Problems starting my first online business using PayPal

I have a few problems selling a single item through Paypal!

[Leweq22]

I am setting up a new website that is going to be selling a single product and after a bit of research I have decided to use PayPal. Although I believe that Paypal is the best option for me at the moment, there are still a few things I can not figure out about it:

-Firstly, I would like to set up seperate shipping fees for my product depending on the country the product will be delivered to. So if my product was being delivered to the UK, it might cost £1.50, £2.50 to the US and £4.00 to anywhere else. How would I go about setting this up through Paypal

-Also, just to confirm - is it compulsary for customers to have a verefied Paypal account in order to purchase something from me (I have a business account)?

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give me!
Leweq22

[gramski]

If you are just using the paypal buy buttons without a shopping cart its quite simple to have different shipping costs. You can specify the shipping cost when you set up the paypal buttons.

I use a different page for deliveries to Europe, USA and UK because I offer the product in £, € and $ but you could just have several buttons on the same page so that buyers could click the delivery location that way.

Paypal customers do not have to be verified but they will have to register before they buy - that sometimes causes problems but most people seem to register easily enough.

[gr8appeal]

be carefull with Paypal. they block sertain ISPs. I am on a broadband ISP at home that has over 1mln users. No one can see PayPal, unless we switch to dial-up. Allways have a back up choice!

[seankelly]

I would like to add that PayPal gives you the ability to specify the page to display after payment is made where the user can download your product (if downloadable). This is a great feature to automate your sales but if you do a 'view source' your visitors can quickly see the download page. Here is an example:

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
...
<input type="hidden" name="return" value="http://www.mydomain.com/products/download.html">
...
</form>

The only way around this is to encrypt the source.
This can be done free at www.EasyHtmlEncoder.com which would give you the following output for this form:

&#60;&#102;&#111;&#114;&#109;&#32;&#97;&#99;&#116;&#105;
&#111;&#110;&#61;&#34;&#104;&#116;&#116;&#112;&#115;&#58;
&#47;&#47;&#119;&#119;&#119;&#46;&#112;&#97;&#121;&#112;
&#97;&#108;&#46;&#99;&#111;&#109;&#47;&#99;&#103;&#105;
&#45;&#98;&#105;&#110;&#47;&#119;&#101;&#98;&#115;&#99;
&#114;&#34;&#32;&#109;&#101;&#116;&#104;&#111;&#100;&#61;
&#34;&#112;&#111;&#115;&#116;&#34;&#62;&#32;&#32;&#46;
&#46;&#46;&#32;&#32;&#60;&#105;&#110;&#112;&#117;&#116;
&#32;&#116;&#121;&#112;&#101;&#61;&#34;&#104;&#105;&#100;
&#100;&#101;&#110;&#34;&#32;&#110;&#97;&#109;&#101;&#61;
&#34;&#114;&#101;&#116;&#117;&#114;&#110;&#34;&#32;&#118;
&#97;&#108;&#117;&#101;&#61;&#34;&#104;&#116;&#116;&#112;
&#58;&#47;&#47;&#119;&#119;&#119;&#46;&#109;&#121;&#100;
&#111;&#109;&#97;&#105;&#110;&#46;&#99;&#111;&#109;&#47;
&#112;&#114;&#111;&#100;&#117;&#99;&#116;&#115;&#47;&#100;
&#111;&#119;&#110;&#108;&#111;&#97;&#100;&#46;&#104;&#116;
&#109;&#108;&#34;&#62;&#32;&#32;&#46;&#46;&#46;&#32;&#32;
&#60;&#47;&#102;&#111;&#114;&#109;&#62;&#32;&#32;

[pageoneresults]

Hello Leweq22, Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

There are a couple of different ways to go about this, with one of them mentioned above.

You could also set up a different item in your cart for each shipping method. The consumer can then add the appropriate shipping charges by clicking on the Add to Cart button that you create showing shipping charges for each country.

There are also some third party javascript solutions which you can find from within your Merchant interface at PayPal. They get a little technical and somewhat complicated if you are not the JavaScript type. ;)

[majjk]

...regarding hiding the download page. What was done with EasyHtmlEncoder wasn't really encrypting, but making the code more difficult to read. If you take the code above and put it between <html><body> and </body></html> you will be able to see everything as if no EasyHtmlEncoder had been used at all. For an easy solution do something like IF FORM SUBMITTED GOTO DOWNLOAD PAGE ELSE GOTO OTHER PAGE, in PHP. The great thing about PHP here is that the code isn't visible in the source code.

[pbreit]

Or use PayPal's Instant Payment Notification. Obfuscating the return URL isn't that useful since it'll be available at some point and can be easily disseminated.