Lifecycle of an Order

By the CQM Team

While the author’s role in the order fulfillment process can be a relatively straightforward one, what happens to an order before and after it is written is not necessarily so clear from the author's perspective. Different order types can also go through different processes between creation and completion, depending on the order type. Our platform exists not only to pair clients that need content with authors to write it, but it also exists to ensure that the flow of work between authors and clients goes as smoothly as possible and that expectations are reasonably managed on both sides.

Order Creation

All orders processed by Textbroker, naturally, start with the client. For Open Orders, Direct Orders, and some Team Orders, otherwise known as “self-service orders,” the order creation process is entirely handled by the client. They choose the topic, write the briefing, decide how much the order will pay, and so on. While we do have a briefing template for ease of use, the client can choose to format their briefing in the way they deem is best. Once the order is created and submitted, the order is reviewed for TOS compliance and then activated and placed into the order pool by our Client Services team.

For Managed Client (MC) orders, order creation is a more collaborative process between the client and the Project Manager (PM). Ultimately, the client has the decision to be as hands-on or hands-off as they choose with how the orders are created. A client may just decide on the order topics and keywords, leaving the rest up to the PMs, or they may draft the entire project themselves, briefing and all. Either way, once everything is drafted and ready, order placement is handled by the PM.

Writing and review

As many of you are aware, once the order has been placed into the pool, it is up to our authors to complete the most crucial step of the process: writing the article itself. Once the article has been written and submitted, the order may go to a few different places for review, depending on the order type.

Self-Service

Once submitted, all other self service orders will go directly to the client. In this instance, textbroker does not review or edit your articles in any way after submission. The client will then review the article and accept it or return it to the author for revision if necessary. However, if a client does not manually review the order, it may be automatically accepted by the system after a set period of time to prevent authors from needing to wait excessively for payment.

Pre-Rating

While not a separate type of order on its own, if an author is still new to the platform, their first few orders will be sent to pre-rating. This step is to ensure that new authors are writing articles with grammar commensurate with the star level they were assigned with their sign-up example. At this stage, the article is reviewed by our Quality Assurance team and may be sent for revision if necessary. This is one of the rare instances where our QA editors will see an author’s article before it is submitted to the client. Once the order is accepted through pre-rate, the order will be passed along to the client, who may accept the order or request a revision as needed.

Managed Client

When an MC Team order is submitted, rather than going directly to the client, it goes into a queue to be reviewed and edited by our MC editors. Depending on the requirements for the team, orders may pass through one or multiple editorial checks before being passed along to the client. During this process, our editors may make changes to the text of an order to better align with client wishes, or they may send the order back to the author for revision. Notably, this is the only instance where an article written by an author may be returned to them with edits already implemented.

Once the order has passed through MC editorial, depending on the client, the order may be passed along for client acceptance, or the Project Manager may accept the order on the client’s behalf.

Post Completion

When an order is accepted by the client (or PM, for some MC orders), that order becomes eligible for rating. This means that it has a chance to be chosen by our algorithm to appear in the batch of orders used to determine an author’s next rating when they appear in our rating queue. Our system also determines when to next rate an author by accounting for things like how many articles the author has written, and how long it has been since their last rating,

After being queued for rating, the orders in the rating batch will be reviewed by a QA editor, given editorial feedback in the form of notes on highlighted portions of the article, and then used to determine the author’s new star level.

Finally, the order used in the rating will be presented to the author on their statistics page for review along with all of the editorial feedback from our Community and Quality Management department. Since this feedback only appears after order acceptance, it is solely given for authors to reference to help improve their writing in the future.

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