I've been teaching a couple of friends from HS how to do ugc, and it's funny looking back. the same mistakes I made. they're making them in real time. I woke up this morning to the gc blowing up. all of them getting excited, fighting over the same 5 dream brands: "Let's find a way to work with Glossier." "Drunk Elephant!!!" "Summer Fridays." "Ouai is hiring creators rn" "Rare is the move" I read it and didn't say anything. just sat there scrolling. I didn't tell them what their mistake was. because I wanted them to learn first-hand the same way I did. life's the best teacher anyways when it's like that. here's what they don't see yet. every UGC girl in the country is pitching those same 5 brands. 100s of pitches a day. maybe 1 reply. budgets capped at $300 per video. one-off deals. no power. they're about to spend the next 6 weeks getting ghosted and not understand why. meanwhile. There are a bunch of creators getting paid $3-10k per video working with personal injury law firms, medical practices, debt relief services. boring stuff. the kind of brand you'd be embarrassed to tag in a story. I did so many blue collar boring ugc videos for a bunch of different ad agencies and those are some of the most high paying, low effort to make videos. a beauty brand running UGC? it's competing with 14 other beauty brands for the same girls who post about gua sha. their content is replaceable. their price gets pushed down. a law firm running UGC? they've never worked with a creator before. they have NO clue what the the normal going rate is. they're burning money on fb ads with boring stock photos. they want a real person, they have a real budget, and there's basically zero supply of girls willing to pitch them. that's the gap. beauty = high supply, they can't charge much. boring B2B = low supply, you can charge whatever you want. so when my HS friends finish pitching those 5 dream brands and get the silence I know they're going to get... I'll be there to point them somewhere different.