How to find UGC jobs, and avoid the scams

By Oleksii · Updated 9 October 2026 · 8 min read

Quick answer. Paid UGC work comes from three places: platforms that list campaigns, brands you approach directly, and agencies that hire on a brand's behalf. The scams cluster around the first and the third, and they share one tell — you are asked to give something before you are paid anything.

The three sources

Campaign platforms. Brands post briefs, creators apply or join, the platform handles payment. Fastest route in, lowest negotiation. What varies between platforms is the payment model, who verifies the views, and what they take. How this one works.

Direct outreach. You email brands you actually use. Slowest and highest effort, usually the best rates, and entirely dependent on your pitch rather than your follower count.

Agencies. They hold the brand relationship and subcontract production. Steady work when it comes, and the place where the most unpaid "tests" appear.

Four scam patterns

Gifting dressed as work. You are offered a free product in exchange for a video. That is a trade, not a job, and it is fine if you want the product. It becomes a scam when it is advertised as a paid opportunity and the payment turns out to be the item.

The paid test that never converts. You are asked to make one video unpaid "so we can see your style", with paid work to follow. The paid work does not follow. A legitimate buyer who wants to see your style looks at work you have already made.

Upfront fees. Any variation of paying to join, paying for a course to qualify, or paying for a "verification" step. Money flows to the creator in this job, never from them.

Overpayment and refund. You are sent more than agreed and asked to return the difference. The original payment reverses later. This one is old and still works.

How to approach a brand directly

Direct outreach pays best and is the slowest. It works when it is specific and fails when it is a template.

Email a brand whose product you actually use. Say which product, say one concrete thing about how you use it, and attach or link one video you have already made — ideally about that product, made unpaid. Say what you would make and what you charge. Keep it to a short paragraph.

What kills these emails: opening with your follower count, attaching a media kit, asking what their budget is, and any sentence containing "collab". Brands receive dozens of those a week and recognise them instantly.

Expect a low reply rate and send a reasonable number. One good reply from twenty is a working ratio, and the replies tend to come from smaller brands first.

What a legitimate brief looks like

Before you film anything, you should be able to answer all of these from the brief alone:

• What has to be visible, and for how long
• What you must not say about the product
• Which platform the video is for, and whether it may run on more than one
• Who owns the video afterwards and whether the brand may run it as a paid ad
• How and when you are paid, and what has to happen first
• Which disclosure label to use

A brief that cannot answer the ownership question is the one to be careful with. It is the single most common gap in informal UGC deals and the one that costs creators money later, when a video they made for one post turns up in a paid ad campaign.

The questions to ask before saying yes

"How long do you have usage rights for, and does that include paid media?" "Is this exclusive?" "When is payment due relative to delivery?" Three questions, asked in one message, and the answer tells you most of what you need to know about who you are dealing with.

A buyer who will not answer them in writing is telling you something.

Where per-view work differs

When you are paid against views on your own post, the ownership question is simpler — the video stays yours because it lives on your account — and the payment question changes shape: there is no invoice, but there is a rate and a threshold you should read before joining. Both are on the campaign page here, and the view count comes from the platform's API rather than from anyone's report.

Keeping track of what you applied to

Once you are applying to more than a handful of things, keep a single list with four columns: where, when, what the terms were, and what happened. A note in your phone is enough.

It pays off in two ways. You stop re-applying to the same brand with the same email, and you start seeing which source actually produces work — which is usually not the one that feels most active. Most creators discover that one channel accounts for nearly all of their accepted briefs, and that they had been spreading effort evenly across all of them.

Common questions

Should I pay to join a platform?

No. A platform that charges creators to access work has its revenue in the wrong place — it gets paid whether or not you ever earn. Legitimate marketplaces are paid by the brands or take a share of what you earn, so they only make money when you do.

How many places should I be signed up to?

A small number you actually check beats a long list you ignore. Two or three sources plus occasional direct outreach is a workload a person can keep up with; ten accounts become stale profiles that no longer represent your work.

Is a media kit worth making?

Rarely, early on. Brands commissioning UGC want to see a video, and a PDF of statistics is a slower route to the same question. Three strong videos and one line about what the brief asked for will do more than a template deck.

What if a brand only offers free product?

That is a gifting arrangement, not a job, and it is worth taking only when you genuinely want the product or the video is a portfolio piece you would have made anyway. It still needs disclosing, because a gifted product is a material connection.

How do I know views are being counted honestly?

Ask how they are verified before joining. A per-view campaign should state the source of the numbers and the threshold a clip must cross, and your dashboard should show the figure it is paying on rather than asking you to trust a total at the end of the month.

Starting out

If you have no work to show yet, the fastest route is a platform campaign, because nobody there is asking for a portfolio. What the first campaign involves, and whether you need a portfolio at all — the short answer is later than you think.