As a seller, do I need to link my bank account to PayPal?

[NoPonySpecial]

As a seller, do I need to link my bank account to Paypal to accept payments?

I've been gleaning what I can from PayPal's site and Googleing the question. Here's as far as I can figure out:

-When someone pays you through PayPal, the money goes into your PayPal Balance.
-This money can be either transferred to your bank account, or it can float there in your PayPal account and be used for online purchases.
-Obviously you can't take the money out of PayPal unless you connect some kind of bank account to your PayPal account.

Is this a correct assessment? What it comes down to is, I don't want to connect Paypal to my "real" money - my financial adviser (actually my Mom  ) says I should absolutely not connect a bank account to Paypal. However, she has never sold anything. Also, when Googling my question, I've found answers from several people saying "Don't do it, PayPal will steal from you," but they seem to have come from people who were bad sellers anyway. But I have my reservations anyway, since it's an era of hacking anyway and... when you get down to it I just don't want to do it, no matter how safe PayPal probably is.

I guess really my question now is, is it okay to just have money in your PayPal balance and just use that for online purchases? Are there secret fees for keeping money there and using it?

I have and will be basically using this account solely for buying and selling ponies here at the Arena, probably someday eBay if I get an account there (and if I did, it would be as a buyer only, it sounds nightmarish to sell there.) I'm wondering if I ought to just stick with trading; if I don't trust PayPal, maybe selling isn't right for me?

If you do answer, please feel free to explain things to me as if I am a child. I can be nervous about monetary stuff, and want to make sure I understand everything clearly.

[ponylady]

PayPal requires a bank account or credit card and ID to verify your account. If you sell stuff and keep the balance in PayPal, sure you can just spend this balance. PayPal always uses any balance they hold to fund purchases first. So, there's no obligation to use your bank account if you don't want to. But if you don't verify, your account is limited and will be frozen once you reach your limit.

The link below is from Paypal and explains the verification process a bit more in depth.

 https://www.paypal.com/au/webapps/mpp/security/buy-verificationfaq