“We have 30 creators on the roster and not one will film for a share of sales alone.”
Creators will not film for commission only, most of the time, and the numbers say why: the median paid brief offers $100 a video, a commission-only brief offers an expectation, and the creator carries all the risk of the difference. The fix is not more creators and not a bigger percentage. It is a base for the work, per video or hourly, with the commission on top, in the same campaign. The base gets the video made. The commission gets the video made well.
Why creators won’t work for commission only
The most viewed brand post on this objection is a founder with “Have 30 or so creators.” and none willing to film for a percentage of sales alone; 45,590 views and 162 bookmarks, mostly from other brands (Bbruhis on X, 12 October 2026). A new brand on Reddit reports the same from the other end: “First we tried commission only (15%) but didnt get responses” (r/UGCcreators, 29 August 2026). Neither thread got an answer from a platform. The creator side explains it.
The creator’s math. A creator with 32,794 views on her post described a commission-only offer as all the risk on her side and none on the brand’s (byJessKay on X, 24 September 2026). She is comparing against the market: across 670 paid briefs the median advertised offer was $100 per video, with half between $50 and $200 (Pitchlo, December 2025 to November 2026). Against that, a 15 % share of sales that may never happen is a lottery ticket, and the creator knows the odds. One creator who scraped 3,820 brand programs on a commission platform says 86 % had never paid a creator a dollar (r/UGCcreators, 7 September 2026); that is one creator’s count, not an audited figure, but it is the count creators share with each other.
The payouts are small until a video wins. Lumanu’s analysis of $500 million in creator payouts found that where brands pay a share of ad spend, the median monthly payout was $22 and the average $127 (Lumanu, 2024). The top payouts were large; the typical one does not pay for an hour of filming. A creator deciding whether to film for you sees the median, not the top.
Creators pick by structure first. A creator with 34,898 plays on the post explains how she picks a deal in 15 seconds: the pay structure first, the product second (heykatiemullss on Instagram, 26 August 2026). A brief with no base is sorted out before the product is looked at.
What the brands with takers do differently
They pay a base. The largest brand-side post about commission UGC, Hector Serrano’s breakdown of the Wispr Flow program (2,078,610 views), pays creators 7 % of ad spend for as long as the ad runs, and also sets a $1,000 minimum for the first 20 to 25 videos (X, 8 October 2026). They say; those are the brand’s numbers. The point is the structure: the program everyone quotes as commission has a base in it.
An agency that runs commission programs publishes a ladder: a share never under 10 %, a core tier at 15 %, and a VIP tier at 20 % plus $5 per approved video (Phil Kiel on X, 29 October 2026). Even the agency selling commission adds a flat amount per video at the top. Lukas Pakter’s answer to the 30-creator founder the next day was that the method is not mass sampling and hoping, but a small set of creators you train and invest in (X, 13 October 2026). Training and investing is a base by another name.
And the objection from the other direction, “Why would I add to my CPA and give creators a %”, gets Pakter’s own answer: a flat fee pays the same for a careless video as for a careful one, so it rewards the wrong thing (X, 7 July 2026). Both sides are right. The base gets the video made; the share gets it made well.
The fix: a base for the work, commission for the result
The method, for a campaign that had no takers.
- Add a per-video base below the median. $50 to $80 per approved video is enough to make the hour worth filming when a real share sits on top. Approve to pay, decline costs nothing.
- Or book hours for creators you trust. An hourly session pays for time and ends in several videos; the cost per cut falls as the session produces more. Use it for the second round, once you know who delivers.
- Lower the share a little, cap it per video. Commission-only shares run high because there is no base. With a base, 15 % becomes 10 %, and a cap at the most you would scale one video to lets you say yes without fear. The full rate method is in UGC creator commission structure.
- Write the pay line in money, on a round figure. “$60 per approved video, plus 10 % of what we spend running it as a Meta ad: a $4,000 run pays you $400 more.”
- Move the winners up, not the losers out. The creator whose video scaled gets a higher share next round. Nobody’s terms get cut after a good round.
Example. A supplements brand ran commission only at 15 % of sales for three weeks: 2 applicants, 0 videos. It relaunches with a base.
| Brief | Applicants in week one | Videos | Cost before results | After two winners scaled to $4,000 of spend each |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 % of sales, no base | 2 | 0 | $0 | Nothing to scale |
| $60 per approved video plus 10 % of ad spend, capped at $500 a video | 38 | 14 approved | $840 | $800 to two creators |
$1,640 for 14 videos, two of them scaled, against three weeks of silence. Lumanu’s data gives the direction: brands pairing a flat fee with an ad spend share paid about 20 % less for content than flat fee alone, $1,800 against $2,300 on average (Lumanu). Example numbers, not a benchmark.
When commission only does get takers
Three conditions, all at once: the product already converts and you can show it; the creators have sold your category before; the count is visible to them, with the window and the payment day written down. Under those conditions, commission only is a fair offer to proven creators. As the default brief for a new brand, it is a closed door. The setup for the proven case is in commission-only UGC.
How HourlyUGC does it
On HourlyUGC, commission only is one option, not the only one. A campaign carries a base, hourly (you book hours and each session ends in videos) or per video (you pay for each approved video), with commission on top: a share of the Meta ad spend behind the video, 1 to 30 %, or a share of the sales it brings, 1 to 50 % of each order or a fixed $1 to $500 per order. Same campaign, same creator, one statement.
- The creator sees both lines before applying, the base and the share, in money.
- The base is paid on approval or at the session’s end. The share is counted by Meta or by HourlyUGC: a connected Shopify store or the Hourly Pixel, last touch within 7 days, with creator links and codes.
- Set the base to none when you want zero cost before results, and bring it back the day applicants go quiet. The campaign does not change; the line does.
- CPM and samples can sit on the same campaign: pay per 1,000 views of the creator’s organic post, and ship the product.
With commission, the creator gets paid when you run their video as an ad and it spends or sells, so they work to make the video that wins. The base is what gets them to start.
Proof
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.” Kitsch runs its creator program on HourlyUGC; the workflow is in the Kitsch case study.
Next step
Start a campaign on HourlyUGC with a per-video base under the median and a share of ad spend on top, capped per video. Watch the applications come in that week. The whole family of mixes is in hybrid UGC payment.