116 Add Paypal “Buy Now” button

I recently read the book Digital Disruption. The basic premise is that the economy has changed dramatically, which everyone knows, but few realize the positive nature of this change. The book posits that we no longer live in a capitalist society, that is, a society where those who control capital control the economy. But rather we now live in a society where the economy is controlled by those who control knowledge and information. Previously it took money to make money. Now it takes knowledge to make money. Why? Because technology has pushed the cost of production so low that virtually anyone can use technology to promote their ideas with little or no capital. Createspace, Blurb, and Graphicly are manifestations of this new, evolving economy.

In previous blogs I mentioned experimenting with the above services as well as with Etsy and Wix. Wix is a website creation site with a shopping cart option. But the option costs $16 a month. Cheap, but not cheap enough. So I looked around and discovered that PayPal has an option to add a buy button to a website or blog that costs nothing up front. There is a deduction from the transaction. Few people seem willing to mention how much this deduction is, perhaps it fluctuates, but they claim it is nominal. I’ll find out and report back. If the deduction is steep enough it might be better to go with the Wix shopping cart as they deduct nothing. I will experiment with the Paypal button and switch to a Wix shopping cart when sales warrant (that is, when Paypal deductions add up to more that $16 a month).

I was surprised how easy it was to set up the button with Paypal. Although it was disappointing I had to charge for shipping. Free or no charge wasn’t an option so I made shipping $1 (I prefer to include shipping into the price of the item). I didn’t have any paintings in an appropriate price range (it’s difficult to imagine someone buying a painting for thousands of dollars via a Paypal button) so I made a button for my 9 value grayscale. It is like the one I use in my videos and it might save some from having to purchase all the grays from Golden Acrylic.

To buy a 9 Value Grayscale for $5 plus $1 shipping click the button below:

Many thanks! I will share the results of this experiment in a future blog.

Brad Teare April 2013