There’s been a lot of posts going around lately about Paypal and their policy on fees, and I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting you move to invoices. What you might not realise unless you have a closer look at these payments once you receive them, is that Paypal is expecting you to ship an item. This remains the same regardless of whether you use the default form, the ‘services’ form and charge by the hour, and whether you put 0.00 in the postage section.

After a call to customer service this morning, I have confirmed there is actually no option on invoices for a seller to indicate that postage is not required if you are invoicing from the main paypal website (ie. you don’t do paypal checkout through your website, there may be a work around if you have a purchase button on your website, which isn’t entirely practical for commissions as prices can often vary and most do payments through the site directly). This means that if you don’t provide shipping / tracking information on that payment, Paypal may freeze the funds and/or your account.

Apparently the way to avoid this is to include in the notes section of the invoice that the invoice is for goods and services, and that no shipping is required. 

They also said that the buyer should indicate in the notes when they pay that they have received the goods/service, however this is going to cause issues with commissions as most are either paid upfront or partway through. 

But also to choose this option when the payment has been sent and the commission has been completed 

Hi thanks for your questions. I’ll address the “how to send invoices” question first. It’s really easy when you get down to it, but I’ll include screen grabs just to make even simpler. And I’ll answer this publicly for anyone else who might be wondering how to do this. First log into your paypal and go to “send and request”(My personal information is obviously censored for my own security)

It will then take you to a new screen with a few options. You want to click the one that says “create invoice”

You’ll then be taken to another screen where you can manage your invoices. It will even show you previous ones, and you can use the various options to sort through your invoices based on whether they are paid, unpaid etc.  You want the option “Create New Invoice”(Customer information censored for their security)

Now there is quite a bit going on, on the actual invoice form. I’ll try to keep it as plain as possible, though most of the information is self explanatory. (Hopefully this will be easy to follow.) 

1: Here you can decide to use a previous template. (You will have to change some information though.) Of you can click the drop down box and decide to make a new one. 2: You can add a company logo. (I don’t have one).3: You can add your business information. 4: Here you can set what invoice number it is, the date it was sent, if you want to add a reference to make it more easily identifiable to you. You can also set a due date that the customer has to pay by. 5: The customer’s email address that you are sending the bill to, You can also copy in other recipients. 6: Here you can set details of how you are charging, what information appears on their bill, and what currency you are charging them in.  Here is a screenshot of the drop down menus.

As you can see you can charge people by the quantity of items, by the time spent, or by the amount only. You can also decide to include details such as tax (more on that in a bit), add a detailed description, add a discount, sub charge for postage, etc etc. Currency I feel is self explanatory, select the currency you would like to charge them in. 

7: Here you can add a description of the product you are selling. The box will look slightly different based on how you decided to bill them. I usually go by amount only. But if you choose Hourly/quantity it will have extra details for how many hours/what quantity and the price per hour/item and then a total. 8: Tax. This is important. You need to look up the tax laws for your area and check to see if you need to add anything to the total for tax purposes. (Such as VAT for example.) And then select a rate of tax to add to the charge. (This will be different for everyone depending on where you live, what you are charging for, and how much money you make during a financial year.)9: This is simple, it lets you add another line so you can add another item to the bill. 10: Check this if you are okay with your customer only paying you a little at a time. Leave unchecked if you want the full payment upfront. 11: The subtotal, and total price. 12: A message to the customer. I think it;s nice to put a little thank you here. 13: Your terms and conditions. Basically here you can include a return or cancellation policy, whether you accept them or not. As an artist you could also include usage rights for your art work. 

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justifies harassment with power dynamics

justifies harassment with mental illness

justifies harassment with morals

unironically & actively engages in callout culture

guilt trips people, including large groups of people, based on superficial and impersonal things

fear-mongers and seeks to amplify tension between social groups

is a part of a “hostile clique” kind of group of friends

tells people to conceal personal information or opinions due to those being “problematic”

makes you choose between x and being their friend

nitpicks on literally everything to find something to complain about

The term problematic is a shitty measuring stick. It shouldn’t ever be used as though the term is self-evident and conclusive. 

What do you even mean by problematic? And are you talking for a group (or an entire culture) to which you don’t fucking belong? Do you really think that “problematic” is where it ends, no discussion? 

Listen, 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2 here. When you’re talking about society, people, basically structures that rely on subjectivity, you sound naive and lost when you say something like, “Liking [___] promotes/excuses/normalizes [___].” How the fuck. Have you ever learned about audience reception? Cause textual analysis doesn’t fucking cut it.

You can pretend that you like or do not like things based on the morality/problematics you perceive in them, but every single person I’ve known who did this would twist themselves in knots to write off their own hypocrisy. 

Hey, I don’t care, I’m gonna say it: in fiction, I like noncon, dubcon, some level of guro/abuse, manipulation, abusive relationships, incest, and some other things that probably would earn me one of those ridiculous callout posts. Someone once told me they felt weird seeing me have opinions about fic plots because they knew I like noncon. Apparently liking noncon bans you from having opinions, ever, or at least expecting anyone to treat you as anything more than a Bad Person who has to be Silenced.

It’s not like I don’t know they’re problematic; I fucking like them because they are. That doesn’t mean I’m not critically engaging at all. I honestly think that I probably engage more critically than the majority of the high-horse, pure-as-crystal people who like to throw shit without reflecting. There’s so little [room for] thought with that mentality. 

Hey, let’s talk about how ending it at “this is problematic and bad, and so are you,” is intellectually pathetic. I’m personally interested in thinking about why something is problematic, why it appeals to people, and how they interact with it. And of course, enjoying it in spaces that don’t involve perpetrators of those things. Liking it doesn’t mean excusing it in real life.

Cause, y’know, 1 + 1 can’t equal 2 when the equation is being applied carelessly and to something it doesn’t fit.

Abusing entire groups of people for a ship, show, whatever they like that’s problematic, especially when they keep to themselves and are not denying the problematic aspects as what they are, is so much more vicious and unforgivable to me. When I try to figure out why they bother, it always comes down to the harasser wanting to fucking harass people and dressing that desire in terms that do not justify their actions in the least. 

The act of liking and enjoying the ~wrong~ fictional thing doesn’t justify that vitriol. But some people hate fun, I guess. They’d rather delude themselves. Go ahead, but leave others the hell out of it.

WHAT YOU’LL GET!

Hi-res JPEG file of your commission in A5 size.

BENEFITS!

Get a simple portrait drawing of your desired character!

Or get one of yourself or friends or family!

Support an art student! (Me)

CONDITIONS!

Contact me at [email protected] with the title Portrait Commission or DM me on my Twitter @isacchili if you’re interested.

Human or human-like characters only!

OCs are OK!

For OCs, please include picture/drawn references. I will not accept written descriptions due to my busy schedule.

For actual figure portraits (ie: you, your friends, etc…), please send a good photo to use as reference, preferably taken in good/bright lighting like under the sunlight.

Keep in mind: Commissions may take up to a month or so.

PAYMENT!

PayPal only!

For Malaysians, please ask for MYR rates. Payment is through bank-in.

ML Week: Day 5: (Nov 27th) Puns