Add A PayPal Donate Button

Have you put a lot of work into your blog or community and wish to accept donations for your efforts? If you’re a PayPal member you can do just that! First, if you don’t already have a PayPal account, but would still like to accept donations. You can signup for a free PayPal account here. Once you have your PayPal account or if you already have a PayPal account you continue using the instructions below.

1.) Login to your PayPal account using your email and password as usual.

2.) Once logged in, click on “Merchant Services”.

3.) Once at the merchant services page, you will see “Create Buttons” click on “Donate”.

4.) You will come to a page that looks like this, leave the first drop down box on it’s default setting for donations.

5.) Fill in the Name/Service text box with the name of your blog, website, yourself or what you’re accepting donations for such as “SomeBlogs Webhosting Fund”. You can also customize the appearance of the button by making the donate button smaller or larger, adding credit card symbols below the button or if you wish you can even use your own donate button or graphic.

6.) Select your currency you wish to receive donations in, set your setting to either fixed or own contribution amount. Allow users to set their own contribution amount leaves the payment field open so users can donate any amount they wish, a fixed amount is where you set a default amount and users can only donate that amount. It is best left to allowing users to specify their own amount.

7.) Choose your merchant ID settings, here you can choose what name appears on the donation page at PayPal when users arrive to make a donation, leaving it as secure merchant ID will show your name or if you have a business account, your business name to contributors. If you set it to an email, only the email will be shown when users attempt to donate.

8.) Click Step 2 to save your button, by saving your button you you can come back later and edit it or make changes without needing to go through the button making process all over again.

9.) Click Create Button and copy the HTML code to your blog. It is not mandatory to go on to Step 3, but you can customize your button further with some of the options offered.