SPS can offer members a personal shop page where they can sell their writings etc. All you need is a PayPal account. The orders will be placed directly with you via your PayPal account. You will need to fulfil the order. SPS will have no involvement in the order fulfilment.

What you need to do is create a payment button in your PayPal account for each item. You need to provide the code that generates, as described below.

You will also need to provide an image of your product and a description for us to use. Remember to include the price and any postage and packing charge.

Creating payment buttons in PayPal

You can create PayPal buttons in your PayPal account and produce the code needed to add payment buttons to a product.

We cannot create the buttons for you without you giving us access to your PayPal account, and we are sure you do not want to do that!

Here is what you need to do. Remember that this explanation was correct as at August 2021, but PayPal may change it at any time. The general principles should still apply.

1. Login to PayPal.
2. Go here: https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/profile/seller-tools
3. Select ‘Manage’ PayPal buttons: https://www.paypal.com/buttons/. You should be seeing this:

4. Select ‘Buy Now’. You should see this:

5. Configure what you think you need. You can make several buttons for your different products and save them.  The way it works is that PayPal saves them within your PayPal account. When you have created a button you will be able to save some code which you need to copy to SPS (we will come onto that). The code goes on the SPS website on your Member’s Shop page and links back to the working part of the button in your account.
   
   You do not need to add fields for the customer address. If you click Step 3: Customise advanced features, you will see an option in there for PayPal to provide you with the customer details.
   
   You obviously need to complete the boxes with the item name, price, shipping cost (important! Do not overlook that). But the three Customise button options in the middle might be useful to you for asking whether they want the book signed (‘Add drop-down menu without prices’ (give a signed/unsigned option)) or require a message (‘Add text field’), etc.
   
   The Merchant account ID is, I think, an obscure Seller ID on your account page, although as it shows, you can use your email address (obviously yours will show where you see one of mine above).
   
   Under Step 2, you obviously want to save the button at PayPal. Whether you want to track inventory or profit is your choice.

In Step 3, again the choices are yours

6. When you think you have the button the way you want it, ’Save Button’.
   
   You then get the following page. Follow its instructions carefully. We need the mysterious garbage in the box in the middle. A lot of it is hidden from view, so do as they say. ’Select Code’, right click in the box and copy the code. Paste it into an email and send it to webmaster@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.
   
   Don’t worry about the ‘Paste the code…’, we will be doing that bit.

7. Notice at the bottom the very useful ‘Create more buttons: Create a similar button | Create a new button’. That should help with subsequent products.

Also, ‘Go to my saved buttons’, where you can edit them, even after they are on your website. Remember that the website will point back to the buttons here.

8. Just one more thing: we will be creating the payment button. If you have a website, you can design the selling page and we will emulate it.