How Victoria Kurichenko grew her SEO newsletter with automated cross-recommendations

The problem

She wanted list growth and a side income from the newsletter without spending her time on promotion.

Free cross-recommendations. She joined the ConvertKit Creator Network, where creators recommend each other’s newsletters to new subscribers.
Paid recommendations. After passing 1,000 subscribers she registered on SparkLoop and added her identification number to her ConvertKit landing page or form.
Upscribe widget. She picked partner newsletters and customized the post-signup pop-up (header, subheader, CTA, skip link). It shows up to 5 at a time.
Review campaigns. She keeps 12 active promotion campaigns and regularly decides which are worth keeping. She checks each paid newsletter’s geography and engagement requirements.
Magic Links in her weekly issue. One-click subscribe links let her readers join recommended newsletters without a landing page.

Creator Network: roughly 300 to 1,000 subscribers “in a few months.”
September 2023: about 10 new subscribers a day see her paid recommendations. About 500 people see recommendations weekly, and 100 to 200 click links in her newsletter. Her click rate is about 4% on a list of about 1,100.
Confirmed SparkLoop referrals: 12 in July 2023 and 11 in August, plus 6 pending. September had 23 pending.

She reports that most subscribers she sent to one high-paying newsletter were rejected for low engagement.
X: @k36_victoria (verified 2026-10-13: linked from her article).
Her figures are from 2023. This is an automated recommendation loop, not an AI agent.