Thursday, January 04, 2007
STAGE 3: SETTING UP YOUR ONLINE PAYMENTS SYSTEM
Before I discovered PayPal, I offered only the simplest payment system: here's our postal address; you can send us cheques or money orders. But people reaching you online want to be able to do the transaction online. I estimate we would have lost 90% of potential donations if we hadn't found a way to allow people to donate online. So PayPal was a godsend. In fact I've got to thank Bendigo Bank for helping me to discover PayPal. When I asked the Bank for a merchant facility for credit cards, it sent me a 15 page form to fill out, asking me to give them our financial history, etc. etc. In fact we were only seeking to reactivate an old merchant facility we ran for 10 years in the '90's. We needed this facility quickly, and the Bank was acting like it would get it to us sometime in 2007. Too late.
My friend Fred Schebesta mentioned PayPal. It allows you to take any credit card online, for a small fee. I can tell you we had a few problems with PayPal. There were a lot of complaints about its inflexibility from our donors. But the money got through. And the problems were probably caused by my ignorance. In fact, the best thing about PayPal is that you can connect it up to your site in a few minutes and start taking money instantly.
INSTALLING PAYPAL
The first step is to dial up www.paypal.com. Click on the "Sign Up Now" Button. This takes you to a window that offers you three types of account: 1. Personal - for buyers. 2. Premier - for sellers selling on EBay or individuals wanting to be merchants. 3. Business - for sellers trading under a business name. I wanted the most robust system so I chose the third option, even though it meant having to pay a fee. Select "Business" and choose "Australia" from the pull down menu asking you to nominate which country you are in, the click "Continue".
The next window asks for your business name - I used "Adoptasheep". It also asks you to choose a category. I selected "Gifts & Flowers" because that was the closest option I could find. Next fill in the contact details. The next window asks you to give an email address and a password. It also asks you to provide 2 security questions (like "Mother's maiden name"). Finally you need to read the fine print and agree to their terms of trade.
Once through this gate they send you and email which has a link to their website to enable you to activate your account.
Once you've done that click on the button "Merchant Tools" which gives you the option of "Donations". This asks you to choose their standard "Make A Donation" button or design your own. Stick with the easy option. Also choose the "Encryption" option because it is the safest way to send money.
Click "Create Button" and you are given some code to cut and paste into the template of your blogsite. My code looks like this:
Go to your blogsite and select Template from the buttons. Scroll down to <$BlogMemberProfile$> Cut and paste the PayPal code into the template just below <$BlogMemberProfile$>. Click on "Save Template changes", then on Republish. And you're done.
My friend Fred Schebesta mentioned PayPal. It allows you to take any credit card online, for a small fee. I can tell you we had a few problems with PayPal. There were a lot of complaints about its inflexibility from our donors. But the money got through. And the problems were probably caused by my ignorance. In fact, the best thing about PayPal is that you can connect it up to your site in a few minutes and start taking money instantly.
INSTALLING PAYPAL
The first step is to dial up www.paypal.com. Click on the "Sign Up Now" Button. This takes you to a window that offers you three types of account: 1. Personal - for buyers. 2. Premier - for sellers selling on EBay or individuals wanting to be merchants. 3. Business - for sellers trading under a business name. I wanted the most robust system so I chose the third option, even though it meant having to pay a fee. Select "Business" and choose "Australia" from the pull down menu asking you to nominate which country you are in, the click "Continue".
The next window asks for your business name - I used "Adoptasheep". It also asks you to choose a category. I selected "Gifts & Flowers" because that was the closest option I could find. Next fill in the contact details. The next window asks you to give an email address and a password. It also asks you to provide 2 security questions (like "Mother's maiden name"). Finally you need to read the fine print and agree to their terms of trade.
Once through this gate they send you and email which has a link to their website to enable you to activate your account.
Once you've done that click on the button "Merchant Tools" which gives you the option of "Donations". This asks you to choose their standard "Make A Donation" button or design your own. Stick with the easy option. Also choose the "Encryption" option because it is the safest way to send money.
Click "Create Button" and you are given some code to cut and paste into the template of your blogsite. My code looks like this:
Go to your blogsite and select Template from the buttons. Scroll down to <$BlogMemberProfile$> Cut and paste the PayPal code into the template just below <$BlogMemberProfile$>. Click on "Save Template changes", then on Republish. And you're done.
