How to Write a Custom Work Offer

A custom request offer works when it names one exact deliverable, states what the price includes and excludes, lists the input the buyer must send, and gives a firm turnaround. Write those four things as short, separate lines under a title that describes the finished delivery rather than your skill. 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.

What are the essential parts of a custom request listing?

A complete custom request listing carries six elements: a title naming the deliverable, the included scope, the required buyer input, a delivery time, a boundary that rules out adjacent work, and a price. Followers can pay for a small, clearly defined deliverable when they can tell exactly what they will receive, what they must send, and when it will arrive. If you have not picked a deliverable yet, start with the full list of services creators can sell or turn a recurring question into a paid micro-service first.

Marketplace listing editors are built around similar fields. The Fiverr Help Center article “Creating a Gig” states that “A Gig consists of a title, category, pricing packages, a description, requirements, and a media gallery” (Fiverr Help Center) — stored fields that map onto the elements above. Upwork’s Project Catalog editor collects the same information: the Upwork support article “How to create a project in Project Catalog” lists “Delivery days” as a project field and tells sellers to “Set a realistic and attractive delivery timeframe” before publishing (Upwork support). The Fiverr Help Center also states that “Gig requirements let you collect everything you need from a client before you start an order” (Fiverr Help Center, “Creating a Gig”), which is the marketplace equivalent of the required-input line below. Brillay collects that brief at checkout, on your own page and at your own price, so the work is paid for before you start.

The five copy elements each remove a specific source of buyer uncertainty; price is the sixth element, and it lives in its own field:

1. A precise title identifies the product instead of merely naming a skill.
2. Included scope defines how much work the listed price covers.
3. Required input tells the buyer what to submit so the creator can begin.
4. A visible delivery time establishes when the buyer should expect delivery.
5. A boundary line distinguishes the purchased service from adjacent or open-ended work.

Together, these details make the offer easier to evaluate before payment and reduce the need for clarification afterward.

How should you title a custom request?

Title the offer after the deliverable or the outcome, not the general skill. “Content feedback” says what you know how to do; “I’ll review your last 3 posts and tell you the one thing to fix first” says what arrives. Keep it short enough to survive truncation in a listing card or a search result, and make it feel like an optional paid help offer rather than an awkward plea for support.

Two primary sources set the practical length. Fiverr’s Help Center advises sellers to “keep the title under 50 characters so it doesn’t get cut off on the Gig card” in “Creating and optimizing your Fiverr Pro Gig”. The Etsy Help Center states that “a listing’s title can be up to 140 characters long” in “How to Create a Listing,” and separately warns that “search engines only show the first 50 to 60 characters for a page title” in “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Shop and Listing Pages”. On Brillay that title sits on your own page, with the scope and the delivery window written beneath it and no listing to renew.

• Weak: “Content feedback”
• Better: “I’ll review your last 3 posts and tell you the one thing to fix first”
• Weak: “Resume help”
• Better: “Line-by-line resume edit with rewrite suggestions”

The stronger versions let a buyer picture the finished delivery: a specific review or edited document arrives, rather than an undefined conversation. If your title needs the word “and” more than once, it may contain two separate services; narrow it to the smaller, sellable deliverable. A custom request is not one finished file sold to every follower: each follower submits a brief, and you make that scoped delivery for that person.

What should go in the description?

The description explains three mechanics in order: what is included, what the buyer must send, and when delivery is due. Three or four plain sentences are enough — marketplace description fields are deliberately short, so a service description is a paragraph that defines an output, not an open-ended brief or a biography.

The Fiverr Help Center instructs sellers to “write a description of your Gig (up to 1,200 characters)” in “Creating a Gig”; at typical English word lengths that is approximately 180 to 220 words, which is a useful working budget for a service description. The Fiverr Help Center also states that “the client needs to submit their order requirements before the order can officially begin” (“Managing your orders: A freelancer’s guide to the Fiverr order process,”), which is why the required-input sentence belongs in the description rather than in a follow-up message. Upwork puts a deadline on that same step: the Upwork support article “How to set and manage project requirements” states that “Once the client places an order, they have 48 hours to provide the mandatory requirements. If they don’t, we’ll automatically cancel the project and refund the client” (Upwork support). Etsy turns the request into a structured field instead of prose — the Etsy Help Center article “How to Offer Personalized Listings” says a Custom options field carries “a character limit (1–1024), based on your design” plus a setting for “whether the field is required or optional for buyers to complete” (Etsy Help Center).

• What’s included: Restate the exact scope with enough detail to define the output. For example: “I’ll review up to 3 posts and send written notes on hook, pacing, and one concrete fix per post.”
• What I need from you: Name the link, file, screenshot, or context required to complete the work. Specific input requirements help prevent submissions that lack the information you need.
• Delivery time: State the delivery deadline in your own words so it reads as a clear promise. For example: “Delivered within 48 hours.”

Assembled, that looks like this:

I’ll review up to 3 posts (Reels or TikToks) and send written notes on hook, pacing, and one concrete fix per post. Send me the links plus who your audience is in one sentence. Delivered within 48 hours.

These three sentences tell the follower what they receive, what they must send, and when delivery is due. Add a boundary line if the scope could be mistaken for a broader service.

What should the boundary line say?

A boundary line states what the offer does not cover. It rules out adjacent work and limits the volume of a deliverable that might otherwise expand after purchase. For Custom Work, make the boundary clear because one delivery closes the order. Write the boundary before you publish so buyers know exactly what the one delivery includes and what would require a separate order.

Revision limits are common on some marketplaces; Custom Work uses one delivery. Fiverr’s Help Center specifies that a custom offer’s revisions must be set “between 0 and 20, or Unlimited” (“Creating and managing custom offers,”). On Fiverr Milestones, “clients have 8 days from delivery to request a revision or accept the current Milestone,” after which the order is marked completed (Fiverr Help Center, “Working with Milestones,”). Upwork frames revisions the same way: the Upwork support article “How to create a project in Project Catalog” tells sellers to “Choose how many revisions are included during the delivery period” (Upwork support). On Brillay, use those examples only as a reminder to close scope in writing around the one Custom Work delivery.

Decide the boundary before publishing and include it in the listing rather than improvising after a request arrives. For a deeper framework on scope limits, including requests that are larger than the listed service, see how to scope a custom creator request. For guidance on pricing work that could expand, see how to keep a small service from turning into a larger project.

What does a strong listing look like next to a weak one?

A weak listing forces the buyer to open a conversation before deciding; a strong one answers the deliverable, input, output, boundary, and delivery time questions inside the copy. The strong version below is longer only because it resolves those five questions, not because it uses more promotional language.

Weak: “Feedback service. I’ll take a look at your stuff and give you my thoughts. DM me for details.”

• No named deliverable, no input requirement, no delivery time, and no boundary.
• The buyer must request basic details before deciding whether the service fits.

Strong: “Portfolio review—3 pieces. Send links to 3 pieces of work plus who you’re trying to reach. I’ll send written notes on what’s strongest, what’s weak, and one thing to fix first. One delivery of notes, delivered within 3 days.”

• Names the deliverable, the required input, the exact output, a one-delivery boundary, and a delivery time.
• Fits in four sentences and roughly 250 characters — about a fifth of Fiverr’s 1,200-character Gig description allowance (Fiverr Help Center, “Creating a Gig”).

What should you leave out of the listing?

Keep the listing aligned with the structured fields and the product’s delivery format: put the price in its field, and leave out a long biography and unrelated credentials. Brillay stores price and delivery time as separate fields, so repeating them in prose creates a second value that can go stale.

Marketplaces enforce part of this list rather than merely advising it. The Fiverr Help Center article “Policy Violations Explained” states that “we do not allow the inclusion of external payment methods and personal contact details in Gigs” (Fiverr Help Center), so an email address or an off-platform payment link inside listing copy is a removable violation. Length is constrained by design as well: a Fiverr Gig description is capped at 1,200 characters while delivery time and other order terms sit in their own per-package fields (Fiverr Help Center, “Creating a Gig”).

• Don’t repeat the price in the copy. Price is its own field, and duplicating it in the description creates a second value that could become outdated when you make a change.
• Describe the one-delivery format. The offer provides one deliverable that you complete on your own time, so followers know what to expect from the product.
• Don’t bury the terms in a wall of text. Use three or four short lines where possible, with one purpose per line: scope, input, delivery time, and boundary.
• Don’t add unrelated credentials or biography. Keep the listing focused on what this purchase includes; broader background information belongs on your creator page.

How do you write this as a live offer on Brillay?

Brillay Custom Work turns the same six elements into fields. You give the custom request a title and description, state what followers get, what you need, and what is excluded, then set a fixed price and delivery time. With Custom Work, you send one delivery, and that closes the order. A custom request is one time, no membership, so the listing should describe a single finished package rather than ongoing access.

Those fields come from the “Create a service” step on the Brillay Custom Work page, which lists a title, a description, a price, and a delivery time as the setup fields for one service built around one delivery. Followers order from the listing as guests with their email, name, and card, so the call to action can focus on the service.

You set the delivery time per service, up to 5 days. Followers can attach up to five files when they buy.

Delivery happens privately. A Custom Work delivery can include a written note, up to five files in any format, and/or links. You send the package once, and delivered files remain available for 90 days. Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request.

The “How pricing works” fee breakdown on the Brillay pricing page at /pricing lays out the fee in full: 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. Payments run on Stripe, which lists standard United States online card pricing at 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction plus 1.5% for international cards on its public pricing page at stripe.com/pricing (Stripe); Stripe’s rates vary by country, so check Stripe’s page for your own market. Price the offer so the amount left after Brillay’s 8% platform fee on a Custom Work order and separate Stripe processing fee still pays for your time. Creators can receive payouts in 41 countries through payment setup in the Brillay dashboard.

Once your first listing is written, the next decision is whether to offer more than one price point. See how to build a $10/$25/$50 offer for a framework for designing that ladder.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a custom request delivery time be?

For a small asynchronous deliverable, one to three days is a reasonable starting deadline — that is an editorial rule of thumb from the Brillay team, not a platform rule, and the correct number depends on the work. The published ranges are far wider: Fiverr custom offers accept a delivery time frame of “1 day to 90 days” (Fiverr Help Center, “Creating and managing custom offers,”), and Etsy states that “the maximum processing time you can place on a custom order is 6-8 weeks” (Etsy Help Center, “How to Offer Custom Items,”). Etsy also counts processing times “in business days (Monday through Friday)”, so a stated 3-day deadline that spans a weekend is not 3 calendar days (Etsy Help Center, “How to Set Up Shipping Information,”). Upwork starts the countdown at the buyer’s input rather than at payment: its support article “How to purchase a project in Project Catalog” states that “Once you submit these requirements, the clock starts on the project” (Upwork support), and the Upwork support article “How to manage your Project Catalog order on Upwork” gives the worked case that “if your project promises a 5-day delivery and you send your requirements 12 hours after purchase, day one starts from when those requirements are received” (Upwork support). Choose a deadline you can meet every time, then write the exact number in the description.

What if a follower requests something outside the listed scope?

Point back to the boundary line, which is why it belongs in the listing rather than in a reply. For a request that is larger or materially different from the listed service, follow the steps in the “What if I get a request I don’t want to fulfill?” FAQ at /how-it-works.

How much should I charge for a custom request?

Price the smallest, clearest version of the deliverable first, then decide whether a second, larger tier makes sense. For reference, Fiverr’s Help Center sets custom offer amounts at a “minimum of $5 USD up to a maximum of $20,000 USD” (“Creating and managing custom offers,”), so a first listing sits near the floor of what marketplaces price. Do not copy that floor if the work takes real time: build in Brillay’s platform fee (8% when a follower pays for work, 5% on tips and goals), separate Stripe processing fees, and the value of the time needed to deliver the work well. How to build a $10/$25/$50 offer explains how to design that ladder.

Do I need a follower minimum to sell a custom request?

No. Brillay has no follower minimum or application gate for selling Custom Work. Creators complete payment setup from the Brillay dashboard to receive payouts; they do not need a Stripe Express account or a separate Stripe dashboard. A custom request is a paid deliverable, not an audience-gated feature.

Ready to publish your first listing? Create your free Brillay page and set up a custom request with the title, description, and boundary you just wrote.