Intoduction

Thank you for choosing ezPayPal. You will find it easy to setup and use. The initial setup is so simple and intuitive that you may be able to start earning revenue in a matter of minutes without even having to read this manual. You will find all the advanced features and options of ezPayPal documented in this manual.

What is it?

ezPayPal is a package to turn your website into an automated e-shop to sell your digital goods (such as eBooks, photos, programs etc.) It uses PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) to automate everything from payments from your customers to product delivery. Aiming at simplicity and robustness, ezPayPal does all the heavy lifting invovled in IPN posting, verification, product and payment validation, buyer download link generation, email etc., so that your e-shop can run unattended for months, generating revnue. As a payment solution, ezPayPal finds itself in between PayPal buy-now buttons and shopping carts.

Why not use PayPal buttons?

PayPal "Buy Now" buttons are great if you sell a couple of eBooks or photos or programs a week. Yu get the payment and either email the product or manually create a download link for your buyer. Clearly, it is not a scalable solution. For one thing, all your payment and delivery information is in your email account, and your product definitions are on PayPal site. They should all be in a database under your control. Besides, once your products become popular, you will be spending an inordinate amount oftime servicing orders. If you want to add more products, you will have to generate new buttons and cut and paste the HTML code to your web pages.

With ezPayPal, you will add a new product using a dedicated web interface. The moment it is defined your new product will appear on yopur website ready to be bought by your customers. All the payment and customer data will be sotred so that you can have detailed reports, start your own affiliate networks, or link exchange systems etc. Infinitely more powerful, yet simpler than buttons.

Why not use a shopping cart?

I found shopping carts too cumbersome both for my customers and for my backend administration purposes. My customers typically wantto purchase and download one copy of a program or an eBook of mine with no fuss. Having them go through multiple screens of registration, login etc. before they can get to the payment gateway is suboptimal in the context of downloadable digital goods. The overall user experience needs to be as close to the one-click buy a la Apple App Store as possible. Hence ezPayPal.

In addition to the unweildy user-experience, the backend administration (product setup, customer and payment management etc.) in shopping carts is also heavy-handed for the purpose of digital goods sales. Combined with their typically high price range, the administrative costs render the shopping carts unsuitable for me. ezPayPal, on the other hand, is designed spcifically for downloadable digital goods, and provides a streamlined experience for your buyers and your admin staff. But, if your inventory includes physical goods, ezPayPal may not be the right solution for you.

Different Versions and Features

ezPayPalcomes in two stand-alone versions, Standard (also known as Lite) and Pro. It also comes as a WordPress plugin, again in Standard and Pro versions.

Standard Features

1. Minimal setup and administration load: ezPayPal gets you started with your online shop within minutes, rather than hours and days.
2. Generous help and hints during setup: Whenever you need help, the information and hint is only a click away. (In fact, only a mouseover away.)
3. Automatic validation of admin and setup entries to minimize errors: ezPayPal catches all the usual data entry errors so that you can afford to be a bit sloppy.
4. Very little programming knowledge required: This program is written for creative people who have some digital products to sell. So it doesn't call for any deep computing knowledge. The most you will have to do is perhaps to set permission to a couple of folders.
5. Handles all the complex PayPal instant notification and data transfer to prevent unauthorized access.
6. Buyers are automatically redirected to a download page.
7. Self-service download link retrieval: If the PayPal information is not yet received by your server, your buyer will see a page where he can retrieve his purchase link. (This feature reduced my support load by 90%).
8. In addition to the download page, an automated email with the download link is sent to your buyer as well. Just in case...
9. Easy to add new products to your inventory.
10. Automatic generation of an online shop. Once the first product is added, you can already see it on your online shop.

ezPayPal is available as a freely distributed WordPress plugin as well as a standalone package.

Security Features

Since ezPayPal deals with money, it takes the security and integrity of your data very seriously. It also puts serious roadblocks to prevent unauthorized access to your server.

1. All login type actions are implemented in such a way as to virtually eliminate the possibility of SQL injection attacks.
2. The setup.php (which you are advised to remove after successful installation) script doesn't let you set up your installation twice. In fact, it won't even display the setup information the second time you run it. Reinstallation will require database manipulation.
3. Only one admin user is permitted. You cannot add another admin user.
4. There is no interface to recover your password once you install your system. No amount of database hacking will recover it. So please be careful to note it down in some secure location.
5. Strong validation of all user entries exposed to the world.

Pro Features

In addition to the fully functional Lite version, there is a Pro Stand-Alone Version with many more features. The WordPress plugin is also available in the Pro Plugin Version.

If the following features are important to you, consider buying the Pro version.

1. Data Security: The Pro version takes special measures to set up data verification links to ensure your sales data is safe and not susceptible to corruption. In technical terms, it checks for the existence of InnoDB in your MySQL installation, and uses it if found, setting up foreign keys to ensure referential integrity, and indices to guarantee performance. The Lite version uses the default MyISAM engine, fast and simple, but not exactly secure.
2. Sandbox Mode: In the Pro version, you have the option to choose PayPal sandbox mode so that you can check your setup before going live.
3. HTML Emails: In the Pro version, you can send impressive HTML email to your customers rather than the boring plain text messages.
4. Template Editor: The email body, thank you page and download display are all editable in the Pro version.
5. Automatic handling of refunds and disputes. When you issue a refund on the PayPal website, the corresponding sale in your database will be set to inactive. And if a buyer registers a dispute, he (and you) will get a friendly email message stating that the dispute is being reviewed and handled.
6. E-Check handling. The Pro version recognizes e-check payments and sends a mail to the buyer regarding the delay for the check clearance.
7. Sales Editor: You can load a single sale or a bunch of sales on to a friendly interface and change their data. For instance, it will let you change the download expiry date and resend a download notification message -- one of the frequent support requests from the buyers.
8. Email Tools: You can select a number of your buyers to notify, for example, of a critical update of your products, or of a free upgrade opportunity.
9. Product Version Support: The Pro version supports versioning of your products. It will keep track of the version sold to your buyers and your current versions. So, if you want to send a product and version specific upgrade notice, you can do it with Pro version.
10. Batch Upload: The Pro version gives an easy way to upload your product files (when you release new versions, for instance), and keeps track of their versions.
11. Additional Tools: The Pro version also gives you a bunch of tools (php example files) that can help you migrate your existing sales data or product definitions.
12. Data Migration: Using this Pro tool, your database tables can be automatically upgraded to the later version without losing your sales info and other settings.
13. DB Backup: The Pro version has an option to generate a backup of your sales info to download to a safe location.
14. DB Restore: It also provides a means to restore (of course) a previously backed up data file, overwriting (or appending to, as you wish) the existing sales info. (WIP)
15. Security Audit: The Pro version provides you with a tool to check your settings and installation for possible security issues.
16. Product Updates: Your customers can initiate product update checks. If the version they purchased is older than the current version on your shop, they can download the latest version. Bu default, the first update is provided free of cost, and the subsequent ones are chargeable at $0.95. In later versions, this update policy will be configurable on a product-by-product basis.
17. Upgradeable Products: You can define products that are upgradeable. For instance, you can sell a short eBook at an introductory price. If your buyer likes it, he has the option of buying the full book by paying the difference. (WIP)

If you buy the Pro version, you will get an upgrade notice (using the last item listed above) when the features that are Work-in-Progress are completed. You will be able to update free of charge.

Optional Packages

ezPayPal is designed to be extensible. Already in the pipeline are the following optional extensions:

1. ezAffiliates: Create your own affiliate network and go viral by turing your satisfied customers into your advertising affiliatees. This package, built on the pubicly available Affiliates-for-All, integrates perfectly with to automate affiliate sales tracking and commission computation and more.
2. ezReports: Maximize your sales by analyzing your sales. This reporting package makes slicing and dicing your sales and affiliate data a snap, so that you can spot opportunities.
3. ezTextLinks: Do you have a high page-rank site? Do you get a lot of requests for text links? They can be significantly more lucrative (by a factor of 100, in my case) than contextual ads such as AdSense. The returns can be even greater if you can deal with your advertisers directly, rather than via providers like Text Link Ads that take 50% of your revenue. ezTextLinks will handle payment, activate and expire links, send reminder emails and handle renewals etc.
4. ezSupport: Every complex software project, once deployed, generates significant support load. Most of the support questions are frivilous, where the end-user presents silly issues that are easily resolved by a cursory look at the documentation. How do we ask the end-user to RTFM without antagonizing them? I found that it could be done by switching to a paid support model. I started charging 95 cents per support questions, and my support load went down by two orders o magnitude. This ezSupport package is built on the excellent osTicket program. It works hand in hand with ezPayPal and provides you with a configurable support system.
5. PageSales: Another project built on ezPayPal is a WordPress plugin to sell your blog pages in nicely fromatted printable PDF files. Page Sales, when priced right, can be a perfect way for your appreciative readers to send you donations.

Note that these extensions are designed to work with Standalone Pro version. They will be ported to the Plugin Pro version as well if possible.

Support and Product Updates

ezPayPalcomes with extensive documentation both on its website and as a part of the distribution. The documentation is also available as a PDF file. But the design of ezPayPal is to make it so intuitive that you will seldom need to refer to the documentation. To this end, the documentation is actually integrated with the ezPayPal interface at two levels.

Timely Help: On all setup, admin and Pro screens in ezPayPal, you can hover over the icon next to a feature or option to bring up a tooltip with detailed information about feature or option under consideration so that you don't have to refer to this manual every time you need help. ezPayPal will also validate your inputs and present warnings or error messages to guide you along.

To get the help page specific to an ezPayPal screen you are working with, look for the icon to the right of the page title. Click on it and you will get a page specific to the page. If such a help file is not ready yet, you will see this message.

Despite this large documentation effort, if you still find yourself needing support, we have a paid support model. Please visit our Support Portal and raise a ticket.

ezPayPal and other programs sold at our e-shop can be updated by visiting our Update Portal. This portal will list the updates available to you and let you download or purchase them. The first update for each of the programs is provided free of cost, and the subsequent ones are charged a nominal $0.95.