So it's been a bit since the Creator Network launched. I am curious if anyone has any wins to celebrate or feedback on their own experiences.
Here is what I can say at this point:
- Brilliant idea. Needs more creators though, so discovery can be useful and more creators findable.
- Tip #1: Don't fret about the categories. Use the search field in discovery as it does a decent job scanning across all creator profile metadata to bubble up people.
- Tip #2: Don't recommend featured people unless you truly believe your audience will benefit from them. It's not what YOU like but what your audience might like.
- I am seeing about a 17% conversion rate for the creators I am recommending. I still have a small list that is growing, but it's still a whole bunch of new subscribers that my fellow creators are gaining with very little additional work.
- I only have a 9% conversion rate coming in from creators recommending me. However, the reality is I haven't seen anyone recommend me yet that has a similar audience as I want to attract.
As I think about the capabilities of the Creator Network, I do see some gaps that I hope ConvertKit will eventually fill:
- We need a clean way to track which subscribers came from a recommendation from the Creator Network. I think a tag would be a perfect solution for that, so we can track exactly who is coming from where.
- We need reporting based on this. Not helpful just yet as the beta just launched, but it would be useful to know how many subscribers actually stick around. What good is getting new subscribers who end up unsubscribing or going cold immediately? Waste of a seat count.
- We need a way to remove ourselves from a creator's profile if we don't want to participate with them. This might be controversial, and I get that. But there are some ConvertKit customers I honestly don't want to be recommended by. I'm a hacker being recommended by a yoga instructor and some stay-at-home moms. The audience alignment makes no sense. Makes it hard to trust any subscribers coming from them. I have had a few decent subscribers come in from other creators who are in industries closer aligned, so it's not all bad. But I can see this wasting seat counts pretty fast if we don't have a way to stop it.
The last point is interesting. I can't speak for other creators, but I try to cull my list pretty aggressively. The "biggest" subscriber count is a poor vanity metric if you ask me. I'd rather have fewer subscribers but who engage more. So where subscribers come from in the Creator Network matter.
So how about you? What are YOU seeing?