How to Become a UGC Creator in 30 Days: The Week-by-Week Plan I Give Friends

To become a UGC creator you need three things: a handful of short videos that look like ads, a page to show them on, and a steady habit of pitching brands. No followers, no agency, no expensive camera. The plan below gets you all three in 30 days.

Whenever a friend says “I want to try UGC,” I send her a version of this. It’s not a course. It’s the four weeks I did this spring, cleaned up, with the boring specifics that nobody puts in a TikTok.

Before you start: this plan assumes about an hour a day, a phone, and one product niche. Pick a niche now. Mine is beauty and wellness, and within that mostly skincare, because it’s what’s in my bathroom anyway. “Beauty” is fine; “skincare + body care” is better; “everything” is not a niche.

Week 1: film before you’re ready

Goal: three spec videos that look like ads.

• Day 1: Pick three products you already own and genuinely like. Different types if you can: a cleanser, a lip product, a candle or a supplement.
• Day 2: Set up your corner. Window, plain wall, phone on a tripod or a stack of books. My whole setup guide is here, but the short version is: face the window, clear the background.
• Day 3–4: Film. One product per session, three angles each: face to camera, hands and texture, wide shot. Write the first line before you hit record (hooks that work).
• Day 5–7: Edit in CapCut. Under 30 seconds each, captions on, one clean cut every 2–3 seconds. Don’t chase perfection, chase “done.”

You’ll hate the first one. Everyone does. The third will be noticeably better, and that’s the whole point of week one.

Week 2: three more videos and a home for them

Goal: a six-video portfolio on a page you own.

• Day 8–10: Film three more in the formats you skipped. If week one was all talking head, do an ASMR texture video, a before-and-after intro, and an unboxing. Variety is what brands look for; the six formats are in the portfolio guide.
• Day 11–12: Build a one-page portfolio. Your name, “[niche] UGC creator, [city]”, the six videos, brand names if you have any, one button that says “Work with me”. A free Canva site is fine for now; a Google Drive folder is not.
• Day 13–14: Send it to two honest friends and ask one question: “Does this look like someone a brand would hire?” Fix what they say. Then stop touching it. Also: start your spreadsheet today. I started mine on day 12-ish after losing track of who I’d emailed, and I still regret the mess.

Week 3: the list and the first 20 emails

Goal: 40 brands researched, 20 pitched.

• Day 15–17: Build your list. Small brands in your niche: 10k–200k Instagram followers, a Shopify store, a founder who’s visible, and ideally already running creator-looking ads (check the Meta Ad Library). Find the right person, not info@. How I find contacts is a whole article, but a spreadsheet with brand, contact, date and status is enough to start.
• Day 18–21: Send 20 emails, five a day, each personalized with one real sentence about their product. Under 120 words, one link, one question. The template. Log every send.
• Same week: make profiles on two or three creator platforms and apply to a few campaigns. I use Insense, Cohley and Aspire, and they paid me sooner than cold email did (what each one paid).

Decide two things now, before anyone asks. First, your gifted rule: which brands you’d say yes to for product only. Mine was “brands I’d buy from anyway, up to ten, portfolio rights in writing.” Second, your paid rate. Write it in the spreadsheet. For a beginner beauty video with organic usage, $100–$150 is a fair first number (the full rates guide). Pick it so you never say it in a panic like I did.

Week 4: 20 more, follow-ups, and the first “what are your rates?”

Goal: 40 emails out, all week-3 pitches followed up, first real conversations.

• Day 22–25: Twenty more pitches, five a day. New brands, same process.
• Day 26: Follow up on every week-3 email that got no reply. One line, same thread (my follow-up templates). This is where most first replies come from, including my $300 one.
• Day 27–30: Answer replies within a few hours. When a brand offers product, check it against your gifted rule and say yes or a warm no. When a brand asks for rates, send the number you decided in week 3 plus a one-line explanation of what it includes.

What the numbers usually look like

From my own month one and from friends who actually did all four weeks:

Cold email on its own is slow: across my first four months I emailed about 150 brands and 10 replied. That’s why week 3 also has you applying on creator platforms and answering brands in your DMs, which is where a lot of my early work actually came from (the full breakdown by source).

My month one: seven gifted collabs, two paid videos ($100 and $300), and a page that suddenly had real brand names on it. So it’s completely normal to end day 30 with a portfolio, 40 pitches out, a few boxes on your doorstep and not much money yet. The paid deals usually land in week 5 or 6, from a follow-up or from a gifted brand coming back. The people who quit on day 30 are the ones who didn’t know that.

What to skip in the first 30 days

• Buying gear. A phone and a window. Kit under $200 if you must, but after week two.
• Growing your own account. Not needed. Post if you want (I do), but your followers don’t get you hired; your portfolio does.
• Pitching big brands. Sephora isn’t reading your email in month one. The indie skincare founder is.
• Contracts and LLCs and all of that. A simple agreement by email is enough for a gifted or $100 collab. Once you’re doing bigger ones, read my contract checklist.

Day 31

You’ll have a portfolio, a list, a rate, a gifted rule, and probably a few brands who are interested. That’s more than most people have after a year of “thinking about it.” From here it’s repetition: 20 emails a week, one new video a week, ask every gifted brand for a paid second round, raise your rate every five paid videos. And keep the spreadsheet. Four months later mine is the most useful thing I own.

If you want all of this as something you can tick off, the day-by-day checklist, my 25 hooks and the portfolio plan are in the free starter pack at the bottom of this page.