How to Make Money Posting Videos (2026 Guide)

Posting pays. The bar to get paid is lower than the gurus in your feed claim and higher than your view count makes it look.

I built Socialync solo. Before that I had a real following from gaming, top 100 in my game. The truth is, views and money are two different numbers. You can hold one for years and never touch the other.

I quit my job the same hour I decided to go all in on this company, and since then I have spent every day around creators stuck on the same question. The clips get views. How does that turn into money?

Four ways in 2026: platform creator funds, affiliate links, brand campaigns (including UGC jobs), and products you sell yourself. Each one has a bar to clear. The platforms publish some of the bars. Brands set the rest, campaign by campaign.

This guide gives you every bar, with a link to the platform's own help page for each program. It answers the exact question people type into Google, "can you make money posting videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook," one platform at a time. Then it shows why brand campaigns are the most reachable way to get paid to post on social media under 10,000 followers, how campaign pay gets calculated, and what the disclosure rules require.

One warning before the numbers. Platforms move their thresholds without much notice. Check the linked page before you plan around a number.

How to make money posting videos on social media

Every "get paid to post content" offer you have seen fits one of four buckets. Learn the four and you can size up any offer in a minute. Our 13 monetization strategies post lists the variations. This section is the map.

Platform creator funds

A creator fund pays you out of the platform's own pocket for views. It sounds like the obvious route. For a small account it is the hardest one, because every major program publishes a threshold, and those thresholds sit above where most accounts under 10,000 followers are.

Program	Published bar to enter	Source
TikTok Creator Rewards Program	18 or older, at least 10,000 followers, at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days, personal account, original videos over one minute long, eligible countries only	TikTok Creator Academy
Instagram bonuses	Invite only, limited time, tied to the performance of reels and photos	Instagram for Creators
YouTube Partner Program	1,000 subscribers with 4,000 qualified watch hours in the last 12 months, or 1,000 subscribers with 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days	YouTube Help
Facebook Content Monetization	Facebook Page or professional mode profile, eligible country, 18 or older, Partner Monetization Policies; rolled out by invitation	Meta for Creators
X creator revenue sharing	X Premium subscription plus a follower minimum and an organic impressions minimum over the last three months	X Help Center

Every one of those bars, with the page it comes from, is in the next section. Even once you are in, short-form payouts per view are small. Our ad revenue breakdown by platform and the TikTok vs YouTube Shorts monetization comparison go through what each program pays per thousand views.

Verdict for a small account: creator funds are a later chapter. Under 10,000 followers, most of them either need numbers you do not have yet or an invite you cannot request.

Affiliate links

Affiliate pays a commission when someone buys through your link or code. Amazon's programs, TikTok Shop's affiliate side, LTK, and thousands of brand-run programs all work this way.

The bar to join is usually lower than a creator fund. Many programs let you in at any size. TikTok Shop's affiliate side sets its own follower minimum, and that number has moved more than once, so check the current requirement inside the app before you plan around it.

The hard part is volume. A commission is a small slice of one sale. You need clicks, clicks come from views, and a 3,000 follower account does not generate many of either on a given day.

Affiliate works when two things line up:

A buying niche. Products people research before they purchase: camera gear, skincare, kitchen tools, supplements, software.
Review-shaped content. A clip that shows the product doing the thing, with your honest take, converts. A clip that mentions the product in passing does not.

Where the link lives matters as much as the link. Our guide on links in captions vs the first comment shows where a link survives on each platform and where it gets buried.

Brand campaigns and UGC jobs

A brand pays you to make content about its product. There are two flavors, and you should know which one a listing is asking for.

Sponsored post. You post it on your own account, to your own audience, labeled as a paid partnership. The brand is buying your reach.
UGC job. You make the content and the brand uses it: on its own channels, as an ad, on a product page. Some UGC jobs also ask you to post it on your own account. The brand is buying the content itself.

Pay is set per job. There is no platform-enforced follower threshold. Brands set their own bar, campaign by campaign, and plenty of them set it low on purpose because small accounts in a tight niche are exactly what a $30 product needs.

That is why this route is the most reachable one for a small account. The full case is a few sections down. If you have never made a UGC clip, how to become a UGC creator covers the portfolio, the gear you already own, and the first 30 days.

Your own products

Presets, templates, a short course, coaching, a paid community, a physical product. You own the price and the margin, and nobody can revoke it.

It is also the slowest route to start. Selling requires trust, and trust takes time at 2,000 followers. The common path is to land a few brand deals first, learn what your audience responds to, then build a product around it.

If you want to see what sells, our digital products monetization guide covers the formats, and the creator revenue streams guide shows how creators stack more than one of these buckets over time.

Can you make money posting videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook?

Yes, on all four, and each platform publishes its own bar. Here is the exact answer per platform, the page the numbers come from, and what pays before you reach the bar.

Can you make money posting videos on YouTube?

Yes, through the YouTube Partner Program, once you clear one of two doors. The YouTube Partner Program page lists them: 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 qualified public watch hours in the last 12 months, or 1,000 subscribers plus 10 million qualified public Shorts views in the last 90 days. You also need an active AdSense for YouTube account, 2-Step Verification turned on, and no active Community Guidelines strikes.

Under 1,000 subscribers, ad revenue is zero. What pays before that: affiliate links in the description and brand deals, both of which a small channel in a buying niche can land. YouTube is also the platform where long-form watch time compounds. A channel that hits 1,000 subscribers with real watch hours is a different asset than a Shorts-only account at the same count.

Can you make money posting videos on Instagram?

Through Instagram itself, only if Meta invites you. Meta's own bonuses page says it plainly: bonuses are "limited time and invite-only" while Meta builds toward a sustainable program. There is no application. You cannot grind your way in. If the invite appears in your Professional dashboard, it appears. Plan your income as if it will not.

So how to get paid to post on Instagram, in practice, comes down to the two routes that are open at any size: brand campaigns and affiliate links. Reels are the format that moves both, because a brand buying reach looks at your average Reel views before it looks at your follower count. More on that number below.

Can you make money posting videos on TikTok?

Yes, through the Creator Rewards Program, once you clear its bar. TikTok's Creator Academy eligibility page lists it: you must be 18 or older, have at least 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days, use a personal account (business accounts do not qualify), and be based in an eligible country. As of this writing the list is the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and Brazil. Only original videos longer than one minute earn, each video needs at least 1,000 views on the For You feed before it counts, and Duets and Stitches are excluded. The Creator Rewards Program replaced the old Creator Fund, so ignore any guide that still quotes Creator Fund numbers.

Below 10,000 followers, TikTok pays through two other doors. TikTok Shop's affiliate side pays a commission on sales through your videos, with its own follower minimum that you should check inside the app. Brand campaigns pay per post, with a floor the brand sets.

Can you make money posting videos on Facebook?

Yes, through Facebook Content Monetization, Meta's program that pays for Reels, longer videos, photos, text posts, and Stories from one place. Meta's Content Monetization page lays out the program. Meta rolled it out by invitation and has been expanding access since. The published conditions: a Facebook Page or a profile in professional mode, an eligible country, age 18 or over, and compliance with Meta's Partner Monetization Policies. You check whether your account is eligible inside the Professional dashboard.

Two things people search for around this deserve a straight answer. "Get paid to post ads on Facebook" offers in groups are sponsored posts under another name: a company pays you to put its ad on your profile or in a group. A real one is a brand campaign, and the disclosure rules below apply to it. One that asks you to pay a fee before you earn anything is a different kind of business. And Facebook views count toward brand floors the same as any other platform, which is why a Reel you already made for Instagram should be on Facebook too.

Which routes are open under 10,000 followers

Two routes are open on day one. Here is the map, where "open" means you can act on it this month with the account you have.

Route	Open under 10K?	What it takes
TikTok Creator Rewards	Closed. 10,000 follower minimum plus 100,000 views in 30 days	Grow first
Instagram bonuses	Closed unless Meta invites you	Nothing you can apply for
YouTube Partner Program	Open at 1,000 subscribers if you have the watch time	4,000 qualified watch hours in 12 months, or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days
Facebook Content Monetization	Closed until Meta opens it to your account	Check eligibility in the Professional dashboard
X creator revenue sharing	Closed until you hold X Premium and clear the follower and impression minimums	A Premium subscription and steady organic reach
Affiliate links	Open, program by program	A buying niche and review-style content
Brand campaigns and UGC jobs	Open. Brands set their own floor	Real average views in a niche a brand sells into, and a place where brands post jobs
Your own products	Open	An audience that trusts you and a product they asked for

Brand campaigns and affiliate are open for a small account today. Your own products open once you have an audience that trusts you. The rest are gated by numbers or invites.

The math on growth still matters, because every route pays better with more views. If you are stuck between 1,000 and 5,000 on TikTok, our guide on how small accounts hit 10K followers covers the 30-day plan. Read it alongside this one. Growth and income run on the same posting habit.

The most reachable way to get paid to post on social media

Brand campaigns. Three reasons, each one specific.

Brands set the bar, and many set it low

A brand selling a $30 skincare product needs twenty creators with 3,000 real followers in the skincare niche, whose viewers buy $30 skincare. One creator with 500,000 followers costs more per post and reaches a crowd that mostly buys something else. Smaller accounts cost less per post and tend to hold a tighter audience.

The brand side agrees. Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 benchmark report found that about half of the brands surveyed plan to expand their work with nano creators (1,000 to 10,000 followers) this year, and a similar share plan to expand with micro creators. Brands are moving toward small accounts on purpose.

The pay is per post, and you can look up what others report

Because pay is set per job, there is public data on the ranges. Shopify's influencer pricing guide, updated June 2026, lists what nano creators (1,000 to 10,000 followers) reportedly charge per post: $25 to $150 on Instagram and $5 to $200 on TikTok. For micro creators (10,001 to 100,000 followers) the guide lists $250 to $5,000 on Instagram and $200 to $1,200 on TikTok.

Shopify calls those figures directional, and so should you. They are what other creators report, aggregated across sources. Your number depends on your niche, your average views, and what the brand is buying. But the point stands: a small account has a rate, and brands pay it. For the full breakdown of how UGC pay is built, including usage rights and exclusivity, read UGC rates: how much do UGC creators make.

You do not need a platform's permission

No application to a platform. No invite. To get paid on a brand campaign you need three things:

Numbers a brand can verify.
A niche a brand sells into.
A place where brands post jobs and small creators can see them.

That third piece is the one that has been missing. Brand deals for small accounts have mostly happened through cold DMs and luck. A job board with a floor changes that: the brand states its bar, and every creator who clears it sees the job.

Socialync's UGC board opens November 1. Brands post campaigns with pay, deliverables, and usage rights on the listing. Sign up to get told the moment it opens.

Get paid to post apps

Search "get paid to post apps" and you get four kinds of app mixed together. Knowing which is which saves you a month.

Creator marketplace apps. Brands post collaborations, creators pitch, and the app charges the brand or takes a cut. TikTok Creator Marketplace and Instagram's creator marketplace are the platform-run versions. Independent marketplaces do the same across platforms.
Affiliate apps. You get a link or a code and earn a commission on sales. Pay depends on what sells, and nothing is owed for the post itself.
Micro-task apps. You get a small fixed amount to share a brand's post, ad, or quote on your own account. The amounts are small, and the disclosure rule applies to every one of them.
Job boards with floors. A brand posts a campaign with pay, deliverables, usage rights, and a minimum follower count and minimum average views per platform. Creators who clear the floor see the job. Creators who do not never see it.

The difference between the fourth kind and the first three is mechanical. On a marketplace you pitch and wait. On a board with floors, the brand has already decided who qualifies, and your connected numbers do the pitching. Each has a place. A marketplace has more listings to browse. A board with floors has less noise per listing, because nobody applies to a job they were never going to get. Our field guide to the best UGC platforms for brands and creators compares each type, what it costs, and what to ask before you sign up. For where UGC jobs come from week to week, and how to spot a listing that wants money from you, read UGC jobs: how to find paid UGC work.

How campaign pay structures work

Every listing on a job board, and every offer in a brand's DM, comes down to one of three structures. Learn all three and you can read any listing in ten seconds.

Post to all your platforms in one click

Socialync lets you cross-post to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Pinterest, with AI-powered captions for each platform. Free to start.

Flat fee

You deliver the post. The brand pays a fixed amount. Views do not change the number.

This is the most common structure for small accounts and the easiest to plan around. It rewards reliability: deliver on time, on brief, and the fee is yours.

What to read on a flat-fee listing:

How many deliverables (one video or three)
Which platforms it must go on
Whether the brand gets usage rights to run it as an ad, and for how long
When payment is due (on delivery, on approval, or net 30)

CPM over a measurement window

CPM means cost per thousand views. The brand pays a rate for every 1,000 views the post gets, counted over a fixed window, commonly 7, 14, or 30 days after it goes live.

Say a listing offers a $4 CPM over a 14-day window. That is an example, and the rate in a real listing will be whatever the brand sets. Under that example, 20,000 views inside the window pays $80. 5,000 views pays $20. 100,000 views pays $400.

CPM rewards creators whose average views run above their follower count. If your Reels regularly pull three times your follower count in views, CPM can pay more than the flat fee a brand would offer for the same post. If your views are flat, a flat fee is easier to plan around.

Two details decide whether a CPM deal is fair: which platform's view count is used, and when the window closes. Both belong on the listing.

Flat fee plus a view bonus at a threshold

A fixed base, plus a bonus if the post crosses a view number inside a window.

Example again, with made-up numbers: $75 base, plus $150 if the video passes 50,000 views in 30 days. You get $75 either way. Cross the line and it becomes $225.

Brands use this structure when they want a guaranteed post but are hoping for a hit. The base is your floor. The bonus is upside you can influence with a better hook.

The three structures side by side

Structure	You get paid on	Works best when	Read the listing for
Flat fee	Delivery	Your views are steady and you want certainty	Deliverables, platforms, usage rights, payment timing
CPM	Every 1,000 views in a window	Your views outrun your follower count	Rate, window length, which platform's count is used
Flat fee plus bonus	Delivery, with a bonus above a view threshold	You want a floor with upside	Base, threshold, window

All three structures exist on Socialync's board. Payment terms and usage rights are on the listing before you apply. They are agreed before application and never renegotiated after. The brand pays you directly.

How brands set floors on followers and average views

A floor is the brand deciding in advance who is worth its time. On Socialync's board the floor includes country, language, niche, and, per platform, a minimum follower count and a minimum average views.

Why the floor exists. A brand with a budget for twenty posts cannot read three hundred applications. If you clear the floor, the job shows up on your board. If you do not, you never see it, and you have not spent an application on a job you were never going to get.

Why average views matter more to a brand than followers. Follower count is a history. Average views is what happens now. A brand buying views cares about the second number. A 4,000 follower account averaging 12,000 views per Reel is a better buy for that brand than a 40,000 follower account averaging 900.

Where the numbers come from. On Socialync's board, every stat on an applicant comes from the platform API through the creator's own connected account. A brand never has to take your word for anything. The floor says prove it, and your connected account does the proving. No screenshots. No media kit. An inflated slide cannot help anyone, which means an honest small account with real views competes on the actual number.

What this means for you. Your follower count and your average views on each platform are the two numbers you are being hired on. Know them cold. Our guide on analytics that matter shows which metrics predict growth and which are noise.

How to raise your average views before you apply

Average views is a number you can move in a month. The levers are the same ones that grow an account:

Hooks. The first two seconds decide whether the view counts. The anatomy of a perfect hook breaks down the openings that hold.
Cadence. Platforms reward accounts that show up. How often to post on each platform gives the real number per platform.
Timing. Posting when your audience is awake is free reach. Best time to post on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube has the day-by-day breakdown.
Niche. A brand floor includes niche. A clear one makes you findable and makes your views mean something to a specific kind of brand. How to find your content niche walks through the overlap method.

Post through one tool so your numbers count everywhere

A brand floor is set per platform. Post on TikTok only and your Instagram numbers sit at zero. That one mechanical fact decides how many floors you clear, and most creators miss it.

A campaign might require 2,000 followers and 3,000 average views on TikTok, and 1,500 followers and 2,000 average views on Instagram. If you only ever post to TikTok, you clear half the floors you could have cleared.

Cross-posting fixes this. The same clip, published to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook, and Threads, builds five sets of numbers from one piece of work. Your average views on each platform climb because you are posting there, every day, with the same content you already made.

Socialync publishes one post to nine platforms: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Pinterest. The free plan covers eight of them (X is on paid plans), 5 posts a month, no card required. Paid plans start at $20 a month. Start posting everywhere from one place.

There is a second reason this matters for paid work. On Socialync's board, a deliverable attaches to a real published post, published through Socialync, and it is tracked. The brand confirms delivery. You confirm payment. Both sides have a record. When your everyday posting and your paid posts run through the same tool, the post you were paid for is the post that gets tracked, on every platform the brand asked for.

If you want the full workflow, how to post to every platform at once covers it. And if you already do UGC work, read should UGC creators use cross-posting first, because client content comes with usage rights attached.

Disclosure rules you cannot skip

Getting paid to post comes with one legal obligation. You tell your audience it was paid. In the United States that rule comes from the FTC, and the platforms enforce their own version on top of it.

What the FTC requires

The FTC's Disclosures 101 for social media influencers is short, and worth reading once in full. The core rules:

Disclose any relationship. The FTC's words: any "financial, employment, personal, or family relationship" with a brand. A free product counts. A discount counts. If a brand gave you something and you mention its product, disclose.
Put it where people will see it. The disclosure goes with the endorsement itself, positioned so it is "hard to miss." A note in your profile does not count. A tag buried behind "more" does not count.
In a video, say it in the video. A line in the description alone does not satisfy the rule. Say it on camera or put it on screen.
On a live stream, repeat it. Viewers who join late need to hear it too.
Use plain words. "Ad," "advertisement," "sponsored," #ad, and #sponsored all work. The FTC calls out "sp," "spon," and "collab" as too vague.

What TikTok requires

TikTok's commercial content disclosure setting is mandatory: "When posting content that promotes a brand, product, or service on TikTok, you must turn on the commercial content disclosure setting." Content made for another business gets a "Paid partnership" label.

Turning the label on has no effect on how TikTok recommends the video. Leaving it off can cost you distribution. TikTok's page says an undisclosed commercial video "may not be eligible for distribution in the For You feed," and if TikTok flags a video as possible branded content, you have 24 hours to respond before it loses For You eligibility.

What Instagram requires

Instagram's paid partnership label is the tool for tagging a brand partner on organic branded content across Feed, Stories, Reels, and Live. The brand needs a professional account to be taggable, and your account needs to meet Meta's partner monetization policies to use the tool.

Why this protects you

A brand that runs campaigns knows disclosure is required and expects to see it. A listing that asks you to leave the label off is asking you to break an FTC rule on your own account, with your name on it. The disclosure is part of the deliverable. Treat it that way.

A 30-day plan to land your first paid post

You can start this at 1,000 followers. Four weeks of focused work and a place to apply.

Week 1: set up the account brands will check

Pick one niche and commit to it for 90 days.
Rewrite your bio so it says what you post about and that you work with brands.
Switch Instagram to a Professional account if it is not one already.
Connect your accounts to a scheduler and start cross-posting so every platform builds numbers from the same clips.

Week 2: post daily and watch average views

One clip a day, cross-posted. Same content, per-platform caption.
Write the first two seconds before you film anything else.
At the end of the week, write down your average views per platform. That is your baseline.

Week 3: build proof

Make three spec UGC clips for products you already own and like. No client, no rights issues, pure portfolio.
Put them on your own accounts, cross-posted, and in one place a brand can scan in thirty seconds. Our guide on influencer portfolio websites covers when you need one and what goes on it.
Pin your best example on each platform.

Week 4: apply

Sign up for the Socialync UGC board so you are told the moment it opens on November 1. Founding campaigns show up first.
In the meantime, DM three brands in your niche that already work with small creators. Lead with your average views and a link to your proof. Keep it to four sentences.
Keep posting. Every day you post, the number brands hire on goes up.

The scheduler that makes week 1 through 4 possible is free to start: 5 posts a month, eight platforms, no card. Get started at socialync.io.

What to read before you apply to any campaign

The listing tells you what you are agreeing to. Read all of it before you apply, because on a board like Socialync's the terms are agreed at application and never reopened.

Usage rights and duration. Can the brand run your content as an ad? For how long? Perpetual usage is a different deal than 90 days.
Exclusivity. Are you barred from posting about competing products, and for how long?
Deliverables. Exact count, exact platforms, exact format. "Three Reels" and "one video cross-posted to three platforms" are different jobs.
Payment timing. On delivery, on approval, or net 30. Know before you start filming.
Revisions. How many rounds the brand can request.
Posting requirement. Whether the post must stay up, and for how long.
Who pays whom. A brand pays you. A listing that charges you a fee to apply is a different kind of business.

If you want to see how a brand builds one of these listings from its side, how to write a UGC brief shows the template brands work from. Reading a brief the way a brand writes one makes every listing easier to judge.

Frequently asked questions

How many followers do you need to get paid to post on Instagram?

There is no platform-set minimum for brand deals on Instagram. Brands set their own floor per campaign, and many set it in the low thousands for niche products. Instagram's own bonuses are invite-only, so there is no follower count that gets you in. For sponsored posts, your average views on Reels matter more to a brand than your follower count.

Can you get paid to post on TikTok with 1,000 followers?

Through TikTok's Creator Rewards Program, no. That program requires at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days, per TikTok's Creator Academy. Through brand campaigns, yes, if a brand's floor is set at or below your numbers and your niche matches. Affiliate programs are also open at that size, though TikTok Shop's affiliate side has its own follower minimum that you should check in the app.

What does get paid to post mean on X?

On X, "get paid to post" refers to X's creator revenue sharing program, which pays eligible accounts a share of revenue based on how their posts perform. X's creator ads revenue sharing help page lists the requirements: an X Premium subscription (Premium+ and Verified Organizations also qualify), a minimum follower count, a minimum number of organic impressions on your posts over the last three months, a payout account, and age 18 or over. As of this writing the published minimums are 500 followers and 5 million impressions in three months; confirm the current numbers on the page, because X has changed them before. X has also changed what the payout is calculated on more than once, most recently tying it to engagement from Premium subscribers, so the page is the source for the formula too. X does not publish a rate per post. For a small account, the practical answer is that X pays through the same brand campaigns and affiliate links as every other platform, and X Premium is a cost you pay before revenue sharing pays anything back.

How do you get paid to post on Facebook?

Two ways. The first is Facebook Content Monetization, Meta's program that pays for Reels, longer videos, photos, text posts, and Stories. You need a Facebook Page or a profile in professional mode, an eligible country, age 18 or over, and compliance with Meta's Partner Monetization Policies. Meta rolled the program out by invitation and has been expanding it; you check your status in the Professional dashboard, and Meta's Content Monetization page has the details. The second way is the same as everywhere else: brand campaigns and affiliate links, which are open at any size. Every "get paid to post ads on Facebook" offer is one of those two things or a fee-first business you should read carefully.

What does get paid to post content mean?

It means a brand pays you for a post. Either the brand is buying your reach (a sponsored post on your account, labeled as a paid partnership) or the brand is buying the content itself (a UGC job, where the brand runs your clip on its own channels or as an ad). Both are brand campaigns. Both are paid per job, at a rate and structure the brand sets, and both require a disclosure when the content goes on your account. Neither requires a platform's permission or a follower threshold set by the platform.

How much do brands pay small creators per post?

It depends on niche, average views, and what the brand is buying (a post to your audience, or content it will run itself). Third-party guides publish ranges. Shopify's 2026 influencer pricing guide lists $25 to $150 per Instagram post and $5 to $200 per TikTok post as what nano creators reportedly charge, and calls the figures directional. Treat any range as a reference point, then read the actual pay structure on the listing: flat fee, CPM over a window, or flat fee plus a view bonus.

Do I have to say a post is sponsored?

Yes. The FTC requires a clear disclosure of any financial relationship with a brand, including free products, placed where viewers will see it and inside the video itself. TikTok requires the commercial content disclosure setting on any post promoting a brand, product, or service, and undisclosed commercial content can lose For You feed eligibility. Instagram provides a paid partnership label for tagging the brand.

When does the Socialync UGC board open, and who can join?

The board opens November 1, 2026. Marketplace participation is 18 and over. Brands post campaigns with pay, deliverables, usage rights, and a floor for followers and average views per platform. Creators connect their accounts once, and the jobs they clear the floor for show up on their board. The brand pays the creator directly. Sign up at socialync.io/ugc to be told the moment it opens.

Start here

Here is the verdict. Creator funds are real, and most of them are closed to you today. Affiliate is open and slow. Your own products come later. Brand campaigns are open now, because brands set the bar and plenty of them set it where a 3,000 follower account in a tight niche clears it.

The whole guide in six lines:

Creator funds have published thresholds. Under 10,000 followers, most are closed to you.
Affiliate is open at any size and works in buying niches with review-style content.
Brand campaigns are the most reachable route because brands set their own floor, and many set it low.
Pay comes in three shapes: flat fee, CPM over a window, or flat fee plus a bonus at a view threshold. Read which one the listing uses.
You are hired on two numbers per platform: followers and average views. Cross-post so both grow everywhere.
Disclose every paid post. The FTC and the platforms both require it, and it protects you.

One thing to do today: sign up at socialync.io/ugc so you are told the moment the UGC board opens on November 1. While you wait, post everywhere from one place with Socialync, free plan, 5 posts a month, eight platforms, no card, so the two numbers brands hire on grow on every platform at once.

How to Make Money Posting Videos (2026 Guide)