Editor Agreement

You work for yourself

You are an independent contractor. You are not an employee of MontageU, you decide what to charge, when to work and which jobs to take, and you may work anywhere else you like at the same time. Nothing here creates employment, a partnership or an agency.

That also means your taxes are yours. Nothing is withheld from what we send you, and you get the tax forms your payment processor is required to issue.

Where you have to be

The United States, for now. That is where our payment processor lets us pay people and where we can report the tax correctly. If you are somewhere else you will not be able to finish payout setup, and so cannot be paid, which is why we say it here rather than letting you find out at the end of a job.

What comes out of a job

The client pays the price you quoted, in full, with nothing added on top. Two things come out of your side of it: our 15 percent commission, and the card processing fee charged on that payment.

The processing fee depends on the card the client used, so the exact figure is known once the payment goes through, and you are shown it then. Quotes show an estimate at the usual domestic rate before that.

On a job that is refunded or cancelled there is no payment to you and so no fee taken from you. MontageU absorbs it.

When you get paid

The client's payment is taken when the job is booked, so you never start work that is not funded. It is held until the client approves, or until 72 hours after you deliver, whichever comes first.

Approval is not payout. From that point your earnings clear for 7 days before being sent, or 3 days once you have 25 paid jobs behind you with no dispute decided against you. The wait exists because a card chargeback can arrive long after the work is delivered.

You can see what is clearing, and the date each amount is released, on your payouts page.

Money we are owed back

If a client's bank reverses a payment, or a refund or other adjustment means you have been paid money that is no longer yours, you owe that amount back to MontageU. What you owe is what reached you, not the whole charge: our commission and the processing fee are not yours to return.

You agree that MontageU may recover that amount by holding it back from earnings you have with us, including earnings from work you have not done yet, until it is settled. We will tell you what is being recovered and why, and it comes out of payouts rather than being charged to you. This is subject to applicable law.

If there is nothing to recover from, we may suspend the account while we look at it. We will not create a debt against you personally beyond what this clause covers.

Taking work, and handing it back

You may refuse any job, for any reason, before you deliver it. It does not touch your rating, your completion count or where you appear. This is deliberate: it is your protection against a client who uploads something you will not work on.

2 revisions are included in every job at the price you quoted. Anything past that is new paid work, so that you are paid for your time.

Miss a deadline you agreed, or deliver something materially different from what you quoted, and the client may be refunded in full.

The client's files

Client footage is theirs. Use it for their job and nothing else. Do not keep it, do not reuse it, and do not put it anywhere outside the job workspace.

You may show finished work in your portfolio only if that client turned that on when they booked. It is off unless they did.

Your access to a client's source files ends when the job is completed or cancelled.

What you may not upload or deliver

The prohibited content list in the Community Standards is part of this agreement. Sexual content and nudity of any kind, anything involving a minor, non consensual imagery, graphic violence, hate speech, material you do not hold the rights to, and content depicting or helping a crime.

This is not a house style preference. Our payment processor forbids adult content on marketplaces it serves, and losing payment processing would end the business for everybody working here.

Keeping it on the platform

Work that started here stays here. Taking a client off MontageU to avoid the commission is a breach of this agreement and can end your account.

It also costs you the things you came here for: there is no held payment, no approval window and no dispute process on a job done privately.

Ending it

You can stop taking work at any time, and close your account once your live jobs are finished. MontageU can suspend or close an account for breaking the content rules, taking work off the platform, misrepresenting a portfolio or abusing someone.

Earnings already cleared are still yours and are still sent. Anything still clearing is resolved through the dispute process rather than left in limbo.

Governing law

This agreement is governed by the law of the State of Texas, and the courts of Texas have jurisdiction over any dispute about it.