¹Carla Berzon-Lillie, Nozzy Films, 2026.
Carla Berzon-Lillie spent more than 10 years producing primetime documentaries for some of the biggest names in UK television. After a successful career in broadcasting, she redirected her experience into Nozzy Films, a production company in Hertfordshire she founded in 2020 and runs entirely on her own.
Today, Carla's Nozzy Films has built three revenue streams, covering wedding videography, commercial promos for global brands, and a growing operation filming dance performances. She doesn't have a physical shopfront or an ecommerce site because with PayPal Payment Links she doesn't need to.
"I was surprised at how simple it was. Oh, is that all I have to do? It just worked."
Carla Berzon-Lillie, Founder, Nozzy Films
Last year, Carla Berzon-Lillie scaled Nozzy Films into producing multi-camera recordings of dance school performances. This new revenue stream came with a specific payment challenge: for each performance, dozens of parents want to order recordings, whether DVDs with custom artwork, USBs in branded gift boxes, or digital downloads.
But Nozzy Films isn't built around a physical shop or an ecommerce store and Carla didn't have the payment infrastructure to easily handle that many orders. She needed a payment method that was easy to set up and use, looked professional on her website, and didn't charge a monthly fee.
She weighed up several options: some required too much technical configuration, others asked for a full storefront setup and recurring fees. None fit a business like hers where one person handles filming, editing, client management and order fulfilment. Then she discovered PayPal Payment Links.
Carla initially expected PayPal Payment Links would involve a complicated setup. Instead, she had a working payment link on her website within minutes. "I was surprised at how simple it was," she says. "I even did a test because I couldn't quite believe it was so quick."
Her setup is straightforward. For each show, Carla builds a private order page on her website, adding the show name, artwork, and 'Buy Now' buttons for each format – DVD or USB. She makes each button clickable by adding a Payment Link URL behind it.
The school then emails the page exclusively to the performers' parents. They simply tap Buy Now, land on a PayPal-hosted checkout page, place their order, and Carla gets paid.
Parents don't need a PayPal account to complete their purchase either. Since most already have payment details saved on their device, going from "Buy Now" to confirmation can take seconds, with Payment Links, they can easily pay with PayPal, PayPal Pay Later, credit or debit card, as well as Apple Pay.
No code, no plug-in, no platform integration.
The result is a checkout experience that looks and feels like part of Carla's own website. The order page displays her branding, PayPal only appears when a parent clicks through to pay. "It made my website look quite professional," Carla says. "It looked like you're buying off my website, but you're not." For a solo business competing for credibility, that matters. Parents see a polished checkout experience. Behind it is a PayPal Payment Link that took only minutes to create.
The links also stay active long after the show ends. Parents who miss the initial window can come back months later and still complete their purchase. "The link's still open six months later and somebody will suddenly go, oh no, I forgot to buy a film," Carla says. She fulfils those late orders without any additional setup or cost.
On the operations side, Carla downloads her order data from PayPal and prepares each order. DVDs get printed with the school's own artwork. USBs go into branded gift boxes. And the payment step just runs in the background.
At one show, the dance school handed out paper order forms to help collect payments on Carla's behalf, but no one used them. Instead, everyone ordered via the Payment Links from the order page the school had emailed to them, with around 70 families paying online.1
Orders come in earlier too with Payment Links. Once the school emails the order page to parents, they start paying for films days in advance. By the time Carla arrives with her cameras, she's already been paid for up to 15% of orders.1
Payment Links have solved a central admin layer too: Carla doesn't lose time chasing payments, sending reminders, or reconciling cash. For someone who handles every function of the business solo, she's saving more than 10 hours each performance that she can instead put into production work and business development.1
PayPal's brand recognition reduces friction at checkout. Parents are paying a sole trader they may not have dealt with before, but a familiar payment brand helps them feel comfortable completing the purchase.
"I haven't had any issues with it whatsoever," Carla says. "It's been really easy to use, which is great because everything else seemed really complicated."
Nozzy Films has several more bookings for 2026. And Carla can count on the same setup to work each time. Her order page, PayPal Payment Links, and a checkout that runs itself.
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