r/expertnetworks: rules, karma requirements and posting culture
A small, candid forum about paid expert consulting calls: rates, screening, getting paid, and working at the networks. Three short rules and little moderation.
Growing your expert network consulting practice · Open on Reddit
- Members
- 15k
- Created
- 2015
- New posts a day
- 2.7
- Comments on a typical post
- 5
- New posts removed
- 7%
The short answer
r/expertnetworks publishes no karma or account age requirement. It has three short rules: stay on the topic of expert networks, post no referral or signup links, and be nice. About 93% of posts in our sample stayed up and none were removed by moderators. It is a small room, around three posts a day, where people speak frankly about rates and how the networks treat them.
Who posts here
Three groups share the room. Experts are often senior professionals and executives who take paid calls on the side. Network staff and applicants are usually early in their careers. A smaller group are clients who buy the calls. Expert threads use the industry's shorthand without explaining it, but a newcomer asking whether a network is legitimate or what rate to charge gets a direct answer, usually a blunt one.
- Professionals who do paid consulting calls through the big networks and want to set rates or get more projects.
- First-timers who have been approached by a network and want to know if it is real.
- Associates and applicants at the networks, asking about interviews, hours and what the job is like.
- Clients such as investors and consultants who use expert calls for research.
- Recruiters for paid studies and surveys, whose posts stay up and get ignored.
Karma and account requirements
What it takes to get a post through in r/expertnetworks.
| Karma | Not stated publicly. |
|---|---|
| Account age | Not stated publicly. |
| Topic | Posts have to be about expert networks. Clients and network employees are welcome as well as experts.Mods' wording: “Posts must be Expert Network related.” |
| Referral links | Not allowed in posts. Referral requests are kept to a recurring thread.Mods' wording: “No referral or "signup" links allowed” |
| Post flair | Effectively unused. Fewer than 1 in 100 posts in the sample carries one. |
What you can post
| Post type | Subreddit setting | Share of recent posts |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Allowed | 88% |
| Link | Allowed | 9% |
| Image | Allowed | 4% |
| Video | Allowed | 0% |
| Poll | Allowed | 0% |
Post flairs in use
- Question <1%
What happens to a new post
Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.
- Stayed up93%
- Removed by Reddit's filters7%
- Deleted by the author<1%
Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.
What happened when we posted here
We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.
- Stayed up
- 100%
- Removed by Reddit's filters
- 0%
- Removed by moderators
- 0%
- Period
- June 2026 to August 2026
The rules, in the mods' words
- 1
Posts must be Expert Network related.
- 2
No referral or "signup" links allowed
- 3
Be nice.
These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.
The culture
r/expertnetworks is a niche forum about one corner of consulting: the firms that connect investors and consultants with industry professionals for paid calls. It has under 15,000 members and about three posts a day. Posts are short, around 60 words with six-word titles, and mostly text.
The tone is that of a trade back room. Experts compare hourly rates, ask why projects dried up, and complain about screening calls that seem designed to get information for free. Network employees describe the workload and ask about exits. Clients complain about experts who turn out to be reading AI-generated answers. People are specific about which firms pay, which are slow, and which they have stopped working with.
Moderation is light. We saw no moderator removals in the sample, and the roughly 7% that went were taken by Reddit's own filters. Scores are small, so judge a post by replies: the busiest thread had about 37 comments. The newest recurring subject is AI, both networks running interviews with an AI instead of a person and experts using AI to answer.
What lands
- A frank account of a bad experience with the process, such as giving up on the networks altogether. That was the busiest thread in the sample.
- A practical rate question with your seniority and field stated. One on raising rates drew about 25 comments.
- A warning about a specific practice, like a screening call that extracts the substance of the consultation unpaid.
- First-hand reports on something new, such as being interviewed by an AI.
- Questions from the other side of the business: associate interview rounds, working hours, what the job leads to.
What gets removed or ignored
- Nothing in our sample was removed by moderators, so there is no observed pattern to report.
- By the rules, referral and signup links are not allowed. Referral requests belong in the recurring referral thread.
- By the rules, anything not related to expert networks is off topic. In practice recruiting posts for paid studies stay up and get no replies.
- Reddit's own filters removed about 7% of posts. Our data does not show why.
The unwritten rules
- Name your field and level when you ask about rates. The standard advice is to charge more than you think, and people will say it bluntly.
- Be specific about the firm. The room trades on named, first-hand experience of each network.
- Do not ask for a referral in a normal post or in replies. It reads as begging and it is against the rules.
- Short posts are normal. A clear question in a few lines is how most threads start.
- Comments almost never carry links, about 2%. Answer in the thread.
Self-promotion
The only written limit is on referral and signup links, plus the requirement to stay on topic. There is no broader self-promotion rule in our data, and the evidence on enforcement is thin because moderators removed nothing in our sample. Off-topic recruiting and hiring posts stay up, but nobody engages with them. A network or a tool for experts would be judged the way the room judges every firm it discusses: on how it treats and pays people. Promotion without that substance gets silence.
How people write here
- Typical post length
- 63 words
- Typical title length
- 6 words
- Titles phrased as a question
- 42%
- Typical comment length
- 26 words
- Comments that include a link
- 2%
- Posts that carry a flair
- 0%
When people post
- 0:00 UTC, 8
- 1:00 UTC, 14
- 2:00 UTC, 11
- 3:00 UTC, 10
- 4:00 UTC, 15
- 5:00 UTC, 10
- 6:00 UTC, 9
- 7:00 UTC, 6
- 8:00 UTC, 19
- 9:00 UTC, 8
- 10:00 UTC, 16
- 11:00 UTC, 18
- 12:00 UTC, 18
- 13:00 UTC, 31
- 14:00 UTC, 20
- 15:00 UTC, 21
- 16:00 UTC, 28
- 17:00 UTC, 22
- 18:00 UTC, 37
- 19:00 UTC, 23
- 20:00 UTC, 16
- 21:00 UTC, 19
- 22:00 UTC, 10
- 23:00 UTC, 11
New posts by hour of day, UTC.
Top keywords
The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/expertnetworks.
- alphasights 55 posts
- expert 109 posts
- glg 51 posts
- expert network 51 posts
- expert networks 41 posts
- third bridge 29 posts
- networks 56 posts
- network 82 posts
- guidepoint 28 posts
- experts 53 posts
- ens 21 posts
- client 66 posts
- weekly referral 18 posts
- violate rule 18 posts
- referral thread 18 posts
- referral request 18 posts
- network preferences 18 posts
- expertnetworks 18 posts
- en referral 18 posts
- associate 41 posts
- calls 56 posts
- interview 48 posts
- client services 13 posts
- refrain 18 posts
- experience 79 posts
- dialectica 12 posts
- consulting 29 posts
- call 53 posts
- referral 30 posts
- consultation 19 posts
- round 28 posts
- role 42 posts
- expertise 21 posts
- expert calls 10 posts
- consultations 14 posts
- thirdbridge 8 posts
- research 38 posts
- surveys 13 posts
- industry 31 posts
- services role 7 posts
Growth
- 20221.5k
- 20233.5k
- 20247.1k
- 202511k
- 202615k
Common questions
How much karma do you need to post in r/expertnetworks?
No karma or account age requirement is published, and our data contains no AutoModerator message about one. About 93% of posts in our sample stayed up. The small share that did not were removed by Reddit's own filters, not by the moderators.
Can I promote my network or share a referral link in r/expertnetworks?
Referral and signup links are against the rules, and referral requests are kept to a recurring thread. There is no other written self-promotion rule, but posts that recruit or advertise get no replies. The room responds to first-hand detail about rates, process and payment.
What do people talk about in r/expertnetworks?
Hourly rates and how to raise them, why projects slow down, screening calls, payment problems, whether a network is legitimate, and AI in interviews. Network employees also discuss hiring rounds and working conditions, and clients discuss the quality of the experts they are given.
Who can post in r/expertnetworks?
Anyone with a question or experience related to expert networks. The description says clients and network employees are welcome alongside the experts who take the calls.
Data as of October 4, 2026. Numbers come from public Reddit data (the Arctic Shift archive and GummySearch) sampled on this date. Removal share counts posts taken down by moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit's own filters. Banner and icon belong to the community. Moderators change rules without notice, so treat the sidebar as the final word.
