Sell your eWebinar via PayPal redirect after purchase

The simplest paid-webinar workflow: PayPal takes the payment, then redirects the buyer to your eWebinar registration page to sign up for a session.

The PayPal redirect is the simplest way to charge for an eWebinar. You sell a "Buy Now" button in PayPal, configure PayPal's return URL to point at your eWebinar registration page, and let the buyer pick a session after their payment clears.

This workflow does not auto-register the buyer. After paying, they land on eWebinar's registration page and have to fill out the form themselves. If you want auto-registration, see the Zapier + replay workflow or the EventBrite workflow.

What you'll need

  • A PayPal Business account (or any payment processor that supports a configurable return URL after checkout — Stripe, Kartra, etc. work the same way).
  • The registration URL of your eWebinar, from the Share button on the home page.
  • A custom landing page outside of eWebinar (on your own site) where you promote the webinar and place the PayPal button.

Step 1 — set up the eWebinar

  1. On the Schedule tab, configure the schedule you want. Any session type works — scheduled, just-in-time, on-demand, or replay.
  2. On the Registration tab, design the registration page to make it clear the transaction has completed and the visitor still needs to register. Something like "Payment received — pick your session below."
  3. On the Replays settings (if you enable them), consider expiring replay links after a few days so buyers can't freely share them.

Step 2 — set up the PayPal button

  1. In PayPal, open Seller Tools → PayPal buttons and create a new Buy Now button.
  2. Enter the Item name and Price for your webinar.
  3. Turn off the option to collect a shipping address.
  4. Enable Take customers to this URL when they finish checkout and paste your eWebinar registration URL.
  5. Enable Take customers to this URL when they cancel their checkout and paste your custom landing page URL so cancelling returns them to where they started.
  6. Click Create Button, then copy the button HTML (or the shareable link) and paste it onto your landing page.

PayPal does not automatically send buyers to the return URL — buyers have to click Return to Merchant on PayPal's checkout-complete screen. Call this out on your landing page so buyers know to click it: "When your transaction is complete, click Return to Merchant to register for a session."

Security trade-off

This is the least secure of the three paid-webinar workflows. Because the registration page URL is the buyer's post-purchase destination, anyone who gets that URL can register without paying. If that matters for your business, add the Advanced access control add-on to require email verification or token-gated access on your registration page. Also avoid sharing the registration link publicly — only promote the custom landing page that sits in front of PayPal.

Related articles