The Perchway blog https://perchway.com/blog/ Guides for illustrators and other creative freelancers: pricing your work, taking commissions, getting paid and selling prints. en-us Meet Wren: an illustrator's week, before and after Perchway https://perchway.com/blog/meet-wren/ https://perchway.com/blog/meet-wren/ Sat, 17 Oct 2026 06:12:19 GMT The Perchway team Wren is the illustrator we use to show how Perchway works. Here's what selling commissions and prints looked like across a handful of separate tools, and what changes when it all runs from one place. Wren is an illustrator we made up to show how Perchway works, though her week will sound familiar to a lot of people who sell their own art. She paints pet portraits on commission, sells prints of her fox and woodland pieces, and offers a few digital downloads. The art is going well. The business around it is where her evenings go.

Seven places to check before lunch

Before Perchway, a commission for Wren started in her Instagram messages, moved to email once the details got long, and ended with a payment link she had to remember to send. Her prints sat on a marketplace that charged her to list them and again when they sold. Her downloads lived in another app, her orders in a spreadsheet, her invoices in a separate tool, and finished files went out through a shared folder.

Wren at her desk late at night, surrounded by sticky notes, invoices and a laptop full of notifications
Wren's desk at 11pm, before Perchway

Each tool did its own job. Together, they cost her hours every week. A client's reference photos were in one place, the agreed price in another, and the deadline on a sticky note. She'd finish a portrait, send it over, then chase the invoice by hand. Fees arrived from four directions on four different statements, so working out what a print had earned took a calculator. And when a client wanted to know whether their order had shipped, the question came as a DM, an email, and sometimes both.

Plenty of illustrators run their business this way. Selling tools tend to be built for shops in general, so artists end up stitching several of them together and acting as the glue.

One page for everything she sells

On Perchway, Wren has a single shop on prch.shop. Her prints, downloads and commission slots all live there. She lays it out by picking a template and arranging her work in the editor, without writing any code, and Flight adds custom HTML and CSS for when she wants more control.

Clients check out right on her page, by card through Wren's own Stripe account or with PayPal. The money goes straight to her. Perchway never holds her money, so there's no waiting period, no payout minimum and nothing to withdraw from us. Stripe pays her out on the schedule she chooses.

Commissions, in the right order

Commissions used to take the most chasing, so that's where Perchway does the most for her. When a client asks for a portrait, Wren sends a proposal with the price and timeline. The client signs it and pays the deposit in their own client portal, and the conversation stays there with it rather than scattering across DMs. As she paints, she shares watermarked previews in the portal. Once the client pays the balance, the final files unlock for them automatically.

That last step changed the most for Wren. She no longer sends finished work and then waits to be paid.

Prints without the spreadsheet

When someone buys a print, the order arrives in Wren's dashboard with the buyer's shipping address and the date it should go out. She packs it, adds the carrier and tracking number, and marks it shipped. Prints ship to US addresses for now.

Wren sliding a fox print into a cardboard mailer at a tidy table
The address and the ship-by date are already waiting in her dashboard

Her buyers follow their orders from their own account at prch.shop/account. They sign in with a code sent to their email, so there's no password to remember, and Wren gets far fewer "has it shipped yet?" messages.

A client opening a mailer and smiling at his new fox print while his dog looks up
The other end of the order

What it costs

The Free plan has no monthly charge. Perchway takes 5% of the item price on each sale, never on shipping, and Stripe or PayPal charge their usual processing fee. Each payout shows both fees next to the sale, so Wren can see what a print earned without the calculator.

Flight, at $14.99 a month, adds custom branding, custom HTML and CSS for her shop, and reminders that follow up on late invoices for her.

Be one of our first 50 sellers

Perchway is opening to its first 50 founding sellers. We'll set up your shop with you, one to one, and you'll get Flight free for your first year, a direct line to the people building Perchway, and a say in what we build next. For now, selling is open to illustrators and designers based in the US.

If Wren's old week sounds like yours, join the waitlist and tell us you'd like to be a founding seller. You can also read more about Perchway for illustrators.

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