Add to cart for $0.00

[mmatzek]

I have a web site client that is using pay pal "add to cart" buttons on their site to sell tickets for an wine tasting event.  They want an "add to cart" button for designated drivers for $0.00.  Why a need for button, you ask?  Because they want to track how many people are coming to the event and still give the desginated driver a "invoice/receipt".  How can I create an "add to cart button" for $0.00?

[skier]

PayPal's Shopping Cart has some limitations. PayPal requires at least 1 cent to complete the transaction process. Although you can process a payment for 1 cent, you will not see any funds in your account because this amount would be less then the transaction fee. You can have a free item in your cart as long as the cart has another item with an amount of at least 1 cent. You cannot have a free item by itself. Should you try, when you proceed to Check Out, you will get an error message.

Regards,

skier

[Infamuke]

I'm currently working on a site that will provide a "free trial" which would be a similar situation...

What I did was basically avoid PayPal entirely for this option and wrote separate code that handles it on my end.

Depending on your level of technical expertise and whats capable on your website and how it is set up, you could do the same thing and display a button that instead of going off to PayPal it will do something else.

For example send the person an email receipt, send yourself an email regarding this free purchase - or if you're working with a database it can make an entry there too. Again, depends on what you have available to work with.

Hope that helps some.

[skier]

Good idea, sometimes you have to outside the box.   There's just some things that cannot be done with Website Payments Standard.

Regards,

skier

[DexSinister]

However, if I understand what you are trying to do, you CAN do a free trial easily if you're willing to structure it as "Pay nothing for X days, then pay only $XX.XX in two easy payments."

Under "Create buttons: Subscribe" all the tools are there to set up a free trial of "X" amount of time, and a minimum of two recurring payments at "X" interval. So you can, for instance, have a 14-day free trial, and two recurreng payments 14 days apart (or one day apart, or 30 days apart, or whatever).

Then buy clicking "customize appearance" (still in step 1) you can set the button back to say "Buy Now" instead of "Subscribe."

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@Infamuke wrote:

I'm currently working on a site that will provide a "free trial" which would be a similar situation...

What I did was basically avoid PayPal entirely for this option and wrote separate code that handles it on my end.

Depending on your level of technical expertise and whats capable on your website and how it is set up, you could do the same thing and display a button that instead of going off to PayPal it will do something else.

For example send the person an email receipt, send yourself an email regarding this free purchase - or if you're working with a database it can make an entry there too. Again, depends on what you have available to work with.

Hope that helps some.

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[DexSinister]

Another option, if you were using a 3rd party cart, would be to offer a one ticket-price designated-driver discount, if the total in the cart equalled the price of two tickets or more. That's what I'd do, using e-junkie.com or other 3rd-party cart.

I don't think that a discount code is possible just using PP, but Skier could probably tell you. But then again "Designated driver attends for just 1 Cent," ought to be fine. 

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mmatzek wrote:

I have a web site client that is using pay pal "add to cart" buttons on their site to sell tickets for an wine tasting event.  They want an "add to cart" button for designated drivers for $0.00.  Why a need for button, you ask?  Because they want to track how many people are coming to the event and still give the desginated driver a "invoice/receipt".  How can I create an "add to cart button" for $0.00?

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