from LinkedInTalks

LinkedIn Business Accounts

By KonstantinGuericke

Regina,

There is absolutely no risk of LinkedIn going away. We’ve been profitable since March and revenues are growing nicely. As I mentioned, we’ve been making all the features we developed since November available free of charge to Personal account holders. As you may imagine, if many subscribers were not renewing, we wouldn’t be doing that. But most everyone who gets a premium account doesn’t go back to a free Personal account. It’s like moving from a dot matrix printer to a laser printer . . .

I appreciate those of you who feel they want to make a “contribution” to ensure we are around and to pay back for value received for free—it’s noble and we gladly take the contribution. However, especially if your financial situation is constrained, don’t feel like you need to do that, but judge whether or not a Business or Pro account is for you based on the additional features offered, such as InMail, finding implied connections, viewing expanded profiles outside of your network, OpenLink, OpenLink Network, etc. For many, a Personal Plus account may be the best choice at $60 per year (that’s the equivalent of a cheap lunch in the US or Europe).

Business and Pro accounts are a good fit for everyone—they were designed for people for whom it is of extremely high value to contact anyone on LinkedIn quickly and discreetly. If you are researching investments worth millions of dollars, finding one valuable source of information make it a no-brainer to spend $20 or $200 a month. Same if you are gaining customers or clients worth tens of thousands of dollars. Recruiters can easily make $20,000 to $40,000 for placing an executive, so if they find great people they can’t find anywhere else (or find them in a shorter period of time or receive higher response rates than cold calls), then a LinkedIn Pro account is easily worth it.

While I know of some people who feel re-connecting with a long-lost co-worker, contacting a potential employer or making a new networking contact is worth $10 (if you buy just a single InMail rather than buying them as part of a subscription package), I think that’s when the ROI becomes less certain.

We do know that InMail works quite well. It doesn’t mean it’s going to work for each person since it’s very much based on who you target and whether or not you have a compelling proposal to the recipient. InMails can’t make someone want to talk to you if they don’t find your profile, your InMail Feedback score or the proposal compelling, but people virtually always review the proposal—especially if you have an InMail Feedback score of 4 or 5 stars. Some people prefer not to respond rather than decline—it’s a natural human behavior and I’m sure we all know when people don’t accept our invitation, it’s much more likely that they don’t respond than for them to actively decline. And if they don’t respond within five business days, you automatically (no need to contact customer service or even click on anything) get a free credit for sending another InMail to another user.

-Konstantin