User Generated Content (or UGC) has become an exceptional marketing tool in recent years. Brands use it to improve their conversion rate and, at the same time, build brand reputation and customer loyalty.
As we explain in our article on what UGC is and how brands use it, this is semi-professional content that stands clearly apart from traditional online advertising.
It is normally produced by a specialist — the UGC content creator — and used by brands both on their own channels organically and to run paid advertising campaigns aimed at building trust in the brand or providing testimonials for a specific product or service.
The reason for its popularity is simple: UGC is content that looks like it was made by an ordinary customer.
That is also why anyone reasonably comfortable with filming video and the basics of digital marketing can become a UGC creator. The job is to create content that shows a product or service at its best — how it works, what it does for you, and what buying it actually feels like — in a form a brand can use.
At the same time, the content has to look like it was made by a real person who bought the product and wanted to share the experience.
By now you understand why so many brands turn to UGC creators for the content behind their marketing. The question you are probably asking is how much you can actually earn making it.
So in the next few sections we will go through the average prices and rates charged by a beginner creator and by an experienced one, so you have as much information as possible if you decide to take up this profession.
Average price and rate for a beginner UGC creator
Before listing any figures, it is worth focusing on three things: your status as a self-employed professional, the type of content, and the channel it will be published on.
On the first point: a UGC creator is a freelancer, and normally gets paid against an invoice for services rendered. The exact obligations depend on where you are based — registration, tax status and how you declare income vary from country to country — so check what applies where you live before you start issuing invoices.
What is true everywhere is that creator income is getting more scrutiny, not less: both in terms of responsibility for what you publish and how sponsored products are labelled, and in terms of declaring what you earn. Treat it as a business from the first paid job, not from the tenth.
You should also think about the type of content you want to specialise in and where it will be published, because different formats and lengths demand very different amounts of work.
Take a YouTube video reviewing the five best graphics cards: it runs around 10 minutes (two minutes per product), and it needs a proper filming setup and real editing time with the right gear.
A 15-second story showing the unboxing of a parcel that just arrived from a skincare ecommerce is a completely different job. The effort is far lower and there is no editing to speak of.
And a one- or three-minute Instagram Reel, YouTube Short or TikTok is different again.
Now that those three points are clear, let us look at the average rates for a beginner UGC creator working freelance for different brands.
At the start, you may well be paid in products or services — things sent to you for free specifically so you will create content the brand can use on its channels. You might receive a monthly box of new products from a cosmetics brand, or a new piece of PC hardware to review.
In some cases, especially if you also publish the content on your own channels and have a following, you can ask for a fee as well: typically a few hundred euros.
As a reference point, a beginner UGC creator can ask up to €100 for a photo for Instagram or Facebook, while the fee rises to around €200 for a short video for Instagram or TikTok.
For YouTube the picture is slightly different, because it involves video editing that often demands real craft. A UGC creator working on YouTube, even a beginner, can ask €300 or more for a video.
These are obviously average rates, and the trick to increasing what you earn and becoming an experienced creator is learning to sell your professionalism — which is what the next section is about.
Average price and rate for an experienced UGC creator
Now let us look at the average rate asked by an experienced UGC creator. Before we get to the figures, it is worth understanding what makes a client see you as experienced in the first place, and how to read a sector so you can raise your rates over time.
To be treated as an expert and charge accordingly, you need to be able to document the work you have done. How? The answer is fairly simple: by building a portfolio full of solid work made for different brands, and by growing the reach of your own channel where you publish what you create.
Do those two things and the whole conversation with a client changes. Before, only your word counted, and the client compared your fee against other people's because they had no evidence of your work. Now the situation is completely different.
A portfolio of videos and content you have already made, case studies showing better retention and higher conversion rates, and the way you handle the relationship, together let you ask the fee you want from every brand that comes to you.
It also pays to understand how your client makes money. Are they selling something people buy again within weeks, or once every few years?
Take make-up products against PC hardware. In the first case customers repurchase fairly often, perhaps ordering from the same online store every month. With hardware, the same customer might buy again three years later, if at all.
That is why you should understand your client's business model before you quote: it tells you what their margin looks like, and lets you ask for a share of it based on the sales your content can realistically generate.
Once you are an experienced UGC creator, free products stop being enough and rates climb considerably. You can ask whatever you think you are worth, but as a reference, in markets where the profession is well established a product review video on YouTube can be paid as much as €10,000, while videos and photos for Instagram, Facebook and TikTok top out around €3,000.
Those sound like very large numbers, but to reach that level you have to be able to show the visual quality of what you make, your ability to communicate on camera, and the numbers — the lift in sales and retention you generated for previous clients.
Obviously a restaurant is never going to pay you that to film a Reel of one dinner. But a free meal and €200 for an evening is already a decent result.
As you go on you accumulate work you can point to, and that is what opens the door to the bigger brands, online and offline, who reach the figures above readily enough when the content moves their conversion rate.
Work on your portfolio, get experience, and experiment: with time, the numbers that look astronomical today become fair payment for the work you put in.
