For newbie internet marketers, the notion of creating a paypal buy now button can be extremely intimidating. I confess that it took me a VERY long time to make the attempt myself. I have to laugh now because my first attempt at ecommerce involved installing the ‘Opencart’ software through Simple Scripts in Cpanel. The installation and setup for that cart was vastly more complex than setting up a paypal button… Oh well, live and learn!

If your site is an online shopping mall then you would be best to use shoppingcart software. However, if you only sell a small range of products or individual items like downloadable information products then a paypal buy now button is perfect. Paypal buy now buttons are especially perfect for digital download products because once you set them up you will earn on autopilot. Just imagine waking up in the morning to discover you’ve sold ten $17 products during the night… and they’re already delivered! NICE!!! The best thing is that people TRUST paypal so using paypal buttons actually increases sales (especially if the payment section of your page contains a paypal logo and states that payments are via paypal and are therefore 100% secure).

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

So how do you create a paypal buy now button?

You will notice that Paypal has the process set up in three steps; Button type and payment details, inventory tracking and customizing checkout pages. Just follow the step-by-step instructions below to make a paypal buy now button. After you have created your first 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 1: Creating Button type and payment details
• Specify the type of product you are selling. Choices include; Products, Services, Subscriptions/recurring billing, donations and gift vouchers. Once you have created your first paypal button you can click the ‘go to my saved buttons’ under this option to edit an existing button or create similar buttons. To create a similar button click the ‘action’ link beside the chosen button and select ‘create similar button’.
• Select whether you want an ‘add to cart’ button or a ‘buy now’ button. Add to cart buttons are for sites that offer 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 will recognize it later. Under this option you can also add an item ID if you are selling physical products and want to use Paypal’s inventory management system to track your inventory
• Enter the item Price in the next field and which currency you want 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 can add drop down menus for size, color or any other option. You can customize the appearance 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 items like CDs) then you can 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 type of Merchant identification you wish to use. You can use plain text where your email address is visible in the button code or you can select to use ‘secure merchant account ID’ which replaces the plain text email with a merchant number that only paypal can connect to your email address. Using this option stops spammers being able to harvest your email address so it’s a excellent option to choose.
3. Step 2: Inventory Tracking
• There are only a couple of options under this section. The first 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 create similar buttons and lets you edit buttons with paypal tools
• Inventory tracking for physical products – Allows you to specify item quantities and stop additional sales of sold out items
4. Step 3: Customizing checkout pages
• If you are selling physical products you can select to allow customers to update the order quantity under this section.
• You can also add a field to allow customers to leave special instructions.
• Request customer address if required for postage purposes
• 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 are 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.
• Ebay power users can also add other variables
5. Finally – just click the ‘create button’ button and your paypal buy now button will be saved to your profile and you will be taken to a page containing the code to add to your webpage. You have two choices, either use the button or a link.

If you want to know how to increase conversion rates by up to 300% then check out The Conversion Kode!

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If you are serious about internet marketing, one of the most important decisions you need to make is whether to have a mailing list of subscribers that you can market your products and services to. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression The money is in the list! This is very true. Maintaining a list allows you to build a relationship with subscribers who are specifically interested in what you are offering.

Sure, you can rely on adwords or organic search visitors for your income, but the amount of effort required lowers your ROI (return on investment). It’s much better to maintain a list of subscribers who are interested in what you have to offer than to perform the online version of ‘cold calling’! That pre-existing relationship inspires trust and therefore increases the likelihood that those people will purchase your products and services.

So, you’ve made the smart decision that you need a mailing list! CONGRATULATIONS!!! How are you going to build and maintain that list? What autoresponder company or organisation will you trust your livelihood to? In the internet marketing arena there are only TWO autoresponder companies for serious marketers. Those two companies are Aweber and Getresponse.

Certainly you could use a free autoresponder service like freeautobot.com or one attached to your hosting account, but as the saying goes… You get what you pay for! Lack of features and reliability end up costing more than the potential earnings. Thankfully, Aweber and Getresponse both offer FREE trial versions for people who want to try before they buy!

So which service is the the most reliable email marketing service? Which one is the most affordable email marketing service?

The first of these questions is totally up for debate. As mentioned before, there are only two viable autoresponder services. Aweber is popular with professional internet marketers, they have the better reputation… just barely. Both services claim top notch email deliverability. These days however, you’ll notice an increasing number of marketers are using Getresponse email marketing services. Possibly because in the current economic climate people are tightening their belts and Getresponse offers the most affordable email marketing services. On July 6, 2009 Getresponse introduced a brand new interface and pricing structure along with some new and exciting features including the ability to create subscriber surveys. Check the table below for a cost comparison between the two services.

Note: The prices above are monthly subscription costs. Significant savings are available by subscribing for longer periods. For example a 12 month subscription with Aweber costs US$190 for up to 500 subscribers (save $38), GetResponse costs US$177 for 12 months for up to 500 subscribers (save $38). Once again, Getresponse has the upper hand on price since they allow you to pre-pay for up to 1 year for larger lists. Unlike Aweber who only allow you to pre-pay for up to 500 subscribers. Take a look at the table below for the yearly costs for each size list.

As you can see, using Getresponse for email marketing needs is considerably cheaper. For this reason I recommend Getresponse for less experienced marketers because… well, because personally I don’t believe in spending more money than I have to! Admittedly, Aweber is reputed to be the Rolls Royce of autoresponders… but why buy a Rolls Royce when a Chevy will do the job?

Ultimately, it is your choice which email marketing service you use. I hope this post has helped clarify the options available to you.

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