Maker agreement

This is the agreement between you and e3mel when you apply and work as a maker. It is written to be read, and the Arabic text is the binding version (section 15).

1. What this is

e3mel is operated by Usef Elshazly, trading as e3mel, in Egypt; a company being formed will replace the operator as the party to this agreement when it is registered, and we will publish the change here. You are an independent contractor. This is not employment. You decide whether to apply for any job, you use your own tools, and you are responsible for your own taxes and any social insurance. Your contract for each job is with e3mel, never with the client.

2. Who can apply

You must be at least 18. To be approved and paid you verify your identity with your national ID and a selfie, which are stored in restricted storage and seen only by our operations team, and you provide payout details: a bank account, an InstaPay address or a mobile wallet number, stored encrypted. A change to payout details is re-verified and puts a 72-hour hold on the next payout.

3. Getting work

Jobs appear in your feed with the brief, the payout and the deadline stated before you apply. An application is a short note on your approach and, optionally, up to three items from your existing portfolio and one lightweight direction image. There is no bidding, and you are never asked to produce finished work to win a job. We select makers on their record in that category, their reliability and their current workload; makers with no work in progress see new jobs first for a few hours.

Shots: with no work in progress you may take a shot at a live brief. Once you send it, with its files uploaded to e3mel, it is shown to the client beside the order's first delivery as another option, with no check by us, and offered to the client if the original maker's work fails or a dispute ends with shots. If the client takes it at the first delivery, you become the order's maker and make the client's changes by the change deadline; your version passes our quality check like any job, and you are paid the payout less the half the delivered maker keeps. On a bigger service that starts with a sample, the first delivery is a sample, and a shot at it is a sample too: if the client picks yours, you build the whole project in the service's delivery time and are paid the payout less the sample fee the maker of the first sample keeps (20% of the payout). If it is chosen after a failure or a dispute, you are paid the payout stated on the shot, less the share a replaced maker keeps when their work had passed our check. If a client takes another maker's shot at your first delivery instead of your work, the job ends for you and you keep half the payout, paid like any earning. At a sample, if the client picks another maker's sample or stops, the job ends for you and you are paid the sample fee, 20% of the payout; if they pick yours, you go on to build the whole project in the service's delivery time. Clients may start an order with part of its price and pay the rest to approve the delivery; you are paid your payout when they do, as on any approval. If a client never pays the rest after a delivery that passed our check, the order closes and you are paid the cancellation fee for your time. Once the order ends we rate every shot, and a good rating earns reward points; a shot never counts toward your score. Shots never affect your on-time or completion record, can be released at any time without penalty, carry the same confidentiality as a job, and may not appear in your portfolio unless chosen.

Reward points: you can also earn points outside paid jobs, for a video about e3mel that we accept and for a bounty entry that passes our review, is shortlisted or wins. Points count for 90 days. When makers of similar quality apply for the same job, they give you a small, capped push in our ranking. They never change your score or your level, never get you past a job's quality bar, cannot be exchanged for money, and are paused while a job is late or for a while after a job fails. We decide whether a video or an entry qualifies, and we take points back that were earned against these rules, for example with bought views, telling you why.

Talk about e3mel: a video you post about e3mel is yours. It must be public, on your own account, and must not show any brief, file or detail from an e3mel job (section 10).

Bounties: a bounty is an unpaid practice brief we publish for every eligible maker, for example a concept redesign of a well known logo. Your entry must be your own original work. By sending it you allow e3mel to show it, with credit to you, on e3mel's website and social media, including in our videos; you keep every other right in it. An entry that uses another company's brand is an unofficial concept: it is not made for or approved by that company, and neither you nor we may present it as official.

4. What we expect

Deliver what the brief asks for, by the deadline, in the formats listed, and nothing that is not yours or that infringes someone else's rights. Keep the order inside e3mel: you never receive the client's identity or contact details, and you must not seek them, share yours, or try to take the work off the platform; contact details in a message or a file are removed automatically and the attempt is recorded. You can write to the client directly in the order's chat on e3mel; it is reviewed when the order ends. Do not subcontract a job without telling us. Where a service allows AI tools, you may use them if your licence permits commercial use, and you disclose it when asked; never use a real person's likeness or a protected character or trademark.

5. Deadlines

The deadline is stated before you accept. If you cannot make it, tell us early and we will extend it where we can or reassign the job. Releasing a job early is treated far more leniently than going silent.

If you deliver after your deadline and the client accepts the work anyway, a late fee of 30% of your payout for that job is deducted from it. The deadline used is the one you were working to, so a granted extension or a client-requested revision moves it and never counts against you. If you miss the deadline and the job is reassigned, or you go silent and we reassign it, you are not paid for it.

6. Quality review

Every submission is checked against the brief and a per-service checklist before the client sees it. Work that fails is returned with specific points. Revisions we ask for during quality review are part of the job. Revisions the client asks for are included up to the number in their tier; a change of direction beyond the brief is new work and is not asked of you without a new payout.

7. What you are paid

Each job states your payout before you apply. It does not change afterwards.

Standard mode: the payout is paid on the client's approval, or on automatic completion if the client does not respond within their review window.

Multiple mode: every direction that passes quality review is paid. The maker whose direction the client picks finalises the work within the stated final production window and receives the full payout; each other maker whose direction passed receives the concept fee stated on the job. A direction that fails quality review and is not fixed receives nothing.

If the client cancels after you were assigned to the job, you receive a cancellation fee for the time you spent, even though the work was not finished. The amount appears in your earnings when the cancellation happens.

8. When you are paid

Your payout is credited when the client approves, held for 7 days, and paid on the next payout date, the 15th or the 30th, once your available balance reaches EGP 500. Payouts go to the details you verified. Where Egyptian tax law requires it, we deduct withholding tax from a payout and give you the document that shows it, and we may ask for your tax ID.

9. Ownership and portfolio

On the client's approval and full payment, the rights in the final deliverables pass to the client. You may show completed e3mel work in your portfolio after 30 days, unless the client opted out at checkout, in which case you may not show it at all. Directions that were not selected in Multiple mode stay yours.

Showing your work on e3mel: when you approve this version, you allow e3mel to pick images from the portfolio links and samples you send us and show them, without your name or any contact details, on e3mel's website and later in e3mel's own marketing, such as social media posts and ads. You confirm the work is yours to show and contains no confidential client information. e3mel's team chooses which images appear and the level each one represents. You can stop this at any time from your profile: we take your images off the website straight away and stop using them in anything new, though marketing already published may stay up. Brands in your work belong to their owners, and we never present them as e3mel clients.

10. Confidentiality

Treat everything in a brief and every file a client sends as confidential. Do not share it, publish it, or use it for anything other than that job, during the job or after it.

11. Your level, strikes and your account

Your level reflects your record: on-time delivery, how often work passes quality review first time, completion rate and client ratings. Levels open bigger jobs.

A confirmed breach of this agreement, for example trying to contact a client directly, is a strike. A first strike is a warning. A second within 90 days restricts your account for 7 days. A third leads to suspension pending review. The order chat is reviewed when the order ends: trying to take the work, the conversation or the payment off e3mel there is a strike given automatically, and at a second strike we may close your account; that decision is always a person's. You can contest a strike, and a strike found to be a false positive is removed. Where an account is restricted or suspended, any balance you have already earned is still paid.

12. Your data

We process your identity documents, payout details and performance record to run this agreement and to meet our legal obligations, as described in the privacy policy. Clients never see them.

13. Ending it

You can stop taking jobs at any time. Finish what you have accepted, or tell us so we can reassign it. We can end this agreement if you breach it, after telling you why unless the law prevents it. Earned balances survive termination.

14. Changes

Material changes to this agreement are published with a new version number and apply to jobs you accept after that. Jobs already accepted stay under the version you accepted them under.

15. Language and law

This agreement is published in Arabic and English. The Arabic text is the binding version; if the two differ, the Arabic prevails. It is governed by the laws of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the courts of Cairo have jurisdiction.

16. Questions

Write to us through the contact page at e3mel.com/contact, or from the job page for a specific job.