Today I’m going to show you five proven ways for how to make money on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has changed. It’s no longer just a boring platform where you post your resume and forget about it.
Nope – in 2023, you can use LinkedIn as a powerful money-making engine.
Making money on LinkedIn all starts with having something to sell. That could be your own product or service, or someone else’s.
For the former, you’ll charge directly. For the latter, you’ll make money through affiliate commissions.
The other thing you need to make money on LinkedIn is an audience.
Ready? Let’s find out how to make money on LinkedIn.
How To Make Money on LinkedIn [5 Proven Ways]
#1. Selling Your Services
One of the easiest ways to make money on LinkedIn is by selling your own services.
For example:
- freelance writing
- SEO consulting
- personal brand consulting
- web development
Whatever your area of professional expertise, you’re highly likely to find an interested audience on LinkedIn.
It’s full of professionals who are actively looking to network and make business connections. In short, LinkedIn offers a prime audience for selling professional services.
To tap into the audience, first narrow down your ideal client. Then create regular helpful content that solves their problems and publish it as LinkedIn posts.
If you can do this daily, or at least a few times a week, you’ll soon gain traction with the LinkedIn algorithm. The more you publish, the more people it will show your posts to.
People will start to follow you and engage with your posts. Then you can connect with them and start conversations through direct message. Soon, you’ll be able to sell your services in that way.
Just remember to lead the conversation with a problem-solving approach that shows genuine interest, rather than being pushy and overly salesy right off the bat.
#2. Selling Your Own Products
Selling your own products is another effective way to make money on LinkedIn.
In this case, I’m talking more about selling information products, rather than physical products. LinkedIn isn’t really designed to be an e-commerce platform.
For example, you could create an online video course, a paid e-book, or a set of actionable templates, then sell them to solve the problems of your LinkedIn audience.
The simplest way to do this is upload your info product onto a platform like Gumroad or ConvertKit, which also allow you to accept payment for it.
You could also create a simple landing page, either on your website or through a standalone page builder like Cardd.
Then hook it up with Stripe so you can easily accept customer payments, then allow them to download your info product after making payment.
To promote your product on LinkedIn, simply mention it as a great solution in your regular problem-solving posts, and drop a link to it in the comment section.
It’s important to avoid putting any external links in the post text itself, as this means LinkedIn won’t show the post to a very wide audience (as it wants people to stay on the platform).
You can also include a link to your info product in your LinkedIn featured section.
#3. Affiliate Marketing
If you’re not ready to sell your own product or service yet, you can also make money on LinkedIn by selling other people’s products or services. This is a form of affiliate marketing.
Successful affiliate marketing on LinkedIn revolves around choosing the right products that can genuinely solve the problems of your audience.
I strongly recommend that you only promote products and services you’ve tested yourself (and which you like). If you recommend things you’ve never tried, your audience might pick up on it and will see you as inauthentic.
You can start affiliate marketing either through existing affiliate platforms, or by reaching out to businesses directly to establish a referral partnership.
Then, all you have to do is drop the relevant link in the comment section of your post, and position it as a great solution to your audience’s problem.
#4. Sponsored Posts
Once you start to build an audience on LinkedIn, it’s likely you can start making money through sponsored posts.
That’s right – brands will pay you to talk about their product or service to your LinkedIn audience.
I’ve done several sponsored posts recently, for my current audience of just over 17,500 members.
When I do these posts, I always stick to products and services that I use myself. I then work them in as a natural mention within a post that focuses on solving a specific problem for my audience.
That gives me a great angle to naturally position the sponsored product as a perfect fit to help my audience solve their problem.
Sponsored posts are a great way to make money on LinkedIn from your regular posting workflow.
They don’t necessarily take much extra effort (although you could incorporate them into carousel posts for extra reach, in which case you should be charging more to the brand).
But you should avoid doing them too frequently, as this might cause your audience to lose interest in your content.
#5. Building an Email List
Compared to what we’ve looked at so far, building an email list is a more long-term strategy for making money on LinkedIn.
Building your own list is a powerful way to own your audience. This is important, because the downside with LinkedIn is that you don’t own your audience on that platform.
At any point in time, LinkedIn could decide to shut down your account, or you could fall out of favor with the algorithm and it could stop showing your posts.
When your audience is only on LinkedIn, LinkedIn holds all the power. It’s the same with any other social media platform.
But on the other hand, if you build an audience through your email list, you’ll have all the power and ownership of that list.
What’s more, if people trust you enough to give you their email address, it’s a sign they truly value your content – beyond just surface level interactions on LinkedIn.
So what exactly is the role of LinkedIn in building an email list?
Well, you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your posts, and then encourage people to sign up to your list.
You can sweeten the deal by offering them weekly in-depth tips in your newsletter, or by offering them a valuable freebie (otherwise known as a lead magnet), to entice them to join the list.
Getting people on your email list uses exactly the same strategy as the previous ways we’ve looked at for making money on LinkedIn.
But instead of dropping a link to your products in the comments, you drop a signup link to your email list, either for them to get a lead magnet, or to join your newsletter.
Once they’ve signed up, make sure you send them a welcome email, then at least weekly updates. I normally recommend a mix of helpful information content, with regular sales emails.
Then, you can sell your products and services to them via the email list, safe in the knowledge that this list is totally under your control.
Final Thoughts
Well there you have it – you now know how to make money on LinkedIn using five different strategies.
I’ve tried most of these myself (with the exception of selling my own product, as I’m still building it). I know for a fact that they’re highly effective.
But the first step is building your LinkedIn audience.
That all starts with learning how to post on LinkedIn, so you can begin building your personal brand on the platform.
THIS is the way you should be using LinkedIn in 2023 and beyond.
So cast aside all your old thoughts of LinkedIn as a place simply for hosting a resume.
It’s actually a powerful moneymaking machine!
