Accepting Payments with PayPal

PayPal is a very popular system for accepting online payments. It allows a user to accept payment from other PayPal accounts, and from credit cards. It's very easy to set up.

Having a PayPal payment option on your website is almost essential, as many people will only want to pay by PayPal.

  1. First, you'll need to click here and sign up with PayPal, if you don't already have an account. You should choose "Premier Account" when it asks.
  2. Once you've signed up, find and click on "Merchant Services".
  3. Click the "Website Payments Standard" button.
  4. Underneath "Sell multiple items with a free PayPal shopping cart", click "Create One Now".
  5. Type an Item Name and a Price. Type in a Postage cost if necessary.
  6. Click "Save Changes" at bottom.
  7. Copy the code from the Website box. If you're using Dreamweaver or another web page editor, paste the code into your page, while looking at the Code view of your website (click the "Code" or "Split" button.) If you're using Wordpress, click "Pages", then click on the page you want to put the code in. Then click the little HTML tab, and paste the code in there. You can then click "Visual" to see your page again.
  8. Click "Create a View Cart button". This is a button that allows the visitor to see what they've put in their cart.
  9. Click "Create Button".
  10. Copy the code from the Website box, and put it into your website, the same way you pasted the other code.

That's it. Now people can buy things from your website. You'll receive an email whenever someone makes a purchase. Then you can send the item the visitor has bought.