For beginner web marketers, the notion of creating a paypal buy now button can be extraordinarily intimidating. I confess that it took me a VERY long time to make the attempt myself. I’ve got to laugh now because my initial attempt at ecommerce involved putting in the ‘Opencart’ software through Simple Scripts in Cpanel. The installation and setup for that cart was vastly more advanced than putting in a paypal button… Oh well, live and learn!

If your site is an online shopping mall then you’d be best to use shoppingcart software. However, if you only sell a small range of products or individual things like downloadable info products then a paypal buy now button is perfect. Paypal buy now buttons are especially good for digital download products because once you set them up you will earn on autopilot. Simply imagine waking up in the morning to find you’ve sold ten $17 products throughout the night… and they are already delivered! NICE!!! The best thing is that people TRUST paypal, thus using paypal buttons truly will increase sales (particularly if the payment section of your page contains a paypal emblem and states that payments are via paypal and are therefore a hundred% secure).

Before you start, you will need a success or thank-you page for paypal to direct customers to after checkout completion. If you’re selling information products this page could contain the download link. Alternatively, you may harvest the buyers email address and send the download link to them via email. In that case your success page would contain an optin form. A smart way to keep people on that list is to offer some kind of instructional or bonus product that comes in instalments.

So how do you create a paypal buy now button?

You may notice that Paypal has the method set up in 3 steps; Button type and payment details, inventory tracking and customizing checkout pages. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions below to make a paypal buy now button. Once you’ve created your initial buy now button you can create additional buttons using the ‘create similar button’ function.

1. Log in to paypal and click ‘Merchant Services’ and ‘buy now buttons’ as per the image below
2. Step one: Creating Button type and payment details
• Specify the sort of product you’re selling. Choices include; Products, Services, Subscriptions/recurring billing, donations and gift vouchers. Once you’ve created your first paypal button you can click the ‘go to my saved buttons’ beneath this selection to edit an existing button or produce similar buttons. To create a similar button click the ‘action’ link beside the chosen button and choose ‘create similar button’.
• Select whether you wish an ‘add to cart’ button or a ‘buy now’ button. Add to cart buttons are for sites that supply multiple products whereas buy now buttons are for those that sell individual items.
• Specify the name of the product you are selling – Use something logical as this becomes the name the button is saved under for future reference. That way you’ll recognize it later. Beneath this option you can also add an item ID if you’re selling physical merchandise and wish to use Paypal’s inventory management system to trace your inventory
• Enter the item cost in the next field and which currency you would like to receive payment in (eg. US dollars)
• Next you customize the appearance of your paypal buy now button and the options associated with it. You’ll add drop down menus for size, color or any other option. You can customise the looks of the button. You can even specify your own button graphic.
• The next option is Postage. If you are selling a physical product that you can charge a flat postage rate on (i.e. small, lightweight things like CDs) then you’ll be able to fill this field in to specify the postage rate. To activate this option you will need to go to myaccount>profile>selling preferences>postage calculations and check the ‘override postage methods per transaction’ box.
• The last option under this section is the sort of Merchant identification you would like to use. You can use plain text where your email address is visible in the button code or you’ll choose to use ‘secure merchant account ID’ which replaces the plain text email with a merchant number that only paypal can connect with your email address. Using this selection stops spammers being able to harvest your email address, therefore it is an excellent option to choose.
3. Step Two: Inventory Tracking
• There are only a couple of choices underneath this section. The primary option is to save your buttons at paypal. This protects buttons from fraudulent changes (eg. switching your paypal account for someone elses), Saves buttons in your paypal profile. Allows you to easily produce similar buttons and lets you edit buttons with paypal tools
• Inventory tracking for physical merchandise – Allows you to specify item quantities and stop further sales of sold out items
4. Step three: Customizing checkout pages
• If you are selling physical products you’ll be able to choose whether to allow customers to update the order amount under this section.
• You can also add a field permitting customers to leave special instructions.
• Request customer address if needed for postage functions
• Specify a URL to forward to in the event of order cancellation.
• Specify a URL to forward to after successful payment – As mentioned earlier, if you’re selling downloadable products this page can contain your download link OR an optin form to harvest customer emails and send them the download link via email. The advantage of this being that you can add them to your sales funnel… just make sure you specify that they may be contacted later and make it ‘double opt in’.
• Ebay power users can also add other variables
5. Finally – simply click the ‘create button’ button and your paypal buy now button will be saved to your profile and you’ll be taken to a page containing the code to add to your webpage. You have 2 choices, either use the button or a link.

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