As you continue to grow your audience and start taking commission work, you’ll need a way to get paid for your NSFW art commissions. PayPal is a popular payment aggregator, meaning you don’t need a merchant account/legal business to receive payments and withdraw money.
Despite its sneaky fees and quirks, PayPal is the easiest way to get paid if you have clients abroad. As you start building other sources of income, you can connect these to your PayPal as well.
In this article, you’ll learn the difference between personal and business accounts, how to get paid with invoices, and what to be careful of when using PayPal for NSFW art commissions.
This is part 2 of the “Making Money as an NSFW Artist” Course
Table of Contents
- PayPal and NSFW Artists
- Making Your Account: Personal vs Business
- How to Receive Payments
- Invoicing 101
- Paypal Quirks You Should Know About
- Ways to Withdraw Your Balance
- Conclusion
PayPal and NSFW Artists
PayPal’s isn’t known for being kind to NSFW creators. Their policy prohibits sexually oriented digital goods, including artworks.
However, the risk is well worth it. From experience, PayPal is by far the easiest payment platform for both artists and customers. As we go through each aspect of using PayPal, I’ll point out what to be careful of.
This quora answer talks about the risk adult content poses for merchants. It’s a peek into the complexities of business, which is why I don’t really fault companies for not wanting NSFW creators on their platforms. What do you think?
Making Your Account: Personal vs Business
PayPal offers two types of accounts.
Personal accounts are attached to your full name and address. Whenever you receive money, the sender will see your details. Personal accounts don’t have any fee benefits over business accounts, so I suggest going for the latter for privacy. This article talks more about the benefits of using a business account.
A business account doesn’t require actual business documents, so you can earn even if doing NSFW as a hobbyist/sole proprietor.
If you don’t have a legal/incorporated business name, fill it up with whatever you call yourself (but keep it SFW!). I just named mine HBeats Art.
When asked for business type, select Individual/Sole Proprietorship, and give your social security number. If you have a website but post NSFW to it, do not link it.
If you don’t have a social security number, personal accounts don’t require SSN. You can always upgrade a personal into a business account later on, or make more than one account.
Once done, your PayPal account will be ready to send/receive payments!
How to Receive Payments
You can receive payments by
- Letting your client “pay for an item or service”
- Letting your client “send money to friends”
- Making an invoice to send to your client.
Let’s say you were commissioned to make a $20 artwork:
The first option is available if your client has a PayPal account and selects “Paying for an item or service”. They can send you an amount, along with a note.
This is not the recommended way to get paid. Notice how the client is the one setting the price, so they might enter a wrong amount/purposely make it lower. Also, if they mention anything about commissioning NSFW art in the note, you’re screwed. Even something like “Thanks for the sexy artwork” might get you banned!
The second option “Sending to a friend” also means the amount is set by your client. Although there’s no seller fee for sending to a friend, you can get fined $2500 for avoiding PayPal seller fees. This method is not recommended at all.
Finally, you can make an invoice to send to your client. This is the best method, allowing you to make an invoice document where you set the payment amount and product details. This way, you’re sure nothing related to NSFW is mentioned.
Invoicing 101
PayPal invoices are great for working with international clients, and don’t require your customers to have a PayPal account.
Let’s learn how to fill in one. Head to https://www.paypal.com/invoice/create, or go to Send & Request > Send > Send an Invoice
Click Create to make a new invoice
Welcome to your first invoice! Let’s break down what you’ll find
- Depending on how you price, you may want to choose a different template. I price commissions by amount, not per hour, so I keep it as is.
- You can setup business info here, such as logo, company name and address. This will appear on the invoice document your client receives.
- Put the email address of your client here
- You might bill recurrently for some projects, but most of mine are one time payments.
Rule of thumb for invoice numbers is to do them incrementally. I didn’t touch mine from the original 0001.
I usually leave reference blank, and keep the due date as due on receipt.
- Don’t forget to choose the agreed on currency if working with international clients
- Enter the items sold for documentation. Keep it SFW, like “lineart commission” or “portrait art”, not “pinup” or “ecchi fanart”
- I usually don’t allow partial payment, and allow clients to tip
- Your client will see whatever you write here. I just write “Thank you for choosing my art!”
- If you have terms for things like late payments, art licensing, etc, you can include them here
And you’re done! Click send, and your client will receive the invoice through email before paying.
PayPal Quirks You Should Know About
Fees
Great! You’ve got your commission payment, but.. why is it missing an amount?
Whenever you receive money from invoicing, PayPal takes a service cut. For the online international transaction below, there was a service fee of 4.4% + $0.30:
Since PayPal is easy to use, I don’t mind the fee. To manage the cost, you can include fees into your commission prices. For example, instead of pricing lineart at $50, you’d price at $60 to cover fees.
However, do not ask clients to pay for the fees in addition to your commission prices. That is surcharging, and can get you fined and banned according to PayPal’s policy.
You can use SaleCalc to calculate PayPal fee on a specific amount.
Pending/Holding Funds
If your account is new, PayPal holds incoming payments for at most 21 days. You need to “demonstrate a pattern of positive buyer-seller transactions” before payments are received instantly.
On my new PayPal account, I’ve accepted two payments so far. I don’t know if there’s a number of required transactions, so I’ll update this post with that number in the future.
Withdrawing to your local currency
PayPal allows you to charge and get paid in different currencies.
You can add different currencies in your Wallet. I have one for USD (international clients) and PHP (local currency).
PayPal has a sneaky conversion fee that can stack up if you convert currencies.
| USD -> PHP | Exchange Rate (Optimal) | PayPal Rate |
| 60 USD | PHP 2,899 | PHP 2,807 (lose $1.9) |
| 400 USD | PHP 19,330 | PHP 18,715 (lose $12) |
Even if you have a USD currency account but the bank is non-US, PayPal will still convert the withdrawn amount to your local currency. No escaping this one, unfortunately.
Some posts say you can link a USD currency account’s debit card to PayPal, then call PayPal to have them change the card’s currency to USD on their end. This supposedly allows you to withdraw USD to the card, with no conversion fees even if you aren’t from the US. I’m still going to try it out myself, but I’ll update the post if ever.
You can check PayPal conversion rates here.
Ways to Withdraw Your Balance
Though you can use your PayPal balance/digital wallet to pay for some online goods, you might want to withdraw it as cash.
Head to Wallet > Link a bank. You can only link a local or US bank.
PayPal does not charge for bank withdrawal if over a certain amount (don’t forget conversion rates though!). However, they charge for withdrawal to debit cards.
You can also withdraw your funds through:
- PayPal debit card for US residents.
- Local cash apps which might be partnered with PayPal
Conclusion
Despite its fees and policy against NSFW goods, PayPal remains the easiest way to get paid online. Just be careful not to mention NSFW keywords on your invoice, business details, or payment notes.
Despite fees and quirks, PayPal remains the easiest way to get paid online. Just be careful not to mention NSFW keywords on your invoice, business details, or payment notes! Click To TweetWhen billing a client, use invoices so that you can set the payment amount and the product details. It’s also more professional, and allows you to keep track of transactions.
Finally, always be aware of PayPal’s fees when receiving, converting, and withdrawing money. Again, you can use these tools to calculate fees:
Now that you know how to charge for your work, read on to find out how to price commission work without guessing and wasting your time.
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Thank you so much for this!! Been struggling to find concrete information on this; this basically answered all of them.
You’re a life saver! 😊
Awesome! Glad it was helpful for you 🙂
Hello Beats, this is a very informative page and I would like to ask a question.
So I have a client who commissioned an 11 page nsfw comic. I told him to pay for the fee before I start each page because I can only do 1 page a week because of other commissions taling up my schedule. But he paid all of it upfront. I have finished atleast 5 pages and now I see he is disputing the payment. If I dont give any proof that the service has been given, then I have to refund all of the payment including the pages that I have finished. But I dont think I can give proof since its NSFW. The payment method
we used was “pay for a service”. What should I do with this? Could this have been prevented if I used the “Invoice” method?
Hey Boku,
Glad you find it helpful.
Damn, sorry to hear you’re going through that. I personally haven’t experienced that. While PayPal does have digital service protection now, it’s definitely off the table for an NSFW commission.
Sent you an email!
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How would I go about having multiple Paypal accounts to separate sfw and nsfw art? Is the only option to have multiple bank accounts?
Hey Statue State,
You could definitely do that. Just know that a new paypal account will need around 3 or more finished invoice transactions before you get money without Paypal holding your income.
I currently have a personal one and a business one. Good idea to have backups, and you can send money between them for free.
Hope that helps!
Thank you for the article.
Any way to use PayPal for gallery access/online content..? Or would that be subscription type transaction?
I have a full gallery I want to have a small subscription fee to access.
Hey Roy,
There are a few ways you could do that. Maybe you set up a paypal product that once bought, will email a link or code to the buyer.
PayPal also has a subscription feature, where you set how much it is per time interval. You can check it out here
I tried the paypal subscription thing, but I didn’t like how it wasn’t consistent (someone could sign up day 1, while someone else day 20, and the payments would come at those days instead of all in one day), so in the end decided to go with Patreon instead.
Hope that helps!
Great article.
I guess Paypal updated and when creating a template for invoices you can edit out your name, e-mail and phone number. This is the same for a personal account, so it has left me a little confused. Will a client still be able to see my personal information?
Cheers!
You are correct, it won’t show those details you choose not to. However, your paypal name (most likely your real name) will be seen. This is why you might opt to upgrade to a business account and only show your business name.
I tested the “First name” “Last name” field on the invoice, and it will still show the name of your paypal account when receiving the invoice.
Hope that helps!
Do you know if the Paypal business form updated or something? Requires my address and phone number now, which I’m a bit hesitant to provide.
Hey Oddleaf,
I double checked and it does seem like it’s required now. Address was always required (I just gave my home address/something I could prove with bank bills)
As for mobile, they do ask for it, but I don’t think they ever send anything/ask for proof.
Providing info like that is commonplace for business stuff, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The info doesn’t show up in your invoices or anything, it’s just for PayPal.
Cheers, Beats
Do you know of a good alternative to Paypal?
I’m really not comfortable with giving away any personal information with regards to making NSFW transactions, even to Paypal itself—social security number, phone number, address, my real name… Anything that could potentially be used to expose me. It makes me wonder how people like you deal with that risk.
I’ve been thinking of making NSFW illustrations for others who would be willing to support me for it, just in case I find myself in a tight spot… It seems that I’ve hit a roadblock in this venture.
Great question. As of now, I can’t think of any good alternative to Paypal, unfortunately. Perhaps you could take donations as payments through ko-fi or buy me a coffee. That way, your info is kept private while you still get money into your account.
if i set up a businesses account will it be anonymous, like the buyer won’t be able to see what my full legal name and address is?
Hey fish! Yep, your invoice will display your business name, but you can choose not to add your full name or your address.
What if someone tries to scam me by demanding a refund? I would be forced to comply, otherwise it would alert Paypal that what I’m selling is NSFW.
Do you have an article about Payoneer or Transferwise?
Hey there,
Yeah, that’s always a risk. From experience, as long as you converse with clients and get a feel for them, then you can tell who the less trustworthy ones are (inconsistent story/requests, unclear on what they want, little to no proof that they’ve commissioned before, no sign of hentai appreciation on their socials). I have yet to be hit by someone like that in the past 7 years of freelance.
No article on Payoneer or Transferwise, but Payoneer isn’t easy to use for NSFW because it’s meant for bigger businesses (no invoicing individual people), and Transferwise isn’t accessible to most people.