[Wondering about..]How does a site like this work?[Example inside]

[Freezo]

I am wondering which things are needed for a certain website.

Example : a photostock website where people can sell their photo's. When a sale is made, the photographer gets perhaps 50% of the sale credited to his/her account on that site. Then after they made a few sales and get to the minimum amount of money, they can ask for a check or wahetever.

Now how or what is involved in a site like this?

Are the photographers credit information stored in a simple MSYQL database? (kind of risky?)
How do companies keep track of all the payment requests (from the photographers). Do they use applications(programs?)??

Would it just be as simple as :
Using a paypal account, put all the transactions money on that account, let it build up and when a photographer asks for money, send them the money?

Sorry if I can formulate my question etc neatly, but I was just wondering the above, any info is usefull.

Thnx

[keeB]

This question really doesn't belong here..

Maybe in PHP General?

But anyway, there are numerous ways to do something like this, but to keep data secure, I am sure a company would use a SQL Database for the web application, then for financials use trusted finanacial software on a secure server (not attached to the net)

[obsidian]

i think i'll leave the topic here in the newbie section since it really is a fitting question. as mentioned above, there are so many different ways to approach a topic like this that it's not really even possible to go into a structure out of the blue like that. if you're looking at a pay site, you really need to read up on how basic ecommerce sites are driven first. then, once you have a handle on the merchant process, focus that onto the product (in this case photographs) that you are interested in selling.

[Freezo]

[!--quoteo(post=355054:date=Mar 14 2006, 04:15 PM:name=obsidian)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(obsidian @ Mar 14 2006, 04:15 PM) [snapback]355054[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
i think i'll leave the topic here in the newbie section since it really is a fitting question. as mentioned above, there are so many different ways to approach a topic like this that it's not really even possible to go into a structure out of the blue like that. if you're looking at a pay site, you really need to read up on how basic ecommerce sites are driven first. then, once you have a handle on the merchant process, focus that onto the product (in this case photographs) that you are interested in selling.
[/quote]


Ok thnx, this does help. I am not looking specifically for selling photographs, but I saw them doing it with photos so.. I guess i'll have to research some ecommerce then. thnx