UGC portfolio examples, section by section

Three layouts for three starting points

The layouts below are composites we wrote so you can copy them. They are not screenshots of anybody's page, and no creator is named here on purpose. A structure you can rebuild tonight is more useful to you than a picture of somebody else's branding, and it is fairer to the people whose pages would have been used as exhibits.

Layout one, the cold start. A single scroll, four screens deep. Screen one holds a name, a category line, and one vertical clip playing on its own. Screen two holds two more clips side by side on desktop and stacked on mobile, each with a two line note saying what the piece was practising. Screen three lists formats and lengths as a short menu, then a filming conditions line: phone model, window light, a kitchen and a bathroom available. Screen four is an email address and the languages you film in. Nothing about passion, no timeline of your career, no headshot the size of a poster. This layout suits the 31% of the index sitting under a thousand followers, because it never invites a comparison it would lose.

Layout two, one job told properly. Same skeleton, different weight. The paid piece takes the whole first screen with the brand named and the scope written out underneath in one sentence: what was shipped, what you delivered, how many hooks, how long it took. Screen two carries the self-set work under a heading that says so, so nobody has to guess which was commissioned. Screen three is the terms block, and it can now be specific because you have actually run a job: revision rounds, turnaround from delivery of the product, what you charge separately for. One real scope, described precisely, reframes the rest of the page as practice for a thing you have already done once.

Layout three, a year of work, sorted by format. Now the grid is the problem rather than the content. Group by what a brief asks for instead of by date: talking head, unboxing, demonstration, before and after, photo set. Three clips per group at most, with the group heading naming the format in the words a brand uses. Add a filter or a jump menu if your host supports one. Retire pieces rather than accumulating them; a page with eleven clips and no grouping makes a marketer scroll for the format they need and give up halfway. This layout only works once you have the volume to be choosy, and it is the point where most creators finally delete their first three uploads.

All three open on a single vertical clip and close on a plain email address. Those two positions never change.

One body lotion clip, presented two ways

Take a 22 second clip of a body lotion applied straight after a shower, pumped once into a palm, worked up a shin, then a hand pressed on the skin to show absorption. The footage is fine. Here it is presented so a brand passes, and presented so a brand replies.

The version that loses the job: it sits fifth on the page under the heading Recent Work. The file is called Untitled_final2.mp4. It opens on two seconds of black before the shot starts, it was exported horizontally so the phone footage runs letterboxed between grey bars, and the music is loud enough that the reader mutes the tab and never hears you speak. The note underneath reads "so happy to have worked with this amazing brand, loved the results!" A marketer learns nothing from any of it except that editing decisions are apparently optional.

The version that gets a reply: it sits first. The still frame a reader sees before pressing play is the pump mid press, product in frame, hand in shot. It is vertical, full bleed, audio levelled to the same loudness as the other clips. The note underneath reads: "Body lotion, 22 seconds. Filmed in a rental bathroom with one overhead bulb, no light kit. Hook A of three from one setup. Product in frame by the second second, absorption shot at the end for the claim." Same skill, same footage, same afternoon of work. The second version is a document a brand can price.

Notice which details did the persuading. Not the adjectives. The bulb, the second count, the number of hooks off one setup, and the fact that you knew the absorption shot was there to carry a claim rather than to look pretty.

What a marketer skips, and what gets read twice

The person opening your page is usually working from a shortlist and has several more tabs waiting. In the deepest category we index, beauty, there are 4,550 qualified creators, so the competition for that attention is not theoretical. Assume ninety seconds, spent unevenly.

Skipped almost entirely: the About Me paragraph, the logo wall, a testimonial with no name attached, a colour palette or mood board, anything describing you as passionate, and any figure the reader has no way of checking, which covers most of the numbers creators put on these pages.

Read twice: the deliverables menu, because it tells them whether to write you a brief at all. The turnaround line, because a launch date already exists. Whether the audio is yours, because an ad cannot ship on borrowed sound. The caption under the clip that happens to match the format they came looking for. And the first two seconds of the top clip, which is the only piece of your actual craft most of them will ever watch.

• One clip, autoplaying, above everythingIf the reader has to choose what to watch first, you have given away the only decision you fully control.
• Format words in the headingsTalking head, unboxing, demonstration, before and after. These are the terms a brief is written in, so they are the terms a reader searches your page for.
• A caption that names a constraintOne window, no tripod, a shared kitchen, a wriggling dog. Constraints are proof of delivery in a way that adjectives never manage.
• The email in plain textNot a contact form, not a direct message request. The marketer is copying an address into an outreach sheet, and a form breaks that step.

The block almost every page leaves out

Nearly all of these pages describe what the creator gives. Almost none describe what the creator needs. That missing block is the fastest thing you can add today, and it reads as experience because only people who have shipped work know what to put in it.

Write five or six lines. What has to arrive before filming starts, and how many days you need after it lands. Whether you want a shot list or a full script, and which one produces better footage from you. Who supplies the hook lines. Whether the product is consumed during filming and therefore cannot be returned. What happens if it arrives damaged or in the wrong shade. One sentence on rights as a default, for example that quotes cover organic use by the brand and that paid usage is priced separately by term.

This block also filters. A brand that wants a full script delivered in 24 hours with perpetual paid rights bundled in at no extra cost will read those lines and self-select out, which saves you two days of email. The ones who stay have already agreed to how you work before the first message arrives.