The video was approved on a Tuesday, the brand's marketing manager wrote "love it, sending to accounting", and the first message from accounting was not about the video. It asked for a form. Then it asked for the purchase order number the creator had never been given. Then it explained that the company pays on net-30 terms from the invoice date, which meant the money for a video delivered in the first week of the month would arrive in the second week of the next one. None of that was a problem with the brand. It was the American way of paying a supplier, applied to a creator who had expected to be paid like a friend.

Getting paid in the United States is a sequence, and most of the friction comes from not knowing the order. This guide gives the order: the form that comes before the first dollar, the ways the dollar travels, the report that arrives after year end, the escrow alternative that reverses the sequence, and the habits that keep an invoice from sitting in a queue.

Before the first dollar: a form

The W-9, if you are a US person

An American company paying an independent creator will ask for Form W-9 before it pays. The IRS describes its purpose plainly: the form gives your correct taxpayer identification number to the person who is required to file an information return with the IRS to report income paid to you. The brand needs it because, once its payments to you reach the reporting threshold, it files Form 1099-NEC, and it cannot do that without your number. The brand is not suspicious of you and is not offering a contract: it has a filing obligation, and the form is how it meets it. Fill it in, sign it, send it once per client, and keep a copy, because the next client will ask for one too.

The W-8 BEN, if you are not

A creator outside the United States who is paid by an American brand is asked for a different form. The IRS's instruction is that a foreign person who is the beneficial owner of an amount subject to withholding gives Form W-8 BEN to the payer, and submits it when requested whether or not they are claiming a reduced rate of, or exemption from, withholding. Whether any withholding applies to a given payment for creative work, and whether a treaty between your country and the United States changes it, are questions for a professional in your country; what a creator can do on day one is have the form ready, because an American accounts department that receives neither a W-9 nor a W-8 BEN often does not pay at all.

How American brands actually pay

Net terms and the purchase order

Larger companies pay on terms: net-30 is common, net-45 and net-60 exist, and the clock usually starts from the invoice date, not the delivery date. Many also pay only against a purchase order, the internal document that authorizes the spend; without a PO number on the invoice, the invoice has nowhere to go. The Dallas guide describes this vendor logic from the inside. Founders and small direct-to-consumer brands are faster and less formal, and pay on approval or on a 50% deposit, which is one reason a creator's client mix affects cash flow as much as it affects income.

The money itself

The dollar travels by ACH transfer to a US bank account, by card through an invoicing tool, through the payment platforms that startups use to pay contractors, and occasionally still by check. ACH is the norm for corporate clients and is free or nearly free to receive; card payments and some platforms take a percentage from one side or the other; checks are slow and are worth declining when there is an alternative. A creator outside the country receives dollars through an international transfer or a cross-border platform, with a currency conversion somewhere in the chain that is worth pricing in.

The report after year end

After the year closes, a brand that paid you $2,000 or more in the tax year, the threshold in the IRS instructions for tax years beginning after 2025, sends you a Form 1099-NEC and files it with the IRS. It is a copy of what the brand reported, neither a bill nor the brand's opinion of your income, and it should match your own records. A brand that paid you less sends nothing, and the income is still yours to declare. The guide to the creator's tax status in the United States explains where the number goes.

Escrow reverses the sequence

The alternative to net terms is to be paid before the work is delivered, which is what escrow does. On a marketplace with payment protection, the brand funds the order when it places it, the creator delivers, the brand approves, and the money is released; the brand cannot receive the files without having paid, and the creator cannot be paid without having delivered. The guide to payment protection in UGC describes the mechanism in general. On UGC MATCH the platform's fee on the creator's side is 10% of the order, deducted from the payout, and there is no subscription or listing fee behind it; a creator comparing that with a net-60 corporate invoice is comparing a smaller amount now with a larger amount in two months, and the answer depends on the size of the job and the creator's cash position, not on principle.

When the payment is late

A late invoice from an American company is rarely a refusal to pay; it is an invoice that did not enter the system correctly. The first checks are mechanical: was the W-9 on file, did the invoice carry the PO number, did it go to the accounts-payable address rather than to the marketing contact, and did the term actually expire. The lever a creator holds is the license. A contract in which usage rights take effect on payment, in one sentence, means an unpaid brand is running an ad it does not yet have the right to run, and that sentence gets the invoice found faster than any reminder. The guide to contracts and usage rights covers where the clause sits.

Invoice like an American vendor

  1. Put the purchase order number, if there is one, at the top of the invoice, and ask for it before you schedule the work rather than after.
  2. State the payment term you agreed and the due date it produces, so nobody has to calculate it.
  3. List the components as agreed: production, usage with its term, raw files, exclusivity, each on its own line, as the guide to invoicing as a creator lays out.
  4. Add the sentence "usage rights take effect on receipt of payment".
  5. Give ACH details for American clients and international details for the rest, and confirm that a W-9 or W-8 BEN is already on file.

Sources

Checked on 20 September 2026. This guide is not legal or tax advice. Where this guide and the official source disagree, the official source prevails.