Choose the Creator Network creators you want to recommend to subscribers
If you're part of the Creator Network, you can recommend creators whose newsletters your subscribers may be interested in subscribing to. (Some creators will even pay you for each successful referral!)
To set up these Recommendations, follow the steps here to join the Creator Network if you haven't already.
After that, follow the steps below to add (or edit) your Free and Paid Recommendations, share them, and customize the order in which you display your Recommendations to your subscribers:
Managing your Free Recommendations
Add a new Free Recommendation
Go to Recommendations under the Grow tab in the top navigation and click My Recommendations.
Click + Add recommendation to add a new Free Recommendation.
It'll direct you to the Discover page where you can browse creators in the Creator Network.
Click a creator's profile to check it out in more detail. If you've decided to recommend a certain creator, click the Recommend button and we'll add them to your list of Recommendations.
Remove a Free Recommendation
To stop recommending a creator, click the ✕ button to the right of their name on the My Recommendations page.
Click Remove in the window that pops up to confirm the removal.
If you change your mind about removing a Free Recommendation, you can easily re-add it by clicking the curved arrow symbol to the right of the creator's name.
Managing your Paid Recommendations
Add a new Paid Recommendation
To add a new Paid Recommendation, enable Paid Recommendations first if you haven't already.
Use the Paid toggle in your My Recommendations page to go to your Paid Recommendations. Or, use the top navigation and go to Earn > Paid Recommendations.
Click + Add paid recommendation to add a new Paid Recommendation. It'll direct you to the Discover page, where you can browse Paid Recommendations.
Click any Paid Recommendation to view more details on its referral criteria.
If you've decided to recommend it and you're pre-approved to do so, click Recommend.
NOTE: If you aren't pre-approved to recommend the Paid Recommendation, you'll see an "Approval Required" box.
Fill out a short message on why your audience is a good fit, and then click Submit request. The creator behind the Paid Recommendation will review your application and decide whether to approve you.
In the meantime, the Paid Recommendation will have the "Pending" status on the My paid recommendations page.
Once you're approved to recommend the Paid Recommendation, it will appear on the My paid recommendations page with the "Active" status.
You have the option to click on your active Paid Recommendations and add a customized description of why you're recommending these creators to them.
By adding your own customized description, it will replace the publication's default bio in the Paid Recommendation, like so:
⚠️IMPORTANT!⚠️ If you had connected an existing SparkLoop account when enabling Paid Recommendations in ConvertKit instead of creating a new one, you will additionally need to add your Paid Recommendations to Upscribe and activate Upscribe.
(You'll need to set up the Upscribe widget as part of the Upscribe activation process. But you don't have to embed the widget on your website.)
Finally, customize your recommendation slots to display your Paid Recommendations! Otherwise, your Paid Recommendations will not appear. Learn how to customize your recommendation slots below.
Remove a Paid Recommendation
To remove a Paid Recommendation, go to the My paid recommendations page.
Click the three vertical dots on the right of the Recommendation you want to remove, followed by Remove.
Click Stop recommending to confirm the removal.
NOTE: If you change your mind about removing a Paid Recommendation, you’ll have to re-add the Paid Recommendation using the steps above.
To temporarily turn off a Paid Recommendation without removing it completely, select Pause instead.
Sharing your Recommendations
You can get a standalone page of your Recommendations for sharing with others. It looks like this:
To get the link to this page, go to the My Recommendations page and click the Settings tab in the left sidebar.
Scroll down to the Share section and click the copy icon to copy your standalone Recommendations page's URL.
NOTE: Want to redirect subscribers to this Recommendations page after they submit a non-ConvertKit form? Learn how in our guide to displaying Recommendations on third-party forms.
Customizing your Recommendations
While you can have up to 100 active Recommendations, we'll display up to five Recommendations on your Forms and Landing Pages at any time.
You can customize the number and order of your Free and Paid Recommendations at the Customize tab in the left sidebar of the My Recommendations page.
Customizing the number of Recommendations
The Recommendation slots bar lets you select the number of Recommendations you want to display:
For example, if you select "5," we'll display five Recommendations on your Forms and Landing Pages.
On the other hand, if you select "2," we'll display just two Recommendations on your Forms and Landing Pages instead.
Customizing the order of your Recommendations
Click each Recommendation slot to choose the type of Recommendation that appears there. The available options are:
Random Recommendation: The slot will display one of your Free Recommendations at random.
Paid Recommendation: The slot will display one of your Paid Recommendations at random. (This option will appear only if you have added Paid Recommendations to your Recommendations settings.)
Pinned: Pinned Paid Recommendations will be displayed in your Paid Recommendations slot until the budget runs out. You can pin specific Paid Recommendations by clicking the three vertical dots on the right of your desired Paid Recommendation and selecting Pin.
Specific Free Recommendations: The slot will display a specific Free Recommendation of your choice.
Customizing the modal theme
You'll have the option to choose how your Recommendation modal appears on the browser for your subscribers. You can choose to set it to:
Light: Background is white with dark text
Dark: Background is black with white text
Auto: It'll either be light or dark mode depending on what your subscriber has enabled on their browser.
If you're done managing your Creator Network Recommendations and want to see who has recommended you to their subscribers, you can learn how in this article 👇