Substack Writer Referrals is Really about Mentorship and Creator Economy Partnerships

Grassroots feature for people that like to help others.

Photo by Julius Drost on Unsplash

Hey Guys,

So I’ll be honest, as a new Substack creator and Newsletter I didn’t get very far looking upwards and like everyone else, recommending hugely popular Creators or Newsletter that had been on the platform already many years.

Altruism and Competition

I’m more of a grass-roots type of person to be honest, and when I writer accepts a Writer Referral, it makes me want to provide free mentorship (or help or support or whatever you want to call it).

There’s also not just a communal incentive but a benefit of readership. If they grow well, you get a “cut of their new readers”, since there’s a peer-recommendation built into it, as far as I can tell.

So in such a scenario, this is the best way to support new writers on the platform or people that you know who might find being a Newsletter Creator is fun and immersive.

Basic Content Income

I’ve always believed that as automation became more prevalent in society, being a Creator would be one way some folk would be able to earn a “basic content income”. They provide value to an audience, no matter how small, and get compensated for it.

Whatever Patreon, Substack, beehiiv and other Creator platforms are, they are the first steps of what a basic content income implementation might look like. There are creators on Substack who work maybe 10 hours a week, for something resembling a part-time wage.

That’s not exactly a bad deal. If you focus on providing quality information, or entertainment or other support to readers, you might flourish and in the process, help others grow.

The entire idea of paying it forward or compounding your own growth here has a civic and community element. Substack’s Writer Referral is actually the most interesting implementation of this yet.

You are bound to that person you refer and they are bound to you, giving them whatever support they might need like a buddy-system begins to make sense even from a commercial perspective.

What is a Substack Writer Referral?

Ponzi Schemes and Partnerships

If peer-recommendations became a scheme that benefited the minority who have been on Substack the longest with biggest personal brands, Writer Referrals in theory might actually benefit the “little guy” and I find on ethical grounds this is super important.

Substack also needs lets writers to churn in the first six months of their Newsletter. The initial encounter with how hard it is to find an audience, is the pain point for so many writers who start a Newsletter in 2021. But there are signs 2022 has been different and 2023 could be even better.

If I actively try to “mentor” the top people that joined because of my writer’s referral I’m in a win-win situation. It’s a construct that supports community and financial goals.

Micro Brand Ambassadors and Building Relationships

It’s also Substack’s way of making us behave like business development brand ambassadors, and I’m okay with that. Because fundamentally I like words and people. I want to contribute value to the network and benefit from how it might scale and how cohorts of writers “grow up together” on a platform.

The Substack network flow is being designed and it isn’t a finished product, it is a work in progress. But I admit since Writer referrals have gone live (December, 2022), I’m a bit more optimistic about the chances of the newbie Newsletters. I care about them because I know how hard the last year has been as a full-time Newsletter Creator. I uniquely know about that due to my own risk-taking (from a financial perspective) and on the spectrum obsession with it all.

A Playbook for Mentorship

The internet is a transactional place, even our acquaintances are likely helping we provide some value to them. What if you approach Writer Referrals with the mind of a salesman and the heart of an altruist? What would result?

• You be relentless in reaching out to new people about joining Substack

• You’d offer them full-support in helping them become a success

• What if you did those two things to the fullest of your potential?

• Who would you manage to bring to Substack and change the course of their niche?

• It’s not like Substack Categories have thousands of Creators each, some are actually pretty sparse. It’s still early days.

• Eventually as you gain skill in sales and mentorship, you might even refine your approach to Substack networking.

Sure I know people pretend they are so over networking online, and yet automatically just by being on LinkedIn or Twitter, or TikTok they are participating in the incentive mechanism of those networks. People are political and social and that will never change. If a Substack Creator in my niche recommends my Newsletter, it could actually change my life. So what if we did the same to the new folk?

Social Dynamics in the Creator Economy

What if sales, mentorship was just a partnership of how we grow as a Creator, learning to pivot together into this new adventure? What might the “teacher” learn from the student? What might we learn about ourselves in the process?

But Monetization too?

Don’t underestimate the power of Writer Referrals, if I even have three writers that are a success on Subsack in my lifetime, it would be adequate ROI for all of my efforts in the Substack Network and bringing more creativity to it. A successful Writer’s Referral and their subsequent success on the platform might bring 500 to 1000 new readers to me. That could amount to 25 paid subscribers per Referral! Now imagine if you got really good at this?

The Dynamics of Compounding Audiences

The way your Subsack could compound would in theory grow faster than a Creator who had totally neglected this community feature. Now I’m grossly speculating here, but even if you don’t have an altruistic bone in your body, the formula adds up empirically. What if Substack itself noticed that you were a prolific lead-generator of sales for its company? Substack promotes people that promote its own business model, because that’s the entire cycle.

I’m not sure I’d call it a Goodwill Growth Loop:

The Goodwill Growth Loop

But it is a cycle, writers are born every day. What it you as a good actor in the Network, could augment their success? Would you let down your envy, your competition and your supposed dogged independence for the collective? It presents a wonderful experiment in the Creator Economy set up for 2023.

Importance of Having a Growth Mindset

For me personally, in the way I relate to the internet, I’ve decided this is a good feature. I want to find and benefit others, whatever my actual capacity for “mentorship” or partnership, at the end of the day it is a numbers game - some will work out, while most people who start a Newsletter, simply won’t continue for every long.

Besides the ideological packaging, Substack only really said this in detail:

If a referral is successful, the referrer is credited on their Substack profile and receives an automatic recommendation from the referred writer. Over time, we’ll keep adding more benefits to referrals, all in the name of strengthening cooperative ties between writers on the platform. - Substack

The art would be in finding the right people who already have their toes wet in the Creator Economy, who are related to your own Newsletter’s niche, and who are best equipped to succeed in the first place, and who have time on their side and enjoy writing sufficiently.

The feature benefits:

• Paying it forward

• The altruistic tendency in us

• A sales-marketing approach

• And in building stronger communities that grow faster together.