How do I add a Paypal Donate Button to My Blog?

Recently, a friend asked me how to stick a Paypal link on a blog. A friend of hers wants to create a Paypal donate button for a charitable cause she is working on. So, this article answers the question, "How do I put a Paypal link on my blog?"

This article deals specifically with pay pal buttons for donations.  However, you can create any pay pal button using a similar process.  Fortunately, Paypa makes it fairly easy to create a paypal button of any sort with their button generator. 

First, you need to have a Paypal account (setting up a pay pal account is a whole other article). So I assume you have one because you need one before you can even consider setting up a Paypal donation button. If not, the process for getting an account is fairly straightforward and you can get one at paypal.com.

How to use the Paypal Button generator:

Log into your Paypal account and go to Profile->Selling Preferences->Create New Button.

Step 1
Then you choose a button type from the drop down menu. I assume you would choose "Donations".

Under "Organization Name/Service" you could write your own name or maybe <Own Name's Trip to Rwanda> or something. There is a slot for "Donation ID". That is an ID that YOU assign. It is optional, but it is like giving your donation an item number. This is not really too relevant unless you were creating multiple donations for multiple sites (or if you were creating sales buttons for multiple products).

You can customize the appearance of the button a little by clicking on "Customize text or appearance". This is optional.

You need to choose the currency. If mostly US viewers will see your site, USD is best. While Canadians and others can handle USD, US citizens find it hard to accept other currencies -- not all of you, of course, but enough that it makes it worth a person's while to stick to USD unless 90% of your audience is Canadian or British or Australian, etc.

You can decide if donors must contribute a fixed amount or if they can choose their own amount.

If you have a merchant account, you can choose whether to use your merchant id or your e-mail address.

Step 2 (Optional)
You can save your button on the Paypal site.  This protect your buttons from fraudulent changes, and then easily create similar buttons which you can edit your buttons with PayPal's tools.  You do this just by clicking where it says "Step 2" and then checking the box that says you want to save the button.  This box is checked by default.

Customize Advanced Features.

You do this just by clicking where it says "Step 3". You can choose whether customers can send special instructions to you. This is checked "yes" by default. Personally, I like to check it "no" because what if you don't CHECK the message?

This is more of an issue if you are, say, selling beads and the person sends you a Paypal message saying, "I need these in two minutes or I don't need them at all". By NOT allowing them to send you a message via Paypal, you force them to actually e-mail you, which is a message you are more likely to check. However, if someone has few payments coming in, they might be okay with messages.

It also asks if you need your customer's shipping address. By default, the answer is "yes". If you are taking donations, maybe you don't, but then again, if someone sends you a donation of $100 towards your charitable trip to Rwanda, you might want to mail them a postcard or something?

The advanced section allows you to take your "customer" to a specified URL when they are finished and that IS something that you probably want to do for a blog because you want them back on your blog once they are done.

There are two pages you need to set up: One is for if they cancel the transaction. One is for if it is successful. They don't have to be deep or fancy.

They just need to say, "Transaction successful. Thank you." Or "Transaction Cancelled. Thank you." and then lead the person on to whatever you want them to do next.

For example, you might have a link to "Find out more information about ..." or a link to some other interesting part of your blog.

Lastly, it talks about "Advanced Variables". Unless you are a fairly advanced user, you won't need these.

Now you click on "Create Button".

On the left, you will see the code that you need to put in your blog and on the right you will see what it will look like. This is the Paypal button code.

Click on "Select Code". Now go to Edit->Copy.

Now go to your blog and edit it in HTML view so that you can paste the Paypal code directly where you want to see it.

If you are using widgets on your blog, you might want to place your code in a part of your blog that will be around pretty much no matter what page people are on.

For example, on my site http://www.victoriabctravel.com/, the right hand side of the page is called the "Primary Sidebar" and is present on nearly every page. I put the donations button that I made as a sample for this article onto the bottom right hand side of that blog. (Side note: I have since removed this as I am currently a little annoyed with Paypal for reasons of my own.  I sent them an e-mail, though, and I am hoping for a prompt and satisfactory response.  Based on my past experience with their customer service department, this hope is quite unrealistic.)

You now should have a glamorous Paypal donation button on your website or blog. You can use this to get donations for a worthy cause, to ask for coffee money, beg for spare change, or any purpose you desire.

You can make a Paypal Buy button in a similar way by just selecting a different option other than donation from the drop down menu in step one.