“We paid an influencer a flat fee for one post and got nothing.”
A flat fee pays for the video: a fixed amount per video or per hour, settled whether or not it does anything. Commission pays for what the video does: the creator earns a share of the ad spend you put behind it, or a share of the sales it brings, as a percent of each order or a fixed amount per order. Flat fees fit when you need a known cost and a file on a date. Commission fits when you can count the result and want the creator to care about it as much as you do. You can book both in one campaign: a flat base for the work, commission for the result.
Why a flat fee buys the video and nothing after it
A flat fee is settled at upload. From that moment the creator’s incentive ends. A Wispr Flow growth lead put it plainly on LinkedIn (12 October 2026): “Traditional UGC pays a fixed fee per video and the creator’s earnings end there” (Hector Serrano). Whether the video runs for three months or dies in a folder, they were paid the same. Most videos do die: creative testing is a numbers game, and the brand carries every loss.
The second problem is what a flat fee signals to the creator. “$200 for one video” says: make one acceptable video. It does not say: make the video that sells. Those are different jobs, and the second one needs the creator to have skin in the result.
Public pricing shows how the flat-fee market has settled. Pitchlo’s UGC Pay Report, from 670 per-video briefs posted between December 2025 and November 2026, puts the median advertised offer at $100 per video, with half of listings between $50 and $200. Collabstr’s 2026 report, from more than 21,000 collaborations in 2025, puts the average UGC payout at $154. That is the price of a video that exists. Nothing in it is tied to a video that works.
The fix: pay for the result, or split the bet
Commission turns the creator’s pay into a function of what you can measure. The creator is paid when you run their video as an ad and it spends or sells. You pay for what works, and the creator works to make the video that wins.
- A share of ad spend. The creator earns a percent of the budget you put behind their video as a Meta ad. You only scale spend on a video that is converting, so the creator is paid for a video a media buyer chose to scale. One public program: a Wispr Flow growth lead’s post (8 October 2026) describes 500 to 700 UGC ads a month with creators on 7 % of ad spend for as long as each ad runs (Hector Serrano on X). Their number.
- A share of sales. The creator earns a percent of each order their video drove, or a fixed amount per order. Sales are matched to the creator by link, code, pixel or the ad platform’s report.
Both are commission. The first needs no attribution, since spend is read per ad. The second needs a way to count orders per creator.
Example. A skincare brand gets one 30-second video. It runs as a Meta ad for a month on $4,000 of spend and drives 200 attributed orders at $50.
| Model | Terms | Creator earns | Brand’s content cost per order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat fee | $150, once | $150 | $0.75 |
| Commission, share of spend | 10 % of spend | $400 | $2.00 |
| Commission, share of sales | 10 % of each order | $1,000 | $5.00 |
| Base plus commission | $75 + 5 % of sales | $575 | $2.88 |
Now the same video flops: $400 of spend, 8 orders, paused.
| Model | Creator earns | Brand’s content cost per order |
|---|---|---|
| Flat fee | $150 | $18.75 |
| Commission, share of spend | $40 | $5.00 |
| Commission, share of sales | $40 | $5.00 |
| Base plus commission | $75 + $20 = $95 | $11.88 |
The flat fee is the cheapest model when the video wins and the most expensive when it loses. Commission is the opposite. If you could predict winners you would pay flat. You cannot, so commission or a mix moves part of the bet onto the creator and pays them more when they are right.
It also changes the arithmetic of reach. One influencer post for a flat fee is one shot. Twenty creators on a per-video base plus commission are twenty shots, and you pay the commission only on the ones that land.
How to decide, per campaign
| Pay flat when | Pay commission when |
|---|---|
| You cannot yet count sales or spend per video | You can read spend per ad, or orders per creator |
| You need the asset, not the sale: site, email, product page | You will run the videos as ads or the creator will post with a link |
| You are auditioning creators with a fixed cost per upload | You want creators who believe they can sell your product |
| The brief is still moving and you want hours of iteration | Your margin can carry a share of each order |
The split is not permanent. Most brands run a first round per video to find creators, then move the ones whose videos performed onto a base plus commission, then onto commission with scale.
How HourlyUGC does it
On HourlyUGC a campaign has a base and a commission, chosen separately:
- Base: hourly (an offer of a rate and a number of hours; funds held when the offer is sent, released when the session is marked done), per video (a pool of slots; approving a video pays one slot), or none.
- Commission: a share of Meta ad spend from 1 to 30 % on ads built from the video, a share of sales from 1 to 50 % of each order or a fixed $1 to $500 per order, or both. Sales are counted by Meta or by HourlyUGC, through a connected Shopify store or the Hourly Pixel, last touch within 7 days, with creator links and codes.
- Frozen terms: the term a video carries is fixed when the creator uploads it. Change the campaign later and only new videos take the new term; the campaign tells you how many delivered videos keep the old one before you confirm.
So “flat or commission” is not a choice you make once. It is two settings on the same campaign, and the creator sees both in writing before they accept the brief.
What creators think of each
Creators price risk the same way you do. A flat fee is money for certain; commission depends on your product, your landing page and your counting being honest. Expect:
- Experienced creators to ask for a base unless your product already sells on its own.
- Questions about how sales are counted and when money arrives. Write the answer into the brief. See how to track creator sales.
- Fewer applicants on commission-only briefs. That is a filter, not a failure.
Whatever the model, a creator who posts the video on their own account must disclose the relationship. The FTC says to disclose “if you got anything of value to mention a product” (FTC, Disclosures 101). Put it in the brief.
Proof
Brands that moved from one-off fees to a system report the time saved as much as the money. ALLSALE’s Head of Growth, on HourlyUGC: “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 per-video base and a commission on top, or commission only. Change the mix for the next round once you know whose videos sell. Pricing is on https://hourlyugc.com/pricing.