Is LinkedIn Premium Worth It For Freelance Writers?
Big ole thanks to Sarah Zimmerman for this topic! I know a bunch of freelance writers who've hit up my inbox or asked me through 1:1 coaching or in my course, Freelance Writer Wealth Lab, about going in on purchasing LinkedIn Premium for their freelance writing business and what tier to buy.
Investing in LinkedIn Premium is definitely a business decision all writers have to make so this week's livestream is focusing on when you should get LinkedIn Premium, how I use LinkedIn Premium and my results, what LinkedIn premium costs, what paid tiers make the most sense, and the pros and cons of LinkedIn Premium.
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Is LinkedIn Premium Worth the Cost for Freelance Writers?
Have you been thinking about LinkedIn premium for your freelance writing business? Today, We're gonna talk about why that is something you're thinking about, right? Like why we're talking about LinkedIn premium, why it's worth it, why it may not be worth it for you when you should get it, um, the costs and the different tiers. So that's what we're gonna go over today. And I have found that LinkedIn and premium has made a big difference in my business. It has really kind of changed how, um, how I do my marketing, how I see the platform and how I end up connecting with other people on LinkedIn. So we're gonna go through a few things and I kind of have an older tier, so we're gonna go through the new ones, uh, and what you can get with those. Cuz I have had LinkedIn premium so long that they like changed everything.
1) LinkedIn Premium InMails, Connections, Company Insights, and Alternatives
So here's the deal we're gonna talk about, um, LinkedIn premium just in general. So when we're doing LinkedIn premium, what that means is you get a bunch of different features and there are specific feature that I use as a freelance writer that I think are really helpful in doing your marketing, getting your business together, um, and making sure that you can use the premium features to get as many connections or free messages as you can. So for me, with LinkedIn premium, I use it to connect with people easy year, right? So if you both have premium, it allows you to connect with those premium members. Like easier. There isn't as many, like you can't connect with this person cuz they're not in your network. Um, that you, the fact that you both have premium allows you to connect to someone who's like a three plus, right?
You have like first connections, which are people in your network. You have second connections, which are like their connected to someone in your network. And then your third connections. They're not connected to anyone in your network, but when you have premium, instead of like hiding those members, they bring them up. The other thing is that when you have premium, it allows you to message people for free who also have premium. So if you're looking for a potential client on LinkedIn, you can message them for free on LinkedIn. If you both have premium. The other thing I use LinkedIn premium for is sending emails. So for me, that has been really, really effective. And the plan that I have, I get 15 InMails per month. So when I send my Lois, my letters of introduction, I send those as emails and I have found that's gotten a better response rate than sending them through email.
But I just wanna put the caveat here that for a long time, I couldn't afford LinkedIn premium. So with my plan where I get 15 InMails a month, that's $65 a month. And that was like a lot when I was first kind of getting all my freelance business stuff in order. So for me, when I was moving all these things around $65 a month, every single month was just like out of my budget. So I did thing through email for a long time, which you can do. You can go to, um, hunter, H U NT E r.io and find anybody's email address and send your Lois that way. When you have a little bit of extra money and you can afford LinkedIn premium, do it. Uh, there's different plans that have different tiers now. But for me, I would save those 15 InMails for my most attractive potential clients.
Or if I couldn't find someone's email, if hunter.io didn't work or if I just couldn't figure out their email convention, I would use the InMail for it. But since you only get at 15 every month or sometimes you only get five or 10, then you end up having to save them. The deal is that, um, when you're kind of using these InMails, I found I get a better response rate, but also it's easier to connect directly with who you wanna talk to happy Friday, everybody. So the deal is that when we're kind of going through sending our InMails, um, we wanna make sure that they're just our Lois. We can connect directly with the person and then you send your InMail. So you paste your LOI template, customize it a little bit in the InMail, right? And then once you send it, you connect with the person as well.
Hey Daria, welcome in. We're so glad you're here. Um, then you with the person on LinkedIn. So that way they can maybe not respond to your InMail, but they can connect in your network and then you have a bigger network. So every time you send an InMail, you can connect with someone in your network. Um, and the plus of LinkedIn premium is that when you send those InMails, sometimes they're free, right? So sometimes you get a free message because you're sending an InMail to someone who I, as premium. Sometimes you get a free message because you have premium and, um, that allows you to, um, connect with certain people. And there's certain free messages for someone who's like a second connection for you. You also get messages back. So every time someone answers an InMail, you get it back. So if I send out 15 in emails and five P people answer, I now have five extra InMails to go and use for my marketing.
Yeah. We're glad you're here. Dar and Dar has been helping me with all of my YouTube stuff too. So if you guys, um, if you have, if anyone's coming across this video and needs, um, video help, Dario's your girl. So the deal is that, um, you get those InMail emails back, you get those five InMails back, Hey Marie, welcome. The other positive is that if you get, uh, sucked into a ton of work. So this has happened to me many times where you get a bunch of work, right? All of, all of a sudden it, when it rains at pores, you get a ton of work and then your InMails pile up. So right now I have 45 InMail because I haven't sent any for three months. And this is kind of how I ended up changing my marketing because I started getting so busy with work.
I started marketing more on like a quarterly basis or an every six month basis. So this is the first day, right? Today's April 1st, uh, it's the first day of Q2, right? We're in our second quarter. So that means it's time to send out quarterly marketing. Um, and I used to send out a lot more. So like, I've just kind of gotten to a phase where now it's quarterly. So I have 45 messages that I could send. Um, and some, I may not even, I may actually be able to send more than 45 because some are free. Some are premium mess members, I get responses. So then I get those messages back and then we, I like the virtual hug and then we get to send more of our Lois out and do more marketing. So for me, LinkedIn premium is a really, uh, useful tool.
And I know that, um, to some people $65 a month for InMails, um, doesn't sound like very expensive. Like doesn't sound super expensive. Uh, but if you think about it this way, if you were to buy more InMails, like I've, I've tried to do this before. If you try to go buy more InMails, each InMail is $10. So if I try to buy one more InMail, I have to pay $10. So, um, getting 15 of them, right? Like they, they cost 10 bucks. So if I got 15 of them, they're $10 each that's 150 bucks. I pay $65 a month to get 15. Plus I get all the other benefits of premium. It's worth it. Yeah. Hey Margaret. Welcome in. Yeah. So I haven't done any marketing, like I have done marketing, but also I like, I get responses and they, they, um, they grow over time.
So I have 45 right now. Yeah. And so that's kind of the plus is that they roll over. So if you get into a busy period with your work, then everything kind of rolls over and now you have way more marketing. Um, you can just do a big marketing push when you're ready, grumpy. Um, so I think that that's really helpful. So let's talk about like the, when part, I think you should do it when you feel comfortable paying $65 a month, when you can afford it. Like, it may not be easy to afford it, but it's affordable. Like you can fit it into your business budget and you're like, I can afford 65 extra dollars a month or 50 bucks or, um, whatever your plan is. So we're gonna look at that in a little bit, but, um, I think that it's definitely worth the cost.
So if you're looking to invest in something in your business, LinkedIn premium, is it like it's better for marketing. It's easier to find people. You get a bunch of stats on the company page. So when you go to a company's with LinkedIn premium, I can see what their new hires are like. Did they hire a marketing person or did they hire like a new CEO? I can see if their, um, financials are going up or down. I can see if their company growth is going up and down. I can see if they've gotten funding. Like what's kind of been going on in their news. Uh, there's so many stats that you get about the company with LinkedIn premium to tell you, like, should I actually contact this company? Are they doing well? Regardless of like, let's say this company fits our regular amount of revenues, right?
So startups need to have at least 3 million and regular companies need at least five to 50 million. So let's say you go in, and this company has 25 million, but it looks like they're in a downward, like all of a sudden they started firing people and it looks like they've been not hiring and their growth is going down. Maybe they're not the best fit for you to reach out to, but you know that with LinkedIn premium. So if you can afford like somewhere between 50 and a hundred bucks a month for LinkedIn premium, I think you should do it. I think that's definitely worthwhile. It's it's there are just so many benefits of having LinkedIn premium and they add new benefits all the time. So I think with, for me, the biggest benefit is the marketing, but then the second part is growing your network and, um, being able don't sit on her.
Why do you do that? Um, she doesn't, she hates that. Like, he just loves to sit on her, like, that's his favorite activity? He's like, how do I bother her today? And sit on her and annoy her. Yeah. So now you have to sit on her and she hates that. All right. So that's when you should get LinkedIn premium, when you can afford 50 to a hundred dollars extra a month and you should pick the plan that has the most InMails that you can afford. That's not the salesy one. Oh my gosh. Now everybody's active. So for me, I, when I got LinkedIn premium, it was the middle tier. I picked the middle tier of LinkedIn premium. I don't even know what it's called anymore. It, it doesn't exist. Um, but I pick the middle tier and that's better than the sales one. Like there's a sales navigator.
Hold on. Let me find the, I have it in here. So there's like different, um, tiers of LinkedIn premium. So let's look at that real quick. So if I was gonna go see all premium features. Okay. So if I, um, oh, the other thing that we should talk about is viewed your profile. So we have company insights. We oh, the browsing too. So we should talk about browsing and we should talk about who's viewed your profile. Hey, Annie. Welcome in. It's okay. You can't be late. It's just, we're just hanging out. You can just do, and we can all hang out. So, um, if I go into subscription, um, I have to do it on my desktop, boo boo LinkedIn app. Okay. So let's talk about a couple things before we move on. So the other thing I'm gonna put these numbers up to, cause I keep forgetting to do this and Dar and I talked about, I need to keep my videos like easier and we need to make 'em like this needs to be bigger.
So, um, let's make it large. Let's make it a lot larger. Is this large? Okay. This is large. All right. Two. So first what size is this? 96. Okay. Hold on. Let's let's go back to one. So one we're gonna make it 96 cuz now we're fancy. Okay. Number one, number one. Number one is that we are using LinkedIn premium when we can afford it. And there are different tiers of LinkedIn premium. That makes sense. But if you can afford 50 to a hundred bucks a month for LinkedIn premium, it is definitely worth it. Mostly for getting emails to do your marketing, seeing company insights, getting free messages, being able to use LinkedIn premium, to connect with a bunch of people. And then we're gonna talk about a couple other features with LinkedIn premium. All right. It is an Allison Wonderland quote, quote it's from the rabbit.
2) Who’s Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile and Business Search Capabilities
Um, okay, here we go. Two, two. We're gonna talk about, who's viewed your profile and we're gonna talk about, uh, what was the other one? Um, oh, browse. So when you used to have free LinkedIn free, LinkedIn used to let you, you all this kinds of like you used to be able to search a ton of stuff. You used to be able to look in all the company, uh, people like who worked at the company and then they started cutting it down to start incentivizing you to get the paid version, right. LinkedIn premium. So when I first had LinkedIn, we could do basically anything. And the premium features were, uh, in mails and, and who's viewed your profile and company insights, but then once they started cutting down on the free features, then it's kind of like, you need LinkedIn premium. So for me, when you have LinkedIn premium, you can search whatever you want.
So every time I go to a company page on LinkedIn, like when I, before I send an LOI, I go to the people's tab and I'm searching for content in the job, title, space, content, and then marketing. So if nobody comes up for content or the people who come up for content are the wrong people, like they're the people who don't make decisions. They're not managers, they're not VPs. They're not people who are hiring freelancers or who would be hiring freelancers. Then I go to marketing and see like, who's the person I need to talk to. Is it the market manager? Is it the communications person? Which sometimes that's PR so be careful. Is it the content marketing manager? Um, is it the VP of marketing? Sometimes it's the CEO, if it's a really small startup, but the deal is that with LinkedIn premium, you can now search by job title, which is basically like cuts down, finding the right person by ours.
I mean, it's just, if you don't have that feature, which is involved in premium, then you have to search around and it's a big pain in the butt. Um, or if it's a big company and you end up having to go through a ton of employees, that can be a big pain too. The other thing is who's viewed your profile. So with who's viewed your profile, this is only important if it's a potential. It, so the deal is that when you are looking through, who's viewed your profile, um, the people who are like CEOs or marketing people or anybody in your niche, that's who you should then view their profile and connect with them. And you can say things like, Hey, were you looking for a freelance writer? Or you can say, Hey, I'm a freelance, come on, marketing writer in your niche, in FinTech, whatever their niche is.
Uh, and I'd love to connect with you. Or you can ask if they were looking for a freelance writer, depending on who it is, right. If it's a marketing person or a CEO, you can ask if they were looking for a freelance writer, but the deal is you're only using the Hughes. Who's viewed by profile part in order to connect with the right people in your network and get work. It's not about like connecting with everybody. Who's viewed your profile. Sometimes you just get a bunch of random views. Like if I go into mine, I think mine's like 438. Like every time I look at the number, it's like 400 something. Um, if I went and looked at all those 400 people who looked at my profile, like a very small percentage of them would be, um, people that I'd actually wanna connect with in terms of ideal clients or other writers.
Um, sometimes it's just random stuff. So the who's viewed your profile is only to filter who you actually wanna connect with to get work and to grow your network. Like other freelance writers are good too, because if they're in your niche, they can refer you or they can give you tips or you guys can, um, share leads. That's always good. So the second part is that is that you get more in depth, um, searches and hold on, you get more in depth searches. So actually connect with the right person. You find the right person. Um, and you also get to use the, um, yeah, exactly. Hello? Is it me? You're looking for exactly. Yeah. You could go back to someone who's viewed your profile and be like, hello, were you looking for a freelance writer? Yeah. Um, so that stuff is really important. Let's talk about how I use, um, like my results, LinkedIn premium.
3) The LinkedIn Premium Tier I Use
So that'll be our third thing that we're gonna talk about. Cause I have these numbers and now I can use them. All right, here we go. There we go. Third. Okay. Um, the deal is I have a LinkedIn premium plan that doesn't exist anymore. So I have, uh, a 65 bucks a month and I get 15 InMails a month. They roll over and I don't use them. I end up in a space like I am now with 45 InMails and then I just do a big bulk chunk of marketing. I send them all out and for me, I've tested this a bunch. When I send an InMail and an email, people get back to the InMail. I don't know why, because they have to leave their inbox to go to LinkedIn, to answer the InMail. But the InMail gets a better response rate for me.
Excuse me, then email. Hey, Shera. Welcome in. Yeah. Better. Late than ever. It's always cool to hang out so everybody can always hang out and come in whenever they want. I think that's the point. Oh my gosh. Why are you so grumpy? Um, the deal is that my test with this, like sometimes I would send the email first and sometimes I would send the email first and sometimes I would change the times I would send them for some reason, people answered the email. So anytime you get a chance to use an email for a, um, for a, a potential client that you're really interested in and someone who is a really good fit for you, that's InMail worthy. So you're not gonna get very many, right? You're not gonna get a hundred. I think the max is like 20 or 25 on the new plans. We'll have to check. I'll have to look it up on my computer. Cuz the app, the LinkedIn app doesn't wanna tell me hi grumpy. Um, but the deal is you still don't get a ton of them. And when we're doing a lot of marketing, we wanna make sure that we're doing at least 50 to 75, uh, Lois a month or pitches. However you, you know, if you're focusing on magazines or businesses. So the deal is that if you only get so many InMails, oh my gosh,
Grumpy, come here. I'm gonna pick you up.
Well, if you're gonna grumble at me, I'm gonna pick you up.
Can you go back to your little ho hole? Oh, everybody's go back to your ho hole.
Thank you.
So go, go back to your ho hole. All
Right. We're gonna do a little trio thing because everybody's
Everybody's active right now. Right?
Let's do a quick pop date. And as usual, I always have to adjust this camera cuz you guys just love being, being in the wrong place.
All right buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. All right, Charlotte. Ready?
Oh, hi. Five other one. Good job.
All right. And I have a little bit. Here you go.
All right buddy or Betty.
All right buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. All right, Charlotte, back up,
Back other one. This one. Come on. Nope. The other one. This one, you gotta hit my hand though. This, this one.
Close it up.
Close it off. Charlotte. Close it up. All right. Now everybody got a trio. Now we should get a little bit of peace and quiet for a little bit while
You guys are.
Yeah,
I know. So, um, when you're going through LinkedIn premium, you're only gonna get so many InMails. So that means that you need to use them carefully and for your top prospects, everybody else can be through email. And don't worry about the better response rate because you're never gonna have a thousand InMails. Like it's just not gonna happen. Even if they roll over, right. Like mine have that means you're not doing any marketing through InMails. Right? So the deal is that you're only gonna get so many InMails. So don't sweat over that. You get better results or I have gotten better results with InMails that I have with emails. It's just, um, or better response rate. It's just that you have to basically pay, pick who you want those emails to go to. Right? Like that's it. Um, there's only so many and you still have to get your marketing done and sometimes you go to email and then sometimes what you can do, um, is you send someone an email and then you can connect with them on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I just sent you this email about working together.
If you're looking for help, I'd love to talk about your content and connect with them on. And then you can message them all you want because it's free. Um, so that's a way to do it too, is like, if you run outta InMails, you can always send someone, send your L O I B email and then connect with that person on LinkedIn and say, I just emailed. You let me know, blah, blah, blah. And they, sometimes people just connect with you on LinkedIn and they never respond to you, but at least if you were gonna up, you could follow up through a message. Right? So now you kind of have the messaging feature, which is kind of what you get with the InMail, right? So that's the important part. Uh, the same thing with, for me with who's viewed with my profile company insights, finding the right person, being able to search as much as I want.
Um, and really just being able to connect with other people with premium. And it not be a knock against like how many times I connect during the month. Those are really important for getting LinkedIn premium. Um, I just feel like that has been the stuff that gets me the most results. Um, and sometimes, you know, paying for LinkedIn premium seems like a big pain. Like for example, I haven't really been using the InMails a ton, but I have been using other features of premium. So it's worth it. And the more they limit the free plan, the more you kind of de LinkedIn premium to do your marketing, to get your business, um, you know, running well, to be able to connect with a ton of people, um, and do basically the research that you need to do on a company before you send an LOI, let's go on the cost. So I'm gonna see if I can pull it up.
4) LinkedIn Premium Costs and Plans
Uh, first we're gonna go to four. Yay. All right. Let's change its size. Right? So I'm gonna try to pull it up on my computers. Sometimes my computer is very sad when I try to pull things up, like also while I'm doing a live stream. So we'll see. All right. So let's hope that it comes up here. It goes, it's thinking it's doing its stuff.
Hold on. All right. It's thinking it's loading. So what I'm gonna try to do is look at all of the different LinkedIn plans because they look way different. And a lot of times what happens with LinkedIn is they're like do a free trial and then they end up, um, then they end up telling you like how much it costs or what plans are available. And sometimes it's really hard to, um, you know, figure out and they change the plans too. They change the plans pretty often I've noticed, uh, manage subscription. Right. So I wanna manage my subscription so I can see other plan options. Okay. Manage my subscription. All right. So, um, switch plans. The that's what I wanna do, hold on. It's thinking manage subscription. I am on premium business. Okay. So this is news to me. The plan that I am on is premium business and it's $65 a month.
So it says it's 59 99 a month, but that is just without tax. So with tax, uh, premium business is what I have. I don't even know if that's a thing anymore. Hello. I see you. And you're grumpy. Um, okay, cool. So I have business, which is apparently still a thing. So they must have changed the name because the name that I had was not premium business before. So I have premium business. It's 65 bucks a month. I get 15 in mails a month. And then, um, there is sales navigator core, which is a hundred dollars a month where you get 50. Oh wow. Now you get 50 InMails a month. Wow. I did not know. They must have changed this stuff a whole bunch since the last time I saw it. So, okay. Sales navigator is 50 InMails a month and recruiter light is 30 InMails a month. So kind of judge it based on InMails, cuz that's the most lucrative feature, the connection stuff. And being able to look through search and find the right people that's still available on business. So I guess if you really wanna go nuts and go crazy, I guess you could get sales navigator and use your 50 emails a month. Uh, but oh my gosh,
Thank you. Sassy. MOSY go back to your home. It's stop working at me
Sassy today. So the deal is that sales navigator is a hundred bucks a month and you get 50 in mails a month. So I guess if you wanted to go crazy and do 50 in mails a month, that might be an option. If you have a hundred bucks a month to do that. So maybe consider that from mine. I feel like the place I'm at now and when I bought the plan, it was like the mid tier plan. Um, my 15 InMails a month, uh, was basically what I could afford and what made sense if you wanna go a whole hog with, with uh, sales navigator and get 50 InMails a month, I don't know that might be worth it. That might be something you wanna consider because those InMails are super valuable, but then you have to pay a hundred bucks a month to get them.
So, um, for me, I would stick to a plan that's affordable. Like if you can do sales navigator, maybe consider it cause you get a ton of InMail credits. Um, but I don't know. I guess it depends. So for me it costs the cost of what I pay for, I think is pretty valuable. Um, and, and I feel like it should be less though. So let's just say that caveat, I pay 65 bucks a month, but I feel like it should be less. I feel like 49 bucks a month makes more. So I feel like they're, it's a lot, plus like they're cutting free features to force you into the expensive plans. So if you can afford 65 bucks a month, do that. If you can afford the a hundred dollars a month and just get a bunch of email credits and do a lot of InMail marketing, you can do that.
If you don't wanna send in emails and you just wanna do email and you still, the premium features, I would do the cheaper one. I would pick the cheapest plan where you can still do a bunch of searches. You can still see company insights. You can still connect better with people with premium, but you don't have to worry so much about the emails. I know some people are not a big fan of emails. They're just, I don't know. I, they don't like them as much as email, but for me, I just feel like it's a more direct of a, of connecting with someone. It grows your network too. Cuz a lot of every time I send an InMail, I send a connection request with it. Um, and I just think it's, I have just gotten better results with InMail. So consider that, think about that.
But to be fair, I have not used sales navigator, so it's probably, I mean it has a whole bunch of things in here that I feel like are not things we would even need. So, um, like there's a bunch of tracking like salesy things, right? Because it's sales navigator that you don't need, but the all lore of 50 InMails a month is really nice. So all right. That's number four.
Any questions you can always pop them in the chat. So while we're going through anything, if you have anything that pops up, you can pop 'em in the chat. And then if you have anything as you're watching this on the replay or you're watching this later on, you can always put a question in, into man.com/question, and it can be a question or a topic that you want me to answer. Um, and I'm happy to do that.
And then, um, if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business subscribe and let's get to the last few things.
5) Pros and Cons of LinkedIn Premium
So let's talk about, um, pros and cons of premium, right? So that's our last piece that we're gonna go over. Do do, do do let's pick our last number. Yay. Five. All right. Let's update its size. Let's make it large. All right, here we go. So, um, the pros of LinkedIn premium, I think I've already covered a bunch, but basically like InMails are number one. Connections are number two. Being able to search through companies to find the right person to contact is number three. Uh, you want to be able to see company insights. That's number four. Number five is that when you send emails and you get a response, you get more, you get more, um, InMails back.
So every response you get from in, from an InMail, you get back, um, and then the search features are great. You get a lot of things that used to be free that are now only available on paid plans. So the pros of LinkedIn premium are really great marketing tools for freelance writers. So there's a lot of things that we can use in LinkedIn premium. That is, it's just worth it. If you can afford it, it is worth it. I just, I, I love LinkedIn for what it's done for my business, how it's helped me market a lot quicker and a lot more efficiently. And I don't have to search for a hundred hours to find the right person. I can look at the company insights and see like, are they growing or are they tanking? Did they get funding recently? I can look through their articles and see how they're presenting themselves on the platform.
Can look through a bunch of different things on LinkedIn all at once. Um, I think it's really, really helpful. Um, there's also like things, if you find a freelance job, like every once in a while on the LinkedIn job board, you can find a freelance job or some kind of, um, post on there. That's a, that's a really good fit for you. And then LinkedIn premium, like let's you do quick apply or there's some like premium feature that allows you to apply to those things really quickly. So you could do that or you could just send an LOI to the person who's hiring, which, uh, I think that's a premium feature too. Sometimes when you go to job listings, it'll say like, here's the actual person who posted the job. So you can go to that person and say, here's my InMail. You know, let me know if you need help.
The cons are definitely the cost. And, um, that, that to me was a big pain for a long time. The con was that I just, I was very shoestring when I started as a freelance writer, which I think a lot of us are and I just couldn't afford it. So for a long time, I just sent everything through email, but once I could afford it, you know, I went whole hog on LinkedIn premium. I've had it for several years now. Like sometimes you can, you can turn it on and off too. So like, if you wanna try do the free trial of LinkedIn premium you SAS, I hear you making noise over there. Um, so if you wanna try LinkedIn premium for a while on the free trial, and then why are you making these chicken noises? I don't know if you guys can hear her make these chicken noises, but she's over there like making chicken noises, cuz she wants me to give her another T R E a T. And if I say it she'll freak out. So, um,
I see you grumpy come here, here. Let's squeeze you. All right.
I'll give you guys a quick trio.
So
Price is a bummer, but when you can afford it, get it. The other con is that they're pulling a lot of things out of the free plan, right? So like over the years, like years ago you could use the free plan and pretty much your only problem was that you didn't get the InMails.
All right, ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh buddy. You're so close. Let's try again. 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. Ready? Good job.
So you could use the free plan pretty much. And the only thing you didn't get were InMails, but now it's like they've cut a lot of the, um, free features or out of a lot of features out of the free plan. So you need to pay for the other one. Um, the other cons to premium are, um, oh yeah, you can turn it on and off. So if you wanna do a free trial and turn it off and then wait a few months and then do a free trial and turn it back on, you can do that. I just like leave even it on cuz then you get rolling InMails. Um, the other cons are that you can end up like me with rolling InMails. So I'm paying for basically other features of premium. And now I have like a thousand InMails that I send it's 45, but um, they just kind of roll in, right?
So you're now paying for a feature you're not using. And the other features are not worth the cost. Like to me, the biggest thing that's worth the price are the InMails and being able to see the right person to connect with at the company. But I'm trying to break this trio in half and it just like does not wanna participate. Um, yeah. So you end up with a ton of extra stuff that you don't use, right? So you're paying this high price for something that you're not even really using that much, but if you get rid of it, then you have to get a different plan. Like if I get rid of mine, I don't know if my plan actually exists. Like it's telling me I have business premium, but I don't know, or premium business. And I don't know if that's like, just because I have an old plan or they changed the name or what, ah, I did it,
There you go. Ready anybody.
Good job. Um, but then when you get rid of premium, they change the plan. So then you can end up paying more. Like, I think one time I had the $25 a month LinkedIn premium and I was just trying it out. But then they got rid of that plan and then you're like, the lowest thing we have is like a thousand dollars. It's like 65 bucks a month and you're like, Ugh. Um, Hey Bena, welcome in. So then you get in this kind of annoying situation where they change the plans on you a bunch, right? So then, then you end up spending a lot more money for basically what you had before, right? So there have been times with linked premium where you had a really cheap plan and they raised their prices. And now instead of paying $25 a month, you pay 50 bucks a month for the same plan because you just got off of premium.
So that can be really annoying. Um, there's not a ton of cons for premium outside of the price and how they change the plan and what's offered in the plans. Um, but again, that's something as freelance writers that we have to kind of budget in as a tool. I guess for me it becomes frustrating because there's a lot of tools that I use. I use tons of tools all day, every day. And those tools are less expensive and more valuable than LinkedIn premium. Like they are, they cost less and I in do a lot more with them than I can with LinkedIn premium, but I pay more for LinkedIn premium. So then it's kind of this balance where it's like, all right, so do I factor in the value of a client into that? Right? Like, so if LinkedIn premium by sending those in emails and getting connections and all that stuff has allowed me to get thousands of dollars worth of work, then $65 a month doesn't seem so bad. Right? Like then you're like, okay, if I'm paying $65 a month and it's helped me to get all of this work. Okay. I guess that's valuable. I just find it frustrating from a tool standpoint where I have other tools that allow me to do a lot more like LinkedIn premium, again, as someone who has come from it, basically using the free plan for so long. Um, and now they're like just like cutting back on features. That's really frustrating. Um, I see you,
I see you making noise. I gonna squeeze you
Woo. Almost fell over. So that's just kind of a pain point of mine. I think if you're being introduced to premium now it's not as bad because you're just used to it not, um, you're used to it, the free version being so limited. Yes. Hello. I know you're sassy Panda today. What are we gonna do? You're just a sassy Panda. So anyways, I think for me, the bottom line is that LinkedIn premium is super worth it. Um, it's basically like you can pay more than a hundred bucks a month or you can pay what I have, which is 65 bucks a month. Um, or they have that other plan on there. What was the other plan? Uh, the recruiter light one is 140 bucks a month, but that one only gives you 30 InMails a month. So that doesn't really make sense. Why would you get that?
Well, like guess if you're a recruiter you would anyways, anyways, the whole point of LinkedIn premium is to help us with our marketing, right? So the whole point of LinkedIn premium is so we can send in mails, find the right person at the company to connect with, right? So that we can do have search functions. We can look at company statistics on their company page. We can see if they got funding. If they've been hiring, if things are going down downhill, we can look at all that stuff. We can look at what they're publishing and what they're featuring about their company. We could connect with other people with premium. We can get free messages. We can expand our network. That's really helpful, Sarah. Yeah. Sarah is actually the one who recommended this topic. So she's the one that asked this question and I was like, oh man, that would make a great live stream. You know, I'm trying to figure out how to make this like a square. How do I do that? Oh, yay. Oh my God. Hold on.
Is it there we go. Maybe we can like put it over here. I don't know. I'm figuring it out on the bottom though. Like then it comes with the controls, right? It comes like it's. Oh, okay. Hold on. All right. We're just gonna have to deal with it. Maybe we'll just put it here anyways. Sarah's the one who recommended this topic and um, she's the one that asked about LinkedIn premium and I think it's great that we talk about it because there's a lot of times where I get this question of like, should I invest in premium? And the answer is if you can afford it yes. All the time. But you have to know what you're investing for. You're not just buying premium out, stepped on my toes. You not just buying premium just to buy a tool or you're not just buying premium for one feature.
Make sure that you use all these different options within premium because without it, uh, you're just wasting money. Write it out on the whiteboard. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So we got the whiteboard. So we got the whiteboard and I tried to do the camera below. Hello, last time. And that was just like, so what I've been doing for my students is just holding it up. So like I'll write on it and then I'll stand here and hold it. And um, I'll write different things out so I can put it on the whiteboard. But, um, I don't know what I would put on the whiteboard today. I don't really like, we've kind of covered all the things. So if you have any questions, you can always pop 'em in the chat. Or if you're watching this as a replay or you're watching this as a new episode, um, let me know how you're using LinkedIn premium.
I'm always interested to hear how other writers are using LinkedIn premium. And if there are features that I don't use that we should know about, uh, I always think that's helpful. So if you have anything to put in the comments in of like how you as a writer use LinkedIn premium, I'd love to hear it. Um, if you have anything to put in the comments about like whether or not, um, you know, maybe you got on LinkedIn premium and got off and got on and got off. Um, so that I think is an interesting thing too, cuz I did that a bunch. I don't know if other people are still doing that. That says now see, this is my prob Hmm. I'm still learning. So this is okay. We're just figuring out. It's just like, you know, I know that we were talking about or Dar and I were talking about the controls being down here.
So we wanna be careful about that. So be says, not sure if you mentioned it already, but I have LinkedIn career, which is $40 a month with five InMails. Um, when I, when compared to premium business, the differences are 15 InMails and unlimited people browsing, um, is in business premium and not career. Okay. So she even has another plan that exists. That probably is when mine existed. Like when I had premium business, which I think is a, I don't even know if you can sign up for that. But LinkedIn career, she is pays 40 bucks a month for five emails. VNA. Here's a question. See if you can change to me on business, cuz if you can afford an extra 20 bucks, 25 bucks a month, it's way worth it to get 10 more InMails. So think about that. Think about if you wanna switch to what I have, if what I have is available. Um, but yeah, there's all these different plans. Woo woo. You can. Woo. Woo. At me all you want, you're just seeing a set Iasi today. Um, so think about, um, if you can afford the extra 25 bucks a month and see what your upgrades are, because I feel like my upgrades are different than other people's because of the plan I'm on. Um, and like I said, I know other people, not like I said, but I know other writers like Bena who have LinkedIn career where they only get five in mail else.
Um, it also says that you saved 50%. Okay. I don't know. 50% on what? Yeah. I mean maybe you saved 50% on using another plan. That's in that tier. I don't know. Can you, can you just let me do my thing sitting over there? Be in a SAS machine.
You wanna eat this pen? No, don't
Eat the pen. I was just kidding.
Geez. Jeez Louise. All right.
Ready? You sassy
Bean. You gotta do your high five other one other, one other one. Good job. All right, Barry. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh Barry. You're so close.
Close to you so far. Um, Maurice says she haven't hasn't had success yet with InMails. I think you will over time, Marie, but it's also like maybe your ideal clients aren't as much on LinkedIn. I know there's certain niches where people have LinkedIn profiles, but they just don't hang out on LinkedIn that much. So maybe that's more of a, a like a niche thing. Maybe that's I know that Marie works in construction. So maybe it's that construction.
Um, that
Construction people have LinkedIn profiles. Oops,
Free trio.
Um, that LinkedIn, that construction people have free profile free, well, construction people, LinkedIn profiles, but they don't actually use LinkedIn functions. So when you send it InMail,
They don't get it right? Like they're hold on. Nope. Here you go. I don't know where it went. Barry. It's
Lost. Hold on. We gotta search for the missing trio.
Nope.
Oh, here it's. Here it is Barry.
We found it. Okay. We gotta do a little digging. So, um, yeah, Marie, so some niches, I think they have LinkedIn profiles, but if they don't have their settings in LinkedIn to, um, to have those InMails go to their inbox or to be notified when they get an InMail. So I think that's niche based. Um, I think for me the niches that I'm in, like I think hospitality, tech, prop tech, real estate, they're on LinkedIn all the time. So I get answers on that. Uh, food travel restaurants. They're on LinkedIn a bunch. So try it out for, um, your business and see what happens. Okay. So business says hers is, can you
Back to your HAA hole? Thank you. Back your HAA hole, back to your HAA hole. Ew. You Dred on me gross back up other one other one? No, you're just other one. There you go. All right buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. Oh close.
Did you find it? Good job. All right. So if you have Hold on, I just deleted something by accident. Welcome to the livestream where I delete things by accident. Okay. To, so Vesna says she has $70 for premium business. All right. So if you get premium business visa and you get more in bails and you can afford that. Okay. So the cost is like more than double. So now you said it's, um, two 40 to 6 72 per year. Yeah. So I pay for it monthly. If you don't wanna pay for monthly, then the, how would it, if it's 40 bucks a month
Versus 70 bucks a month, right? So seven times 12. I'm not good with mental math. Hmm. Okay. Anyways, look through the plans basically. I guess the conclusion that we're coming to is that, um, look through the plans and see what's affordable. Like if you can go to a plan with more InMails, I think that's a good way to do it. I don't know about sales navigator. I've never had it, but the fact that you get a ton more InMails is definitely really attractive. Um, but yeah, like if you're paying a ton, like I know that's about mine. Like if I $65 a month. Right. So let's do some math real quick. So if I'm paying $65 a month, times 12, that's seven 80. So with the discount, that would be 6 72. Yeah. So the other thing about LinkedIn premium is it's a business expense. So I put it on my tax deduction and say like, I pay for LinkedIn premium. It's this much per month, blah, blah, blah. Uh, that's always helpful. So if you can afford the difference between like 40 bucks a month, is that right? Like that's two 40, right? So why does it feel like it's so,
Um, different like 40. Okay. So 40 bucks a month is four 80. So the, you must be getting, okay. That's how you save 50% visa because 40 bucks a month at 12 months is four 80. So if you've been paying two 40, you're paying 50% of your typical plan. So you're paying way less for it. So now the, yeah, the 50% discount. I don't know if it's, cuz you did annual is usually like a 20% discount. Yeah. Look at, look at upgrading when your subscription ends and see what happens, but they give you an annual discount. You might have gotten one because you came off of a free trial of LinkedIn premium and then they give you a coupon. It just depends. But if you can get more InMails, I think that's always a good thing. And if people like answer InMails, so for some people, right? Like, um, Maurice says the InMails don't, haven't worked as well for her, which I think is a niche based thing. And like who's on LinkedIn and who's not. Um, but she uses the other features. So, you know, I think, like I said, for me, it's always been InMails as like number one, but other people, right? The search functions, growing your network, connecting with the right people, being able to, um, use premium in a bunch of different ways. See who viewed your profile. That's always really helpful too.
Yeah. So the 50% discount is probably a coupon that you got when you got off, whatever else was going on. Cool. Okay. Let's do one more cup date and then we're gonna hop out. So let's see what's going on. Oh my gosh. You guys look super cute right now.
All right. Ready? Hold on.
It's probably because you guys are both sitting where you're supposed
To. All right. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh buddy. You're so close. It's behind you. It's it's right there. Can you find it? Oh buddy. You're so there it is. You got it. Good job. All right.
Charlie bean high five other one other, one other one. Good job
Here. Go. Good job. All right, buddy. Ready? Hold on 1, 2, 3 dogs. Oh you you, oh your mouth, little too early.
It's okay. To be fair. Like Bo is 15 and a half now. We're pretty sure. Um, so we took him to the vet just as like a dog update, just a little update. Um, we took him to the vet. He is developing cataracts. He's never been good at catching things. So don't be confused by the fact that he has cataracts, that that's affecting him catching things. He's never been good at it. He's gotten way better as he gotten older. But um, so anyways, there's that plus his hearing is not so great. So the fact that he's not super like good at catching things, that's not an old dog thing, but also he is an old dog and we have to give
Him a little allowances. Wow. You're just like a little mu a bunch. Go back to your ha hole. No, go back to your ha hole back up, go back to your ha hole all the way, all the way back up,
Back up the things over here, back up, back, up, back up all the way, all the way, all the way. There we go. High five other one. Good job.
Charlotte just has to have a little bit of extra discipline and she has to have a little bit of extra, like getting her in the right place. Cuz otherwise she just loses Elle control and just tries to high five everything in her way just to get the trio. All right. Marie says she's mostly done construction. Yeah. So it may just be Marie that construction or there's like, I'm sure there's other niches like construction where they have LinkedIn profiles and it just, they don't get the settings changed and like they just use it for, I don't know, just to have a LinkedIn presence, but they don't actually check their inbox or they don't get the emails for the InMails. I don't know. Yeah. Me too. Margaret says good for him. I wanna be getting better as I get older. Yeah. I mean, he's gotten a lot better at catching things since he's really gotten geriatric.
I think it's cuz he's slowed down. Cuz when he was uh, younger, he would just kind of run around and like be a wild child. He's still a wild child kind of now. But I, I think now that he kind of slows down and like pays attention a little bit more. I think that helps. Cool. All right. I'm glad that we were here. If you feel like, um, this was helpful and you feel like this was a good discussion about LinkedIn premium, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business subscribe, eventually I'm gonna change that watermark dairy and change it to the subscribe, a button I'm getting there. Um, and then, oh, last few things. So, um, the coming Monday, so this Monday I, if you join my email list, so if you grab my free pricing guide here, you'll join my email list and I will let you know about my free masterclass.
So my free masterclass is like this live stream, except it's a lot more in depth. So it's a lot more detailed and uh, the free master class is gonna open up on Monday and then it will be like the following week. So there's gonna be a couple slots open for the master class that you can join. It's totally free. It's an hour of me teaching you really in depth strategies that, um, I've developed from my six figure business. And it's not like the livestream where we focus on like one little topic. It's like really, um, a combination of different strategies that you can use right now. So if you go to Mandy ls.com and get the pricing guide, it's free, you'll be added to, uh, the list to find out when the free masterclass opens up and then you can sign up and um, join me eight for a one hour class.
It'll be on a different platform. It won't be on YouTube, but we're gonna go through specific strategies. One by one of things you can do right now to earn more money in less time. And then also basically, uh, learn how to get better clients so that you're not kind of struggling to, uh, work for pennies or it's not, um, this big pay in the, but thing of like, how do I actually set up my business? So free pricing guide. We'll put you on the list to know about the free masterclass that is happening, um, between April 12th and April 19th. So the free masterclass, I think the three slots will be on April 12th, April 13th and April 19th, I believe. But if you join the email list, you'll find out the specific times. Cool. Uh, Marie says the masterclass is amazing. Woohoo. I know some people have, have joined the masterclass in the past.
I'm gonna update it from the last time we had the masterclass. I always try to make sure that everyone who comes to the masterclass gets to walk away with a ton of value so that when you come to the masterclass, bring your pen and pencil, like, bring your notes up, whatever you take notes on. Like, I always try to make sure that, um, we get all of these tips and strategies down, so you know how to move forward in your business and there's questions at the end. So if you have any questions about freelance writing, you can always ask 'em at the end of the masterclass. Cool. All right. Thanks for hanging out. I'm glad that we talked about LinkedIn premium. It's really like a, excuse me. It's really like a gold star service. Um, it is a little expensive, but it's worth it in the end.
So Charlotte, you have a funny year. Why's your funny year up your little radar year. I don't know if people can see that. All right. Well, thank you so much for hanging out and, um, oh Vicky, we're glad that you were here. It's been a little bit it's okay, Vicky. We sometimes forget his Friday, but we're glad that you're here. We're about to hop off, but thanks to everybody for joining we're here every Friday at noon central, join the email list to find out about the free 60 minute masterclass and I will will see you next Friday. Bye.
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