Choosing a platform

1The question is backwards

Most people start with which platform should I be on? and pick the one they already use, or the one that seems biggest.

The useful question is where do the brands in my niche already buy? — because UGC is commissioned work. You are not building an audience and hoping to be noticed. You are producing content a brand will run on their channels, and the platform that matters is the one they're spending on.

This is the difference between a UGC creator and an influencer, and it is worth getting straight early. An influencer is paid for access to their audience. A UGC creator is paid for the content itself — often for content that runs entirely on the brand's account, or as a paid ad, with the creator's own following irrelevant to the deal.

That has a consequence people find surprising: you do not need a large following to do this work. You need to be able to make the thing.

2What each platform is structurally for

Not features — features change. The shape of the thing.

Short-form vertical video — the core of the trade. Fast, disposable, volume-driven. Brands buy a lot of it because they run it as paid media and iterate. If you make one thing, make this. Most of the format templates in this guide assume it.

Longer-form video — different economics. Fewer pieces, more considered, usually higher per-piece rate. Better suited to demonstration and review than to hooks.

Photo and static — often bundled into a UGC deal as an add-on and frequently under-priced by creators who treat it as free because it's "just a photo." Price it separately. It's a separate deliverable.

Written and voice — a real corner of the market that beginners overlook, because it's less visible. Product descriptions, scripts for other creators, voiceover.

3Let the niche pick

Work backwards from what you established in Module 0B:

1. Name the niche. The specific one, from your own list.
2. Find where those brands already advertise. Not where they post organically — where they're clearly paying. Look for the same brand's content appearing in feeds it has no organic reason to be in.
3. Look at what format that content is. That's what they're commissioning.
4. Go and make that.

That is a two-hour exercise and it beats a year of guessing. If every brand in your niche is running short vertical demos, then short vertical demos are the product, whatever you'd rather be making.

The check

If you cannot find brands in your niche paying for content anywhere, you have found something important early: it may not be a niche with a UGC budget in it. Some categories commission constantly; others barely exist as buyers. Better to learn that in week one than after three months of pitching.

4One platform, properly

The instinct is to be everywhere. Resist it for the first few months.

Each platform has its own conventions — length, safe areas, caption style, what an opening looks like. Learning one properly is worth more than being mediocre across four, because a brand hiring you is hiring a specific competence, and "I make short vertical video well" is a competence. "I'm on all platforms" is a statement about your account, not your work.

Add a second when the first is producing work you'd show someone.

5Where your own account fits

You need one, and its job is narrower than people think.

It is not there to build an audience. It is there so a brand can see that you can make the thing. Ten strong pieces beat two hundred posts, and a brand evaluating you will watch three of them at most.

Two practical points:

• Post the work. Including spec work, labelled as such — Module 4 covers how to do that honestly.
• Follower count is not the qualifier for this work. If a brand is buying content rather than reach, they care what the content looks like. Some deals do involve you posting to your own audience, and those are priced differently — Section 2 explains why.

6What to do with this section

By the end of an afternoon you should be able to write down:

• The niche, in one sentence
• Three brands in it that are visibly paying for content
• The format they're commissioning
• The one platform you're going to be good at first

That's the input to Section 3, where you actually contact someone.