Draft

Draft Help Centre

The content you have created on Draft cannot be circulated elsewhere. When signing up as a writer on our platform, you agree to our 

. This means the copy you create is owned by the client and is 'ghostwritten'. 

Publishing on your own portfolio site with attribution to the client is forbidden as well.

Understand the guidelines and permissions for sharing the content you've written for Draft, ensuring compliance and protecting intellectual property.

Can I share the content I wrote for Draft?

On Draft, we primarily use email and live-chat to communicate with you. There are four main emails we send to you to and it's important to make sure these aren't landing in your spam folder:

Available Work emails are sent each time there are jobs available on Draft for you to claim.

Preferred job emails are sent whenever a customer has requested content that you're tagged as a preferred writer for. To learn more about Preferred jobs head

If a certain time period passes where you're not responding to your Preferred jobs, we also send reminders of unclaimed preferred work you need to respond to.

Revision requests are emailed to you whenever a customer has requested adjustments to a completed piece. Learn more about revision requests 

Messages from a customer related to a job you've claimed is also notified to you via email.

Discover how to manage notifications on Draft and stay updated on job assignments, messages, revisions, and other important activities.

Notifications

On Draft, customers can request adjustments to the completed piece you've sent their way. This can be for:

Errors in the piece you've submitted such as missing brief details or grammatical/spelling mistakes. This can include complete rewrites if there's a strong mismatch between what was requested and what you've submitted (in such cases it's good to reach out to live-chat so we can help assess as well).

Adjustments to the final piece to help shape it up to what they're looking for such as correcting the style/tone, or elaborating on a specific point in the brief

Revision requests aren't intended to build on an existing brief. If the customer is asking for additional points to be covered that weren't part of the original brief, please reach out to the Draft team via live-chat so we can help assess and see if the ask is reasonable or requires additional compensation.

If a revision request comes through for a job you've completed, you'll receive an email notification and the job will now be placed back in your Claimed view.

In the job details, you'll notice the revision comments are added to the Description of the job.

You can then download the original piece, make edits, and then upload and submit the same way you'd do with a regular job you've claimed.

Revision requests aren't compensated extra.

 They're meant to be revisions/adjustments to an existing job and need to be justified as either minor corrections OR a clear miss in the original brief that needs to covered by you.

Everything you need to know about revisions.

Revision Requests

At Draft, we want you to grow as a writer. That’s why 

our rating system is designed to be an important measure of quality in order for you to stay consistent in delivering great content for clients

. The better your score, the more opportunity you have to gain more clients and make more income.

As a writer, your overall writer rating is displayed on the top right corner of the navigation menu and is something only you can see on the dashboard. Your rating is calculated by 

taking the average (mean) of all rated jobs

After you complete a job, we allow customers to give a singular star rating (from 1-5) with options to select feedback tags and submit open text feedback.

Here’s what customers look for to rate a content piece 

 Your writing is informative and provides actionable results

 Grammar is top-notch. You only hand in work after you’ve double-checked it

 Do a thorough check of the specifications and follow them to a T

 You communicate if you have any questions/clarify their needs

"How can I get a good rating as a writer?"

to learn more about how to succeed on Draft.

To find out if a client has rated your content, navigate to the 'Completed' content tab. Please keep in mind that 

clients are not required to rate the content they receive. 

If your article has been rated, you'll see stars next to it in the Completed tab view:

Click through on the job to see details. On the right-hand side, you'll see the details:

If the client selected one of the tags, it'll be filled in with color

 such as the 'Well Researched' and 'Detailed' ones below.

What if the client didn't provide additional feedback?

Unfortunately, selecting tags and providing additional feedback isn't mandatory. 

Note that we are always aiming between 4.5-5.0 stars 

What if I believe the client is violating ToS and netiquette with their feedback?

Please reach out to support. We don't tolerate offensive behavior on our platform. Let us know and we can review their feedback.

This article discusses how our writer rating system works and what our standards are for quality metrics.

Writer Ratings

Frequent and clear communication with clients is critical to successfully completing jobs and receiving good ratings. 

Communication with clients outside the platform is against our policy

. At times when you need to request access to google docs, we encourage you to request clients to make the link public without providing your email address when possible. Here are some tips to ensure you and the customer are on the same page.

After claiming a job, you can send a message to the customer on the left-hand side of the job details page. Use this to ask questions about the brief or to learn more about what the customer's expecting from the job. Both you and the customer will receive an email when a message is sent, so make sure that emails from Draft aren't being delivered to your spam folder. 

We recommend messaging clients as early as possible to avoid any delays in completing the job.

Some clients might not be responsive in the messaging feature. If you find yourself blocked from completing the job because you need clarification, please reach out to our support team. We recommend waiting 24 hours after you send a message to the customer before reaching out to us. We'll attempt to contact the customer to answer your questions and will adjust the job deadline accordingly.

If the client remains unresponsive by the designated deadline, the best course of action is to submit what you have as a first draft and let them know in the chat of the difficulties you ran into. They will then provide the information needed through a revision request.

Communicating with clients

Your Draft style guide! While every client is different, you can follow this general style guide for things such as readability, formatting, hyperlinking, and other aspects. Clients' brief requirements override this guide.

Standards of Content Performance at Draft



- Default Voice 
- Default PoV 
- Write the Way You Speak 
- No Passive Voice 
- Break Down Complex Concepts (and Lines) 
- Put Yourself in Your Audience's Shoes 
- Avoid Weak Words



- Punctuation
- Contractions
- Eggcorns & Idioms
- Dialects
- Run-on Sentences
- Transitional Words
- Not Sure? Google It!



- Capitalizing Headings and Headlines 
- Formatting and Structuring Your Content 
- Fonts: Types, Sizes, and Colors 
- Bullet-Point Lists 
- Sentence and Paragraph Length 
- Hyperlinking 
- Images


Standards of content performance at Draft

Have you ever come across an article so dry that you had to make sure you weren't in the Sahara?

Draft provides an antidote to boring business writing. We create 

Our clients want to communicate their expertise to their audiences. They're experts in things like BI reporting or marketing strategy, but it's hard for them to communicate that to people who don't have the same skill level.

As a Draft writer, it's your mission (should you choose to accept it) to create content that's:

In short: if a reader can walk away from your article feeling smarter and more hopeful, you've done a great job.

That's where this style guide comes in! Read on and bookmark this guide to reference it whenever you're in a pinch.

Note: a client's request overrides this style guide.

The default Draft voice is smart, empathetic, helpful, and friendly.

When writing, imagine you're grabbing coffee with a friend and giving them advice: we're aware of the problems our audience is facing, and we have suggestions that will get them set up for success:

Formula: empathize with the audience's challenges, and give them hope by offering actionable suggestions that will improve their situation.

Avoid passive voice whenever possible; it's the content equivalent of Ambien:

addressing the audience as second person singular ("You")

 from the perspective of first person plural ("We"):

When you address audience with "You," they immediately feel like you're speaking to them in particular. This makes your content feel more actionable and engaging.

The best piece of advice we can give you (especially when it comes to casual writing) is to 

Would you use complex and long sentences when talking to a friend, or reiterate the same fact multiple times?

Or would you keep it fun, brief, and understandable?

VR and AR technology should be used in the workplace, at school, and in a plethora of other settings, as this unique tech has started opening up doors to diverse possibilities and applications that can be used by educators, salespeople, students, CEOS, and more, all of whom want to improve their experience.

It's very easy to lose your thread when coining complex sentences. Keeping them simple means there will be fewer mistakes.

You can use VR and AR anywhere! From for-profit companies, to schools, everyone's going to have a great experience. After all, VR and AR allow you to touch and feel previously intangible things.

Avoid words you wouldn't normally use, such as:

 Keep your article actionable and easy to read.

 means that a subject is a recipient of a verb's action.

She was driven by her son to the game.

Businesses should be mindful of appearing as too formal.

More effort will be demanded of you if you decide to proceed with the implementation of CRM tools in your company.

Her son drove her to the game.

Be careful; you don't want your business to look too formal!

If you decide to use CRM tools in your company, you'll need to put in more effort.

Sounds waaay more actionable, doesn't it?

2.5. Break Down Complex Concepts (and Lines)

A software engineer might be able to tell you everything about MySQL queries, but if you're not an engineer yourself, would you understand them?

we have to take the complex concepts our clients send over and make them super simple.

Think of it as an analysis: you analyze something very complex, and then break it down to factors that you can explain simply and clearly so that the audience understands, engages, and knows exactly what to do next.

Simple lines: the more complex the subject, the simpler the sentences

The longer and the more complex your sentence is, the harder it will be for you to spot mistakes (and the harder it will be to read your article).

2.6. Put Yourself in Your Audience's Shoes

If you're a writer, your audience is your client's audience.

Let's say you're writing about the benefits of jacuzzis.

what the audience can get from the jacuzzis.

You might be a writer, but you're a content writer which actually means that you've got to be a marketer, too.

Think about them: what do they care about? What are they like?

imagine you're talking to a specific person from the audience.

 They're your friend, and you just got a great new jacuzzi. Why are you loving it so much? Why are 

The audience is coming to the client, believing them to be a respectable source or an authority in the industry. This is why you should 

We don't think you should eradicate the so-called "filler" words such as: 

However, it's important to be mindful of them, especially if they are making your article more vague.

Full stops, commas, and exclamation marks go within the quotation marks like so:

"We're really loving these zebra-striped socks. They look good, and they feel good too," Ann Smith claims.


Excited, Ann said: "We couldn't wait to move into our new house!"

Likewise, if quoting statistics and findings, full stops and commas go within the quotation marks:

Researchers claim that "over 45% of people in this study couldn't complete it."

A good rule of thumb is to put a comma where you imagine you'd draw a breath in.

You can also sometimes use commas for clarity and the organization of information within your sentence. Try to avoid overly complex sentences. However, if you can't, use commas to organize the information correctly.

You can use them, you don't have to use them - it all depends on your style. We recommend them because it's much easier to organize information that way, but it's not a must.

If you're in doubt regarding your specific use case, Google is your buddy.

English teachers don't like 'em, but they're about the only ones.

, unless specifically asked to not use them.

Access the Draft Style Guide, offering guidelines for effective writing on aspects such as readability, formatting, grammar, and more.

Draft Style Guide

There are times when you may author a piece and realize you're coming under the requested word length indicated by the customer. 

In such cases, if you're within 100 words to the indicated length there's no reason to worry and you can submit the piece. 

However, if you're coming up shorter than that. For example, submitting 800 words for a 1,000 word request, do one of the following:

In your submission, leave an author's note at the top of the content indicating why you're slightly under.

Send the customer a message via the in-app messaging feature letting them know as well before you've submitted the piece. 

Understand the consequences and solutions when you fall short of the requested word length on Draft, ensuring client satisfaction.

What happens if I'm coming short on the requested word length?

You may come across a job that's either available or one that you've claimed which needs more words than indicated to complete the job to a good standard. 

In such cases, reach out to the customer first through the in-app messaging feature in the job details page asking for more words and providing a reason why you'd need them. If they're okay with the adjustment, let us know via live-chat and share the job page URL when doing so. 

Find out how to request a word length extension on Draft when you require additional content to complete a job successfully.

I need more words to complete a job

you have 24 hours to decide on whether or not you want to change the deadline

 (to extend or shorten it). Review your client's brief to help you gauge the time it will take you to create the content and determine if you need more or less time.

We encourage you to make deadline adjustment requests 

If you want to extend a deadline, we trust your judgment to evaluate how much time is required to complete a job (and if more time is needed).

This said, we kindly ask for you to be mindful of the number of deadline requests you make. It's not recommended to request a deadline change for every job as clients may be working with hard deadlines themselves.

Here are the 3 steps to extend your deadline

Log into your writer profile, find the job you want, and click the blue circle button with the arrow.

You'll then be directed to the job details page. Click the 

Make sure to explain why you want to extend your deadline and include how many days you want to add or remove. And that's it! Click the 

Learn how to request a deadline change on Draft, allowing flexibility in managing timelines and accommodating unforeseen circumstances.

How can I request a deadline change?

After successfully uploading content, you'll be able to see your Plagiarism and Readability scores.

We use CopyScape to identify plagiarism and ensure we deliver plagiarism-free content to clients. In order to help you self-edit your work, we're also showing plagiarism counts to you as well.

Anything below 5 matches is no cause for concern. CopyScape often flags quotes and links as matches.

If your score is above 5 matches, please reach out to our team which will provide you with the full list of plagiarism matches to edit your work. 

If your content is often flagged for plagiarism matches, your account will be suspended and our Writer Success Team will reach out to identify the cause and help you make improvements in the future. 

It is a requirement to cite all your sources that is used in your content as well as any used for research purposes.

We use readability score primarily so you can self-edit your own work and make sure it's readable according to the grade appropriate for this particular content request. 

We use the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, in which the lower the grade, the better the content piece. It's one of the indicators that HemingwayApp uses.

However, this does not pertain to content pieces aimed at more advanced target audiences such as: experts, professionals, and formats such as: white papers. If a client has requested a formal tone of voice, this may also affect the readability score.

We do not use the readability score to assess your writing quality

 as we are aware it's not the perfect indicator. However, we hope it can help you make sure your content is up to your standards. 

Discover how Draft handles plagiarism and conducts readability checks to maintain the originality and quality of the content produced.

Plagiarism and readability checks

Timely delivery is one of the key performance metrics for writers at Draft. Here's what that means, and how you can avoid getting penalized for overdue work.

At Draft, every job has a deadline associated with it. We expect our writers to submit the job by the date and time listed next to the job (time is in your local timezone).

You can see the deadline for an article both on your dashboard and at the top of the job page.

We take timeliness very seriously at Draft. Just like independent freelance writers are held accountable by their clients for timely delivery, Draft expects our freelancers to meet the job deadlines given. If you go overdue, a few things could happen, depending on the situation:

If you're going to be late with an article - or get an overdue notice from us - please talk to our team right away.

If we don't hear from you within 24 hours

, we'll have to reassign the article to another writer, and any work you've completed on the job will be lost. You'll not be compensated for jobs that need to be reassigned.

if you don't submit the job within 24 hours of the job going overdue

 The exception is cases where a client is unresponsive to a question.

Note, if we have to automatically reassign a job that's now 24 hours overdue and we haven't received a response from you, other jobs due within 24-36 hours that you've claimed may be reassigned under the assumption that these will go overdue as well. We may reassign jobs due further out depending on the number of pieces you have currently over due.

If reassignments happen, you'll be temporarily suspended while our team reviews your account

If you go more than 24 hours over the delivery time on a single job, it'll be considered overdue and your account will be temporarily suspended while our team looks into the incident.

Specifically, we'll be investigating the reason for the overdue and any history or patterns of overdue work.

These reviews should take no more than 1-3 business days. You'll be able to complete any work currently in progress, you just won't be able to claim new work until our team completes their review.

You may receive a "strike" on your account

In order to balance timely delivery for our clients with the fact that life happens, Draft has a "three-strike" system for overdue work. Your first and second strikes will be instances where we'd had to place your account on Limited Access until pending jobs are completed, but if you accrue a third strike, we'll have to dismiss you from the platform. 

Please note automatic dismissal may result before three strikes if your previous overdues have resulted in automatic reassignment of the work, and we never heard back from you with a reason as to why you went overdue. 

A suspension does not automatically equal a strike

While suspension due to overdue work will often lead to a strike on your record, we understand there are good reasons for going overdue (such as circumstances outside your control or a client being unresponsive).

If our team finds that to be the case in their review, your suspension will end and no strike will be given. However, if the reason for the overdue is poor time management, or if you're unresponsive to our overdue notifications after several days, your account will accrue strikes. 

Note that strikes will be removed from your account if you go three months without going overdue (on a rolling basis).

After your third strike, we'll have to part ways with you and deactivate your account with us. You'll be notified by our team, any existing jobs that are in progress will be voided but any jobs that are completed will be paid out. After that, your account will be locked.

What if I'm late because a client was unresponsive?

We know that sometimes you need clarification from a client before you can finish the job. Clients aren't always quick to answer messages, which we know can cause a lot of frustration and concern when you're up against a deadline. 

Utilize the request clarification feature in such cases. This will ensure the job is 'frozen' until we receive a response from the customer and will also ensure you're not penalized if the job goes overdue.

Ultimately in such cases we do ask that you try to be proactive with these questions and reach out to our team as early as possible, instead of alerting us to the problem after a job has gone overdue.

What if I'm late because I was sick or had a family emergency?

Life happens—we've all been there! So while you may still get temporarily suspended if you go overdue because of something outside your control (such as illness, lost internet, or a family emergency), our team will take the reason for the overdue into account when we do our review and it won't be counted as a strike against you if this was something outside your control.

What can I do to improve my timeliness on Draft?

We want all our writers to be able to succeed on our marketplace, so here are some tips for how to keep your deliveries timely!

DON'T: Wait until the last minute to start writing.

We understand that you don't always have time to start a job the moment you claim it. But we do ask that you at least take some time immediately after claiming a job to review the brief. This way, you can identify any missing details you need to do the job and ask the client for additional information or clarification right away.

If the job deadline is listed at a weird time for your timezone, try setting your own deadline for EOD the day before the job is due.

DO: Review the brief right away and request an extension within 24hrs if needed or ask clarifying questions

If you think you need more time than the job deadline allows, please 

 within the first 24 hours of claiming a job. Similarly, use the request clarification features to ask your questions before it's too late.

We know the marketplace can be a little "feast and famine," so it's tempting to claim a lot of jobs as they're available. However, if you claim too many jobs—especially jobs that are due on the same day—it's easy to end up with a domino effect of missed deadlines if life happens or one job takes longer than expected.

Since multiple overdues at once are more problematic than single job going overdue, limiting the number of jobs you claim at once is a great way to avoid the potential for suspension.

DO: Proactively communicate with the support team if something comes up

Life happens—we've all been there! But if you have to miss a deadline for reasons outside your control (such as illness, lost internet, or a family emergency), we'd ask that you let our support team know so that we can extend deadlines or reassign work accordingly.

Learn about the timeliness expectations on Draft, including deadlines and communication, to ensure smooth workflow and client satisfaction.

Timeliness expectations

Here's a collection of guides to help you succeed as a writer on Draft

Completing a job