Selling products and services requires different skills than straight advertising sites. Site owners must be able to handle promotions, credit card sales, shipping, and protect themselves from fraud. The media likes to play-up horror stories about consumers being defrauded. The reality is the opposite. Merchants are defrauded far more often than consumers.
Merchants have few rights.
If a merchant does not physically swipe the credit card and obtain a valid signature, the consumer has from six months to five years to rescind the sale. Anyone accepting credit cards on the web must build an allowance for fraud into their pricing structure or risk going out of business. They took new technology and applied it to their existing business to increase sales. Many companies are dramatically increasing sales by using Internet technology. Just like the phone, the Internet is simply a new communication tool.