What is Custom request?
Also called: custom, commission
A custom request is content commissioned to your specification and made after you pay. It is the highest-risk transaction in this industry for one structural reason: you pay in advance for something that does not exist yet.
What it means for you
- Agree five things in writing before paying: what exactly is being made, the total price, a delivery date or window, the revision policy, and what happens if it cannot be delivered.
- Keep it in the platform’s own message thread. A screenshot of an off-platform chat is much weaker evidence in a dispute than a thread the platform can read.
- A creator who declines requests outside what they actually produce is managing a real queue. One who accepts everything is either scaling well or about to miss deadlines.
- Customs are also where the largest single sums move, which makes them the transactions worth being slowest about. Five minutes agreeing terms before paying prevents nearly every dispute that follows.
- If a creator declines your request, take it as a good sign rather than a rejection. A queue that is managed honestly is the same thing that makes a delivery date meaningful, and an account that accepts every order is the one most likely to miss yours.
A concrete example
You order on the 3rd, a seven-day window is agreed in writing, and it arrives on the 6th at the quoted price. Nothing about that needed a dispute, because everything was written down before payment.
Illustrative. Not a real account, and not based on one.
How this shows up in reviews here
Reviews of custom work are almost always about process rather than quality. Subscribers rarely complain that something was made badly; they complain that they did not know what was happening.
Read the full guide
Custom orders generate more disputes than any other part of the creator economy. Five things to put in writing before money moves, and what to do when delivery fails.