When creating PayPal buttons for your blog, many people have asked about whether or not a PDF file (for example) could automatically be sent once the payment was made; such as for those of you selling tutorials, planners or other PDF type of documents.

There is good and bad news.

Good News

Yes, you can do it.  When you create your PayPal BUY NOW button, Step 1 is about the item information (description, price, currency, button appearance, shipping and tax options), Step 2 is Tracking and Inventory, where Step 3 is Advanced Options.  Click on Step 3 to set advanced options.  Here you can specify a URL to go to when the payment is complete, this would be the URL path of the PDF document you are selling for example.  Then click the Create Button to get the HTML Code for your blog.

Bad News

This does NOT work with the ADD TO CART buttons. Meaning, it cannot send multiple documents.  Meaning with the BUY NOW there was a 1-to-1 relationship and is why it works.  You can send customers to a URL after payment with ADD TO CART buttons but you can only specify ONE location (not multiple) so for most of you this is not an option.

Solution

• Use all Buy Now buttons.
• Look into using CartVille (www.cartville.com). Many people like this product due to the auto-downloading of PDFs. However it is expensive.
• Usea subscription type of service (as I described in the previous post) if that would work better where subscribers (who have paid) can have private access to an area where PDFs are all listed.

Best wishes,