make it work seamlessly, you need too obtain a third-party shopping cart or have the skills to create one yourself, sign up for a "payment gateway" (company that transmits credit card info), and open a merchant account at a bank or online site. All three services charge, meaning this solution would cost more than I could realistically make, at least in the near future or, at the very least, cut deeply into profits.
The best solution I have come up with, although I have not yet decided whether or not to give it a try, is PayPal Website Payments Standard which combines the payment gateway and merchant account (it apparently works with many, if not most, of the third-party shopping sites including the one owned by my web host)
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cm...verview-outsideIt looks as though there are no costs for setup nor are there monthly fees. There are a couple of compromises we have to suffer. First, the payment buttons take the customer to a PayPal site for credit card data input, although PayPal membership is not required (they are automatically sent back to the photo site afterwards), and you do have to put up with PayPal's usual fees, which include fees for withdrawing money. Still, it might be the best option if sales are expected to be light.
If I do decide to give it a go, I'll post my thoughts and experiences.
Chuck
p.s. If I am wrong on any of the ecommerce tidbits, please correct me as I'm completely new to this and may very well be misinterpreting or misunderstanding one of the steps.
p.p.s. This site explains it all pretty well:
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles2/ba...d-ecommerce.htm