How to make money on LinkedIn

If you are looking to make money on LinkedIn and you don't already have a business idea - the best approach is to monetise your skills or knowledge. It's the fastest way to make money.

Before we dig into the different ways you to can leverage your skills and knowledge, I highly recommend you choose a high value, low volume business model. Many people promote the idea of earning money while you sleep with low ticket (under $500) offers. The problem is it requires success with high volume to make decent money.

Selling a $500 service, to make a decent living requires 20 customers per month - if you try that with content - it means you need a level of engagement which many struggle to get. Getting 20 people to like your posts is easy - getting 20 people to be prompted to click and buy something - more difficult. Likewise, sending DMs to sell something, you don't want to be doing sales calls for a $500 service -too time consuming - so you would have to rely on 20 people clicking and buying straight from the DM - that is more tricky.

When you go for low ticket, there is no choice, you have to play big numbers.

But when you go high ticket, selling $5k+ services, you only need 2 people to buy in the whole month. That's more sustainable.

So, how do you make the money?

First off, you need to know your 7Ps - the core elements of your proposition, this is how you build your whole strategy...

• The problem you're solving.
• The promised outcome you'll deliver
• The process you take people through
• The persona you'll offer this to
• The proof you've done this before
• The price you'll charge
• The parameters of the service

Once you've nailed them, you have 5 ways to monetise your knowledge and skills.

1. One-to-one guidance

You work directly with one person over a set period, usually a few months. They bring you their problems as they come up and you tell them what to do.

The value is not the information, it is having someone experienced looking at their specific situation. Generic advice is free everywhere. Advice about their business, their numbers, their team is not.

It is priced by the block, not the hour. Three months of access, not a call.

2. An audit

You examine one part of their business, then hand them a written assessment of what is wrong and what to do about it.

It is bounded work. You go in, you look, you report, you leave. That makes it easy for a buyer to say yes to, because there is no ongoing commitment and they know exactly what they are getting.

It is also the natural first step into everything else on this list. Once you have shown someone what is broken, you are the obvious person to fix it.

3. Retained consulting

They pay you monthly for ongoing access to your thinking. You are not delivering a project, you are the person they turn to when decisions need making.

This includes fractional roles, where you effectively act as their head of marketing or finance for a couple of days a month.

Sell it as a relationship, not a set number of calls. Once it becomes four calls a month, it becomes a diary slot people haggle over.

4. Project work, done for you

You do the actual work. Rebuild the website, restructure the finances, rewrite the messaging.

The important choice here is fixed price rather than day rate. Set scope, set timeline, set fee. Hourly billing punishes you for getting faster and leaves the buyer worrying about the final bill. A fixed price fixes both.

Write down what is not included before you sell it.

5. Workshops and training

You teach your knowledge to a group inside a company. A half day, a full day, or a programme running over several months.

Same expertise you would put in a course, but the buyer is different, and that is the whole point. An individual buying a course spends their own money. A company booking training spends an allocated budget that expires at the end of the year. They are not deciding whether to spend, only who to spend it on.

In the 15 years of being a social selling expert, I advise most of my clients to start with 1:1 services, because you quickly learn what the market really wants. Those 1:1 interactions can then inform your marketing strategy to develop or sell versions of the other 5.

To get started do this...

• Optimise your profile to align with your 7Ps.
• Create a One pager offer doc.
• Start posting 2-3 pieces of content linked to your buyer wants and offer.
• Connect with 5 people per day (20 people on paid LinkedIn)
• Start conversations with your new connects.