Templates

CONTENT PILOT AGREEMENT Between: [Your company name], company number [number], registered office [address] ("we", "us") And: [Customer legal name], company number [number], registered office [address] ("you") Date: [date] 1. WHAT WE WILL DO We will produce ten (10) finished articles from ten (10) briefs you approve, within thirty (30) days of the kickoff call. Each article is: a) researched against live sources and written to the approved brief; b) scored against a search rubric and an AI answer engine rubric, improved against both, and delivered with both scores, flagged to you where either is below target; c) held to the word budget stated in the approved brief; d) edited by a professional editor and returned to you as tracked changes on the original. 2. WHAT AN ARTICLE IS One finished piece of up to 1,500 words from one approved brief, human-edited once. A piece above 1,500 words counts pro rata against the ten, rounded up to the nearest half. 3. WHAT YOU WILL DO a) attend a kickoff call of about thirty minutes within one working day of payment; b) give us your style guide, brand guidelines and up to five published pieces, or tell us there are none; c) approve, amend or reject each brief within three working days of receiving it; d) name one person with final approval. If briefs are not approved within five working days, the thirty-day window extends by the delay. 4. WHAT IT COSTS $2,500 (US dollars), excluding VAT or sales tax, payable in full before work begins. No other charges arise under this agreement. 5. WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED Design, stock photography, link building, ongoing strategy, articles beyond the ten, rewrites of articles produced to a brief you approved and later changed, translation at volume, and any second full edit after you have rewritten a delivered piece yourself. Any of these can be quoted separately. 6. REVISIONS Each article includes one professional edit. If a delivered article does not meet the acceptance criteria at Schedule A, tell us within seven days and we will revise it at no charge until it does. 7. WHO OWNS IT On payment in full, all right, title and interest in the delivered articles, briefs and images passes to you, worldwide and in perpetuity, with no attribution requirement. We retain no licence to reuse, republish or reference the deliverables, and we will not name you as a customer without your prior written consent. 8. ORIGINALITY Articles are generated from your approved brief and are not assembled from copied text. We do not run an automatic plagiarism scan unless agreed at kickoff. If you identify a genuine match with existing published text, we will rewrite that article at no charge. 9. AI DISCLOSURE Articles are produced by an AI content pipeline and edited by a professional human editor. Whether you disclose that to your readers is your decision. We will supply a disclosure line on request. Where a platform rule, client contract or professional obligation requires disclosure, meeting it is your responsibility. 10. YOUR MATERIAL We use the material you give us only to produce your articles. We will not use it for any other customer or as a sample. You may ask us to delete it at any time after delivery. 11. CONFIDENTIALITY Neither of us will disclose the other's confidential information. This survives the agreement by two years. 12. ENDING IT Either of us may end this agreement in writing at any time. You keep every article delivered and every brief approved to that point. Fees for work already delivered are not refundable; fees for undelivered articles are refunded within fourteen days. 13. LIABILITY Our total liability under this agreement is limited to the fees paid. Neither of us is liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited. 14. LAW This agreement is governed by the laws of [England and Wales / your jurisdiction] and both of us submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts. Signed for [Your company]: Signed for [Customer]: Name: Name: Title: Title: Date: Date: SCHEDULE A: ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA [attach the acceptance criteria from section 3 of this chapter]

BRIEF [n] OF 10 - [Customer name] - [date] WORKING TITLE [title] THE READER Who this is for, in their words, not yours: [role, situation, what they already know] WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO FIND OUT [the question the reader is actually asking] PRIMARY QUERY [the search or assistant query this article is written to answer] WHY THIS ONE [the gap: what competitor covers it, what you have today, why it is on the list] ANGLE [the argument this article makes, in one sentence. Not the topic, the position] STRUCTURE H2: [section] H2: [section] H2: [section] H2: [section] WORD BUDGET [n] words. This is the contract; the finished article will be held to it. WHAT TO INCLUDE [products, terms, internal links, proof points, anything that must appear] WHAT TO AVOID [claims that need review, competitor names, phrases banned by your style guide] SOURCES TO USE [URLs, recordings, documents you have given us] YOUR DECISION [ ] Approved as written [ ] Approved with the changes below [ ] Rejected, replace with: [ ] CHANGES [free text] Approved by: [name] Date: [date] Nothing is written until this comes back. Please reply within three working days.

ARTICLE ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA - [Customer name] An article is accepted when all of the following are true. 1. IT MATCHES THE APPROVED BRIEF Every H2 in the approved brief is present. The angle is the angle you approved. The word count is within 15% of the budget in the brief. 2. IT IS IN YOUR VOICE It follows the style guide and the tone of voice profile agreed at kickoff. Banned words and constructions do not appear. No em dashes or en dashes appear anywhere. 3. IT IS ACCURATE AS FAR AS WE CAN MAKE IT Factual statements are grounded in the sources listed with the article. Where a claim needs your reviewer's sign-off, it is flagged rather than asserted. 4. IT HAS BEEN EDITED BY A PERSON Tracked changes from a professional editor are attached. You can see what changed. 5. ITS SCORES ARE REPORTED The search score and the AI answer engine score are delivered with the article. A score below target is flagged, with what would raise it, but is not by itself an acceptance failure. 6. IT IS PUBLISHABLE Title, meta description, headings, internal links where specified, and hero image are present and correct. WHAT IS NOT AN ACCEPTANCE FAILURE - a change of mind about the angle after the brief was approved - a preference for a different structure than the one approved - a request to add a subject that was not in the brief Each of those is welcome, and is a new brief rather than a revision. HOW TO RAISE ONE Reply to the delivery email within seven days naming the criterion above that has not been met. We revise at no charge until it is met. Agreed by: [name], [date]

Subject: seven of ten, and what happens next [Name], seven of the ten are delivered and the last three are with the editor. Two things worth deciding now rather than at the end. First, what happens in [next month]. If this has been useful, there are two shapes: you run it yourselves on Austen Pro at $299 a month for fifty articles, editing added per piece, or we keep running it for you at $2,000 a month for eight finished, edited articles. Second, which of the two do you want me to price properly? I will put it in writing this week either way, and you can decide when the last article lands. Simon

Subject: all ten, and the baseline [Name], all ten are delivered and published to [destination]. For the record, here is where those queries stood on the day we started and where they stand today: [baseline vs today]. Four weeks is too short to draw a conclusion about rankings and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What has changed is that you now have ten researched, edited articles that did not exist a month ago, and a brief format your team can reuse. The proposal for [next month] is attached: [$2,000 done for you, 8 articles / $299 Pro, you run it]. One favour, whichever you choose. Would you write me two sentences about how it went that I can quote? You would be the first, and being able to name a real customer is worth a lot to us. Simon

Subject: closing the loop [Name], no answer is an answer and that is fine. Three things before I stop. The ten articles are yours outright, published or not. The briefs are yours too, and they are reusable whoever writes the next ten. If the reason is budget timing rather than the work, tell me the month and I will come back then rather than chasing. And if something was wrong with it, I would genuinely rather know. One sentence is enough. Simon

Subject: thirty minutes tomorrow, here is what we will cover [Name], so this is quick tomorrow: 1. Your audience, in your words (5 min) 2. The three queries you most want to own, and your two closest competitors on content (5 min) 3. Your style guide, brand guidelines and five published pieces you are happy with (5 min) 4. Who approves briefs, and who has final sign-off (5 min) 5. What would make you say this worked, in ninety days (5 min) 6. Dates: briefs from us by [date], your approvals by [date], delivery by [date] (5 min) If you can send the style guide and the five pieces beforehand, we will have the tone of voice profile ready to look at on the call. Simon

Subject: two sentences? [Name], now that the ten are done, could I ask for two sentences I can quote, with your name and title on them? Something like "we published ten articles in a month that would otherwise have taken us a quarter, and every one was edited by a professional before it went live" is exactly the sort of thing that helps. Change it to whatever is actually true. If you would rather not be named, an unattributed line is still useful, and no is a completely acceptable answer. Simon

Subject: one introduction [Name], a small ask. Is there one person you know in a similar role who has the same content problem you had in [month]? An introduction is worth more to us than any amount of cold email, and I will make sure they get the free gap report whether or not anything comes of it. Happy to write the two lines for you to forward. Simon

Subject: invoice [number] [Name], invoice [number] for [month] was due on [date] and is not showing as paid at our end. Nothing has changed on the work and the briefs for [next month] are ready to go. If it is stuck in a process, tell me who to chase and I will chase them rather than you. If you need a PO number on it, send it over and I will reissue. Simon

You would be early. I am not going to invent a customer for you. What I can tell you is who does the editing: Proofed, whose own site names SoFi, Pinterest, Emeritus, Samsung, Substack, Forbes Books, the Financial Times, Fujifilm and JP Morgan Chase as clients of its editing business. None of them uses Austen and I am not suggesting they do. Being early is why the pilot works the way it does: you approve every brief before anything is written, you see every edit as tracked changes, and if a piece is not right we keep working on it. That is a better protection than a logo wall.