The Road to Zoe’s PayPal Button

                                                                                         The 1st try

I started my journey on January 13th by emailing my web guru, Lisa, to ask for a PayPal button. I had no idea what I was getting into. The emails bounced back and forth between us for the next couple days while I tried to find the code she needed. Here’s a sample from the first couple 

---

lines. It looks like Greek to me!
​
<div id="smart-button-container"> <div style="text-align: center;"> <div id="paypal-button-container"></div>

I struggle with technology so my editor, Brooke, made a quick video. I followed it step by step, and I got  a new code. Lisa added it to my website on January 16th. I thought it worked. So did Lisa.
​
MISTAKE #1 – We didn’t test-buy a book to see if the button worked. OOPS! I should have done that on the 16th or 17th.  That’s the problem with something new – you don’t know what you don’t know!
​

---

In March Brooke asked about my presales. I didn’t have any. The problem – I didn’t know I was supposed to post the link to my PayPal button on social media. People can’t buy something they don’t know about. Duh!

When I started my launch countdown, I added my buy link to the post. That was March 1st, and that’s when I found my first problem. My daughter messaged me that she couldn’t buy my book. I checked it out!
​
​My whole website was down! I couldn’t even get in – at all! That’s never happened before, and my site has been live since 2016. The only change – my buy link. By the time I went to bed, I was back online, back in business. At least I thought so.

                                                                                                                                             The 2nd Try

---

​The PayPal button came up again on March 8th, the night before Zoe’s debut. That’s the night I posted the #1 thing to do at the lake – read ZOE!

---

My daughter was still trying to buy it from me. She emailed, and that’s when I discovered the real problem – the copy code wasn’t working. Remember this . . . 

<div id="smart-button-container"> <div style="text-align: center;"> <div id="paypal-button-container"></div>
​
That’s the copy code, and it never, ever worked. I emailed Lisa that night. She looked at the button and asked for a new copy code. I generated it at 1AM that night, before going to bed.

By the next morning, Lisa pasted it in, and it still didn’t work. I generated one last code before my virtual launch at 1PM. By the time I finished it an hour later, Lisa had tried again, and again it failed.
​
I was done! I tried 2-3 times within that 24-hour period, and I hit a wall again and again. I called PayPal for help. I knew that I couldn’t do this on my own, and that every time I asked Lisa to input a new code, I was paying for her frustration, and failure.

---

I called PayPal Support and got Neysa. She was wonderful. She walked me through getting that darn button. By the end of our session, I thought I was good to go. Neysa even sent me 2 notes, one about the button. The other about API Credentials. (I still have no idea what they are, except that it’s a number unique to me, and that if someone gets that number, they can hack into my account.)

I emailed the new number to Lisa that night. Guess what – It didn’t work! I don’t know why. Lisa is great at tech issues. Everything you see on my website is due to the foundation she set up. I copied and sent Neysa’s note to Lisa. Nothing changed.
​
I tried to work with the API Credentials, even though I didn’t know what I was doing. Lisa and I tried two different ways to use them. We failed both times.

At 10PM on launch day I gave up and filed a case with Technical Support. After 24 hours in crisis mode, I turned it over to the tech team. It was the BEST decision I made all day.

Lesson #1 – Know when to give up. I had tried everything Brooke, Lisa, Paypal, and Neysa suggested. I wasn’t making any progress. I kept making the same mistake, over and over again. I’m so GLAD I quit!

                                                                                                                                                The Third and Final Try

---

​I got my first email from Tech Support on March 10th. Adithya wanted me to generate another button, but I said NO! I sent him the one Neysa and I created. I hoped Adithya would find the error and help me fix it.

---

He DID say there was an important client ID missing from the button code on the 11th. He didn’t think I generated the code with PayPal, and he asked me to try again. I did, but it felt like I was repeating the same old directions. When you do that, you get the same old results.

I heard back on the 15th and 16th. Adithya sent directions both days, but I couldn’t understand them.  I felt like someone threw me in the deep end of the pool, and I didn’t know how to swim. If someone has ever given you a project that’s above and beyond your skills, you know how I felt.
​
Here’s one of his answers. I looked at my code for 30 minutes, trying to find what he wanted me to find, and change. I couldn’t.  ​

---

Thank you for your reply, Client ID is the Identifier that uniquely identifies your button and helps in routing all the payments to your PayPal account.

<script src="https://www.paypal.com/sdk/js?client-id=sb&currency=USD" data-sdk-integration-source="button-factory"></script>

As of now it is assigned to generic test account "sb" and adding this button code onto your website will route all the payment to a test account and no real payment can be made.

So as your generated button code is missing on client ID, I would recommend you follow the steps given in the below link to get the client ID from your PayPal account.

Lesson #2 – When something’s not working – change strategies! The emails didn’t work. I couldn’t see or understand what Adithya was asking me to do so I asked for a conference call. I thought if we zoomed, he could guide me into doing what he asked.
​
PS – this section was SUPER hard to write. I thought I’d finish the post tonight, but I couldn’t. This was as far as I could write. The more words I used, the more tangled my thoughts became. I hope I let you feel a little of my frustration . . .  without the knots.
 
                                              A Happy Ending – A Conference Call to the Other Side of the Earth

​When I couldn’t make heads or tails of the code, I asked for a conference call. That was March 16th. By the 17th Adithya said he could meet anytime from 9AM – 9PM IST. I had to look up IST – India Standard Time. Then I found a conversion chart for EST – Eastern Standard Time in the US. I don’t even want to think how many time zones are between India and the US. 

---

Can you find the US and India on this World Map? ​

There were two sets of times that worked. First, 9-10:30AM in India. That’s almost midnight in Ohio! The second, 8-9PM in India. That’s when I wake up, about 10:30 in the morning in Ohio. I’m not a morning person so I asked for the first time.
​
Adithya immediately set up a time to meet the next morning. Unfortunately, I read his email after I had breakfast, when Adithya was done for the day. We finally got a call set up for after midnight on the 19th. Within 30 minutes I had my code. You’d think it would have been easy. He could see my computer screen as we talked, but it was still tricky.

The tough parts – 1. We both thought our PayPal computer screens looked the same. I knew computer keyboards look different. The keys are in different places, but I thought the screens would be the same, just in different languages. No wonder I couldn’t follow directions from Adithya’s emails. The commands weren’t in the same places.
​
2. There was also a language difference. Thank goodness Adithya spoke English, but he spoke with an Indian accent, which was hard occasionally for me to understand. Sometimes my American English was hard for him.
​
It sounds funny to have trouble communicating in the same language, but it happens. I was in England, and the hotel guide sent my husband and I to ‘Mer Mickey.’ We couldn’t find it on the map, but we did find ‘Mermaid Quay.’ Our hotel guide didn’t get the joke – but my husband and I did. FYI – the faster you speak, the harder it is to be understood in international situations. SLOW DOWN! ​

---

During the conversation, Adithya had me generate that code again. This time he asked me to paste it onto an email and send it to him. Then he did his magic (he put the right code in the right place – I still couldn’t do it.) He sent the corrected code back to me. I was almost done!

When I got up on the 19th, I sent the code to my developer, Lisa (I thought she was my tech person, but her real title is web developer. Live – And Learn!). Lisa put it up, and at 6:41PM on the 19th, I thought the journey was over.
​
NOT! Brooke, my publisher went in on the 22nd, and found it didn’t work again. URGH! I sent out 12 emails from 4 - 6PM. Sometime during that period Brooke sent me a Capture image (it looked like Greek to me, again), but I sent it off to Lisa. She worked on it, but we needed someone to test-drive the button. Brooke did, and I was finally in business. I closed the case on PayPal, and my daughter finally bought her book. Life is good!

---