How To Add A PayPal Buy Now Button
March 29th, 2008
If you only need to sell a few items from your website or collect different sums of money (like I do on my payment page) you could use a PayPal Buy Now Button to accomplish this. You’ll need to have already set up a PayPal Business/Merchant Account before watching this tutorial video.
After fully setting up your PayPal Business/Merchant Account, you’ll be able to log into your account and create the code that makes PayPal Buy Now Buttons all by yourself, using PayPal’s Buy Now Button creator.
Prepare: Item Names and Prices
Before you do this, you should have an idea of what the items are called, and how much you want to charge for them. This tutorial video doesn’t cover setting up shipping or taxes, which can be done via PayPal also. If you need to collect shipping and/or taxes, you’ll need to set these up separately in advance of creating the Buy Now Button in the appropriate Merchant Services section.
To Encrypt or Not To Encrypt
You’ll also need to know whether or not you want these buttons to be “encrypted”. Encrypting a button means that the code (and therefore item name, price, etc) cannot be changed by anyone, including your web designer. If you have fixed items with fixed prices, you should probably select encryption. However if you want to let customers select what to pay (like on my payment page) you won’t want to select encrypted buttons, because the price will be variable.
Here’s the video of how to set up a basic PayPal Buy Now Button:
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J. Olkoski
Aldebaran Web Design, Seattle
Jill Olkoski has a BS in Engineering, a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Clinical Psychology. She delights in using her advanced technical and psychological skills to help small business owners develop cost-effective and successful websites.
