Better Deals, Fewer Hours: The Systems That Scale Tech UGC To $20k+ a Month | Nikolai Junussov E12

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the UGC Industry Podcast, the show that brings creators, brands, and everyone building the UGC space into one conversation. I'm Brandon Heen, and each week I sit down with the people shaping this industry, from creators landing brand deals to the founders and agencies behind them. Let's get into it. On this episode, we have Nikolai Janusov. Nikolai has done over 20k months with Tech UGC and teaches others how to do the same with his unique systems. So I'm super excited to talk to him today and see how he's doing it. Nikolai, welcome to the show. Thank you, Brandon. Awesome. Yeah, man, I met you early on in my tech UGC career and I've seen you done do some crazy things, especially for your age. I know you're you know implementing a lot of cool systems that help people do this easier. How does a creator go from 5K a month to scaling to over 20K a month?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

I feel like most people have the same answer, and it comes down to three things that being deals, content, and systems. I would say deals are pretty democratized now. There's so many Discords out there and places to actually find these deals if you know where to look. But the main two things that creators don't really have is knowing actually how to make good content, having the right systems.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

So when you say systems, and and let's talk about the kind of UGC this is. So how would you describe tech UGC?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Yeah, so tech UGC is basically when you're making high volume content for these typically AI startups who have a lot of VC money. And instead of traditional paid ads where you get paid like a flat base, they'll actually put you on retainer. You're you know typically making one to like 10 videos a day, sometimes even more. Um, and they'll pay you uh base pay per video, typically like a monthly retainer. And also they pay you like bonuses for views and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

This is what a lot of people start off doing in UGC. You're creating fresh accounts and posting daily on them. And it's really simple videos, so you can come into it without much marketing experience at all. How do people then come onto these deals and you know do 20k months?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

If you want this to be sustainable, you obviously have to know how to make good content, like fundamentally, you know, you have to know how to get views. Um yeah, as long as you know how to make good videos, it's pretty simple on how to actually hit 20k a month plus. And the way that people actually scale, besides just you know hopping on good deals, if you're on a deal at $30 per video, you can only post once a day, you have a $1 CPM, it's much harder to hit a $20K month versus a creator who's on like a deal where you can post 10 times a day at a $50 base pay and the CPM is three times as high.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, and there's been an increasing amount of these really high-paying tech UGC deals, even just in the last few months. I know when I started UGC earlier this year, a good deal was like $30 to $35 a post. What are some of the deals you're seeing out there now?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

So I'd say Higgs Fuel like recently entered the space in the summer, and ever since then, it's kind of been a very aggressive inflation of base pay and like bonuses and all that kind of stuff. Um they like basically dropped like a $50 base pay deal, and you could post like three times a day. And that was a $45, $100 a month base pay deal, which was a lot of money at the time. Now that's kind of like standard, I would say, if you're like somewhat decent as a creator. These AI video companies, they're extremely profitable. So basically allow creators to post unlimited if they're really, really good. I have like people who I know who are on $70 to like $80 base pay deals and they can post like eight to ten times a day. So you're basically guaranteed to make almost $20K a month as long as you you know post eight videos a day, which is pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

That's crazy. Now, a lot of people are gonna hear eight videos a day, only $50 a video, right? Especially coming from the traditional UGC world where they get paid more per video. What kind of videos are these that are paying, you know, $50? And how does someone actually get eight videos out per day?

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Well, without any systems, I'd say it's still fairly simple as opposed to having like eight unique videos like for a paid ad where you're spending potentially like one to three hours per video here. Because, you know, assuming your page is warmed up and you have like some viral formats, you could probably make a viral format style video if you have like anywhere from five to thirty minutes if you're pretty efficient with it. So for eight videos, you know, you could probably knock that out in anywhere from like 30 minutes to three hours, depending on you know how efficient you are and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Yeah. And so what does that process look like for a creator who's sitting down and is going to make eight of these tech UGC videos?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

It definitely depends on the deal, because some deals it's just like a reaction style video. I'll talk about like what I see with you know these like AI generation deals when you're spending there's like multiple clips, there's like B-roll and like audio and that kind of stuff. In this like kind of situation, does a creator have an editor or are they just kind of doing it on their own? Let's talk about both. Talk about both. Okay, yeah. So I'll kind of talk about like I'd say like a creator who's doing it raw, which is like totally fine. And then someone who's like, you know, has like scheduling software and you know viral formats ready and editors. So for the creator who's kind of you know going in, like doing it on their own, which is completely fine. And I think it's a really good way to kind of learn what you're supposed to do. In this case, I'll assume they have a you know a decently warm-up page, it's like a couple hundred followers and it's doing well. They would like, you know, let's say wake up in the morning, check out you know, the videos of the last couple of days, pick, let's say, one or two formats that have been like doing well, they think will do well, and they'll record, let's say they can do eight videos that day, they'll record like basically four variations of like two formats. And that'll take them, let's say, 10 minutes per video. Uh, I mean, I guess 10 to you know, 20 minutes per video, depending on how efficient they are. They're probably banging that out in like one or three hours. Um, but creative as an editor and scheduling software and all this kind of stuff, they can probably on a Sunday or Saturday, um, again, assuming they have like a like a pool of vile formats to choose from, they're not just kind of going in cold, they know which formats do well. And on like a Saturday, they could sit down and let's say they can post like 35 videos that week, they will record the raw clips of the 35 videos. And they could probably, you know, if they have a system for it, like for example, um, you know, if you're doing anything in Kapka and you have Google Drive, obviously it's very inefficient. But if you have a native recorder inside of your software and your custom software, you can record 35 videos in probably an hour or two. And because your editors know all the briefs, they could edit up all the videos. And then also, um, some like advanced ball knowledge here, once all the videos are edited, probably by you know Sunday afternoon, you could have like Grokbot take the like thir 35 videos as uh not like the the actual files, but like a like an approval link, uh, which kind of like a like a fancy like Google Drive folder. Um the grok bot would like send it into your Discord channel for approval. And then at that point, you know, the the CM would go into that like kind of custom portal, approve the videos, and they would be automatically scheduled either by you or by your VA or by the the the Grokbot. So basically you do 35 videos, which could be like you know, one to like $3,000 worth of videos in like a few hours.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Yeah, this is so cool, and it's uh it's a different kind of of UGC than a lot of the people I've been talking to, which is more paid ads and tribe. This is very much get get volume out. You know, there's there's not a whole lot of like necessarily strategic thinking that necessarily goes into the actual video itself. It's more the strategic thinking about the systems that are built, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, I would say there is like some strategic thinking into the videos, especially when you're choosing what kind of videos to do. So like obviously with the systems, you need to be like fairly efficient if you don't want to you know be spending your whole day recording videos. But like uh with Tribe, for example, like how do you actually like think about what videos to record like when you're on a DO? Because I'm assuming it's fairly similar to what we do.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

A lot of people go look at the top formats that are working.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yeah, and rip those. That makes sense. So, for example, with Higgsfield, so they they're working with the marketing agency ran by like Andrew Shin and uh Richard, they have over a thousand creators, so they have like a team of people who literally just look for formats all day and like kind of compile them into these like nice notion boxes. So, there, I mean, effectively what you can do is if you have good like taste as a creator, you know which formats will naturally do well for you because like your you know creative avatar or whatever, your audience, and you could just pick those very intentionally and most you know have like a you know very high hit rate.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. What separates a creator? Because right, creators are gonna go in, they're gonna choose their format. Some creators' videos are gonna do good and some aren't. So, how can identical scripts perform differently among different creators?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

A script at the end of the day, it's just one part of the video. Like a video is like an experience for the viewer. So a script, you know, you can say it something a hundred times, like even like in the English language, like when you put like a comma somewhere, it can completely change the meaning of uh of a video. If you say a script differently and you know have different lighting and all that kind of stuff, it completely changes how the video is experienced by the viewer. So a very like simple example that I use is like, for example, um, you know, you see like Andrew Tay with his Bugatti. Um if he's talking about how to make money, you kind of naturally you know believe what he's saying to an extent because he has a lot of authority. In the same way that if you're promoting a Kiggs field as a way to make money and you you you look broke, like you're recording your college dorm, people will not watch that video because they don't believe what you're saying. But if you're recording a nice house, you have nice clothes on, you look presentable, you're convicted of what you're saying, um, and maybe you know you look older, whatever. I'm not saying you can just be young or whatever, but like as long as you look believable and people actually believe the message that you're saying, um, they'll do a lot better. Even if you say the same script.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, before we we hopped on here, we were talking about videos now that are like paying $100 per video. What what does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah. Yeah, so it's definitely getting pretty crazy. And just to give some context, I've spoken with some people at these like AI generation companies, and allegedly, allegedly, they make from organic content $20 to $40 per thousand views. So they're extremely profitable when they run organics. Uh which gives you like more context on that. So how these base pay deals work is typically like obviously, you know, these companies are out basically outbidding each other for the best creators. Um, you know, the the top one percent are basically driving like 50% of the traffic. So they want to entice people and they you know have a bunch of like crazy incentives, whether it's like you know religious money or like having a good community, that kind of stuff. And generally what happens with a lot of these deals is they'll start you off on like on a ready high base pay at $50. And as you get better, or if you have like a lot of you know proof, they'll start you off even even higher than $50. Um, but as you get better, they'll keep basically increasing your base pay. Some deals right now, like even in the Discord that I have, like once you hit like a certain number of views for the program, they'll just pay your base pay $100 and you post like five times a day, which is like ridiculous. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yeah, that's crazy. Awesome. Well, I want to rewind a little bit back to the start of your UGC journey because you started this while you were in high school. You know, while most kids are just going to school, not even thinking about ways to make money, much less this kind of money. How did you even get into UGC in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

So I was actually posting content like basically like before my grade, my last year of high school. And I was trying to find ways to monetize it. I I I tried like doing SMMA and I mean did like decently well, made like a thousand dollars. But at some point I realized that like this was very inefficient. And I actually had a brand called like Cthulhu reach out to me. I'm wearing their their shirt today. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, they're really popular in the space.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah, yeah. So they reached out to me and I was basically like brand new to space. They kind of told me about their deal, and I was like, oh my gosh, you can make $35 per video and equals three times a day. It's like a hundred dollars a day. And I was like, obviously, uh I haven't seen the crazy potential of you know these VC backed companies. And within my first 45 days, I hit like a 10K month, and I was like, Yeah, there's no way I'm getting like a real uh J L B. So I've kind of been uh I'm the content pipeline ever since.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Awesome. And so how do you hit a 10K month when you're you know getting paid $30 a post? What does that look like on the deal?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah, yeah. So generally speaking, like I think as you mentioned before, like people are a bit like thrown off by this $50, like whatever low retain, like low base versus these other deals. But it a lot of these deals, like the way you actually capture the upside is by having like really viral videos, but also viral videos are repeatable. So without deal with Clule, I had within my like I got like you know pretty lucky, I would say. I found a viral format like very quickly. Although I was technically making whatever 3k a month from the base, I got like I think a couple million views that month, and with the bonuses, I actually you know hit that 10k month.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yeah. What were you what were you thinking when that happened?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah, it was crazy. I was uh actually for half the month as well. I was away in Peru for a school trip. No way. I had scheduled out all my videos. So basically for two weeks of work, I made yeah, 10k, which is like absolutely ridiculous. I didn't even know you could make that much money. And I was like thinking like why my teachers like make the same amount of money as me. I don't even do that much work. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Okay, so then where did you take things f from there?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah, yeah. So for me, before my kind of work with Clule, I happened to be in San Francisco, and I kind of was introduced to the world of like VC uh venture capital. Um, and I met a lot of people who like raised money. I didn't realize young people could make so much money. I had this like one like catalytic moment where uh I'm not sure if you've heard of this company called like sperm racing.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Yes, through you actually.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So the guys who started it, one of them was like, I think he was 16 or 15 years old, and they raised $10 million, which I thought was absolutely insane, which I actually I'd say still is pretty insane. And I realized that the ceiling with like content and working with startups is like so, so high. And I think right now, as a creator, someone who's like not very technical, the best way to kind of cash in on that was through through UGC. So after Clue, I would like kind of basically continue to work with um other startups for doing GC programs. And yeah, just kind of scaling and learning and also documenting it all on my personal page.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Awesome. Yeah, so so we actually we met on you know a tech UGC campaign that that we were both doing together. So were you so were you doing these campaigns at at first? And then at what point, because I know now you have a bunch of systems to help optimize things. When was the light bulb moment where you went from just creating videos and editing them all yourself to really systematizing everything and implementing these AI systems to help become more efficient?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

I would say I've always tried to systematize everything. Initially, I was you know using like Notion and I actually had an editor and he would like log into my like Notion and like mark videos off for me. But then I remember this one agency called Media Maxing. They had this one creator who was like called like Ste UGC. He was posting like 50 or 100 times a day. I was like, okay, no matter how much I work, like clearly I cannot like post a hundred times a day unless I'm like changing something, changing something about my uh my workflow. So from that point, I kind of like this is like in the summer, I kind of went down the rabbit hole of like, how can I really systematize this? And I started basically like vibe coding these dashboards where I'd have like editors just like returning videos to me. So you know it's save me a bit of time. Then I realized why don't I just, you know, instead of using metrical and like buffer, I can just add in the scheduler via API into my software. And also I might as well just have a scraper calculate how much money I'm making so I don't have to like you know check launch point and uh sideshift and like all these other tools and like make sure I'm actually getting correctly.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

So you basically built all of this into one thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like everything that you couldn't need. I was like, instead of using uh Notion and all these different tools, like just put it all together and then you can just have like one interface for basically interacting with all of your UGC pages.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Yeah. That's awesome. So so you have all that stuff systematized, and then on the front end, it's really your job as a creator or the company to find these viral formats so that you can get a bunch of views and make way more than the base pay. So, how do you go about finding viral formats before they become saturated and don't work as well?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yeah, yeah, that's that's a really good question. I feel like it's super, super important now, especially because at least the way I think about it is like with a lot of these deals like Higgsfield and like OpenR, because there's so many creators, at least the way I see it, it's kind of like the meta ads like auction. You know, before it was like pretty simple to go viral with like, you know, a pretty easy video. But now, like you're not actually making a good video, you're competing against like 900 other people with slightly different creative avatars doing the exact same script. So you really need to know how to pick a good video. At least that's the way I see like with organics. There's a multitude of strategies to like kind of do this. Firstly, I would say your content fundamentals have to be like very, very strong. If you're a good creator, you'll just take the formats that the companies are giving you and put in your own spinner, as you said. But if you're like a really excellent creator, someone who understands content really well, you could probably go out of your way and find formats. I think like Mido Li has a way it's like like it's like you wink and twist or something like that. Um, you can find a format in an adjacent niche and basically run it in this niche, and no one's really seen it before, so it's naturally gonna go a bit more viral. Yeah, you're just like, like you said, just testing a lot.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah, that that's uh that's a really good point as well. Quick interruption here. This video is brought to you by RTech, the all-in-one platform for UGC creators. So, as a U UGC creator, there are really three things you need. One is a suite of tools to make you more efficient from editing, tracking your deals, tracking your finances so that you're not hopping around from a million different apps. Two, the knowledge and coaching and training from people who've already been there and done that. And then three, access to deals. RTech provides you all three of those and and was built by some of the OGs from the UGC space who understand everything that UGC creators know what they need to be successful. You can go hop on and try it now for free. Just click the link below. Cool. So, what are some of the crazier stories you see of of people who are coming into tech UGC, maybe with no experience and hitting some big numbers?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. There's a couple crazy stories I always like to mention because I just still can't get over them. I'd say, I mean, this is kind of like not exactly your question, but this is someone who's like 15 years old and they've been doing content for like I think a year now. In September, they made like either 30 or 35k. So yeah, he's 15, making 35,000.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Like absolutely ridiculous. Very simple. He just posts like 10 times a day. And I wouldn't think it's like his videos are super advanced, but he just like is ultra consistent and um has like formats just like repeatedly go viral.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Dang. So so he's just found what's worked and it's just keep repeating on it over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah, yeah. He actually he he runs calls in in my community, and one of the biggest things from him, which is like I think people have taken away, which seems like super simple, but it's basically you literally cannot miss a day of posting. So you will, even if he you don't have a lot of views, or you have a lot, not a lot of views, he posts every single day because uh at least the way he explains it is like you just need one format that's like that you find that not only goes viral but consistently goes consistently goes viral because with that, it'll like literally change your life and completely you know make your page go like parabolic.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Um so I'm curious, so if you're missing days of posting, does it really slow the account down or how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I think it's more like the philosophy of just not missing a day, because um you know if you have like five shots on goal every single day and you're actually intentionally testing out formats, yeah, it's almost like inevitable that you'll not only go viral, but more importantly, I think with tech UGCs, you find a format that repeatedly goes viral. Because at that point, you can just ask the company to either scale your base payer or you post more, and it's just a lot easier to make more money and work less hours.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. So, where do you see the future of this tech UGC space going? Because it's already evolved so much just in the past six to eight months. I know you're really tapped into it. So, where do you see it going here in the future?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

To answer that, I think I'll kind of go back a year. So a year ago, with these $30 and $40 base pay deals where you can post in once or twice a day, people were like really concerned, like, oh my gosh, this is like definitely gonna go down. There's no way that this is gonna stay up this high. But I feel like it's been creeping up slowly and slowly, especially as traditionally, I feel like you like tech UC, this was kind of, I'd say before my time, it was mostly run by like scrappy tech startups that didn't have that much money. Um wanted to you know kind of capture this like arbitrage of organic content. But now as these big players enter the space, Higgsfield and OpenArt, and I think Micro One, which is like a data brokering platform, I don't even know what they're doing. Instagram, but anyways, um, they just have so much investor money. They're raising like, I think like Higgsfield raised like $400 million. And I mean, Higgsfield is like literally like a like a like a rapper. So, you know, all they can really do is spend on like influencers in UGC, and they don't even do pay ads. Literally influencers are UGC. I feel like as the space progresses, if you're a profitable creator, and what that means is like you know, you can deliver views under like five dollars CPMs, they'll just keep increasing your base pay and increasing your bonuses or whatever. But the main thing I wanted to like separate from this is like there's no like free lunch with this. With like making the example that like I feel like in this a couple months ago, people were like kind of base farming um big trend. But now that just doesn't work because a lot of these campaigns, if your CPM across all your accounts is above ten dollars, they will basically like either cut you or they'll put you on ice. Like you have to like be like very attentive, like comes with all the group calls, like constantly texting your coaches, or they'll immediately cut you. So I think that that's that's the main thing. Like, if you have a very low CPM on your accounts, you can basically like have a like permission to print infinite money, I'd say. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah. And so can you explain what you mean by a higher or low CPM on your account?

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah, yeah. So how it works with like, for example, like a deal like Higgsfield, like the the agency that runs it, so they'll they'll take all of your accounts, like you most people post on Instagram, TikTok, uh, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. So they'll basically count all the views on all your on uh all your videos and and they'll calculate how much they're paying you and how many total views you have, and that's like your CPM.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Yeah, so it's basically how many views you're getting compared to how much you're getting paid.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, I feel like you said that you explained that a lot better than me.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

What is a what is a $10 CPM creator who's like just barely scraping by, not getting so many views? What are they doing or not doing that stops them from being a $4 CPM creator unlocking that infinite money glitch?

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yeah, yeah, I like you're saying uh infinite money glitch, so it is kind of kind of true. The main the main thing that this seems like extremely simple, but they're like videos that's like not good. Like obviously a bit more nuanced to that, but like if your videos aren't good, people won't watch them and your CPM will be high. But yeah. So what makes a video not good? A good video is fundamentally you're providing value to a viewer. Um I think there's like three types of value or something. It's like you're making the viewer laugh, you're giving the viewer you're either teaching the viewer something, or you're relating to the viewer. Um and then obviously like there's more nuance to this, but like effectively you have to communicate either like one or two or three of these things to the viewer, and that'll give make the viewer watch the video, share the video, engage with the video, and that kind of stuff. But like effectively it's value to the viewer, I would say. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And now do you see a world where companies are gonna move towards paying creators for conversions of the apps? Or do you still see the pay paying per views? Um You know, going out far into the future.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I would say with organics tech you see, the like uh people try to do like conversion style stuff, but like the biggest programs that I see generally just do CPMs, um, which on paper seems like the creators will take advantage of you, which you know oftentimes they do if it's a poorly managed program. Um I think as a you know a campaign manager or as like the person kind of leading the direction of the program, you basically have to have the creators post formats that like naturally convert a lot. Um because it's really hard for a creator like arbitrarily, like, you know, it just it's very hard to motivate someone when they don't really know how much money they're gonna make. And oftentimes I feel like you know, someone might click you know your UTM link, but then they don't buy for like a week or two, and then the creator, like, you know, they they feel a bit kind of like a little bit scammed, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And you you you dropped some statistics before about how Higgs field can predict how much revenue they're gonna make per views.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, wait, I'm gonna answer that referral question again. Something came to me. So um, one thing I forgot to mention is actually there is one referral program that comes to mind, that being a FOMO's trading app referral program. And what they do is initially they'll actually start you off, you know, as a regular creator. Like they'll give you a CPM and a base bay. But as you get better, like they actually give you a you know, like a like a UTM link or a referral link for the app. And one way they sell the program to like a lot of like really high quality creators is effectively as you rack up referrals, you have your your your uh your referral link is like lifetime. So if someone joins with Eurolink, you effectively have like MR, like you almost have your own like SaaS because you have an MRR for every user that joins. And I'm pretty sure like I mean, I would say there's like a low like propaganda from like the people hiring, which is like I'd say still true. Um their top creators make, I think, like six figures in their best months from but obviously they've been you know running these pages for years effectively, but still it's like a lot of money you can make if you're actually a good creator who can run conversions. So yeah, I can't admit that.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

But wow, that's incredible. So you were talking about like running a successful page for for years. How how how does someone create a new account and get that page warmed up so that it is consistently getting views and gaining followers when it is a tech UGC account?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, I feel like this is like an extremely debated thing in the community where people tell you, you know, you have to like warm up your page and like scroll for like 30 minutes a day for like a week and do all these crazy things. And I'd be lying if I had a definitive answer for you. Because I actually asked people who work at Sideshift and the guy who runs Media Maxing, and I'll kind of get like slightly different answers. But the main thing, like I think you're thinking about it from like first principles, is to initially like when you're starting your account is to make Instagram think you're not a bot. Um and I'd say obviously a couple ways of doing this. Firstly, you know, if you have like 20 accounts on one phone, probably like pretty size, your trust score is pretty low. Um, you know, if you're using like some random email address that's like not Gmail or Yahoo, like probably like lowers your trust score. If you're just posting like via API as soon as you make your account, again, not good. I think there's a lot of things you can do to but just to make you know Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, whatever, basically you think you're not like like a bot just using the platform.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Makes sense. And I feel like now, like with some of these companies that are paying so much, creators, right? You used to have to be on like eight to ten to twelve accounts to hit those big numbers, but I feel like now you really only need to lock in on like two to three deals to to make crazy money.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I think um I actually had someone recently like working with me, he used to do YouTube shorts and he had like half a million followers or a little less than that on his page. So he he understood content like extremely well. But the thing was like from YouTube, he's gonna pay like a 10 cent CPM, which is like quite almost tragic. And he joined the OpenArt, you know, campaign, and within like two weeks, just because of his like you know, raw content knowledge, he immediately blew up the account, got a couple thousand followers, got a couple million views, really found a format and negotiated his base pay up to I think 70 or 80 dollars, but also he could post like eight times a day. So it's like why would you want to hop on five mid deals like one strong relationship and just keep growing the page?

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Yeah, literally. So, how does a newer creator find these deals?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah, it's a good question. So I'd say there's a couple ways. Firstly, this might come across as a bit harsh, but you have to ask yourself, do you actually deserve these deals? So that's the first thing. Um that I work with who are like starting off, I actually instead of putting them on some like, you know, mid deal that's like $900 a month base pay, I actually have them just post on their personal page two to like four times, like you know, like three to three times a day, I'd say, uh, with a bio formats to do two things. Number one, to internally feel like they know how to make better content and actually are confident because they're posting these non-competitive formats that you know, they don't have like a thousand other people doing the exact same thing. But B, when you join a lot of these high base pay deals, typically they look for people who either have like extremely high potential from other platforms or they want at least a couple million views. So instead of wasting your time with these bad deals where you have you know $900 a month base pay, I'd rather you wait two weeks, actually develop the skills. Um, so you actually deserve a shot at landing one of these deals, and but you know, then you can actually like print a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Okay, so you're having people post to get views on their like personal brand Instagram pages and then using that to leverage to getting into deals?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, yeah. Because I think people say they apply to a thousand campaigns on side shift for launch point, and they're like, only one of them accepted me. But it's like you really have to ask. Okay, you have a portfolio set up, but you have five nicely edited videos, but I think the best portfolio is just showing that you actually understand viral content.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

So, what kind of videos are they posting then when they're posting on their personal brand pages?

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Um, the simplest thing to do is just to go viral, right? So um always like kind of a big answer. But I would say it's to go viral with talking head content. And typically what I do is I'll just um I have a couple like you know videos that are very easy to recreate that I I would say are like you know, evergreen formats, stuff that people just like constantly relate to. Um like I'd say like kind of share bait stuff. Uh you know, five videos are just like talking about top five things to do as a guide. It's like super relatable, super easy to film, and yeah, just stuff that naturally goes viral and kind of forces them to develop their talking head uh skills as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Yeah, okay. Nice, that makes sense. So you're saying they do that for a few weeks, can get can get can get some decent views, and then you know, hop on to you know, two or three of these higher paying deals, and then from there you don't really need other deals essentially.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Yeah, yeah. And one like new change I really like with these like high-paying deals is I mean, obviously, because they're paying these creators like basically full-time salaries in a sense, they actually care about their creators like a lot more than they did before. Um, if you look at a campaign like Hicksfield, because they have you know like literally a thousand creators and so many coaches, um, if you join that campaign, not only will you make a lot of money and have the potential to make a lot of money, but you'll meet a lot of people in the creator space. You'll have a coach who's constantly helping you. They have like office hours every single day. So in effect, it's almost like a mini mentorship. So if you're um, you know, in like three of these campaigns or two of these campaigns, you not only can you make a lot of money, but you just like learn so much, and your rate of learning is like accelerated because you're just like meeting all these great people who are giving you a ton of feedback all the time.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Definitely sounds simple, and we've both seen a lot of people do the same thing and make money. What are some things that prevent UGC creators from ever even, you know, hitting these big months and kind of burning out or failing before they ever do so?

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I feel like at the end of the day, to be a good UGC creator with longevity, you have to like, you know, make good videos. Again, it seems extremely obvious, but obviously, you know, it it is like pretty challenging and there's a lot of like kind of friction to doing that. And I I would say like the best creators who I work with who like you know progress the fast and all that kind of stuff, they basically can just like learn a lot about content extremely quickly. Um, so you know how to make a good video. Like they're you know, watching content on YouTube, they're texting other creators, just trying to basically absorb as much information to again like make the best videos possible to understand the nuances of content, you know, constantly like getting reviewed by people who are better than they like, they want you know they don't have an ego, they they're willing to get like you know, flamed in a in a like in a in a Discord like voice channel by by their coach and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah, absol absolutely. Being able to take feedback and implement it quickly really can take you so far in UGC. If you think about all the other things in life, like make money opportunities, they all take so much longer than than with stuff like UGC.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

One thing I'll add as well is I think you do this super well, but if you actually document your journey and kind of increase like your surface area as a creator and makes you like improve a lot faster, like for you, like when you started posting, did you like get a lot of inbounds? Like did it help you progress like as a you know as a creator effectively?

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yeah, absolutely. It grew my network a ton. I got a lot of opportunities, and then I got a lot of look like you were saying, I I I built the social proof that I can talk on camera. So it's like aside from the the followers, it's like I'm just talking about stuff that I want to talk about on my page in in relation to UGC. So like it's kind of like my living and breathing portfolio, essentially. So yeah, that that's really helpful as well. So yeah, what do you what are you doing here in the future? Did you say you dropped out of college or you didn't you didn't start, or like what's that look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Yeah, so actually, so I went to Waterloo University for Engineering for two weeks. I went to about a total of six classes, and I realized really honestly, like I actually do enjoy learning. It's it's a lot of fun. Although I just don't like the structured environment, like and it kind of prevents me from doing stuff I actually really enjoy. And also, I I find like my peers like didn't most of them like didn't really understand like what I was doing. So I feel like yeah, the natural stuff was just like dropping out and kind of moving in with people who are more like-minded. Yeah. Wow. So when was that? So I started, I think, university um, I think first week of September, stayed there for like two, three weeks, and I yeah, just dropped out. Technically, I like I'm actually like on hold till next year, but I don't think it'll be returning. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Yeah. So ca because you were so you were already like deep in this, making lots of money, basically.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah, I would say like uh in my first like month of university, like that, that's when uh you know, like the coaching business like really took off. And I feel like you know, opportunities really grew. So I feel like I have to just kind of naturally go uh you know go all in as opposed to kind of splitting my attention across like you know, engineering and then also content. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Yeah. Does it make you nervous at all, or how do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_01 32:20

That's uh that is a good question. But I would say even if everything falls apart, my accounts get banned, whatever. I feel like as well, like I'm saying this in like a very humble way. I think that the skills you develop as a UGC creator really puts you on the map for like growth opportunities. So, like right now, I I could settle down and land like you know, 150k a year like growth job at a startup. Like, I've actually been off a job at like companies like Sideshift and like Higgs Field, um, although I have to move to CADEX and work eight hours a week. But still, pretty cool opportunities. And I feel like those are basically always open because the skill set you learn as a UGC creator applies super well to growth, and companies will definitely pay you quite a bit of money for that.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Yeah, I agree so much. Whenever people ask, are you nervous or do you feel like it's unstable? I'm like, no, UGC is actually way more stable than having a job. And it's even it goes beyond it's it goes beyond UGC. It's internet marketing. There's like thousands of companies that want to work with us as a pair as a opposed to at a job, you have one singular company who can choose if you're hired or fired.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

So yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Cool. So let's say someone's doing content right now or they're making a little bit of money with UGC. What would you say to someone who really wants to take something to the next level and have those 20 to 30k months?

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah, yeah. So in that case, I would probably tell that person a couple of things. Firstly, is to like start like a personal brand if you don't have one already, I'm assuming you do, and just document everything, like put yourself on the map. I feel like you know, if you talk about like these super niche subjects, it'll kind of show up on the algorithm of people in the space and you'll get a lot of inbounds and that kind of stuff. And secondly, would be you know to join a lot of these like you know, discords, communities, all that kind of stuff. Maybe hop on Twitter, kind of see how growth is moving in in the tech startup scene, and just consume a ton of content and try and you know work with at least one or two of these deals and to find someone on that deal who's doing exceptionally well and just kind of copy what they're doing, kind of network with them, provide them value, basically like befriend them. And I feel like from that point, when when you like meet someone who's doing better than you and you just kind of copy what they're doing, it'll be inevitable that you'll at least like not be a couple steps behind them. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Absolutely. Get getting around people who are already having success is one of the biggest cheat codes and unlocks, really, in anything in life. So, as we wrap up here, tell tell us about you know what you are you're you're doing, your uh your coaching venture. Like, what does it look like when people work with you?

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah, yeah. So right now I'm kind of building this community called uh UGC Lab, our main Discord recently just hit over 13,000 members. Well, the private community basically what I do is I'm working with people who are making you know 5k months, that kind of stuff. Um, or they're really good at content, but they're just not super tapped through UGC. Uh, you know, basically fill out their three pillars of uh UGC, like that being you know, deals, content, and systems. I'll put them on the best deals, you know, help them negotiate if they're ready, like doing well on them. Uh I'll give them all the right systems, you know. Like we have a team of 10 editors overseas working to give you like eight sub eight hour uh video returns. Obviously, you know, have like custom software with, you know, with like a developer maintaining that. And also, you know, kind of coaching with content and just like principles of you know how to make file videos. Because I think, you know, once you understand like those three principles, it's really it's really hard to actually not, you know, hit like at least a 20k monthly UC.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Yeah, so true. And even once you get like those first wins and and just seeing it's possible, it really like you know what I've seen with people is it really lights the fire that that they can go further once you you get those first wins and then optimize it from there.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I think you know you need your first viral video, and like literally, if you just capitalize on that, you can like completely blow up your page and basically change your life, I would say. Like all it takes is one video, which is kind of crazy to think about. Uh but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Yeah, I love it. Well, this has been awesome, Nikolai. I I love hearing about everything you're doing in the tech EGC space. It's it's such a fun place and really democratizing being able to make money online. People can get into this even as complete beginners and get up to extremely high income. So yeah, man, keep it up. I love what you're doing. Where can where can the people find you?

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah, so my Instagram is uh at Nikolai.vids. Um, you can uh follow me there. I'm uh I'll be uh posting quite a bit of content. If you want a lot of like in-depth you know guides on how to actually succeed with tech UGC, follow my YouTube as well. I post a ton of you know value on there on how to basically scale up as well. And if you want to you know work with me one-on-one, obviously, you know, I gotta I've got to plug the the link in the bio. You know, you can apply there and that kind of stuff, and we'll see if it's uh the right fit.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'll drop all those links below. Definitely go hit him up. He's uh providing a lot of value to this space. And another great episode of the UGC Industry Podcast. Stay tuned for the next one.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Thank you, Brandon, for uh.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Absolutely.