This interview is with Victor Hsi, Founder & Community Manager at UGC Creator Agency.

Victor Hsi, Founder & Community Manager, UGC Creator Agency

Victor, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in the digital marketing world?

I started off with the Head of Growth at a local social media agency, jumpstarting their UGC department, and eventually left to start my own UGC-creator agency as part of a DTC incubator with a business partner. After our partnership fell through, I bought over UGCcreator.com and pivoted it into a newsletter business.

Your career trajectory is fascinating, especially your pivot from a UGC creator agency to a newsletter-focused service. Could you elaborate on the key events that led to this significant shift?

We were heavily affected by Google’s Helpful Content update and lost one of our top revenue drivers. We figured the only way forward is owned media (newsletters) that isn’t subjected to algorithm changes, so we decided to start running our UGC Creator agency on a newsletter, specifically beehiiv. Beehiiv came with co-registration, where we can recommend other newsletters for profit, a built-in ad network that allows us to make $100-300 with every email to merely 6,000 subscribers, as well as a digital product subscription system. For how little time we worked on the newsletter, it paid off incredibly fast.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when pivoting your business model, and how did you overcome them?

At first, it is tough because we are monetizing less through client work but more so by matchmaking brands to creators. Our newsletter took a while to be monetizable. And for it to be profitable, we needed to know how to onboard creators at scale with UGC and Meta ads and how to break even from it. We stumbled upon SparkLoop’s Upscribe, which allowed us to make a profit with onboarding creators by having a pop-up to follow a similar newsletter, for which we are paid $1.5-4 per confirmed sign-up.

You mentioned that your new model allows you to monetize through various channels like co-registration and ad networks. Can you share a specific example of how you successfully implemented one of these monetization strategies?

With beehiiv’s boost & Sparkloop’s Upscribe feature, once a subscriber adds their email to the landing page—they’ll be shown a pop-up of recommended emails to sign up for. Using UGC, we make a profit every day on sign-ups. For Meta ads, it has a payback period of 1-3 weeks for us through the beehiiv’s ad-network. It takes 1-2 minutes to schedule an ad in with a newsletter based on ad copy that is already written.

How did you identify your target audience for your newsletter services, and what strategies did you use to attract and retain them?

There’s a thriving UGC creator community all across Facebook, X, Instagram, & Reddit. We onboard creators through these platforms for UGC by telling them to join our UGC creator agency to land jobs.

What role does the Beehiiv platform play in your newsletter-focused business model, and what advantages does it offer over other platforms?

Beehiiv is the only ESP that has co-registration, a built-in ad network, and digital products built into its software. No other ESP comes close to this platform.

Looking ahead, what are some emerging trends in the digital marketing space that you’re particularly excited about, and how do you plan to adapt your business to leverage them?

With the evolvement of AI UGC, we are seeing a trend where business owners opt for AI, as compared to conventional UGC, which pays $150–300/video. We figured to lead the way for both AI UGC and UGC by showcasing how UGC creators can use AI to enhance their work through our newsletter.