“We paid an influencer a flat fee for one post and got nothing.”
Pay per view UGC pays the creator a fixed amount for every 1,000 views their own post of your product earns, on their own account. $2 per 1,000 and a post that reaches 150,000 views pays $300; a post that dies at 2,000 pays $4. It is the model for the influencer problem: you stop paying for a promise of reach and pay for reach after it happens. It can sit on top of a per-video fee, an hourly session, or nothing at all, and the whole thing rests on how views are counted.
Why one post for a flat fee is one shot
A flat fee buys one post and one chance, and it is settled before the post exists. The creator’s audience size was the pitch, and audience size is a loose predictor of views on a short-form post, where distribution depends on the algorithm more than on followers. The brand carries the full risk of the post flopping and gets none of the upside if it travels.
In pay per view, both move to the creator. A flop costs the brand almost nothing. A post that reaches a million pays the creator $2,000 at a $2 rate, which is what you would have been glad to pay for a million views anyway.
Pay per view is not an ad CPM
| Ad CPM | Pay per view UGC | |
|---|---|---|
| Who you pay | The ad platform | The creator |
| What you buy | 1,000 impressions of your ad to a targeted audience | 1,000 views of the creator’s own post, wherever the algorithm takes it |
| Who counts | The platform | The platform’s public view count on the post |
| Labelled as an ad | Yes, Sponsored | Only through the creator’s disclosure, which is required |
| Budget control | Daily | Through a cap per post |
| You own the asset | Yes | The creator keeps the post; reuse rights are a separate line |
The two numbers are not comparable. An ad CPM buys guaranteed, targeted impressions at auction prices. A creator CPM buys views you cannot steer, usually far cheaper per thousand, from people the auction never sold you: they watched a post from a person they follow. Paid reach has a ceiling set by your budget and the auction; a creator’s post has a ceiling set by the feed.
The fix: a per-view term with a window, a cap and a base
Example. A mobile app offers $50 per approved video plus $1.50 per 1,000 views on the creator’s TikTok or Reels post, counted over 30 days, capped at $600 per post.
| Creator | Views in 30 days | Per-view pay | Base | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 12,000 | $18 | $50 | $68 |
| B | 180,000 | $270 | $50 | $320 |
| C | 900,000 | $600 (cap; uncapped would be $1,350) | $50 | $650 |
| Total | 1,092,000 | $888 | $150 | $1,038 |
$1,038 for 1.09 million organic views, about $0.95 per 1,000 all in. The cap cost creator C $750 of upside. Sideshift’s co-founder argued the other way in a LinkedIn post (20 July 2026) describing a brand deal with a base rate and “an uncapped $2 CPM” that, they say, paid a creator $59,000 for 22 million views; their point is that capping earnings caps effort. The counter-argument is budget control. Decide before the brief goes out.
What rates are public
No independent dataset exists. What is public comes from companies describing their own platforms:
- Sideshift’s homepage says the brand sets “the base fee” and an optional per-view payment on top, that nothing is paid until the brand approves the work, and that “the median account lands at $7 to $9 a video”; it shows example campaign CPMs of $3.27, $2.16 and $0.13 (Sideshift, checked 7 November 2026). Its team’s posts cite brand campaigns at $0.28 per 1,000 views (6 August 2026) and about $1.50 (9 April 2026).
- viral.app publishes live-job medians from briefs on its own board: $1 per 1,000 views, typical range $1 to $1.25, as of November 2026 (viral.app). Sideshift’s creator FAQ cites performance payments of $1 to $4 per 1,000 views (Sideshift for creators, checked 7 November 2026). Each is one platform’s own figure.
- Third-party guides to Whop’s Content Rewards, where brands set a payout per 1,000 views, report rates “roughly $0.20 to $6.00 per 1,000 views with an average near $1.00” and a 10 % fee charged to the creator (Clipspeed, 13 September 2026). Whop’s own docs are behind a login (checked 7 November 2026).
- For scale, what platforms themselves pay creators per 1,000 views is far lower: Elev8or’s compilation of creator-reported figures (29 August 2026) puts TikTok’s Creator Rewards at roughly $0.40 to $1.00 per 1,000 qualified views and YouTube Shorts at $0.01 to $0.07, and notes platforms almost never publish rates.
Two tests decide your rate. For the brand: well below what the same views would cost as ads, or you would buy ads. For the creator: base plus expected per-view pay on a typical post has to beat a flat fee for the same video. The public figures above run from $0.28 to $4 per 1,000, with the medians platforms publish near $1; margin and your typical creator’s reach decide where you land.
Pay per view is common but not universal. Several platforms publish it. Trybe lists six ways brands pay creators on its platform (2 September 2026): a percent of GMV, a flat amount per order, a flat amount per approved submission, Meta performance pay on ad metrics, retainers and bonuses; pay per 1,000 organic views is not among them.
How views are counted
- From the platform’s data, not screenshots. Read the view count for the specific post through the platform.
- Fix a window. Views within 30 days of posting is common. After it, the count freezes and the payout is calculated.
- Accept the platform’s definition of a view. Say which platform’s count is used.
- Cap per post, or do not, but say which. A cap is also what keeps the all-in cost per 1,000 from drifting above what the same views would cost as ads. Some brands add a floor too; one posted that it pays nothing on posts under 250 views (david_attisaas on X, October 2026).
- Exclude bought views. Sideshift announced bot detection on 26 October 2026, saying flagged posts are removed and bot accounts blocked (Sideshift on X); whatever tool you use, ask how it tells a bot from a person.
- Require the post to stay up for a minimum period after the window.
- Pay on a schedule, with the count the payout was based on shown to the creator.
How HourlyUGC does it
On HourlyUGC, pay per 1,000 views is a term you add on top of any campaign base: hourly, per video, or none. It pays on views of the creator’s own organic post. Because it sits on a base, the work is paid even when a post is slow, which answers the creators’ main complaint about view-only pay: a slow month pays nothing. The term is written into the brief in dollars per 1,000, the creator sees it before accepting, and it is frozen on each video at upload, so a later change applies only to new videos.
It sits next to commission, not instead of it. A campaign can pay a per-video base, a share of Meta ad spend on the takes you run as ads, and a per-1,000-views term on the post the creator publishes. Three results, three payments, no overlap: spend is read per ad from your Meta account, views are read from the creator’s post, and if there is a share of sales it is counted by Meta or by HourlyUGC‘s own links, codes and pixel.
When pay per view fits
- Reach is the goal: app installs, launches, products that need several exposures.
- The format travels without a big following. On TikTok and Reels a post can reach far past a creator’s followers, which is why per-view pay works for small creators there.
- You want volume of organic posts at a known cost per view: a hundred creators at $2 per 1,000 with a $300 cap is a predictable ceiling.
- You cannot attribute sales. Views are the number you can read.
It fits less well when the goal is conversions on a landing page (pay a share of sales), when you want to run the video as an ad in your own account (pay per video with rights, or a share of ad spend), or when you need creative control (hourly or per video).
Disclosure
A pay-per-view post is on the creator’s account and they are paid for it. The FTC’s rules apply in full: disclosure in the video and in the caption, not only in the comments; tagging the brand is not a disclosure; the responsibility “rests with the influencer and the brand” (FTC FAQ). Put the wording in the brief and check it before the window starts.
Next step
Start a campaign on HourlyUGC with a small per-video base and a per-1,000-views term on the creator’s post, capped per post, and raise the rate for the creators whose posts travel. Pricing is on https://hourlyugc.com/pricing.