Set your delivery time from how long the work actually takes in a normal, busy week, then add buffer for unclear inputs, clustered orders, and interruptions — not your personal-best speed. On Brillay, that window can be set anywhere up to the platform’s 120-hour (5-day) maximum. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.
On each custom request, you set the price and delivery time individually (features/creator-services), with a delivery time of up to 5 days from purchase (how it works). The delivery time is one of the key details a follower sees before paying: promise too little time and you risk rushing, delivering late, or issuing a refund; promise too much and the offer may feel less convenient than it needs to be.
How do I estimate a realistic delivery time?
Estimate a realistic delivery time by completing the task once, timing it honestly, and adjusting that measured time for a normal busy week rather than guessing from memory or from how fast an expert "should" finish. Build the published window around your typical case, then correct it against your own completed orders instead of your best day.
Marketplaces build their own delivery time estimates from completed-order data rather than seller intuition: Etsy calculates a shop's actual processing time from its processing times over the past 120 days for orders that shipped, using a minimum of at least 5 shipped orders (Etsy Help Center: How to Set Processing Times, Processing Profiles and "Ship By" Dates). On Brillay nothing calculates the window for you: you write it on your own page, so your own completed orders become the record you check it against.
A mini audit that takes 40 focused minutes under ideal conditions could take twice as long on a busy Tuesday, so build your public delivery time around the typical case rather than the fastest case.
Your estimate should account for the entire deliverable, including:
- Reviewing the follower’s request and materials
- Checking that the client supplied everything listed in your request form
- Producing and checking the work
- Exporting, uploading, or sending the finished deliverable
- Handling other orders that arrive around the same time
How much buffer should I add?
Add buffer by roughly doubling your honest working estimate before publishing it as a delivery time, so a task that genuinely takes one day becomes a two- or three-day public promise. This is an editorial planning heuristic rather than a measured benchmark: no public dataset ties a specific multiplier to fewer late deliveries, so treat the doubling rule as a starting habit to refine.
Services marketplaces build in an escape hatch for underestimated delivery time, and each one is capped. A Fiverr freelancer can request a delivery-date extension of up to 60 days per request, and the client has 48 hours to respond before the request is automatically accepted (Fiverr Help Center: Managing your orders). Etsy is tighter still: a seller can edit an order's "ship by" date only once, only before the original date has passed, and only by up to 21 days. On Brillay, the window you publish is the one the follower reads at checkout, right beside the brief they submit.
Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request. That is the practical argument for putting the buffer in the number you publish.
Buffer absorbs unclear inputs, clustered orders, illness, technical problems, or a deliverable that runs longer than expected. If doubling your estimate pushes the service close to Brillay’s 5-day limit, the service is likely too broadly scoped for one fixed-delivery time offer — tightening the deliverable is usually safer than relying on the full five-day window. How to scope a custom creator request explains how to narrow an offer so it fits inside a shorter, more reliable delivery time.
What is Brillay’s maximum delivery time?
You can set a custom request delivery time of up to 5 days from purchase, the product-enforced maximum rather than a recommended default. Any service that genuinely needs longer than five days is scoped wrong for a fixed-delivery time micro-service and should be narrowed before it is published.
Two comparison points put that ceiling in context. Fiverr’s custom-offer delivery-time field accepts a delivery time frame of 1 to 90 days (Fiverr Help Center: Creating and managing custom offers). Cameo’s Terms of Service give a talent user "up to seven days or longer (at our sole discretion) to fulfill or decline your request," while noting that talent may also offer a shorter tier such as 24-hour fulfillment (Cameo Terms of Service). The five-day ceiling keeps Custom Work focused on commissions and small custom work rather than a long freelance project. Each custom request lives in your own bio link: one tap from the post they just watched takes a follower straight to your page, not to a marketplace roster.
Treat up to 5 days as the outer edge, not the target. For a genuinely small deliverable, such as short written feedback or a quick review, a same-day or 24–48 hour window may make the offer feel more responsive — but only when a creator can meet that shorter window reliably. Reserve 72–96 hours or the full five-day range for services that legitimately require more time, such as multi-part work, editing, assembly, or fulfillment on fixed batch days. If a service needs more than 5 days, revisit its scope before publishing it as a single micro-service.
The table below is an editorial starting-point heuristic drawn from common creator-service workflows, not a measured performance benchmark or Brillay platform data — treat the ranges as a first guess to refine against your own completed orders:
| Deliverable | Typical honest work time | Suggested public delivery time |
|---|---|---|
| Short written feedback or a quick review | Under an hour | 24 hours |
| A personalized recording or short piece | 1–2 hours | 24–48 hours |
| A multi-part audit or edited deliverable | Half a day or more | 72–96 hours |
| Anything you deliver on fixed batch days | Varies | Cover two batch cycles |
Use these ranges as starting points. The right delivery time is the one you can meet during a busy week, and you can tighten or widen it after completing real orders.
Should I batch my delivery days?
Batching works well when you can publish a delivery time wide enough to cover the gap between fulfillment days. You do not have to treat every order as a cue to start work immediately: one option is to pick one or two fixed fulfillment days each week — say Tuesday and Friday — and clear everything received since the previous batch.
Fixed non-working days are a normal, platform-supported part of a published delivery time rather than a workaround: Etsy gives sellers an order-processing schedule where they choose whether they process orders Monday through Friday or also include Saturday and Sunday, and select which holidays they will process orders on.
Batching can make a service more predictable in two ways:
- It reduces context switching. You are not moving into service-delivery mode at random times throughout the week.
- It makes capacity easier to estimate. Your deadline calculation becomes “How long until the next batch?” rather than “How busy am I today?”
If you batch, set the public delivery time to cover a realistic worst case. Covering two batch cycles rather than one gives you room when a follower buys immediately after a fulfillment day or when one batch becomes unusually busy.
Is a shorter delivery time always better?
No — a delivery time you consistently meet is a better offer than a faster promise you occasionally miss, because a missed promise costs more follower trust than a slower-but-reliable one ever gains in perceived convenience. Speed only helps when it is dependable.
Missed deadlines carry priced-in consequences on comparable marketplaces. On Fiverr, an order that has been in Late status for 24 hours can be cancelled by the client independently, without the freelancer's approval. Fiverr's freelancer order guide also states that a Late status affects the freelancer's on-time delivery metric, so one missed window costs both the order and the public performance number.
Fast tiers are penalized the same way. Cameo's Terms of Service say that when a shorter-timeframe booking such as a 24-hour request is not fulfilled within the described timeframe, Cameo may at its sole discretion either refund the entire booking or convert it to a standard request and refund the difference in cost — the speed premium is the first thing a missed window gives back.
A short delivery time can make a small service feel responsive, but it is not automatically the better offer. Setting your personal-best completion time as the default leaves little room for a difficult order, a busy week, unclear follower inputs, or unexpected interruptions.
Choose the shortest window you can meet reliably under normal conditions. Consistency protects follower trust and reduces the likelihood that you will need to rush, deliver late, decline an order, or issue a refund.
How do I adjust delivery time after a few orders?
Treat your initial delivery time as an informed estimate, then re-judge it against a real recent sample of completed orders rather than one memorable order or one bad week. On Brillay, you choose your own review cadence, while two large marketplaces that publish delivery time numbers each define the sample size and the lookback window they treat as trustworthy.
Etsy recalculates a shop's actual processing time from orders shipped over the past 120 days and requires a minimum of at least 5 shipped orders before it will use that figure. Fiverr's seller analytics report on-time delivery as the overall percentage of orders delivered on time over the last 60 days (Fiverr Help Center: Viewing your sales analytics). After several completed orders, compare your promised time with how long the work actually took and adjust the service from your own results.
- If you consistently finish early, consider shortening the window.
- If you routinely finish close to the deadline, keep the existing buffer.
- If you occasionally miss the window, lengthen it or narrow the service’s scope.
- If one part of the deliverable causes most delays, simplify or separate that part.
Match your delivery time to the promised scope: one delivery completes the Custom Work order. See how many revisions a service should include for guidance on setting that boundary.
Delivery windows apply to asynchronous (no live call) Custom Work — replies, recordings, or files delivered on your own time within the window you set.
How do I set delivery time on Brillay?
You set the delivery time and price on each individual custom request, with one completed delivery per order. The delivery time is written down before a follower pays.
If a request cannot be completed within its stated window, Brillay’s custom request workflow lets the creator decline the order and refund the follower rather than remain committed to an unworkable request.
Stripe’s card-processing fee is deducted separately from creator earnings, so creator earnings equal the follower’s payment minus the platform fee minus the processing fee (pricing). No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate. Stripe’s processing rates are set and published by Stripe, not Brillay (Stripe pricing).
Frequently asked questions
What is the longest delivery time I can set on Brillay?
For a custom request, you can set a delivery time of up to 5 days from purchase. The five-day limit is a hard platform ceiling, not a recommended target for every service. For scale, Fiverr custom offers allow a delivery time frame of 1 to 90 days, and Cameo's Terms of Service allow a talent user up to seven days or longer to fulfill or decline a request.
What happens if I cannot deliver a service in time?
If you cannot complete a request within its stated delivery time, you can decline the order and refund the follower through Brillay’s custom request workflow instead of delivering late. This can be appropriate when the brief is unclear, the requested scope is larger than advertised, or your capacity changes unexpectedly. Other marketplaces resolve the same situation by extension instead: a Fiverr freelancer can request up to 60 extra days per extension request, which the client is deemed to accept if they do not respond within 48 hours.
Should I always set the fastest delivery time I can achieve?
No. Set the fastest delivery time you can meet consistently during a normal, busy week — not the fastest time you have ever achieved. As an editorial rule of thumb rather than a measured benchmark, measure the real work time and roughly double it to create room for clarification, competing orders, and interruptions.
Can I change my delivery time after publishing a service?
Yes. Brillay lets you choose your own review cadence, so borrow a marketplace one: Etsy recalculates a shop's actual processing time from orders shipped over the past 120 days with a minimum of at least 5 shipped orders. After several completed orders, shorten the delivery time if you consistently finish early or lengthen it if you are close to missing it; if the work still does not fit, narrow the scope to fit one delivery.
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