Step By Step Guide To PayPal Buy Now Buttons

Many people would like to get into Internet Marketing and sell resell products or even their own products. Although there is a lot of information available to “Newbies” on how to become involved with IM, how to find good products to resell, how to build a website, and more; many newbies find themselves a little stumped when it comes to adding a Paypal “Buy Now” Button on their new sales pages.

Unfortunately, Paypal doesn’t give the best “how to” information in their FAQ’s either. I noticed this problem when a friend of mine that makes quite a bit of money in AdSense Revenue and is very proficient with HTML and web design came to me and said, “I have never added a Paypal Button to any of my sites because I don’t have the time to learn how to do it by myself. Can you help?

This is how this project came about and you now have Private Label Rights to it. You can change it up, keep it like it is, and put your name on it as the author, whatever you want to.

The first step to creating a Buy Now Button in Paypal is pretty obvious, but because I want this to be thorough, I feel I must include it here.  Simply Log-In to Paypal at:

https://www.paypal.com/

After you get past the initial “logging in” screens, you will find yourself at your Account Overview Page. At the TOP of this page, you will see several headers that you can choose from. They look like this:

As you can see from the arrow above, you will want to click on the header that says “Merchant Tools.” This will take you to the actual Merchant Page that allows you to use Paypal on your websites and sales pages. The main Merchant page will look like this:

There are several options on this page to help you completely integrate your sites with Paypal, including Payment Standard, Payment Pro, Email Payments, and more. For now, you will want to stick with the simplest method for creating your Buy Now buttons.

If you scroll down into about the center of the page, you will notice a section that says “Key Features.” This is the easiest way to get to the page that actually builds the buttons. In the picture below, I have an arrow pointing to the link that you will click on:

When you click this link, it will take you to a page that looks like this:

This is your starting point for creating your new Buy Now button. While this process is very simple, it is pretty detailed and until you are completely proficient with it, you may want to follow each step exactly as I have presented them to you. Once you are comfortable with it, there are a few steps that you should not have to make changes to in most cases.

Now, to begin creating your new button, you first need to name your product. I like to name it either the product name, the “package” name, or the promotion/sale name that I am using on my sales page. This helps keep confusion down among your customers, as they can look at the Product Name on their Paypal receipt and know exactly what they bought or where they got it.

This step looks like this:

Next, you will need to put in an Item ID/Number for your product. This is something that either your product will actually have an ID or Number to use or you can just make this up. I generally take the first letter of each word in my Product Name and add on the year to it with a hyphen in between. This just helps me know what it is when it comes in without having to look at the receipt too closely for the Product Name. Of course, you can choose to do anything you want here:

Next, of course, is your price amount. The only thing to really keep in mind here is that if you are selling for $27, you only have to put in 27. However, if you are selling for $9.97, you will want to include the decimal point and put 9.97 in the box. Never put in the dollar sign ($) because Paypal automatically takes care of this for you.

At this point, you can usually go on to the next section because this will automatically default to your Currency and Country in most cases. Since this is the first time you are setting up a Buy Now button, you should at least check to make sure the correct currency is chosen. You don’t want to be charging someone Pounds Sterling (UK) if you live in the USA.

The “Buyer’s Country” section is optional and I generally never use this. If you are targeting a specific country with your marketing efforts however, you may want to choose that country in the drop down box. This will cause the buyer to always see the specific payment form that matches that country. As stated before, it is optional but can be beneficial. See the picture below to clarify:

After you have all of your product information and pricing set in the previous section, you are now ready to move on to choose what your new button is going to look like. Of course, you can choose the standard “Buy Now” button that is selected by default (you can see this in the picture below) or you can also choose from several other pre-built buttons that Paypal has available to you. To choose another button version, click on the “Other button sizes ” link.

When you click the “Other button sizes” link, you will be taken to a page with all of the pre-built buttons on it for you to choose from. After you make your choice, just click the “Continue” button to go back to the previous page you were working on.
Here’s a picture of that page:

You also have the option of using a Custom Button that you have had created for you or that may have came with the sales page of your resale rights product. If this is the case, you will want to choose the “use your own button image” option and put the URL that leads to your custom image in the box as show below.

Once you have chosen how to set up the look of your new button, now you need to decide if you want to “Encrypt” your payment button or not. In almost every case I can think of, you want to choose “YES” and have Paypal encrypt your button. This will make it entirely too difficult for someone to come along and find your download page through the code on your sales page. To keep things easier and to protect your product, just let this default to Yes.

Now, you are at the bottom of this initial set-up page. You will notice that it gives you the option of creating your button now or adding more options. In most cases, you will need to click on the “Add More Options” button so that you can include the download page that your customers should be automatically sent to after their purchase.
 

After you choose to “Add More Options,” you will see the second set-up page that allows you to choose things like shipping, taxes, and download page. The shipping and tax section look like this:

In most cases, since you are dealing in Digital Products, you should not have to make any changes here once you set them up to be $0.00 for all shipping. If you are required to collect taxes from your local customers, you will definitely want to edit that section. I will show you how to do that in just one moment.
First, if you need to change your shipping options (even if you are just initially setting them to $0) all you need to do is click on the “Edit” button beside the shipping cost boxes, as indicated below:

In the first part of this new page, you will be given the option of again choosing your currency. Then you will need to choose a “Cost Method” based on a Flat Amount or a Percentage Amount. If you were to be selling Physical Products, this choice would need to be made based on your shipping needs. In the case of Digital Products, you should just choose “Flat Amount” and then go on to the next section.

Next, you will be taken to a section to change the shipping costs that are already there. You will need to populate this chart based on the method you have chosen and costs for shipping you plan to charge. In your case, it will most likely be Digital Products. Therefore, you will want to populate this chart with 0’s in each section. After you have completed this section, simply choose the Save button and you will be sent back to the previous Options page you were on:

As I earlier stated, you may be required to collect sales tax from your local customers depending upon how your business is set up and the requirements in your locale. If this is the case, you would simply choose the “Edit” button by Sales Tax and be immediately taken to a screen like this:

It is very easy to set this section up too. Simply input the Country or Region you live in, the State (if you are in the US) and your Tax Rate you are required to collect. If you look closely, you will notice that there is a choice of including shipping and handling costs in the taxable calculations too. In most cases, this is not necessary.

After you have made your shipping and your sales tax choices, you should be automatically be redirected back to the second set-up page we were previously on. Now you are ready to finish the options that need to be added to your new button before you create the code for your sales page.

This next section will allow you to add “Option Fields” to your button, but only if you do not have your payment button encrypted. Most people leave this out so that they can use encryption, but I wanted to at least make you aware of this section on the set-up page:

Next is an optional setting to customize your payment pages so that the colors and style match more closely to your sales page’s scheme. This is not necessary, because most of your customers will have used Paypal previously and will expect to see the standard Paypal colors and style. You can choose to modify this if you prefer:

Now comes the Very Important Section. I emphasize this section because it is crucial to making your sales process completely automatic and will decide right here whether your customers will be emailing you saying the download page doesn’t work correctly.

This is where you will check to see where your customers will be forwarded after their payment is complete. Before modifying anything, you will notice that it keeps the last page that you placed here in the “Successful Payment URL” box. I assume they do this just in case you have to correct an error in your previous payment button creation.

Before I take you through the process of editing the “Successful Payment URL” box, I want to point out that there is a spot to put in a “Cancel Payment URL” too. I generally do not use this now, but I plan to start soon. I can see the potential of sending your customer to another page if they cancel their payment and having a simple survey or form for them to fill out telling you why they decided not to purchase at this time. This can only help your business practices and product choices in the future.

If you look at the image below, you can see the arrow pointing to the “Edit” button:

When you click this “Edit” button, you will be taken to another page that will allow you to change what URL goes in the “Successful Payment URL” box. See the image below:

Also, make sure the “Auto Return” section is set to “On” so that your customers are automatically sent on through to the download page you have set up.

The next few images are also shown on this same page that you are editing your download link through. You will want to make note of these and make sure that you are complying with what they state:

The “Payment Data Transfer” will generally not apply to you as you are just getting started. Once you become more proficient with Paypal and with Internet Marketing, you will find a use for this in setting up things such as Affiliate Programs. For now, just notice that it is on this same page we are working on now:

This section is a security measure that allows you to decide if you want to allow payments that are Non-encrypted. Again, this is purely your choice. I have never had any problems with this set to “Off” but that doesn’t mean it cannot happen:


This next section is pretty self explanatory. I always leave this as “Optional” and generally my customers put their numbers in the field:

After you finish modifying this page, simply click “Save” to be redirected back to the previous set-up page so that you can finish your options and create your new Buy Now button. You will need to scroll back down past the sections you have already modified or populated to get back to the next area that requires your input.

I prefer this next setting at “On” so that my customers are not required to have a complete Paypal Account set up. They can just use their credit card and go through the simple steps that Paypal requires for processing. Again, it is your choice here; but I feel that you may pick up a stray sale or two by leaving this set to the “On” setting:

With this next setting (although it states optional) you should always decide if you want to allow your buyers to purchase more than one of your product. For digital products, this doesn’t matter as much, but for physical products you will want to allow this. Also, with digital products, shipping information is never needed but you can choose to allow them to fill in that information if they choose. This is my preference so that I have complete information on my buyers. Most choose to fill in all the fields anyway:

Another setting I like to turn on is this next one that allows you to put a blank box on your payment screen with a note title such as “Optional Information” above it. This allows my buyers to send me any comments they want to. You would be surprised at some of the nicest things I have received from buyers this way. To allow this, simply choose “Yes” and make your note title say anything you choose to say:

Now, you are ready to choose your email address you want to receive payment to. This is designed so that if you have multiple domains or sales pages, you can have an email address from each one to help you track your sales if you choose. Once you pick your email address from the drop down box, you can either “Create Button Now” or “Preview” exactly what your buyers will see when they click on your new Buy Now Button.

If you chose “Preview,” you would have been taken to a page that looks like this (only with your information on it  ):

If you choose the option to “Create Button Now,” you should be taken to a page that includes the HTML code that you will need to Copy and Paste into your sales page where you want your new Buy Now button to go. This page looks like this:

That’s it, You Did It! You have now created your first Paypal “Buy It Now” Button for your own sales page. At this point, you can either choose to create another or click “Done” and go on to your next project.

Congratulations and Happy Selling!