How to Get Started in UGC

UGC stands for user-generated content. A brand pays you to film something, usually a short video, and then runs it as an ad on their own channels. Your audience is not part of the deal.

That is the difference from influencer marketing. An influencer is paid for reach: the brand wants the people who follow you. A UGC creator is paid for the footage. One is a media buy, the other is a production job, and the second one is open to you on day one.

Content that looks like a person made it. Filmed on a phone, lit by a window, spoken the way people speak. A polished studio ad is something brands can already buy, and it is not what they come to UGC creators for.

The usual deliverables are 15 to 30 second video ads, product demos, unboxings, and talking-head reviews. Most briefs ask for a couple of variations of the same script so the brand can test which opening line performs.

Usage rights are part of what you are selling. The brand is paying to run your content for a period, in specific places, not to own it forever by default. If the brief does not say how long or where, that is a question to ask before you agree a fee.

Film spec content for products you already own. Pick three from your own bathroom cabinet or kitchen, and make one 20 second video for each: a hook in the first two seconds, the product doing its job, one specific reason it is good.

Put them somewhere a brand can open in one click. A Canva site, a Notion page, or a simple portfolio page all work. What matters is that the videos play without a download, and that the page loads on a phone.

Three good videos beat ten average ones. A brand watches the first, and if it is weak they do not reach the tenth.

Start with brands you already buy from. You know the product, you have an opinion about it, and the email will not read like a template because it is not one.

Find the right contact rather than the general inbox. Most brands have a partnerships or marketing address on their site, and many list a named person on LinkedIn. A pitch to info@ is a pitch to nobody in particular.

Kept has a brand research library for keeping this straight: who you found, what their niche is, who to contact, and what you noticed about them. Five brands you researched properly will out-perform fifty you found on a list.

Three or four sentences. Say what you make, reference something specific about their product that proves you have used it, state your rate or ask what their budget is, and link your portfolio.

Specific beats flattering. Telling a brand you have used their serum since January and the dropper is the thing nobody talks about says more than a paragraph about how much you love the company.

Then follow up once, a week later. Kept gives you a tracked link to include, so instead of guessing whether the email was read you can see whether they opened the page, which videos they watched, and whether they clicked through.

Four things need to be written down somewhere that is not an email thread: the fee, the deliverables, the deadline, and the usage rights. The one that gets forgotten is usage, and it is the one that costs money later when a brand is still running your video eight months on.

Kept reads a brand's email and drafts the deal from it, then lists what the email did not say. It does not guess the missing numbers. It tells you which ones to go back and ask about before you agree.

After delivery there is an invoice and a licence window. Both are things you can track by hand, and both are things people stop tracking around the fourth deal.