paypal automatic emails

[sportslitter]

I am thinking about selling a product online and using paypal's business account. I will be selling an ebook. Does paypal have a feature that will send an automatic email to the buyer with my ebook download instructions?

I don't want to have to confirm each payment from a buyer and sit on paypal all day. I just want someone to buy the product, send me the money via paypal, and then they automatically receive and email where I say thank you blah blah blah, here are your download instructions.

Is it all automatic or will I have to confirm each payment?

[Dan Grossman]

PayPal does not have an automated process for delivering your goods, no. However, there are many software packages that offer this and integrate with PayPal. You can find a bunch over at HotScripts I'm sure. osCommerce has many user-written modules that do this as well.

[mrpasta]

What you want is PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification). Sign up for the PayPal developer network (it's free) and go from there. There are many sample scripts available in various programming languages (PHP, ASP, etc.).

Basically with IPN your web server will be notified when someone purchases your product, you can then dispatch the necessary email through scripts. It's fairly straight forward.