How to become a UGC creator (and get your first paid brief)

Make three videos for products you already own

Your portfolio is the whole application. Pick three things in your house — a drink, an app, a pair of shoes — and make the advert each brand would want: a hook, the product doing its job, a reason to care. Nobody is checking whether you were paid for them.

Make them different from each other. One talking to camera, one voiceover over b-roll, one unboxing or demo. That range is what tells a brand you can hit a brief rather than repeat a format.

Get the technical floor right

None of this needs equipment, but a few things disqualify a video instantly:

• →Shoot vertical, in focus, with the product actually visible.
• →Record audio somewhere quiet — bad sound is the most common reason content is rejected.
• →Light your face. A window is enough.
• →Keep it short. Thirty seconds is usually plenty; the hook matters more than the length.

Know what you are selling

There are two kinds of paid UGC and they are worth different money. Per-deliverable work means the brand pays for the video and then uses it — in ads, on a product page, on their own feed. Per-view work means you post it on your own account and earn from the reach it gets.

The first is steadier. The second has more upside and more variance. Plenty of creators do both, and the brief will say which one a campaign is.

Where the first brief comes from

Applying cold is the slow route. The faster one is campaigns that are already funded and already looking, where the brief and the rate are published before you commit any time.

On Obscure Exhibit the budget is paid up front before a campaign goes live, so the money behind a brief is real before you film anything. You connect the account you post from, pick a campaign, and submit.

Why content gets rejected

Almost every rejection is one of a handful of things, and none of them are about talent. Knowing the list is most of the difference between a first brief and a repeat client:

• →The product is barely on screen, or is never actually used.
• →A required element from the brief is missing — a claim, a disclosure, a hashtag.
• →The audio is unusable, which cannot be fixed in the edit.
• →It is horizontal, or the wrong length for where it is going.
• →It makes a claim about the product the brand cannot legally stand behind. If the brief did not say you could say it, do not say it.

Usage rights, from your side

Being paid for a video is not the same as handing over unlimited use of your face forever. A brand that intends to run your content as a paid advert — in several markets, for a year — is buying something considerably larger than a single post, and that belongs in the rate.

Read what the brief says about usage before you film. If it is silent and you care, ask. This is the single most common thing new UGC creators give away without realising they had something to give.

Getting paid, honestly

Set up your payout details before your first submission is approved, not after — it is the step most people leave until they have already earned something, and it is the one that delays the money.

Rates vary enormously by product, format and whether usage rights are included. Do not take a number from a guide as a going rate; look at what live campaigns are actually paying.