In this Article
Since 2016, Kit has led the way in marketing tools built for creators, by creators.
We continue to carry out that mission with products that take our commitment to creators to the next level.
Now, when you join Kit, you’re not just getting industry-leading email marketing tools—you’re becoming part of the Creator Network.
In this exclusive network, you can discover like-minded creators and accelerate your audience growth with Recommendations.
Why we built the Creator Network and Recommendations
As creators, we’re used to doing things solo and siloed off from others. While there are a lot of perks to working for yourself, sometimes the creator journey is lonely.
Collaborating with others has made a big difference for many creators, including our founder, Nathan Barry.
In 2012, Nathan found himself alone at a conference.
Introverted and unsure who to talk to, he worked up the courage to speak with James Clear and Caleb Wojcik, who later became part of a creator mastermind. Nathan credits that event and those connections with his success, and he’s not the only one who does.
Collaboration between creators is more than just sharing ideas. It’s partnering to level up each other’s work and grow together.
When I think about my creator career, it’s really the other creators that have helped me have a big impact and helped me get to where I am.
– Nathan Barry, Founder of Kit
That’s why we created the Creator Network and Recommendations—because collaboration is the key to your success as a creator.
It’s a built-in referral program for your email list. When you work with other creators, you can learn from their experiences, get inspired by their ideas, and tap into their audiences.
This feature is a game-changer for all creators wanting to grow their newsletter lists. My total subscriber count has increased by over 48% in 1 month since joining the Creator Network, which is insane.
– Corey Wilks Psy.D, Psychologist, Creator Coach
The Creator Network is a platform for creators to grow faster and pay it forward to other creators, with Recommendations as the first step towards building a supportive, inclusive community.
Our product roadmap includes releasing additional features that help creators better connect and earn a living through partnerships.
Since publishing this post, we’ve launched the following features:
- Subscriber Attribution: There’s now a subscriber tab that shows where each subscriber is referred from.
- Liquid Subscriber tag: Personalize your emails with who they were referred from to make a closer connection.
- In-network profile: The in-network profile improved. See who creators are recommending, who they are recommended by, social links, and featured posts, making vetting easy.
- Email notifications: Get notified when creators recommend you and when they refer a subscriber. This increases your discoverability when you recommend new creators, driving more creators to recommend you back and referring more subscribers to you.
- Creator Matching: Access a more personalized list of creators for you to recommend that’ll help you unlock faster subscriber growth in the network. The three sections are creators who share recommendations with you, are subscribed to your newsletter, or you’re subscribed to their newsletter.
- Smart Recommendations: Giving our paid customers an extra boost to help them grow their list through recommendations. Paid customers can also see which creators are helping them grow, making it easier to connect and recommend those creators back.
- Recommendation signal: Spot creators who are actively sharing content or growing quickly. Consistent creator and Growing fast statuses help you recommend with confidence.
How the Creator Network and Recommendations works
As a creator, nothing feels better than when new fans discover you and hit subscribe. But finding your audience and making sure they find you isn’t always easy.
That’s when you need Recommendations.
With Recommendations, other Kit creators grow your list for you by promoting your newsletter in their sign-up flows and emails—putting the spotlight on you so their subscribers could become yours, too.
To start using Recommendations, you have to give to get:
- Start recommending creators to your audience
- Then, you’ll appear in the network for creators to recommend
You can also jumpstart recommendations by building a circle of creator friends and recommending each other immediately.
It’s a sustainable way to grow your email list without growing your to-do list, so you can get back to creating.
We’ve already seen evidence of how the Creator Network can help you grow your list:
Allea Grummert
Copywriting agency owner Allea Grummert was struggling with slow growth for her newsletter. Although she published consistently for two years, she found it challenging to get her name in front of new audiences and attract the right subscribers to her list—until she found the Creator Network.
After joining the Creator Network, Allea’s subscriber count started to grow on autopilot. She was recommended by a variety of other creators who aligned with her content and was thrilled with the growth and boosted motivation that came with it.
The Creator Network experience “opened a whole new realm of possibilities” and helped her see more potential in herself and her business.
Maurizio Leo
New York Times bestselling author and food blogger Maurizio Leo found that despite his success, breaking through that growth plateau for his email list remained a challenge. This began to change after he started using Kit’s Creator Network.
Through other creators’ recommendations, Maurizio gained 598 new subscribers to his newsletter in his first month.
Joining the Creator Network has helped him focus more on creating content while his email list consistently grows in the background every week, so he can spend more time doing the things he loves: baking and sharing recipes.
Emily Mills
Emily Mills, an illustrator and sketchnoter, started building her newsletter with the hope that it would one day allow her to make a living online doing what she loves. While she was making progress with her own strategies, her list growth accelerated every time she partnered with a creator.
Creator Network by the numbers
Whether you’re an up-and-coming creator or an established name like James Clear, Tim Ferriss, Codie Sanchez, or Pat Flynn, the Creator Network can take your growth to the next level by helping you build deeper community connections, scale your email list, and free you up to focus on the things you love most.
Here’s how the Creator Network has already impacted users since it’s launch:
By joining the Creator Network, you’ll access a community of creators all working toward the same goal: growing their email lists and building their businesses.
How to join the Creator Network
1. Sign up for the Creator Network
To join the Creator Network, all you need to do is sign up with your paid Kit account. If you’re not already a Kit user, start a free 14-day trial and then opt-in to the Creator Network.
2. Set up your Creator Profile
Once you’ve signed up, create your profile in the Creator Network.
Your Creator Profile also acts as your in-network profile so other creators can learn about who you are, what content you write, and what audience you serve. Setting up a good Creator Profile will help drive the number of recommendations you get from other creators!
3. Discover other creators
Use the Creator Network’s search function to discover other creators and find who best complements your work. You can also browse through different categories, such as blogging, podcasting, or photography, to find creators working in your field.
It was a no-brainer to pick a couple of folks I respect and have overlapping content with to share with my audience.
– Nick True, Financial creator at Mapped Out Money
4. Recommend other creators
The Creator Network allows you to recommend other creators to your audience.
Recommendations include a short bio of the recommended creator, as well as a link to their Creator Profile.
When you recommend another creator, the recommendations modal pops up right after someone subscribes to your newsletter. So, when you grow your list, you’re helping others grow theirs, too.
Getting started is easy.
Simply enable up to 5 slots to be seen on the recommendation modal. If you choose more than 5, they’ll rotate at random. You also have the flexibility to choose which forms or landing pages your recommendation modal appears on.
When you recommend another creator, this tells your audience that you trust and value that creator’s work. This can help the other creators grow their audience and reach new people.
I recommend newsletters I enjoy reading, the kinds of newsletters I used to manually send people to because they are genuinely that good.
– Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Writer & Researcher at Ness Labs
Want to know the quality of the subscribers you get from Recommendations?
The Subscribers tab tells you the average open rate, average click rate, and unsubscribe rate of the subscribers you’ve gained through Recommendations.
And if you’re struggling to find recommendations, our Creator Matching feature shares a personalized list of creators for you to recommend, helping unlock faster subscriber growth in the network.
5. Get recommended by other creators
The Creator Network allows other creators to recommend you to their audience.
When another creator recommends you, this tells their audience that they trust and value your work. This can help you grow your audience and reach new people.
For example, when you recommend other creators on the network, your profile will show up on their dashboard, and they can easily recommend you back. This can help you reach new followers and organically grow your audience.
Use the discovery tab to see who’s currently recommended and explore options to find creator matches.
The Creator Network is now driving more new subscribers for Daily Stoic than all our other traffic sources combined.
– Ryan Holiday, Author and Founder of The Daily Stoic
If someone makes an introduction, you can send a personal reply, helping you build strong relationships and connections.
Creator Network also comes with email notifications, so you’ll get alerted when new creators are recommending you to easily discover new creators and recommend them back to scale your list growth together.
6. Get paid
Add a new income stream by opening up paid recommendations slots (powered by SparkLoop) to advertise for other creators.
You can then reinvest the money you’ve earned with these paid recommendations right back into your list growth by finding creators to partner with as a paid recommendation spot in their newsletter (with a $5k minimum budget).
And when that partner grows their list, you’ll grow yours, too.
Since using a paid channel to get referrals, I’ve been able to 2X my spend, which has been much better than any other paid acquisition channel. It was so easy to choose a partner that was a good fit for what products and services I offer. And with the backend already dialed in,
I’m looking forward to expanding and re-investing into this channel.
– Jason Resnick, founder of NurtureKit.co
Let other creators grow your list with Recommendations
The Creator Network is Kit’s newest product that’s designed to help creators connect, collaborate, and grow.
Whether you’re a blogger, podcaster, photographer, or any other type of creator, the Creator Network helps you find other creators who share your interests and goals and grow your newsletters with them.
Join the Creator Network today.
Sign up with your Kit account and discover other creators to help you achieve your goals.
