Adding Paypal

I'm currently working on adding a Paypal shopping cart and check-out options to my website.

A lot of craft producers in Newfoundland have been using Etsy to sell their product, with a lot of success. I debated setting up an Etsy shop, but decided against it for a number of reasons. First, I already have a retail website. It needs updating, but the framework is there and people do use it to place orders already. I think that I should focus on making my existing virtual storefront easier to use instead of creating a whole new space. Starting an Etsy shop would mean a third source of online content to update and promote in addition to this blog and www.elfshotgallery.com. Besides, there is already a flintknapper on Etsy selling under the "Elfshot" banner. He does good work and seems to have independantly developed his own flintknapping business called "Elfshot" in Arizona.

Anyhow, the Paypal set-up seems straightforward enough, but there are enough steps that I'm going to take it a little bit slow to absorb everything. I've signed up for a merchant account and have started the process of linking Paypal up to my Scotia Bank business account. I've started making the little "Add to Cart" buttons. You do that through the Paypal website for each product that you sell and then they give you a bit of html code to copy onto your website. I don't know the exact number yet, but I'll need to do that for about 100 different products. It will be time consuming. The directions on the Paypal website are very clear, but you do need to know a little bit about html in order to add the buttons to your page.

I'm starting with the products already listed on my website. I have a couple years worth of new product to add to elfshotgallery.com, but I'll do that in a second step after I get Paypal up and running.

I'm not sure yet how the final check-out page works, ie., whether that is something that I have to add to my site or if it is created for each order on the Paypal site.

I'm hoping that in a week or two I'll have the shopping cart up and running.