¹ Jenny Leonard, Jenny Leonard Art, 2026
Jenny Leonard Art is a one-person creative business based in Manchester. Jenny — or Jen — has been a commercial illustrator for over 15 years, live-scribing at corporate events, delivering commissions for global organisations, and selling art at local markets.
A few years ago, she also began sharing hand-drawn worksheets online, alongside her client work. Traffic started coming in from all over the world — from the US and Norway to Brazil and Germany. Jen was giving artwork away for free that people were ready to pay for.
— Jenny Leonard, Jenny Leonard Art
Jen’s live-scribing and illustration clients find her through referrals and at events, commissioning her for everything from company timelines to retirement gifts.
The worksheets business is different. Jen had been making hand-drawn activity sheets for years — part of her broader illustration practice — and in 2025 she began sharing them on social media for free. Traction was strong, with traffic to her website climbing to several hundred visits per day.
The demand was there. Now Jen wanted to monetise it, as a lean team of one.
Building a full ecommerce shop would mean a technical setup, an upfront and monthly fee as well as platform maintenance. Selling via a marketplace would also mean high fees and storefront management. And integrating a full payment platform into her website also felt too complex. “I just want it to run itself,” she said.
Jen needed something that was built for how she worked — simple to set up on her own, easy to manage, with fees only when she made a sale. That’s when she discovered PayPal Payment Links.
Jen has had a PayPal consumer account for nearly 20 years. When she wanted to monetise her worksheets, she was happy to turn to a company she already knew and trusted.
After opening her PayPal business account, Jen loved the simplicity of the Payment Links interface. “I set up my first link in under an hour, and the first sale came through from the US almost immediately,” she said.
Each Payment Link acts as a self-contained checkout — or in Jen’s words, “like a mini shopfront”. She adds images, a description of the worksheet pack and purchase instructions, all hosted on a PayPal checkout page she can share practically anywhere via a short link.
Her customers don’t need a PayPal account to pay — most have their card details saved on their phone already, which means an order can take as little as a few seconds. With her name appearing clearly as a PayPal merchant, the transaction can feel trustworthy even to a first-time buyer.
She now has six active payment links, each linked to a different worksheet pack, which she shares across a range of online channels: on her website, in Pinterest pins, in her email signature, and in mailouts to her growing customer list. When she recently released a new pack and emailed around 300 existing customers, roughly 30 clicked through and placed another order — a conversion rate she humbly describes as “not bad for a marketing email”.
Once customers complete their purchase, they can navigate in one click straight to the download page, which means orders fulfil without Jen lifting a finger. If someone buys in the US at 3am, they get their PDF immediately — and Jen can wake up a few hours later to a PayPal payment notification.
The effect on buying behaviour has been remarkable. Rather than one-off purchases, Jen regularly sees customers place an order and come back for more in the same session.
And because Payment Links update automatically, whenever Jen changes a price, swaps an image, or updates a pack description in her PayPal dashboard, every active link reflects the change straight away — there’s no need for her to reshare across her channels.
— Jenny Leonard, Jenny Leonard Art
With PayPal Payment Links, Jenny has found a simple way to sell digital downloads directly to her global audience, with no complicated ecommerce setup, no coding, and no upfront cost or monthly fees.
For Jen, the metrics that matter most today are about trajectory.
She started generating around 5 payment link transactions a day within the first few months. Website traffic has grown. Her customer list has expanded to several hundred buyers. The 70% conversion rate she saw on her best-performing payment links tells her that once someone lands, the friction to purchase is so low that most visitors complete their purchase. ¹
“Now I’m bringing in around 5 sales a day, sometimes more, from customers around the world. It’s just building momentum,” she said. “As a one-person creative business, I don’t need a full ecommerce site. This is like having a mini shopfront.”
The worksheet business has also started feeding back into Jen’s live-scribing business in ways she didn’t predict. Some of her customers have turned out to be team members at large organisations — exactly the kinds of clients who commission her. A side project built for educators is quietly opening doors in the corporate market.
Jen’s illustration and live scribing practice, built over 15 years on referrals and reputation, remains as in-demand as ever.
But with PayPal Payment Links, the worksheets business has added something new: a global sales channel that runs around the clock and a customer list spanning four continents. Jen’s already thinking about new offers, licensing partnerships, and how far the model can grow.
She’s proven the concept — now she’s ready to scale it.
Explore PayPal Payment Links and find out how payment links can help you sell your products online — no storefront required.