- It's the network effect. That's what really drives huge results, and since joining the Creator Network, I've actually had 22,500 subscribers referred from almost 200 creators recommending my newsletter. My name is Jay Clouse, I am the founder of Creator Science, and this is how I use ConvertKit. I started my business in 2017, and it started with a newsletter. Growing your email list
was very, very challenging, there wasn't a built-in
mechanism to do that. All new subscribers had
to be driven, by you, from somewhere else. And it was a lotta work, because now not only were
you writing great emails, but you had to be great
on Twitter or Instagram and drive people to email. Then I started realizing that
a lotta my friends and peers who were doing this creator
thing were using ConvertKit. Now, if you're a ConvertKit user, you can become a part
of that Creator Network, and there are so many more people who I can reach who are recommending me because a lot of my audience
are ConvertKit users, because I recommend ConvertKit a lot. So I just have a much
greater footprint now of people who would be willing
to recommend my newsletter. Now, not all of those people stick around, but currently, about 17,000
people are still there. To say three out of four subscribers, after six months, are still there, I think is a really high
indication of the quality of people that are coming through
the Creator Network. And since my newsletter is about 50,000 subscribers right now, that's a third of my current subscribers have come purely because
of the Creator Network. When I first joined the Creator Network, I think one of the most important and impactful things that I did was reach out to some friends of mine who I knew were already ConvertKit users, if not already members of
the network themselves. Some of them I sent a text message to because we have that
level of relationship, and I said, "Hey, I just
joined the Creator Network, "in case you're looking
for somebody to recommend." And that helped me get the
first 10 people recommending me. And that's really important, because that helps you build confidence, it helps you understand
how the tool works, build the systems that
you feel good about. And I think it's really important, even if you don't have
those relationships, to seek out the partners
that you want to align with, and try to build those relationships. You may go through the
Creator Network portal and see people who are featured, or you might do a keyword search, and find other people in your niche, and subscribe to their newsletter. Maybe recommend them if
you like that newsletter. And then after a couple weeks
of getting their content, reading it, learning about
them, reply, you know, start to build that
relationship in a real way. You should think long term, think about this relationship
as a long-term thing. Don't just email them and say "Hey, would you recommend me" if you don't have a
relationship there yet. Build that relationship,
support their content. Let them know what you think about it. Start recommending them, you know, give before you try and receive. I made a custom sequence in
ConvertKit for subscribers who came from the Creator
Network specifically, because, the more I can
personalize the experience of joining my newsletter
to how they joined, the more likely that
subscriber is to stick around to transfer some of the trust they have in that creator to me. So being able to know who
referred the subscriber to me can be really powerful,
because then I can customize and personalize the sequence that is sent to that new subscriber. And I also didn't assume
that they knew much about me. What that looked like is I took my existing welcome
sequence, I duplicated it, and then I changed the copy a little bit, to say, "Hey, you were
recommended by Justin Welsh." "You were recommended by
Chanel at Growth and Reverse. "My name is Jay, I write a
newsletter called Creator Science "that helps you become
a professional creator. "If that's interesting to you, "you'll get the first
issue this coming Sunday. "If that doesn't sound interesting to you, "if this doesn't sound like
something that you want, "feel free to unsubscribe here." And I did that because I
have always been somebody who likes to keep my list
very clean, very engaged. If you're cost-conscious, that also helps you reduce
your overall email bill, you want people on your
list who are opening, who are reading, who wanna be there. So you shouldn't be afraid of letting people know,
if this isn't for you, here is how you can opt out. So in the beginning, I was just using the free recommendations inside the Creator
Network, which was amazing, there were 160-plus creators
recommending Creator Science. I was getting literally
thousands of new subscribers every week. And then I started playing around with the paid recommendations as well. Sometimes I hear creators
go on interviews or YouTube and say things like "This is
how many subscribers I have, "growth has looked like this,
and it's been all organic." And that's really great,
but I just think to myself, "Well imagine if it wasn't." Imagine, if this is so good, that this many people
are joining for free, all these people are joining organically. Imagine if you put a little
bit of budget behind this what you could do, because, it's only going to grow and
expand what you're doing. And if you set it up right, it should be a net positive in terms of what you earn
from those subscribers and what you're paying to bring them into your
world in the first place. That's been a revelation. I know that I've brought in
thousands of paid subscribers over the last couple of months, because it has this whole set of controls, to ensure that you're getting
a really good fit subscriber for your newsletter. You can control which partners
you accept subscribers from. You can control how many subscribers you allow each partner to send. You can control the budget
that you give each partner for sending you a subscriber, and you can control your overall budget for a monthly timeline. Then you can decide, what does
a good subscriber look like that makes this transaction worthwhile? And that's great, because
that's gonna make it more likely that that person enjoys your work, gets a lot out of your work,
and even purchases something. So, not only is a creator network a great way to grow your newsletter through free recommendations, you can pay to acquire subscribers at a very reasonable rate, and you can get paid to recommend others. Today I've earned about $3000
in paid recommendations, just having one of my recommendation slots be paid over the last couple of months. So, if you set it up right,
it's kind of arbitrage. You can actually pay to acquire customers with the money that you're earning by recommending other newsletters. And that's a pretty fantastic opportunity.
