Delivering an Order: Deadlines, Post URLs, and What Counts as Done

An order moves through a fixed set of states, and most of them have a deadline attached. Knowing them is the difference between a completed sale and an auto-cancellation with a penalty.

The order lifecycle

• Pending — the buyer has paid and is waiting for you to accept. You have 5 days.
• Accepted — you have taken the job. You have 7 days to publish and deliver.
• Delivered — you have submitted the live post URL. The buyer reviews it.
• Revision — the buyer asked for a change before accepting.
• Completed — accepted by the buyer, or auto-accepted after 3 days with no response. Your earnings are credited.
• Cancelled — the order ended without delivery. The buyer is refunded.
• Expired — a completed order whose link-uptime guarantee window has since ended. This is a normal, successful outcome, not a failure.

Some listings carry their own delivery window, so an individual order may show a different figure — the deadline on the order itself is always the one that counts. You get a warning email 2 days before an auto-cancellation.

What auto-cancellation costs you

If you miss the deadline the order cancels itself, the buyer is refunded in full, and the cancellation counts against your completion rate. If you had already been paid for that order, the amount is deducted back from your balance as a penalty. This is the most expensive way to end an order and it is entirely avoidable.

If you cannot meet a deadline, say so before it passes. An order you asked about is protected while you wait for the answer — see Ask Before You Reject.

What counts as a valid delivery

Delivery means submitting the direct permalink to the published article — the URL a reader would land on. It must be:

• Live and publicly reachable — not a draft, not password-protected, not behind a login.
• The article's own page — not the homepage, not a category or tag listing, and not an author archive.
• Carrying the buyer's link as ordered — correct target URL, correct anchor text, and dofollow if that is what the listing promised.
• Indexable — not marked noindex.

Automated checks run against the URL after delivery, so a page that does not contain the agreed link will be picked up.

The link has to stay up

Getting paid is not the end of the obligation. Every order carries a link-uptime guarantee — 12 months for orders of $15 or more, 6 months below that — and the URL is re-checked over that period. If the post is deleted, the link stripped, or it quietly becomes nofollow, the buyer is entitled to a prorated refund and earnings can be held.

If a post genuinely has to move, re-publish it and submit the new URL from the order page rather than letting the old one 404.

Getting paid

Earnings are credited when the order reaches Completed, minus the platform commission. They then sit in your balance until you withdraw — minimum $5. Orders with an unresolved link problem can have their earnings held until it is fixed. Payment Methods & Withdrawals has the full picture.

Next: how your ranking is calculated, and why completion rate matters more than volume.