What is a Substack Writer Referral?
Paying it forward in the discover loop flow!
Hey Everyone,
I’ll admit I’m bullish on Substack’s testing of referrals. To compete with beehiiv in the long-run, it will need to get good with Substack Boost, Substack Meetings, and Substack Writer Referrals, among other things.
If you go to your profile on Substack, and open the tab you will notice “Refer writer to Substack”
I highly recommend you play around with this. Who you refer lives on your Substack, but also perma lives on the newcommer’s page, from what I understand.
Subsack says: Historically, Substack has grown by writers recommending other writers to join. We wanted to make sure writers who bring great writers to substack get some benefit from this, and also do our best to nudge/support writers who are referring others.
Paying it Forward
Peer recommendations (April, 2022) and referrals (December, 2022) should work together, the first is more skewed to older Newsletters with bigger audiences, and I’m hoping referrals helps the little guys a bit more.
Substack says: So we've baked in some neat network effects to referring. Here's how it works today:* I am a reader and see a referral link from a writer I follow, and likely trust and love (e.g. one of y'all)
Click the referral link. When I set up my publication, it has the writer whose referral link I accepted as a default recommendation, which I can always turn off.
If I take my new Substack seriously, the writer who referred me benefits from my growth and success through the recommendation I offer them.
Substack also will prompt the writer who recommended me to cross-post and share my first post on Substack, to help me get started and succeedWe'll try to build more little network effects around this behavior going forward. Hopefully it's a win win win. More context here:
Referring Others to Substack
Substack is creating a way we as Creators can help them grow, which indirectly helps us grow. It’s not clear what other benefits this might have at scale, or how it might “stack” (forgive the pun).
This does create a nifty new incentive to socialize with peers and other creators in the same genre.
This gives new motivation to also help Substack grow in a positive “paying it forward” light.
It also motivates a mentorship loop that is benevolent in its scope.
As someone who more or less is having to grow in their 1st year on Substack with limited support or mentorship, I don’t want others to experience what I have. Unless, they are masochists like I have been.
I can understand Hamish’s ideological argument around the feel-good side of this, but I wonder about the business aspects of this. It’s not overly clear what benefits or incentives the Creator is getting from helping subsack in Sales?
I mean it’s nice to have a button about this - you might be reading this and be an expert who hasn’t yet created your Substack yet! I’m all ears.
What do you think about this feature?
Hamish is smiling as he writes:
I like this cycle because it encourages our company to do everything in our power to maximize love among the writers using Substack. In fact, the imperative is baked right into our business model: We can make money only when writers make money. We have writers’ trust only when we prove we’re trustworthy. We can be happy only when they’re happy. But this system is great for writers for other reasons, too. It’s not just that it helps them find readers and make money—it’s that it also helps them pay it forward.
Who doesn’t want to pay it forward? Who doesn’t want to support network alignment and help others grow.
Newsletters just take a long time to grow, traditionally, but this could give someone the helpful motivation to keep going - until they maybe see a breakthrough, and that’s fairly important for Substack itself to not just survive, but thrive into 2023, a potentially gloomy year.
The Main Pain point for New Newsletter Creators
The main pain point is how slowly it is to grow an audience. In 2023, Substack and beehiiv will make equally impressive strides in this direction.
Realistically in 2023, Newsletter platforms are on pace to be a “better discovery” process than social media itself (all combined). I expect us to reach this milestone in May, 2023. Ironically the political intensity of the U.S. elections cycle is the macro event that drives Substack’s growth the most, and so it begins.
Where would Writer Referrals Scale?
Converting top Newsletters writers on other platforms, to Substack
Finding real-life talented friends who may be good writers to try something new
Finding topic experts online who might not be aware of all that Substack offers
Finding TikTok, YouTube and Instagram Creators who could diversify their revenue on Substack easily.
Making Creators think like gig-economy biz-dev folk is fascinating to me, and this is where I am the ideal person to experiment with this.
What is the Modus Operandi of Substack’s Core Growth?
Recommending people who like to write to an American audience about politics and alternative media (is the low hanging fruit) is the best play here:
I know nothing about Sex and the State, but apparently someone else does: