I was having a conversation with The Savvy Seller on Twitter about gift certificates and when I was talking to her about PayPal Gift Certificates, I realized that I had totally forgotten they existed! Gift Certificates have always been a bit hidden on the PayPal site so I wanted to do a quick overview on them before we get into the holidays.
PayPal gift certificates are a very neat product, very easy to set up and, obviously, a great thing to offer this holiday season. What is great about them is that they apply to wherever PayPal is accepted so you can accept them on your own website, Bonanzle, eBay, Etsy, Craigs List, Overstock, Google Base, or wherever else you are selling where customers pay you directly via PayPal. If you sell on multiple platforms, it’s a great way to offer something that buyers can use across them all.
Just to make sure I am clear, these gift certificates are through PayPal but are only for your items only. In other words, a Priced Nostalgia gift card would be good at Priced Nostalgia’s eBay, Bonanzle, Overstock and own web store, but could not be used anywhere else where Priced Nostalgia is not the seller. When a buyer uses a gift certificate, the money goes into your PayPal account just like with any other sale.
You can read more about and sign up for PayPal Gift Certificates here. (If you are already logged into your PayPal account, click the Merchant Services tab and then scroll down and under “Create Buttons” is Gift Certificate.)
The set-up for Gift Certificate buttons is pretty similar to creating any other buy it now button in PayPal. You can set up a custom image and customize the look of the gift certificate with your own logo and colors (or use one of their pre-made ones in themes like Birthday or New Baby). In addition, you can also opt to either only sell the gift certificates in denominations that you set ($25, $50, $100, etc) or leave the amount open to whatever the buyers wish to set it to.
My advice? Create your own custom gift certificate colors and logo. It’s worth it to have the branding there and that will serve you better than their holiday related clip art. Also, this saves you from having to create multiple buttons for each event if you have one generic branded one. I would also advise that you set your own gift card values. This is both because you will have a better idea of a useful amount for the sort of items that you sell and also because it often encourages people to spend a little more to reach a round number.
Now, if you constantly have similar items in your store, this may be a simple cut and dry application. Your customer buy a a gift certificate for a friend who would like to buy your items, the friend redeems the gift card for purchases in your store.
If you are a blogger, author or a seller without consistent inventory, you may not be sure how to use these to your advantage. Here are a few other ideas for using PayPal Gift Certificates this holiday season.
Sell gift certificates for. . .
- a class, webinar or other online service
- a custom craft item made to the buyer’s specifications
- personalized items
- your online advertising (if you do that through a PayPal payment method)
- premium memberships to your site
- your books or eBooks that you offer for sale
- pre-orders of an item that isn’t available yet
The above are just a few examples meant to illustrate that you can think outside the box when it comes to these.
Got another idea you’d like to share about using these to your advantage? Share it with us below!
Paypal withholding users funds for 21-180 days at Paypal’s “sole discretion” via their New User Agreement amendments makes Paypal MUCH TOO DANGEROUS!
We all can thank Meg Whitman and John Donahoe’s forced “Disruptive Innovation” scheme for that detrimental change, along with tons of other policy changes that are killing users businesses and any possibility for safe trading with ebay or Paypal.
Search the internet for:
“Ebay Stockholders and Sellers Calling For Immediate Termination of John Donohoe CEO Petition”
(at petitiononline) to see what is REALLY happening to Paypal & ebay users.
This, however, is a bad option if you need a gift certificate for services at your business. If the redemption part of the certificate was editable, one could instruct the user to bring the certificate to the studio.
Smooth,
There are a few ways to accept PayPal in person for services done in your brick and mortar store. There is a complete list of them on the Merchant Services tab on PayPal’s site.
Yes. However, I am looking for a way to allow someone to purchase a gift certificate from my website, then print it off to give it as a gift. Some of our clients travel from pretty far away, and I would like to set this up so their friends can purchase these without traveling.
I could just do a Buy It Now button, then email the certificate, but I was looking for something a little less hands on.
Any insight would be great! Thank you for responding so quickly to my prior post.
- Smooth
I used to work at a place where we did our own internal gift certificates (much like what you are describing with buy it now buttons) and it was a nightmare of trying to keep track of what had been used and by whom and what balances were left, etc. I highly recommend doing it through some kind of service if you can so that you at least save yourself some of that aggravation.
That said, I still think that you could do it with PayPal as described above. Your customers buy the PayPal gift certificate that you set up and then the only difference on your end is that, when they pay in person, you process the sale through PayPal instead of through your normal credit card processing. This allows them to do the entire sale process on your site and then just redeem it when they are there in person and you don’t have to remember who bought what gift card because PayPal remembers that for you.
Thank you again. The latter is a great idea… I’ll just have to make sure the buyer “gets it” before they see the PayPal certificate, because the redemption instructions suggest going back to the web site to shop and redeem. If this part is editable or addable, it would be nice. Is it?
Well, I am much clearer about how to make this work; I thank you. Perhaps after I spoke to their tech, they will eventually offer a gift certificate which handle personal care services.
Very nice insight!
- Smooth
What Paypal doesn’t explain clearly is that the seller cannot access the funds until the buyer redeems the GC on-line. Only online and not in person. They charge the buyer and show the funds as pending but not available. Paypal holds both the buyer and seller hostage for six months. It also FORCES the seller to place paypal button on their own website so the GC’s can be redeemed. Six months, “there ought to be a law against that”
Does anyone have some money that they can let me hold for six months? Interest free of course, just like paypal.