UGC or influencer work: two different jobs, and you can do both

The actual difference

An influencer posts to their own audience. What the business is buying is the audience, and the content is how it reaches them.

A UGC creator makes content the business uses on its own channels: its feed, its ads, its website. Your audience is not part of the transaction. What is being bought is the footage.

That is why a UGC creator can work with brands far larger than their following would suggest. Nobody is counting.

What gets you the work

For influencer collabs the question is who follows you. For UGC it is whether the footage is usable, and that is judged on things you control: framing, light, pacing, whether the edit holds together.

A tight portfolio of ten pieces you shot properly will get you further than a large account with nothing that looks deliberate.

Understand the usage rights before you shoot

This is the part that is worth reading carefully every time, because it is the part with money in it.

• Where the content can be used. Organic posts only, or paid advertising as well.
• For how long. A perpetual licence is worth considerably more than three months.
• Whether it is exclusive, meaning you cannot use the same footage in your own portfolio.

Building a showreel out of real venues

The hard part of starting in UGC is that you need work to get work. Collabs solve that: a real venue, a real brief, a real deadline, and something at the end you are allowed to show.

Shoot for the portfolio you want rather than the one you have. If you want to be hired for food, the next four should be food.