UGCM is a User Generated Content Marketplace where brands can pay creators to make content for them. This content can be used for advertising needs or to boost their engagement on socials. Recent studies have shown that “79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions.” (Stackla). UGC has also become more popular with the increase of Gen Z pushing to not work the conventional 9-5.
We saw a need for a UGC Marketplace while scrolling on Twitter one day. There is a large community of UGC creators looking for ways to not get scammed by brands. Our marketplace provides security to both the brand and the creators. We do this by having the brand pay the platform directly before the content is delivered. This allows for UGCM to hold the money in escrow, meaning that we are able to pay the creator, even if the company bails. We saw this was a common issue, to where creators would submit content and never receive their payment. The UGC creators expressed complaints about how long it would take to receive payments, where on UGCM, the payments are sent to the creator as soon as the brands approve the content. We also are able to provide security to the brands by adding in the T&Cs that we are able to charge the creator for the full price of the product if they do not create the content. We did this to ensure that the brands are receiving content and that creators are not stealing any of the product.
We are the first in the market to not charge the brands for being on our platform. UGCM makes money from a subscription that the creators pay to easily access the brand jobs. Right now, we have the subscription listed at $8 per month, although we are certain that creators would pay much more than that. We went into this project wanting for both sides to be able to afford this new platform. There was also a platform fee if the brand wanted to pay though the platform, that would be an additional percentage on top of what they pay the creator.
We have a waitlist with 70+ creators on it that showed interest via a survey and through our DMs. We did not do any creator advertising. We have 10 brands signed up at the moment. We have used a little bit of email marketing and 1 ad on Google, Instagram and Twitter.