Do YOU need Paypal payment buttons with drop-down menus...?

As many of my handmade fabric eReader and tablet cases are now made to order, I did, and it was high time I made this change to my Weebly website online store to make life easier for my customers.

Like many Weebly users, I'd been using their 'Revenue' elements - which is great for sellers of uncomplicated items or techno-thickies like me! - but these offer only a choice of simple Add To Cart or Buy It Now buttons.  This meant relying on customers to advise me of their particular Kindle or Kobo via Paypal's message box when paying.  Of course, customers being busy people sometimes forgot, so I would then have to email them for details and wait for a reply.  It was also impossible to offer a variety of gadget cases at different prices within the same listing.  Not an ideal situation, as I'm sure you'll agree.

I admit that, as a techno-clutz and a coward, I'd been putting off these changes for far too long.  But now that Google, Samsung and others are producing small tablets not much larger than eReaders, and I wanted to offer handmade sleeves for these too - within my existing listings - I knew it was time to bite the bullet and get brave.

Amazingly, once I got going, making the Paypal buttons was surprisingly easy.  The complicated part was making the necessary changes within Weebly as I had to replace all the 'Revenue' elements with title/paragraph, photo and html elements before I could import all my new Paypal buttons.  And it took forever!  So if you're planning to do this yourself, I would seriously recommend that you do it while your online store is still in its infancy!

If you decide to give it a go, bear in mind that the drop-down menu options won't accept certain characters.  I'd described one of my options as 'Kindle 4 (£89)', and didn't discover till the next day that anyone choosing this option would receive an error message telling them there was a problem with my website.  Scary!  After some experimentation, I changed the description to 'Kindle 4 (no keyboard)' which sorted out the problem, thank goodness.

So it's finally done, and everything's working as it should.  Anyone wanting to purchase a handmade fabric case for the Kindle Touch, Kindle 4 (no keyboard), Kobo Touch, Kindle 3 (keyboard), Google Nexus 7, or Samsung Galaxy Tab, can now do so with ease.  And I have the opportunity of adding more options as they're needed.  Am exhausted but happy!

If you want to take a peek, you can check out the new buttons on my Tablet & eReader Cases page at BaggieAggie.com.

Paypal Micropayments account - pay lower fees!

As most online sellers know, charges for a normal Paypal macropayments account (if your monthly sales are less than £1,500) are 3.4% + 20p.

What Paypal doesn’t shout from the rooftops, and which I only found out when I registered as a designer on Ravelry to sell my felted bag patterns, is that they also offer a micropayments option for sellers of low-value items.  The charges for this are 5% + 5p.

So, if an item (including p&p) sells for £3, for example, this is what you would pay in fees:

Macropayments: £3 x 3.4% = 10p, plus 20p = 30p

Micropayments: £3 x 5% = 15p, plus 5p = 20p

A big difference, especially when you work out what you might sell over a year!
The breakeven point is somewhere between £9 and £10, so if most of your items (including p&p) sell for £9 or less, it might be worth converting your existing premier or business account from macro to micro by following the link at the foot of this post.  The lower your prices, the more money you'll save.

Alternatively, you could open a second Paypal account. Paypal allows each person to hold two accounts, one macropayment and one micropayment (very useful for eBay sellers with a mix of high and low prices) but it's not possible to link them both to the same bank account, sadly.

To switch your current Paypal account to micropayments, follow the link, click 'Signup', choose your country from the drop-down menu, and take it from there.  If at any time your circumstances change and a micropayments account is no longer viable, you can simply switch back.

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https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/
NOTE: Ignore the $ figures you'll see when you click - these only apply to US sellers.  The figures I've given in this post are correct at time of writing.  It seems we poor Brits always pay more for everything!