How to Get UGC Brand Deals: The 6 Routes That Got Me 18 Paid Deals in 4 Months (Ranked)

“How do I get brand deals?” is the question I get most in DMs, and the honest answer is “from six places at once, in a specific order”. After four months of UGC I went through my tracking sheet and counted where every paid deal actually came from. Here’s the breakdown, what each route costs you in time, and the order I’d run them in if I were starting over on Monday.

The six routes, with my numbers

Eighteen paid deals, done or contracted, plus about fifteen gifted collabs. Two things jump out of that table every time I look at it:

• Platforms and direct outreach are the whole game early on. Thirteen of eighteen deals.
• Inbound only starts after the portfolio has names on it. My first inbound brand found me through this website, liked the portfolio and asked for a monthly content pack. That couldn’t have happened in month one, because there was nothing on the page yet.

A note on how I counted: the sheet logs brand, status and outcome, not always the channel, so the direct-outreach numbers are reconstructed from my email and Instagram history. Treat them as close, not exact.

Route 1: creator platforms (fastest money)

Brands post a brief with a budget, you apply, you deliver inside the platform, you get paid. No email-finding, no pitching. My platform jobs ran from $150 to $600, and the first one paid out within a month of making the profile.

The catch is volume: once your profile has real videos, expect roughly one hire per ten applications. Apply to campaigns you genuinely fit, write two specific lines about how you’d shoot the brief, and reply fast when a brand messages. What each platform actually paid me, and how I get picked. Platform by platform: Insense, Cohley and Aspire.

Route 2: direct outreach by email, brand forms and Instagram DMs (slower, but it builds clients)

Cold email, the brand’s creator form, or an Instagram DM. This is where my repeat clients came from and where almost all the gifted collabs started. It’s also the slowest route: 150 brands pitched, 10 replies, 5 deals from email alone, and the deals that did close took two weeks to a month from first email to payment.

The whole system is three articles: finding the right email, the pitch template and the follow-ups. Two things I learned the hard way:

1. Pitch brands that already buy creator content. Running video ads in the Meta Ad Library, someone with “creator” in their title, a creators page on the site. The seven signals I check.
2. Founder-led brands are great when the founder has a marketing or PR background and doesn’t film their own content. Founders who are influencers themselves almost never buy UGC; they are the content. Newly launched brands in Sephora replied best of all my segments.

Route 3: gifted collabs that turn paid

Not a separate channel, but it deserves its own line: a good number of my paid deals came from brands I’d first worked with for product. The playbook is simple: film the gifted video like a paid one, wait for the brand’s reaction, then offer paid work with a number in the same email. The exact email I sent. And if you are still at the “how do I even get product” stage, how to get PR packages from beauty brands with a small account is the step before this one.

Route 4: inbound

Two paid deals and one gifted in four months, and the pace is picking up: a new brand writes to me about every two weeks now. Where they come from: the portfolio page on this site, tagged posts on Instagram, and brands that saw my video on another brand’s feed. You can’t force this one; you can only make it possible by keeping the portfolio current and putting the link everywhere. How to make brands find you.

Route 5: smaller marketplaces and agencies

Beyond the big three platforms there are smaller marketplaces that post one-off campaigns. Two of my paid deals came from those. One more came through a marketing agency running a US launch for a brand; they found me, briefed me, and paid on their own schedule. Agencies are worth saying yes to: the brief is usually the clearest you’ll ever get. The smaller marketplaces, with my numbers on each, are Collabstr, JoinBrands and Popular Pays; the agency story, and whether you need one, is in UGC agencies for creators.

What didn’t work (yet)

• Events. I’ve been invited to brand events, and they’re lovely, but zero deals so far. They’re for relationships, not bookings.
• A signed contract with no product. One brand signed an agreement and never shipped the product, so the deal never happened. Nothing to do about it except not count the money before the box arrives. (And no brand has ever failed to pay for delivered work.)

The order I’d run them in

If you’re starting from zero, this is the sequence, and the timing comes from my first-30-days plan:

1. Week 1: six spec videos, one page. Nothing else works without this. The starter set.
2. Week 2: platform profiles + the brand list. Make profiles on two or three platforms the same week you build your list of brands to pitch.
3. Weeks 2–4: apply and pitch in parallel. Three to five platform applications a week, 10–15 direct pitches a week, follow-ups on day 4 and day 9.
4. Say yes to a few gifted collabs from brands you’d buy from anyway, and film them like paid jobs.
5. Month 2: ask gifted brands for paid work, raise the rate for new ones. What to charge.
6. Month 3+: keep the portfolio updated so inbound can start, and send a thank-you with a next idea after every delivery. Repeat clients are the cheapest deals you’ll ever get.

My first month on exactly this plan was seven gifted collabs and two paid videos. Month two was my first $1,000. The deals didn’t come from one clever trick; they came from running two routes at once, every week, and writing everything down.

If you want a head start on the “which brands” part, my list of 30 beauty brands that take creator applications is free at the bottom of this page, with the form or creator inbox for each one. And the actual collabs, as they happen, are on my Instagram.