Unrelated stores with one shopping cart?

Bad idea or labor saver?

[m2c1r]

Just wondering, as I make plans for the new year, if anyone has any thoughts on this issue:

I have (in theory only, so far) three totally unrelated retail sites, with three totally unrelated product lines.

Does it make any sense to have just one shopping cart, one SSL, and one payment processing solution, hosted on a fourth site (the parent company)?

It seems to me this avoids having to do all this set up three times over, including managing three separate databases, and paying three times for SSL certificates and merchant accounts.

Assuming the consumer doesn't get thrown off, which I think could be avoided, are there other reasons to consider or avoid this approach? Has anyone else had any experience with the pros and cons of running multiple unrelated sites? I would be very interested to find out what I am getting myself into :)

Thanks.

[wackal]

what about one store that sold all 3 items? That way there would be no confusion for the customer.

[fishy]

if you rely upon 1 cart, 1 db, etc for 3 sites, what happens when the 4th site that hosts cart, db, etc goes down? are all 3 sites down?

[m2c1r]

Can't really do one store for all three items- that won't work very well for keyword optimizing, theme, linking, content, etc.

Yes, I guess if the shopping cart hosting site went down, all the sotres would suffer however long that took to resolve. That is one point in favor of separate carts.

Any other opinions?

[derekwong28]

This is exactly what I am going to do! I am going to set up a cart on my main site and use it for 2 other sites as well. However in my case, the products sold in each site is broadly related. I intend to set up a back-up cart in another site as well should our main site goes down.

[WebStart]

I have been doing this for 4 years with no problem. Only difference is I have 3 sites that sell the same thing: widgets; 1 site concentrates on Y type widgets, another on X type widgets, and one on all widgets A-Z, including the X and the Y.

It has worked fine for me. And have never had a customer complain.