I currently have a Premier account. I want to offer a digital product for sale on a web site. Going by PayPal's description of that account type I should be able to not only accept PayPal funds directly but also credit cards even if the person paying does not have an account with PayPal. I'm totally confused on how to pull off the following: 1) User goes to my site. 2) User hits 'Buy Now'. 3) After performing the transaction they will automatically get e-mailed a pre-written letter I create, in addition to a randomly generated link that contains the URL to the product they've purchased. After that link has been accessed one time, it no longer becomes valid. I'm getting confused on this part. If a user does not belong to PayPal and makes the purchase with a credit card, how do they supply an e-mail address? Also I'm not exactly sure what I need to handle the auto e-mail reply and the script that handles the random link generation. I'm not up to buying DLGuard, and SmartDD looked reasonable but my host doesn't support the PHP libraries required to run it. Are there any other (free) alternatives?
Where did you come up with this? That is a scripted solution you are describing. Paypal does not offer that. As far as I know there are scripted and unscripted solutions. The free way to do it is to hide your product in an obscure directory, encrypt your paypal button, provide the return link to the file in the button information. The downside to this method is your have keep moving the file around and making new buttons to protect it.
Yeah. "Pull off the following" meant putting that process into action. I know PayPal won't do this part for me. Will PayPal not auto-send an email? I'm really confused on this part. Do I have to put together a "thanks" page that handles the auto-email (and this would be the "return" link on the paypal confirm page?). That would make sense but I'm uncertain as to how I can get their e-mail address in the first place. Especially if they payed by credit card. The process seems pretty complicated to the customer. How would they know to hit "return" on the paypal page, etc..