How To Build Your UGC Portfolio While Still Getting Paid
The demand for UGC content is on the rise and the opportunity to get paid for creating content for brands is becoming more accessible. Today you don’t need to be a big celebrity, you don’t need to be a glamorous influencer, and you don’t even need to have a large audience to start working with brands: instead anyone who can stay true to their personality on camera, hone the craft of creating strong hooks and scroll-stopping content – and who knows where to look for brand collaborations has the potential to turn their content into income.
Even though it might seem inevitable to take on free work in the early stages of building up a portfolio, there are ways to achieve this without immediately giving away content for free. So let’s take a look at the rising role of UGC creators and get the low-down on where to find paid opportunities even without previous experience.
The Evolution of the UGC Creator
We are strong believers that brand marketing is moving in an increasingly democratized direction and that in the future real people getting fairly rewarded for recommending products will replace traditional advertising models. Still, it’s taken a long time for brand and creator relationships to reach this point.
There were times when major celebrity endorsements were the holy grail of brand marketing. Think of the ‘90s TV commercials and you can almost taste the perfectly chilled cans of Pepsi in the hands of the hottest celebrities of the era.
The whole point was to create this almost untouchable, highly aspirational feeling for brands that was a far cry from most people’s realities, but that you could get a tiny taste of yourself, even if just for a moment – if you bought the product.
The idea of selling products through untouchable aspiration spilled over into social media marketing a decade later as brands sought out famous faces and macro influencers for online endorsements. Even though the content now came through sponsored influencer posts on social platforms such as Instagram, rather than directly via brands themselves, the legacy of TV advertising and the notions that content needed polish and perfection carried on.
In the latter half of the decade and as we entered the “fake news” era, the tides began to turn. By 2018 some 15% of Twitter users were reportedly automated pretending to be real people, and fake followers and influencer fraud started becoming a major problem across channels (The New York Times). This naturally created frustration among genuine influencers who were working hard to create content and grow their communities organically, but nonetheless honest influencers were losing jobs to competitors using bots.
According to research by Carmichael Lynch Relate an estimated $2 billion was spent on influencer marketing by 2017, but almost one-quarter of those dollars were wasted on inauthentic content that consumers simply did not trust (ZDNet). People were starting to lose faith in the authenticity of influencer product endorsements, and society in general was becoming more aware and averse to fake online content.
By 2020, the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic had a significant knock-on effect on both the kind of content influencers could create – and on consumer attitudes towards influencer and more specifically celebrity influencer content. As people lost loved ones and adjusted to living heavily restricted and domesticated lives, content from influencers and celebrities fortunate enough to be able to self isolate in luxury holiday homes, and private yachts now felt less aspirational and more divided from reality, leading the New York Times to run a piece in 2020 entitled, “Celebrity Culture Is Burning” (The New York Times). People’s lives had turned inwards and consumers craved solidarity from creators, not impossible luxury or perfection.
This was a major turning point for brand-creator relations. Brands started to realize that consumers were looking for solidarity and that they wanted to see content from creators who better reflected their own lives (Influencer Marketing In The Pandemic Era, TAKUMI, 2021). At the same time more and more people started picking up their cameras and turning their hand to content creation. Essentially this is where influencer marketing and UGC content creation started diverging into two separate forms of marketing.
Today brands draw a distinction between the two: they work with macro, micro and nano influencers to reach into engaged and niche audiences. They also work with regular UGC creators who may or may not have established audiences, but whose content is entirely relatable to consumers, to request content that they can repurpose in wider marketing campaigns. Many creators now identify as UGC creators, and by building solid portfolios are finding opportunities to create sustainable income streams through brand relationships.
How To Start Building a UGC Portfolio
A portfolio is a must for established UGC creators because this enables brands to see a creator’s previous work and content style before commissioning any paid content.
YEAY is a great place for UGC creators to get started. This is how it works:
Brands put out content briefs based on their needs - some brands will be looking for content from more established influencers who can then share the content with their own social communities, while others will be looking for a broader pool of regular creators because they want a mix of UGC to use in marketing campaigns. So even if you are just getting started with UGC there will be opportunities.
The brief will clearly specify the payment for the requested content, and the additional payment for sharing the content on social media, if that is required.
Creators on the YEAY app receive instant notifications once a new relevant content brief is up.
Creators who choose to accept the request, follow the brief and upload content within the deadline are then paid on content delivery, with payment for sharing content paid on provision of the correct sharing link.
The landscape of content creation is changing and the demand for UGC is steadily rising. The exciting part is that getting paid for creating content for brands is no longer restricted to famous faces. Nowadays, anyone who can bring themselves to their content, craft compelling hooks, and really relate to audiences has the potential to work with brands and turn their passion into income.
Gone are the days of needing a large audience or established fame to collaborate with brands. As an amateur social media content creator, you hold the power to make a real impact. By staying authentic and focusing on developing your content creation skills, you can open doors to lucrative brand partnerships.
While building a portfolio might involve taking on some unpaid work initially, there are alternative ways to achieve this without giving away content for free right from the start. This is better for creators getting started, and prevents experienced creators from being devalued. It's important to know where to find paid opportunities and how to approach brand collaborations even if you lack previous experience.
So, embrace your creative spirit, continue to refine your content creation abilities, and be on the lookout for exciting brand collaborations. The world of UGC creators is on the rise, and with the right mindset and strategies, you can join the ranks of successful content creators who are earning income doing what they love.
Ready to get started as a UGC content creator? 👇