“We paid $300 a video and nine out of ten never beat our control.”
A commission-only UGC campaign pays creators nothing for the video and a share of what the video does: a percentage of the sales it drives, a percentage of the ad spend you put behind it, or both. The nine videos that never beat control cost you samples. The one that did pays its creator well, and you are glad to pay because the money came from the result. It works when you can count the result per video, when the product already converts, and when the share and the counting are clear enough that creators believe they will be paid.
Why nine out of ten cost $300 each
A flat fee is set before anyone knows which video will work, so it is priced for the average: enough to make a creator film, whatever happens next. The winner and the eight losers cost the same. The price carries no information about results because it was fixed before there were any. The upfront fee is the part that cannot be recovered. A brand put the arithmetic in public on X (7 July 2026): 696 videos for $0 upfront, where $166 a video would have been $115K (kasramoradi). Their number; the shape is the same for any roster.
Commission flips the order. Nothing is paid until a result exists, and the payment is proportional to it. A video you scale to $10,000 of ad spend pays its creator a share of that, which is money you were spending anyway. Creators who take commission-only deals know this and self-select: the ones who apply think they can sell your product.
The fix: pay from the result
Decide what the commission pays on
| Pay on | Counted by | Fits when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales, % of each order | Your store (links, codes, pixel) or the ad platform | Creators post and link; wide catalog | Refunds, leaked codes, two counts of one order |
| Sales, fixed $ per order | Same | Narrow price band; heavy discounting | Low order value makes the number small |
| Ad spend, % of spend | Your ad account, per ad | You will run the videos as Meta ads | Spend must be matched to the right video |
| Both | Separate sources for separate results | Creators post organically and you run the ads | One order must not be paid twice |
Both shares are commission: spend share pays for being scaled, sales share for selling, and they can sit on the same video without overlap.
Set the share from your margin
Work from one order. Price, minus product cost, shipping, packaging and payment fees, is contribution margin. Decide how much of a first order’s margin the creator who brought it can have. Convert to a percent of the order and to dollars.
Example. A $45 product with $17 of contribution margin. The brand decides the creator can have up to $10 of margin on a first order: 22 % of the order, rounded to 20 %, or $9 per order. The brief says “20 % of every order; $9 on a full-price order.”
For a share of ad spend, decide what you will pay on top of media for creative that beats your own, and cap it per video at the most you would scale one video to. There is no public benchmark for the share; a TikTok post by Pakter (8 June 2026) suggests 5 to 10 % of spend, one operator’s opinion.
Commission-only shares run higher than hybrid shares because there is no base: 12 % with a $60 base, 20 % with none. The full method is in UGC creator commission structure.
Write the counting rules into the brief
This is the step brands skip. In plain words:
- Which signals count: link, code, pixel, ad platform. Which wins when two are present.
- The window: for example, last click within 7 days.
- Whose count pays, yours or the ad platform’s, and whether creators can see it.
- Refunds: commission reversed on refund, with a holding period before payment. Shopify Collabs uses a default 30-day hold, adjustable from 1 to 90 days, and cancels the commission if the order is fully refunded in that time (Shopify Help Center).
- Exclusions: leaked codes, cancelled orders.
- Payment schedule: for example, monthly, 30 days after the order month closes.
- What happens if terms change: videos already delivered keep theirs.
Write a brief that sells twice
A commission-only brief sells the product to the viewer and the deal to the creator. Include:
- The share in money, on a real order. “20 % of each order; $9 on a $45 order. Our average order was $52 over the last 90 days.”
- Proof the product sells. Conversion history, a creator who has earned.
- The counting rules, summarized in five lines.
- What you will do with the video. If it will run as an ad from your account or from the creator’s handle, say so. Running from the handle needs the creator’s permission under Meta’s partnership ads, revocable at any time (Meta Business Help Center).
- Samples. Ship the product before filming, and say so in the brief.
- The styles. A hook, three to five beats, a close, one reference video.
- Disclosure. The FTC says to disclose “if you got anything of value to mention a product” (FTC, Disclosures 101); for links, its sample wording is “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post” (FTC FAQ).
Your brief competes with paid ones: the median advertised per-video offer in Pitchlo’s report of 670 briefs (December 2025 to November 2026) was $100, and the creator asks whether your share on a realistic number of orders beats that.
Open the door instead of DMing, approve what you will run, pay on the day
- Set the door and let creators apply rather than DMing them one by one: open, by application, or invite only. Ask for an existing video or an intro video in the application. Approve applicants by hand; a small roster that believes in the product beats a large one that does not.
- Approve only videos you will run or that the creator will post with a working link and code. An approved video that never runs earns the creator nothing and teaches them your brief is a trap. Send the rest back with notes.
- Match results to creators. Build ads from the stored video so spend maps to the right creator; give each creator their link and code before they post.
- Pay on the day you said, with a statement that shows what the creator earned on: orders with dates, or spend per ad.
Example: a commission-only campaign, end to end
Example. A supplements brand with a $60 hero product and $38 of contribution margin runs commission only: 20 % of each attributed order (link and code, last click within 7 days, 30-day hold) plus 8 % of Meta ad spend on videos it chooses to run, capped at $600 per video. It ships samples to 8 approved creators; 6 deliver.
| Creator | Posted with link and code | Attributed orders | Sales commission | Run as ad | Ad spend | Spend share | Total earned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yes | 45 | $540 | Yes | $4,000 | $320 | $860 |
| 2 | Yes | 12 | $144 | No | $0 | $0 | $144 |
| 3 | Yes | 0 | $0 | Yes | $300 (paused) | $24 | $24 |
| 4 | No | 3 | $36 | Yes | $7,500 | $600 (cap) | $636 |
| 5 | Yes | 28 | $336 | No | $0 | $0 | $336 |
| 6 | Yes | 6 | $72 | No | $0 | $0 | $72 |
| Total | 94 | $1,128 | $11,800 | $944 | $2,072 |
$2,072 plus samples for six videos, 94 attributed organic orders ($5,640 in revenue) and two videos the brand chose to scale on $11,800 of spend. At a flat $300 per video the same six would have cost $1,800 before a single order. Creator 3 filmed for $24; send them the numbers and a note. Creators 1 and 4 earned enough that the next brief to them should carry a base.
Running it with a base
Nobody takes the brief. A new brand on Reddit (29 August 2026) wrote that it tried commission only at 15 % and got no replies (r/UGCcreators). A brand with thirty creators on its roster asked on X (12 October 2026) why none would film for a share of sales alone (@Bbruhis). The fix is a base, not more creators: $50 to $75 per approved video, or booked hours, with the same commission on top, in the same campaign. The base pays for the work, so the creator films; the share pays for the result, so they still film to sell.
Your ad spend is small. A share of ad spend pays creators from your media budget, so it pays little when the budget is small. Trybe’s founder has said on a podcast (31 July 2026) that the model pays off for brands spending at least six figures a month on Meta (Elevator Talks); that is their view of their model. A share of sales does not depend on spend, and neither does a base. A smaller brand runs a per-video or hourly base with commission as the extra.
How HourlyUGC does it
On HourlyUGC, commission-only is a campaign with a base of none. You add a share of Meta ad spend (1 to 30 %, optional cap per video), a share of sales (1 to 50 % of each order, or $1 to $500 per order), or both. The form shows each share in dollars on a round figure, and that is what the creator reads before accepting.
- Sales are counted by Meta or by HourlyUGC: a connected Shopify store or the Hourly Pixel, last touch within 7 days, through creator links and codes. Both counts are shown side by side; only the one you chose is paid. Trybe’s homepage describes the same choice between its own last-click attribution and Meta’s (Trybe FAQ, checked 7 November 2026).
- Spend is read per ad from your Meta account on ads built through Build Ads, matched to the source video and creator. Ads you upload by hand are not linked, so build from the stored video.
- Each video carries its own terms, fixed at upload. Change the share and the form tells you how many delivered videos keep the old one before you confirm.
- The door is yours to set: open, by application with or without an intro video, or invite only. Videos arrive in the Submissions lane with the script attached; approve what you will run.
- Samples are a line in the campaign. Creators receive them without paying anything.
- The Ads tab shows upcoming charges by video and by creator before they are taken, and creators see the term each video was delivered under.
Proof
Kitsch runs its creator program on HourlyUGC; the workflow is in the Kitsch case study. ALLSALE, Head of Growth: “The rights are ours the moment payment clears. Everything sits in one place, so the team stopped chasing invoices and files.”
Next step
Start a campaign on HourlyUGC with a base of none, a share of ad spend with a cap, and a share of sales once Shopify or the pixel is connected. Add a base for the creators whose videos win. Pricing is on https://hourlyugc.com/pricing.