When selling an article online, whats best?

A client wants me to do his website and he is planning to sell stuff online. So far he has only one item that he wants to sell. He is a toy designer and he wants to sell his product.

What are the alternatives I can give him in order for him to sell the toy in his online website?

I was thinking that the best option was to make him get a payment gateway to accept credit cards and also to make him get a merchant account with client administrating tools and such. I will do the website design, the interface and the online front store in php and mysql.

Now the reason Im asking is because I know that companies charge a monthly fee for payment gateways and merchant services. Then they also charge a percentage of the sale. Is there any better alternative for this ? is there a cheaper way for the client than this ? thanks.

He could use paypal initially which would cut out the monthly fees for accepting credit cards. We have done a couple of ecommerce sites and the customers are happy enough to use paypal especially now potential buyers don't need a paypal account to make payment.

Are you charging for the site or working purely for a % of the profits?

It depends upon the estimated monthly number of sales or sales volume you are expecting, if it is more than $1000 I would suggest to look for merchant account instead of 3PP, it will save some charges and you shall get more flexibility.