“We use one tool for UGC, another for affiliates and a third for ads.”
There are five ways to pay a UGC creator: by the hour, per approved video, a commission on the sales or the ad spend their video drives, a fixed amount per 1,000 views on their own post, and product. Each pays for a different thing and each has a public reference point, listed below. The reason brands end up with three tools is that most tools do one of the five. Every way to pay creators, one platform, is the fix: a campaign that carries any mix of the five, pays out on your behalf, and keeps the video, the rights and the statement in the same place.
Why paying creators got spread across three tools
A UGC marketplace pays per video. An affiliate tool pays a share of sales through a link. An ad account reports spend, which nobody pays creators from, because the deal lives somewhere else. Add PayPal for the creator who is not on any of them and a spreadsheet to reconcile, and a brand with twenty creators spends a day a month moving money and a second day answering “when do I get paid.”
The five ways to pay, with the public numbers
| Model | Pays for | Cost known before filming | Public reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Filming time; no fixed video count | Yes, rate × hours | No dataset. Influee (18 April 2025) calls hourly less common and puts it at $50 to $100 an hour. Of the 25 platforms we checked on 2026-11-07, HourlyUGC is the only one that publishes hourly pay for UGC video sessions |
| Per video | Each approved video | Yes, price × videos | Median advertised offer $100 in Pitchlo’s report of 670 briefs (December 2025 to November 2026); average payout $154 in Collabstr’s 2026 report |
| Commission on sales | Orders attributed to the video | No | Set from margin; Amazon’s affiliate rates (1 to 10 %) are a floor, not a UGC rate |
| Commission on ad spend | The media you put behind the video | No, but capped per video | Brands reimburse creators “between 1% - 7% of the amount of ad spend they put through creator accounts” in Lumanu’s analysis of $500 million in payouts |
| Per 1,000 views (CPM) | Views on the creator’s own post | No, but capped per post | No independent benchmark. Platforms’ own figures: viral.app’s live-job median $1 per 1,000 (viral.app, November 2026); Sideshift’s creator FAQ $1 to $4 (Sideshift, checked 7 November 2026) |
| Samples | The product to film with | Yes, landed cost | Your cost of goods |
Commission means both shares. Sales share pays for conversion; ad spend share pays for scale. They can sit on the same video.
Which model for which job
Hourly for volume. Per video for control. Commission for results. CPM for reach. Combine them.
| You want | Pay |
|---|---|
| Many creators auditioned on one brief | Per video; approve to pay, decline costs nothing |
| Volume and variation from a creator you trust | Hourly; the session ends in takes |
| To pay only when a video sells | Commission on sales, through links, codes or a pixel |
| To pay more as you scale a winning ad | Commission on ad spend, capped per video |
| Reach on the creator’s own account | Per 1,000 views, with a window and a cap |
| Zero cash upfront | Samples plus commission |
| Most campaigns | A base (per video or hourly) plus commission; add per-view for creators who post |
Rosters are lopsided. One agency reported “164 active creators, two of them holding 72% of the spend” (Phil Kiel on X, 30 September 2026). Pay those two on ad spend and booked hours; pay the rest per video.
Example. A beverage brand runs one campaign: $60 per approved video, 8 % of Meta ad spend capped at $600 per video, 15 % of orders through creator links and codes, $1 per 1,000 views on the creator’s post for 30 days capped at $200, and a sample case. One creator delivers two videos, one is scaled on $4,000 of spend, their post gets 120,000 views and brings 30 orders at $40: $120 base, $320 spend share, $180 sales share, $120 per-view pay, $740 in total, on one statement. Under three tools that creator gets a marketplace payout, an affiliate payout and a bank transfer, in three months.
How the money moves
The methods, from the one-off to the roster:
- PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, a bank transfer. Fine for one creator in your country on one deal. The cost is yours: the transfer, the invoice chase, the record that is not tied to the video, and the question of what happens to money sent before a video is approved.
- International transfers. Cross-border bank transfers cost fees on both sides and take days; creators abroad usually prefer a platform payout. If you pay by hand, agree the currency and who pays the fee in the brief.
- Your store’s affiliate tool. Shopify Collabs pays commissions on links and codes through Shopify, with a default 30-day hold adjustable from 1 to 90 days, cancellation on full refund, and a 2.9 % processing fee on each automatic payment (Shopify Help Center). Sales only; no per-video, hourly or spend share.
- A platform that pays out on your behalf. You fund the campaign or a wallet; the platform holds funds and pays creators when a video is approved, a session ends, or a commission is counted; creators withdraw to their own account. GRIN, for example, holds creator fees in escrow and pays out through Stripe (GRIN, checked 7 November 2026). The platform carries the international payouts, the statements and the tax paperwork, for a fee.
Two things to write down whatever the route: the day the creator is paid for each model, and who issues the tax form. US brands issue a 1099 to US creators above the IRS threshold; check the current threshold with your accountant, and let a platform do it for a roster.
What paying through a platform costs
Fees come in three shapes. Published figures, checked 7 November 2026:
| Shape | Examples |
|---|---|
| Percent on each creator payment | Collabstr: 10 % brand fee on hires (5 % on its top plan), and creators pay 15 % on payouts. Influee: 10 % marketplace fee on all plans, creator payments not included in the subscription. Insense: 20 % on the trial, 10 % on Brand, 7 % on Agency. GRIN: 20 / 10 / 7 / 5 % added on top of wallet deposits by plan. |
| Percent of money moved, no subscription | Trybe: 1.5 % of attributed sales, 1.25 % of ad spend, 1.5 % of flat payments, never stacked. |
| Subscription, creator payments separate | Sideshift: $299, $499 and $999 a month ($210, $349 and $699 billed annually), creator payments billed separately. Influee: $229, $529 and $999 a month plus the 10 % fee. Insense: from $500 a month on Brand and $800 on Agency, plus the fee. GRIN: $0, $200, $500 and $1,500 a month plus the fee. |
“No fees” does not exist. The honest comparison is the fee against what it buys: funds held, payouts in the creator’s country, commission counted from the ad account or the store, rights stored with the video, one statement per creator. The full table is in UGC platform pricing models. HourlyUGC‘s pricing is on https://hourlyugc.com/pricing.
What to write in the brief
- The model, in money, on a round figure. “$60 per approved video. 8 % of what we spend running your video as a Meta ad, up to $600 per video: a $5,000 run pays you $400.”
- When each one is paid. Per video on approval; hourly when the session is marked done; sales commission 30 days after the order month; spend share on the schedule as ads run.
- How results are counted and whether the creator can see the count.
- Rights. Your Page, the creator’s handle, how long.
- Samples, and that they are theirs to keep.
- Disclosure. The FTC says to disclose “if you got anything of value to mention a product” (FTC, Disclosures 101); every model above is something of value.
How HourlyUGC does it
Every way to pay creators. One platform. On HourlyUGC a campaign carries hourly, per video, commission, CPM and samples in any mix:
- Hourly: an offer is a rate and a number of hours; funds are held when the offer is sent and released when you mark the session done. No fixed video count.
- Per video: a pool of slots at a price. Approve pays a slot; request changes sends the video back with a note; decline costs nothing. The price is frozen at upload.
- Commission: a share of Meta ad spend (1 to 30 %, optional cap per video), read per ad on ads built through Build Ads; a share of sales (1 to 50 % of each order, or $1 to $500 per order), 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. Both counts side by side; the one you chose is paid.
- CPM: a fixed amount per 1,000 views on the creator’s post, on top of any base.
- Samples: a line in the campaign, shipped to the creators you approved.
- The door: open, by application with or without an intro video, or invite only. Applications come to you; you stop writing the same DM forty times.
- Statements: creators see the term each video was delivered under; you see upcoming charges by video and by creator before they are taken. Terms freeze per video; a change applies forward only.
- Rights and files sit with the video in the Library. “The rights are ours the moment payment clears,” as ALLSALE’s Head of Growth put it: “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 share of ad spend; add a share of sales when Shopify or the pixel is connected and a per-view term for creators who post. Pricing is on https://hourlyugc.com/pricing.