Sell a custom script or automation by packaging it as a fixed-price Brillay Custom Work: define the exact task (a scraper, a Zap, a Sheets macro, a small CLI tool), set a price and turnaround, and get paid before you write anything. This replaces the unpaid "can you just script this for me?" DM with a bounded, paid job. 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.
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. pricing
Developers get this request constantly, in slightly different wrapping: "can you write me a script that pulls this data?", "can you automate this thing I do by hand every week?", "is there a quick way to connect these two tools?" GitHub reports that more than 180 million developers now build on GitHub (Octoverse 2025), and plenty of them field one-off asks from followers who don't code themselves. The fix is a priced, scoped offer sitting in the link you already share.
What counts as a "custom script or automation" offer?
A custom script or automation offer is a fixed-price job to build one small, bounded piece of code or no-code workflow that solves a single repeatable problem for one buyer. Typical deliverables are a Python or Node script, a Google Apps Script, a Zapier or Make scenario, a cron job, or a small browser extension.
Zapier surveyed 2,000 U.S. knowledge workers at businesses with fewer than 250 employees in March 2021 and found that 94% say they perform repetitive, time-consuming tasks in their role (Zapier, 2021 State of Business Automation). That same Zapier survey found the most time-consuming task was data entry, named by 38% of respondents, followed by document creation and management at 34%.
The common thread across sellable requests is that they're narrow enough to scope in a sentence: "pull this spreadsheet into that CRM every morning," "rename these 400 files by a pattern," "watch this webpage and alert me when the price drops." Requests that require ongoing infrastructure, security review, or real application architecture belong to a different offer — a scoped script is not a substitute for hosted software, a SaaS product, or an infrastructure audit.
How is this different from a Zapier or Make template?
A custom script differs from a pre-built template because it is written for one buyer's exact tools, data shape, and edge cases, while a template covers the generic case many businesses share — the same distinction that separates a one-off automation build from selling a reusable Excel template. Off-the-shelf templates handle the common path; a paid custom build handles non-standard exports, missing integrations, and rules with three exceptions. A Zapier or Make template has to be built before it can be sold; a Custom Work listing can go live with the task, price, scope, and turnaround, and you build the automation only after someone orders it.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, built on survey responses from over 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers, estimates that 22% of work tasks are today performed mainly by technology (World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025).
"Future of Jobs Survey respondents estimate that, today, 47% of work tasks are performed mainly by humans alone, with 22% performed mainly by technology (machines and algorithms), and 30% completed by a combination of both." — World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025
The widely repeated line that almost 60% of businesses have already implemented automation solutions is published by Zapier itself, in Zapier's own business automation statistics roundup rather than in an independent peer-reviewed study — treat it as a vendor-published figure. What matters commercially is the leftover work: the specific, slightly weird case a generic template does not cover, which is exactly what a paid, human-built script is for.
Why should a follower pay for a script instead of hiring on a freelance platform?
A follower pays a creator directly because buying from someone whose work they already trust skips the proposal writing, bidding, and profile vetting a general freelance marketplace requires. The follower picks one priced offer, pays the listed price upfront by card, and submits the request details on the same page instead of negotiating scope in a messaging thread first.
On Brillay, a follower opens a paid Custom Work, pays by card as a guest, and you receive their brief and any attachments in Brillay (how it works).
Upwork states that its Freelancer Service Fee ranges from 0% to 15% per contract on freelancer earnings (Upwork Help Center). Fiverr states that for every completed order a seller earns 80% of the purchase amount, including Gig Extras and tips (Fiverr Help Center). A Brillay listing keeps the commission on your own page at your own price, with the brief collected at checkout and the work paid for before you start.
| Where the script is sold | What the platform takes from the seller | Who brings the follower |
|---|---|---|
| Upwork | Freelancer Service Fee of 0%–15% per contract (Upwork Help Center) | Marketplace search plus your own proposals |
| Fiverr | Seller earns 80% of the purchase amount, i.e. a 20% cut (Fiverr Help Center) | Marketplace search plus gig ranking |
| Brillay bio link | 8% when a follower pays for work, 5% on tips and goals | Your existing audience — no marketplace demand included |
The tradeoff is honest: a marketplace supplies buyers you have never met, while a bio-link offer supplies none and assumes an audience that already follows the work. A bio-link offer also suits bounded jobs, not multi-week engineering contracts.
What should a script/automation listing include?
A script listing should state input, output, stack, delivery time, support window, and exclusions before the buyer pays, because everything left unwritten becomes a scope dispute after delivery. Brillay shows the price and delivery time on the offer itself, and the follower pays the displayed price upfront.
- Input: What the buyer must provide (a sample file, API access, credentials they supply, target URLs).
- Output: The exact deliverable — a runnable script, a connected Zap/Make scenario, a short setup video, or all three.
- Platform/stack: The language or automation platform used (Python, Google Apps Script, Zapier, Make, a browser extension).
- Delivery time: A delivery time you can reliably hit. You set Brillay Custom Work delivery times in hours or in days, with 5 days as the maximum.
- Changes to the brief: Delivery is one-time; if the follower changes the brief, they place a new order.
- Exclusions: What is out of scope — ongoing hosting, maintenance, third-party API costs, or scaling beyond the buyer's stated use case.
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Input | A sample CSV export + the destination Google Sheet |
| Output | A Google Apps Script that runs on a daily trigger |
| Platform | Google Apps Script (no external hosting) |
| Delivery time | 48-72 hours |
| Support | Covered by your published Support and Correction policy |
Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request. Each creator also publishes a Refund policy alongside the Support and Correction policies, and followers read all three before they pay.
How much time does a small automation actually save the buyer?
The value of a small script is the recurring manual work it removes, and that cost is usually larger than a buyer assumes before pricing it out. Quantifying the weekly hours a task consumes is the fastest way to justify a fixed price to someone who has never bought custom code before.
In Intuit QuickBooks' 2024 Business Solutions Survey, 25 hours was the average amount of time per week respondents reported spending on manual data entry (Intuit QuickBooks Business Solutions report 2024). A script that reliably removes one specific 20-minute daily task is easier to sell, and far easier to deliver, than a vague promise to "automate the workflow."
"88% of SMBs say automation allows them to compete with larger companies by allowing them to move faster, close leads quickly, spend less time on busywork, reduce errors, and offer better customer service." — Zapier, 2021 State of Business Automation
Buyers increasingly assume an AI assistant can write the code themselves, so the value being sold is reliability on their specific, messy data and edge cases, not the existence of working code.
Should this be a custom request or a Paid Question?
Use a custom request whenever the buyer needs a file, a configured workflow, or a recording delivered; use a Paid Question only for a narrow, text-answerable question about approach or tooling.
| Request | Right offer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Which tool should I use to automate X?" | Paid Question | Text-answerable, no deliverable to send |
| "Build me a script that does X" | custom request | Requires delivering a file or configured workflow |
| "Can you walk me through setting up the Zap you built?" | custom request (with a video reply) | Follower needs an audio/video walkthrough, not just text |
| "I need this maintained every month" | Neither — decline and redirect | Ongoing maintenance is a different commitment than a one-time script |
Stating the boundary in the listing avoids the most common failure mode, where a follower pays for what they think is a quick question and expects a working script back.
How do independent developers typically price this kind of work?
Independent developers price small script work as a fixed per-job fee rather than an hourly rate, because a bounded deliverable is bought like a product. A workable formula is: estimated build hours × your hourly floor × a 1.5–2× buffer for scoping and testing, rounded to one fixed price the buyer sees before paying.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $135,980 for software developers as of May 2025 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook), which is roughly $65 per hour across a 2,080-hour year and gives a defensible hourly floor for converting build hours into a fixed price. The same BLS handbook projects employment of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers to grow 10 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
| Tier | Typical scope | Your build estimate | Illustrative fixed price at a $65/hour floor with a 2× buffer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | One-step script or a single Zap: rename files by pattern, scrape one page, one-way sync | 1–2 hours | $130–$260 |
| Medium | Multi-step workflow with a transform: CSV → cleaned → CRM, daily trigger, basic error handling | 3–6 hours | $390–$780 |
| Complex | Non-standard API, auth, retries, and a short handover video or written runbook | 8–15 hours | $1,040–$1,950 |
Those price bands are illustrative arithmetic derived from the BLS hourly figure above, not a survey of what buyers actually pay; request complexity, audience, and scoping discipline move real prices in both directions. About 13.9% of respondents to Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey identified as an independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed, so a large share of developers already price work outside a salaried rate.
Fees come out of the listed price rather than being added to it. On a $250 script listing, the 8% Brillay platform fee is $20 (tips and goals carry 5% instead), and US card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 is $7.55 per Stripe's published pricing, leaving roughly $222.45 before tax. Price the tier at what you need to net, not at what you want to gross.
What else can a developer sell alongside custom scripts?
A script offer works best beside two or three smaller ones, because not every incoming request deserves a build. Adjacent offers absorb advice questions, congratulations, and funding requests without collapsing everything into a single open-ended "hire me" listing that is hard to price and easy to abuse.
- Paid Questions: A quick written reply to "which library/approach should I use," priced separately from a build.
- Personalized Videos: A recorded congrats or encouragement clip for a follower who just shipped their first project.
- Goals: Funding toward a specific open-source or side-project milestone, shown with a progress bar.
- Tips: A no-strings way for someone who used a free script or tutorial to say thanks.
- Brand Collaboration Inquiries: A separate intake form for tool vendors proposing a paid partnership, kept out of the regular request queue.
Related reading: best offer for developers and designers breaks down which offer fits which kind of dev request, and our guide to selling a code review online covers the adjacent "review my code" request rather than "build me something new."
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to publish the script publicly or open-source it?
No. A paid custom script or automation delivered through a Brillay custom request is a private deliverable to the follower, not a public release. Whether to also open-source a generalized version afterward is entirely the creator's choice.
What if the buyer's request turns out to be bigger than expected once I look at it?
Scope is settled by what you publish: your listing and your own Refund policy are visible to the follower before they pay, so defining input, output, and exclusions upfront reduces how often an oversized request arrives.
Can I include ongoing maintenance in the price?
Keep maintenance separate from a one-time script sale. Brillay Custom Work is built around a defined deliverable and a creator-set delivery time of up to 5 days, not an open-ended commitment. If followers need later maintenance, sell each clearly defined task as a new one-time custom request rather than promising ongoing work.
Is a Paid Question ever enough for an automation request?
Only when the follower wants advice — which tool, which approach, which library — rather than a working deliverable.
What does Brillay charge to sell this kind of offer?
Only a percentage-based platform fee on the order, separate from Stripe's card processing — no monthly charge, and nothing owed until you're paid. Creators in 41 countries can get paid; followers pay by card from anywhere.
Create your free Brillay page and turn the next "can you just script this for me?" DM into a priced, scoped offer.
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