How do I know if a brand pays for UGC?

Check the Meta Ad Library for creator-style video ads, look for an influencer or creator marketing hire on LinkedIn, and look for a "creators" or "collabs" page. Two of the three usually means budget exists.

What size beauty brand is best for UGC creators?

Roughly 20k–500k Instagram followers with their own online store. Big enough to have an ad budget, small enough that the person who buys content will read your email.

Do big brands like Sephora brands pay UGC creators?

Yes, but usually through agencies and platforms, with rosters and slower processes. They are worth pitching after you have a portfolio with a few smaller brands on it.

Where do you find lists of brands that work with UGC creators?

Build your own from the ad libraries and your niche, or start from a curated list. My free list of 50 beauty brands that pay creators is built from my own pitching data.

Which Beauty Brands Actually Pay UGC Creators? 7 Signals I Check Before I Pitch

The question I get more than any other, by a lot: “which brands should I pitch?” And the honest answer is that I can’t give you a magic list that works forever, because brands change budgets every quarter. What I can give you is the way I check, which takes five minutes and has saved me from hundreds of pointless emails. Then, yes, there’s a list at the bottom.

Why this matters more than the pitch

Early on I spent a month emailing brands that were never going to pay. Beautiful brands, brands I loved, brands with 2 million followers and a customer-content hashtag. Zero replies. Not because my email was bad, but because they had no line item for creators. They reposted customers for free and that was their strategy.

Meanwhile a random 40k-follower body-scrub brand replied in an hour and paid $250. The difference wasn’t the pitch. It was that one brand bought content and the other didn’t. So now I check first.

The 7 signals

1. Creator-style ads in the Meta Ad Library

The biggest one. Go to the Meta Ad Library, search the brand, filter to active ads. If you see vertical videos of regular-looking people talking to camera, doing texture shots, unboxings, “I tried it for 2 weeks” formats, that’s UGC. They’re paying someone for those. Might as well be you.

If every ad is a polished studio shot of the product on a marble slab, they’re not buying UGC yet. Not never, but not now.

The TikTok Creative Center works the same way for TikTok ads.

2. Someone with “influencer” or “creator” in their title

LinkedIn search: [brand] influencer. If a human is employed to manage creators, there’s a budget, because you don’t hire someone to manage free product. Bonus signal: the role was posted or filled in the last six months, which means the program is growing.

3. A “creators,” “collabs” or “work with us” page

Not an affiliate page. Not an “ambassador” program that’s really a discount code. An actual page or form for content creators. Even a line in the footer counts.

4. Different faces in their content

Scroll their Instagram and their ads. If you see many different real people, in real homes, that’s a brand that buys UGC regularly. If it’s one model in the same studio, they’re not.

5. The size sweet spot

Roughly 20k–500k Instagram followers and their own online store (Shopify, usually). Under 20k they often can’t pay yet. Over 500k, they’re often on agencies and platforms, and your cold email is one of 400. The middle is where a founder or a small marketing team makes fast decisions.

I still pitch big brands, but later, once my portfolio has a few mid-size names on it.

6. A recent launch or a seasonal push

New product in the last 60 days, or a holiday set coming? Brands need content before launches, and they’ll pay for it. A pitch that says “I saw you’re launching the body oil in October” reads very differently from “I love your brand.”

7. They’ve been in a Sephora / Ulta / Target expansion story

Retail expansion means a bigger marketing budget and pressure to prove sell-through. These brands buy a lot of content in the six months after the announcement. I keep a “recently expanded to retail” column for this reason.

The red flags (don’t waste your Tuesday)

Only reposts customer photos with a branded hashtag and no ads. Their “creator strategy” is free.
“Ambassador program” that’s an affiliate code with 10% commission. That’s not UGC, that’s sales.
Inactive account, no posts in a month or two. Budget’s frozen or the team is gone.
Every ad is studio-polished and has been the same for a year.
The only contact is a form or info@ and there’s no visible human on LinkedIn or Instagram. Possible, but low odds.

Scoring, the way I do it

Each signal is a point. Five or more: pitch this week. Three or four: pitch, but expect gifting talk and be ready with my “we only gift” reply. Two or fewer: skip, revisit in six months.

That’s my whole spreadsheet’s “score” column. It’s simple and it’s why my reply rate went from basically nothing to 10–15%.

How I built the database

Two years of this. Every brand I researched, pitched, got a reply from, or worked with is in one Google Sheet: brand, size, category, contact, score, what they said, what they paid. It started as 40 rows in week three and now it’s a few hundred beauty and wellness brands with real contact roles and notes like “paid $300/video, wants ASMR, launches in spring.”

It’s the most valuable thing in my business, more than any video. Because a good pitch to the wrong brand is worth nothing, and an okay pitch to the right brand pays rent.

The list

I’m not going to publish the whole database here, partly because it’s my competitive edge and partly because it changes. But the first 50, the beauty brands that I’ve personally confirmed pay UGC creators, along with the role to email at each one, are free. Enter your email below and it’ll be in your inbox in a minute, together with the pitch template that got the replies.

Then go check the signals on each one yourself. Brands change, and knowing how to look is the skill that lasts.