There are three ways to get UGC: do the outreach yourself, post on a marketplace, or hire an agency. They differ less in what you get and more in what you pay with: hours, vetting effort, or fees and visibility. Here's where each one actually costs you.
DIY outreach: cheap until you count the hours
DMing creators costs nothing per message and everything in time: finding them, vetting them, negotiating, chasing deliverables, collecting files, tracking who was paid what. It works at the scale of two or three creators. At twenty it becomes someone's full-time job, and it's usually the founder's.
Marketplaces: volume without vetting
Post a job and applicants arrive. The volume is real, but the vetting is yours: portfolios don't predict delivery, and the platform's role usually ends at the introduction. When a creator goes quiet or delivers off-brief, there's no one to call. You traded outreach time for vetting and management time.
Agencies: hands-off, at a price and behind a wall
An agency genuinely takes the work off your hands. The costs are the retainer and the opacity: a monthly invoice, a monthly deck, and rarely a per-deal breakdown of what each creator cost and delivered. You buy your time back and often lose sight of the unit economics.
What to demand, whichever you pick
- A number on every deal: what each creator cost and what they delivered. No lump sums.
- Approval before full payment: money releases when you accept the work, not before.
- Rights in writing before filming: platforms, duration, paid or organic, whitelisting.
- Someone whose job is chasing: late deliverables followed up without you sending a word.
If a route can't offer those four, that's where it will eventually cost you. Sadie's answer is to run the campaign like a manager would: vetted shortlist, negotiated terms, chased deliveries, escrow until you sign off, and the per-deal math at the end.
FAQ
What's the cheapest way to get UGC? Gifted campaigns, where your spend is product rather than fees. The catch is lighter usage rights and more variance, so treat it as testing, not your ad pipeline.
Why not just hire a UGC agency? Agencies are a fine fit if you have the budget and don't need per-deal visibility. Ask upfront whether you'll see cost and deliverables broken out per creator. The answer tells you everything.
How many creators should a first campaign have? Enough to learn from variance. A handful is a coin flip; a wider gifted batch shows you which creators, angles, and hooks actually work before you put fees behind them.