Creative Corner

I'm not sure if this is the best place to go to for asking these questions, but I'm not familiar with any other art community so here goes...

I'm in need of a bit of money to buy something I've wanted for a while, and I want to draw art to earn the money to pay it off. However, I'm not familiar with online art payment systems. I'm trying to register a PayPal account, but I'm extremely uncomfortable with how it makes my personal info public to all buyers I interact with. I haven't tried making a business account, mostly because I only need 20 USD and setting up an entire business for $20 is a bit excessive.

Online artists who charge real money, how do you guys do it? Do you use your real names and information or make up fake ones at the risk of not being able to be verified if a payment goes wrong?

I use paypal business with my real information :') Other payment methods I've seen artists use that I haven't personally tried for stuff like commissions are ko-fi and venmo. I don't believe ko-fi makes your info public.

@goblincat Hmm I'll try Kofi then. It seems I need a paypal account to use it but that's fine, as long as my information isn't public to buyers

I think with paypal all that's public is the email address? Not like your address or anything, as far as I know

@VolatileMatter It shows your real name though, and my name's pretty unique so the last thing I want is to give it to someone I don't know on the internet. I can do a fake name, yes, but there are repercussions like Paypal not being able to verify purchases/payments if they go wrong and I really don't want to risk that.



I'm poking around some forums, and from what I've seen the legal name doesn't get shown in a business account? I might try that, as long as getting a business account doesn't require more legal stuff that might screw me over.

I had this exact same problem (also have a unique name) and I ended up making a business account on Paypal. I think I had to enter my name when creating the business account but it only shows the business name to others (which I made my username). It's worked perfectly so far, but Paypal does take out a percentage of your earnings if you have a business account.

@Druddigon Ahhh yeah, both my first and last name are pretty generic so I'm not as concerned. I can understand your concern though, with a unique name. I have also seem ko-fi and with venmo you can just create a username give that to people, but I don't know if venmo has a "business" version

@kitersi So you don't have to have a registered business to get a business account, right? That's good, guess I'll try a business account then.

@VolatileMatter That's fair. I've never seen someone use Kofi for commissions but if I'll see if it's cheaper than a business account (want to keep most of my money :'D)

Thanks for the advice!