What creators ask about UGC on Reddit, answered

The seven questions that come back every week

Take the screenshots away and the recurring questions are remarkably consistent, whichever subreddit or Discord they surface in. Short answers first, then the two that deserve their own section.

Notice what is missing from that list. Almost nobody asks how to write an invoice, chase a late payment, or word a licence term, which are the three things that decide whether this pays rent.

• Is any of this actual work?It is, in the narrow sense that brands pay for footage and licence it like any other asset. It is not a job in the sense of a rota or a figure that lands on the same day each month.
• How many followers before a brand replies?Fewer than the comment sections assume. The distribution further down this page is the whole argument, and it is not close.
• What do I charge for one video?Nothing, until you know how long the brand may run it and where. Length of licence moves a quote more than length of footage does.
• Do I need a course?No. Every craft skill in this job comes from watching your own clips back and noticing the three seconds where you would have scrolled.
• Is the Canva UGC thing real?Partly. Old postings get screenshotted and recirculated until one opening looks like ten. Nobody here works for Canva and there is no template shop on this site, so trace a listing to its source before paying anybody for access to a list.
• Why is nobody answering my emails?Usually because the email is about you. A brand scans the first line for its product name and the deliverable, and stops reading if neither appears.
• Is it too late to start?The generic end of this market is being automated and the specific end is not. Which end you occupy is a decision about your work, not a date on a calendar.

Is it legit, and the shapes the grifts take

The format is legitimate. Footage gets commissioned, licensed and run as advertising, which is an ordinary commercial transaction with an unglamorous paper trail. What sits around it is a predictable set of grifts, and none of these is an exotic edge case; a beginner will meet two of them inside a month.

One test covers most of it. Ask for the fee, the deliverable and the usage term in a single email. Anybody who will not put those three things in writing is not going to behave better once you have filmed.

1. A fee to be consideredNo brand charges you for the chance to be shortlisted, and no legitimate marketplace charges at the application step either.
2. A course sold as accessThe promise is a list of brands hiring right now. The list is a scrape of public contact pages, it ages within weeks, and you could have built it in an afternoon.
3. Product instead of a fee, then a scriptGifting is a real arrangement for a cheap product and an unscripted post. The moment a brief specifies hooks, run time and ad usage, it is a paid job with the payment quietly removed.
4. Overpayment and reimbursement loopsYou are sent more than agreed and asked to wire back the difference, or told to buy the product yourself against a promised refund. Both end with your money somewhere else.
5. An agreement with no term and no territoryOften laziness rather than malice, and the outcome is identical: your face runs in paid social for three years on a one-video fee. The contract template on this site exists for those two lines.
6. A number that is only ever spokenA figure agreed on a call is not a figure. If a one-paragraph scope in an email feels like too much friction for them, the invoice will feel that way too.

The follower question, settled with the distribution

Threads answer this with whoever turned up to comment, which is a sample of people willing to post about themselves. The shape of a real pool being searched by brands looks different.

7,449 creators here, near enough 31%, have not yet crossed a thousand followers. The midpoint of the whole set is 1,706. A further 47% land between one and five thousand, and only 10.8% get past ten thousand. Every one of those accounts cleared the same filming test before it was kept, so this is not a pile of hopefuls; it is the pool a live search returns.

That does not make followers worthless. They start to matter the instant a brand wants the post on your grid instead of a file in their ad account, which is a different product at a different price. For footage work the purchase is a clip plus a licence naming where it may run, and a locked account blocks you harder than a small one ever will.

Why rate threads disagree so violently

Two creators in the same category can both be telling the truth and be four hundred dollars apart, because the word video in those threads covers jobs that barely resemble each other.

The spread comes out of scope: one edited cut or three openings, a delivered file or the raw clips as well, organic use for a season or paid rights for a year, a same-day unboxing or a four-week check-in that occupies a month of your filming. Our own rate calculator models a 15 to 30 second piece at an estimated $150 for an account under 5k and $650 for one above 100k, before any usage is added; a year of paid rights is estimated at another $150 to $650 depending on the tier. Nobody in a thread says which of those they were quoting.

Currency and country add a second layer, and self-selection adds a third. The creator who wins an unusually good rate posts the screenshot; the creator who was quoted badly says nothing at all. Treat every figure you read as one scope, in one country, on one date. That includes the estimates above, which exist to help you build a quote and prove nothing about what anyone was actually paid.

What the threads get right that guides skip

Forum answers are unreliable on numbers and unusually good on texture, because the people writing them are describing a week they have just had rather than a topic they were assigned.

They are right that chasing money is half the job. Thirty and sixty day terms are normal, invoices get buried in an inbox, and the marketing person who briefed you has no control over the payment run. Attach the invoice to the delivery, not a fortnight later, and put a due date on it.

They are right that product is not income. A cupboard of moisturiser does not cover rent, and the sixth gifted bottle is worth less to you than the second was.

They are right that being on camera costs something that never appears on an invoice, and that reading the comments under a brand’s ad featuring your face is a specific unpleasantness worth deciding about in advance.

They are also right to distrust any figure with no scope attached, this page included. What a thread cannot show you is the base rate: how many people pitched all month and heard nothing, because those people do not post. We hold no reply-rate data and will not invent any, which is why every number here describes who is in the index rather than what happened to them.