Teams I've managed have made more than $30M online, but I never had to worry about our #ecommerce backend because we had a great team and it never came up. Not knowing what I don't know just cost me and http://www.curecancerstarter.org .

My mistake was in thinking Auth.net was both "payment gateway" and "credit card processor". NOPE. Auth.net is a "payment gateway" meaning they encrypt the transaction (for security reasons) and ship it over to a bank or credit card processor such as Sterling Buying Group or Elavon across a secure "bridge".

So when you put your Auth.net account into "test" mode you are really only testing if you have a valid and verified Auth.net token. You are NOT testing the entire roundtrip.

My friend and #ecom mentor Eric Garrison just let me know you can pay for a one time round trip to test (sure you aren't limited to once but each test would be a fee) to test both payment gateway and CC processor.

Setting up your Auth.net and payment gateway is a series of inter-connected forms (something I do so well anymore since it takes patience and detailed diligence). I trust Eric and his amazing wife Cynthia to help set up my accounts.

In fact I told someone from the Sterling Buying Group recently to think of Cynthia Garrison as my sister and tell her whatever they would tell me. If you have that kind of relationship with your website HOST then you may not ever need to know about how payment gateways relate to credit card processors.

And how when you are "testing" auth.net you aren't testing much, but if you don't have a "sister" like Cynthia you may want to read the linked post on GPlus. Did I just learn this lesosn the hard way? Yep, like most lessons.