Selling Items for $0.0 (Giving products for Free)

[admin]

If you are trying to sell products for $0.00 essentially giving the product for free then there are a few options for you:

Option 1) Use the manual checkout

You can use the manual/offline checkout to allow the customer to bypass the checkout via a payment gateway (for example, PayPal).

Payment gateways won’t let a $0 transaction to go through so you can instruct your customers to use the “Manual Checkout” option. Make sure to check the “Send Product Download Links in the Email” option in the manual checkout settings menu so the customers can get the download links as soon as they submit the checkout form.

You can also check the “Redirect to Manual Checkout For Zero Amount Purchase” field which will automatically redirect any $0.00 checkout to the manual/offline checkout.

The following post has more information on the various different ways you can setup the manual checkout:

WP eStore's Manual/Offline Checkout Methods (how manual checkout works)

Option 2) Use a squeeze page form

This is how most people build their email list.

The following documentation explains how you can use a squeeze page form to give products for free:

How to Make a Squeeze Page Using the WordPress eStore Plugin

Option 3) Use a Download Now Button

Use an eStore shortcode to create an encrypted “Download Now” button for a product. This will allow the user to download the item but it won’t reveal the true location of the digital item. Refer to the shortcode list documentation page for more details on this shortcode:

WP eStore Shortcodes and Functions Reference

Option 4) Use option 2 and 3 together

You can redirect the user to a “Thank You” page after they fill in the squeeze form. Then on this “Thank you” page you will have the secure download now button that they can use to download the product.

Edit the eStore product in question and specify the “Redirect to” URL in the following area of this product:

Buy Now or Subscription Type Button Specific Settings -> Return URL

When a user fills in the squeeze form for this product, he/she will get sent to the URL you specify in the above mentioned field.

Option 5) Use the Download with Discount Addon

You can also use the following addon plugin to give a download for free to the users who have a 100% discount coupon:

WP eStore Download With Discount or Coupon AddOn

Video Tutorial

[neiljameslloyd]

Hi, I would like my free product to appear on my main product page with the same styling as the pay-for products ([wp_eStore_fancy2 id=#]) but instead of the ‘Add to Cart’ button that’s on the pay-for products, I’d like ‘Download’ button on the free product that takes people to the squeeze page. Is there a way of doing this?

Best wishes

Neil

[neiljameslloyd]

Aha, figured this out now! Can’t quite get the button style to match perfectly but it looks fine. This plugin rocks.

[dioni2a]

Hey Neil,

Would you detail your solution, or include a link to the page where you’ve got this set up? I will be doing something like this in the near future, so I’d appreciate being able to see how you put it together.

Warmly,

Dion

[amin007]

Simply enter the URL of your squeeze page in the “Button Link” field of that product (you can find that field in the Additional Details section). If you read the help text for that field it will explain what it does.

[reneeshupe]

Hello,

I am setting up a site for a client (http://www.ebookchannel.info) and right now they will only have free ebooks for download (down the road they will offer items for purchase), so I’m trying to set up the manual payment setting and though I have everything done as indicated in your write up, when you click the checkout button it’s still be overridden by Paypal? Am I missing something, some preference that I may be missing?

Note: The Middle Product is a dummy and won’t work. If you try the process yourself.

Any insight you can provide would be great.

Thanks,

Renee

[Ivy]

Hi, In the eStore Settings > Payment Gateways Tab> Manual Payment

Did you check the box to use this payment gateway?

[AndieJ]

I’m trying option 1 above and not finding the “Redirect to Manual Checkout For Zero Amount Purchase” setting under eStore settings – Payment Gateway Settings menu.

I see that I’m looking at WP eStore Settings v 3.6.

If that seems correct, can you please tell me specifically on the page where to find this setting?

Thank you!

[admin]

Hi, Please download a new copy of eStore and install it on your site. You should see this field after that. You can download a new copy of the plugin from here:

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/update-request

[Linda Bell]

Is there a way to remove “Download Now” button from the squeeze form? I prefer to have it just email the person (who used a coupon to get a free eBook that retails on the site for $2.99) an encrypted link.

[admin]

The squeeze form needs a button though. Otherwise the users cannot submit the info. Remember that you can customize the button image to anything you want (you can use your own custom image for it that says whatever you want it to say). The following post will explain how to use a custom button image:

WP eStore – Customizing the buttons (changing the button images)

There are a bunch of handy button images at the following URL:

Add to Cart and Buy Button Images for Shopping Cart

[Linda Bell]

Perfect! Thank you! 🙂

[tshombe]

Hi there,

I normally use the squeeze form for this, but for this instance I would like to try out the manual checkout method.

I am offering a “subscriber’s only” free webinar, and rather than have a landing page, I simply sent the subscribers the direct link to the shopping cart. Since it doesn’t cost anything, the settings are set up to redirect to the manual checkout.

(On a related note, I wish there was a way to customize which information is required in the form. Is there a way to do that?)

When I tested the sequence, I experienced two challenges:

1. the {product_specific_instructions} tag did not show up in the email sent to the buyer

2. the buyer was not subscribed to the eList in MailChimp. There is a group set in the product settings, so the buyer should have been subscribed to both the list and the corresponding group.

[admin]

We are working on creating a feature that will allow you to customize which fields are presented on the manual/offline checkout form.

Regarding your questions… which of the following manual checkout scenario are you using?

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/wp-estores-manualoffline-checkout-methods-how-manual-checkout-works

[tshombe]

Thanks so much for the reply. I apologize that I didn’t see that you’d responded.

I used Option 2 at the URL you shared here. It’s Option 1 at this link: https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/selling-items-for-00-giving-product-for-free

[Author]

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