r/UGCcreators

Greetings all. Been doing this for a few months and have only a few gifted projects to show. My question has to do with generating leads. We tried Bento and was very disappointed in the error rate of contacts (wrong email addresses)
Fiverr has zero inquiries, except for a couple of scams.
Cohley - we have submitted 50+ briefs with zero interest.
Just creates accounts for Billo and Insense, we will see if these work.

Is there some other source of business that I have not mentioned? Thanks for any tips.

Hi everyone!

So for context, I’ve been a UGC creator, full time, for about seven months now. I’ve gotten deals on all the Apps, and even had some personal clients move off of platforms.

I had this one client who I found here on Reddit. I had sent them a contract, we spoke about what was needed, expected, etc.

All was great, I sent over the videos, contract was signed beforehand. They asked for a revision (asking for very minor adjustments like caption placement, wording) I sent over the revision and didn’t hear from them for a week. I sent a follow up, still no answer. Another follow up, still nothing. Three weeks later I reached out and said per the contract we had signed, the payment will start incurring late fees soon and we should get this settled before then.

They come back a day later and say they can’t use my content because it was way different than what they usually post (it wasn’t, I did extensive research to make sure my videos were on brand). They said they won’t be paying because they are unusable.

I sent back a message saying how they had over a month since the videos were sent to not only ask for revisions, but bring up this concern to me as well. I politely and professionally explained how me delivering the videos and revisions were all per our contract, and same with the ideas and that if they did not think they were portable, they had ample time to let me know so I could adjust. Therefore, I believe the payment is still very much valid per the contract.

They never responded to me and I’m very unsure what to do. I don’t want to pay for legal trouble because it’s been a slow month and will cost more than what the contract was worth.

Any advice and opinions are appreciated as I am lost and frankly, quite angry. What should I do now?

Hi everyone! I am looking to start UGC with 36k Tiktok followers although from what im seeing, followers arent too important. I do talking head videos at my desk about travel, and havent done anything product wise so im going to work on getting a few videos up.. in the mean time I would love to find some platforms that I can sign up for to start looking at/applying for opportunities? I know others have asked this, TBH there are several posts BUT.. each have a couple comments here and there and not all are actual platform suggestions and I got overwhelmed reading them all 🥹

Actually, I do cruise line comparisons, resort recommendation and excursion recs.. would that be considered good for a portfolio?

Is anyone else frustrated with the direction UGC jobs are heading?

When I first started doing UGC, the whole idea was simple: brands paid creators to make content that the brand would post on its own channels or use in ads. You didn't need a following because you weren't being hired as an influencer. You were being hired to create authentic-looking content.

Lately, though, it feels like so many "UGC" opportunities require you to:

• Create new TikTok/Instagram accounts
• Post the content yourself
• Get a certain number of views before you're paid
• Earn bonuses based on performance

At that point, isn't that closer to influencer marketing or affiliate marketing than traditional UGC?

I'm not saying those opportunities are inherently bad. I just feel like they're being labeled as UGC when they're asking for something very different.

Curious if anyone else has noticed this shift or if it's just me.

Hey everyone! I’m someone with plenty of on camera experience, as well as professional filming and editing experience. I’m confident I could create nice looking content, but my question is, is it worth pouring time into getting into UGC if I don’t have any kind of following? Do I need to make a TikTok account and rack up followers just filming products at home or is a portfolio more important than social numbers to start with?
And how does one find people/brands to pay them to create UGC? Are there databases, websites, etc.? I’m completely new I’ve just send creators make ridiculous amounts of money and I’m in a pinch financially.

🥹just wanted to celebrate my FIRST UGC deals this week!!! I can’t believe I was able to receive not only a mattress but a gaming chair!

I've been digging into whitelisting/usage-rights deals and it looks like nobody on the creator side actually checks whether brands stop running ads when the paid window expires. Brands have whole tools to track this internally while [UGC]creators have a spreadsheet at best.

I'm genuinely curious about:

• How do you track when each deal's usage window ends?
• Have you ever caught a brand running your stuff past expiry? How'd you find out?
• Did you do anything about it, or was it not worth the hassle?

I'll manually check the Meta Ad Library for the first few people who reply with a brand name + expiry date and tell you if anything's still live. Free, no catch.

I want to see how common this is.

where do most of your paid collabs come from? cold outreach? platforms? linkedin? somewhere else? genuinely curious because i feel like i'm looking in the wrong places 😅

I couldn’t not share this story. A big international brand I’ve been eyeing for months posted a UGC creator call for a gifted collab. I thought let’s contact them and see if we can start a long-term partnership because I love this brand.

This is how it went (TLDR version)

- me: pitching strategic content (because some of their content was honestly boring with terrible hooks and too slow pacing and they could do so much better for this product)

- brand sends generic email with an application form for a GIFTED collab, asking for:

+ 2 edited videos + 2 photos + all the raw footage (+ some very specific shotlist requests) + ad usage rights w/o specified timeline + fast turnaround (again, this is for a barter collab)

- I said the scope is way too broad (/too much value) for a gifted collab and if they’re open to 1 organic video (gifted) and see how it goes from there

- brand said they understand what I mean and ask me to do 1 UGC video with perpetual paid usage instead (dead serious)

I genuinely laughed when I read the response because of how disrespectful it was. They’re a huge brand who understands the value UGC gives them, but they try to get the most valuable type of usage rights for *free* ? AND more??

What would you guys have done in this situation?

I use cohley, doginfluence, pawjourr + cold email pitching w help from Claude. Is bento worth it? Are there any useful other sites besides these that brands actually use?

I focus on pet brands / pet adjacent brands only.

I’m not personally interested in getting into it, but I’m so curious how people think of ideas to do 1-2 reels per day for a month straight (and longer)! lol.

Ever since starting my “Journey” my social feeds are all “ I’ve made X amount in only 1month” I try to take that with a grain of salt because I know anything good comes with hard work. It’s been a bit disappointing when you think you’ve found someone who wants to genuinely share how they’ve made just for them to hit you with a “you’ll be successful… after you pay for my course”.

What I want to know, is there anyone out there that has ORGANICALLY made something out of ugc without having to pay your way to get a deal? I personally have had the most reach from cold pitching. Nothing paid but small leads(I’ve been sent marketing emails from big companies, had companies comment on content). If paying is the way to make it, I get it. I just want some hard cold honest feedback.

just got offered a collab opportunity for a short video as well as ugc for a fairly well known brand. this is the first time i’ve ever worked with a brand and im a fairly small creator with around 3000 followers. how much should i charge as a base rate for each?

One thing I've noticed is that many creators still think their income is limited by how many videos they can physically make.

That makes sense in traditional UGC, where you're usually paid a flat rate per deliverable. More videos = more money.

But many tech, SaaS, and AI companies don't think that way anymore. Their customer lifetime value is high, so they're less focused on buying the cheapest content and more focused on finding content that actually performs.

Because of that, I've seen more brands move toward view or performance-based payouts instead of just paying per video.

The interesting part is that your earning potential isn't just tied to output anymore; it's tied to whether your content works. If a hook performs well, you can keep scaling it. If it doesn't, you test another angle. It starts to feel a lot more like performance marketing than traditional UGC.

I kept seeing creators lose track of brand conversations across DMs, email, Notes, and spreadsheets, so I built a tool to keep the deal side organized.

It helps with:

• tracking brand leads and active deals
• organizing rates, deliverables, and due dates
• logging follow ups so conversations do not die
• tracking usage rights so creators know what brands can use and for how long

I built it for creators who are already getting inbound or pitching regularly and are tired of managing everything manually.

I am not posting this as a spam drop. I want real feedback from creators who actually deal with brand work:
What part of managing creator deals is still the biggest mess for you right now?

I've done creating my portfolio.

I've done pitching more than 30brands via email,

Reddit and DM.

I specialised in faceless Tech UGC things which are aesthetic ones.

But I still haven't received any job offers.

What should I do?

I need to do UGC things to fund my university fees.

So, I desperately want offers.