My $10k UGC Challenge

I pitched 500+ brands and made $10k from UGC. Here’s what actually happened.

I wanted to share this because I see SO many new UGC creators getting overwhelmed by posts from people saying they’re making $10k, $15k, even $20k a month.

And when you’re starting out and struggling to even get one brand to reply, it can make you wonder if you’re doing something wrong.

A few months ago I decided to set myself a challenge: make $10,000 from UGC.

I called it my “$10k to Takeoff” challenge and basically decided I was going to stop overthinking everything and just pitch. A lot.

I ended up sending over 500 pitches.

Yep. 500+ 😂

And I think that number is actually the part worth talking about because we constantly see people sharing how much they made, but not necessarily the amount of work, rejection and silence behind it.

I definitely did NOT have 500 brands saying yes lol.

There were ignored emails. Rejections. Gifted offers. Lowball offers. Brands that sounded interested and then disappeared. Follow-ups that went nowhere.

But there were also yeses.

By the end of the challenge, I’d made $11,125 from 28 paid collaborations in 55 days.

Is that $10k every month? Absolutely not.

And I think that’s important to say because I don’t want to become another person on the internet making UGC sound like some magical $10k-a-month side hustle.

I’m a normal creator. I don’t have a huge following. I’m a mum, I work, and I was fitting pitching, filming and editing around normal life.

But I DO think making a few thousand dollars a month from UGC is achievable.

The biggest thing that changed things for me was consistency.

Pitch. Follow up. Improve your portfolio. Work on your personal brand. Get better at explaining what you can actually do for the brand instead of sending “I love your products and would love to collaborate” emails.

Then keep going.

And accept that a huge percentage of your emails are probably going to be ignored.

Sometimes there are 500+ emails behind the screenshot of the $10k.

If anyone actually wants to see what I was sending, feel free to message me. I write about my UGC journey on Substack and I’ve shared some of my actual pitches and what I’ve learnt from sending so many of them. Full transparency, the deeper stuff is behind my paid subscription, which is $8/month. I don’t want to sneakily drop a link here and pretend this post isn’t connected to anything 😂

I’ve also made a YouTube video breaking down the challenge and my pitching strategy, which is completely free. Happy to send that link too if anyone wants it.

Mostly just wanted to put some realistic numbers out there because I know how discouraging it can feel when your feed is full of “I made $10k this month!” posts.

There’s usually a lot of boring work happening behind the screenshot.