Brief templates a freelancer can execute — and what to check on delivery
Most of what goes wrong with a first outsourced job is decided before anyone starts work: the brief left out the one thing that mattered, so the delivery is technically what you asked for and useless to you. Each guide here ends in a brief you can paste and a list to check against what comes back.
Or have the engineering built for you — from $220 Store data automation, a custom MCP server for Claude, or price and stock monitoring. Fixed price, named turnaround, and every delivery ships with a test suite plus proof the suite catches breakage: 23 deliberate defects injected into the public reference build, 23 caught.Start with the brief
Landing page brief template A template you can copy, with what each field is for: naming the sections in order instead of describing a mood, the mobile line to include, and how to hand over store access without handing over the store. Product photo brief template Retouching and lifestyle composites described so a stranger can shoot them, plus the file list to demand on delivery rather than after. Product page copy brief What to gather before you order, and the claims you must never let someone else invent for you.Brief another job
- Logo and brand kit — the source files, variants, and licensing to settle before ordering.
- Welcome and abandoned-cart flows — the step table to demand, and the boundary that turns this order into a dispute.
- Ad video editing — telling an ad editor from a wedding editor.
- Pre-launch store QA — getting a defect list you can work through, not a screen recording.
Decide before you order
Three questions that are cheaper to settle before the brief than after the delivery.
- What is worth paying for at all — the tasks worth buying before your first sale, each with a rule for doing it yourself instead.
- Fixed price or hourly — one test decides which contract shape a job wants, and forcing an open scope into a fixed price is where disputes come from.
- Reading a listing and vetting a seller — how to judge a seller in a field you do not work in, and the terms to agree in writing first.
See all ten guides, ordered the way a launch blocks.
How these guides are written
- No price tables for other people's work. Freelance rates move constantly and vary by seller, scope, and turnaround. Instead of stale numbers, each guide explains what pushes a quote up so you can read a live listing yourself. My own prices live on the services page.
- No third-party seller endorsements. Nobody here has bought from every seller in a category, so the guides teach vetting criteria rather than naming names. Work sold here is my own, priced openly, and is not an endorsement of anyone else.
- No invented statistics. If a claim would need data behind it, it is either sourced or not made.
- Briefs you can paste. Rework caused by a thin brief is what makes outsourcing expensive. Every guide ends with something copyable.
Where the links go. Service links point to marketplace category pages on Fiverr, so you land on current listings rather than a screenshot from months ago. See the disclosure for how this site is funded.