How to make money from Linkedin, Part 2

A novelist once said, "Money is the sixth sense which allows a better use of the other five."

If you don't have religious or cultural prejudice against money (some people people that "money is the root of all evil" or that "rich people are greedy and bad" or that "money doesn't buy happiness"), then the logical question to ask is, "How can I make more and more money while working less and less?"

The only way is to use a system. S.Y.S.T.E.M. actually stands for "Save Your Self Time, Energy & Money."

Linkedin is one such system.

However, most people do NOT know how to use Linkedin profitably. Most people are NOT making any money from Linkedin. They use it as a mere sophisticated Rolodex or as a lazy way to network.

Linkedin is like a powerful sports car, yet most people open the door of that car, sit in the driver's seat, then look at the dashboard (which doesn't change much) and sometimes look through what's in the glove box, then they get out of the car.

They are not going anywhere with Linkedin.

Other people take a different approach. They set a specific goal, such as "I seriously intend to make $50,000 this year from Linkedin." (That's ON TOP of their regular salary from their full-time job).

So what they do is this: They write a personalized letter to EACH and EVERY ONE of their 500 connections and introduce themselves, their services, what they offer to clients, they even sell various knowledge products they have on Lulu.com or Payloadz.

After a few weeks of diligent and customized marketing, they begin to get orders, and they make $100, then $300, then $1,000, etc. Remember: they did not pay anything to be part of Linkedin. Their cost of doing business on Linkedin is zero.

But as I explained in the previous post, you first have to CAPTURE your knowledge in the form of a document, and this document must have at least a price of $1.00.

It is just unbelievable that there are SO MANY highly knowledgeable professionals, executives and entrepreneurs on Linkedin who have NEVER put down in writing all the knowledge they have in their heads! If they did capture their knowledge in the form of an ebook (or even ebooklet of 20 pages) or a blog or a podcast, they would have promoted it in their Linkedin profile.

My point is that if you want to make money from Linkedin, you basically have no choice but to start to diligently document your knowledge so that you can sell it.

I will write more about how this can be done, by using the MAPS framework I created.

It stands for "make it (knowledge), amass it, process it and sell it."

How to make money from Linkedin?

Headhunters certainly make money from Linkedin, which acts like a kind of virtual Rolodex for them.

But how would an ordinary professional or manager make money from Linkedin?

In order to answer that question, we need to step back and understand what business is all about. Business is basically "innovation" and "marketing."

In other words, a business makes money by 1. creating new value and 2. marketing or delivering that value to customers.

With this clear understanding in mind, we can now look at the question "How to make money from Linkedin?"

First, ask yourself: What is the knowledge you have which could be sold to others?
Second, ask yourself: What is the best price for offering that knowledge?

Indeed, making money through Linkedin is easiest if you have valuable knowledge to sell.

This is so because knowledge can be easily captured in a digital format, such as MP3 file, blog, PDF document, video (hosted on Youtube or your own server), etc.

Your valuable knowledge, once digitized, can be sold to ANYONE anywhere on the planet where there is an Internet connection.

The challenge is to package all your knowledge into a digital document (audio, video or text) that you can sell for $1.

You're probably thinking, "How the heck will I become rich if I sell my knowledge for a measly $1?"

Well, I say "$1" because it sounds easy. If you cannot sell your knowledge to someone for $1, then you are in big trouble.

Of course, feel free to sell your knowledge for $50 or even $100 if you want.

But let's start small and then later, we can increase the price.

So that's my challenge to you: package your knowledge into a document that people would pay $1 to download. Or use $5 if you want.

Believe it or not, most people are incapable of creating such a $5 document.

This is not because they are not smart. It's simply because they have never learned how to organize their knowledge in a way that would be useful to other people.

In future posts, I will explain how this can be done.

But for now, realize that once you package your knowledge into a $5 document, you can then sell it to hundreds or even thousands of people.

For instance, if 500 buy your $5 document, then you've just made $2,500.

(To be continued)