651: How to Make Money on LinkedIn

0:00Let's be real. Nobody starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings. That's where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR, so you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. I'm talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers' comp, 401k, you name it.

0:34Gusto makes it simple and all with no hidden fees, no surprises. Plus, if you have any questions, their team of certified HR experts are standing by to help. It's no wonder why more than 400 ,000 small businesses already trust Gusto and why it's the number one rated payroll software for fall 2025, according to the review site G2. So try Gusto today at gusto.com slash side hustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle. One more time, gusto, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash side hustle. All right, these are the three types of posts you need to make money on LinkedIn, how to do LinkedIn as a side hustler, and the common and costly mistake you're probably making on LinkedIn.

1:20This is the Side Hustle Show. It is the business podcast you can actually apply. Today's guest has taken his LinkedIn ghostwriting side hustle from zero to a multi-six-figure business, generating millions of impressions along the way. And he's here to fill us in on how to make money on LinkedIn this year. From joemckay.info, Joe McKay, welcome to The Side Hustle Show. Thanks for having me, Nick. I'm really looking forward to our chat today. Me as well. LinkedIn has long been ignored as a social platform for me. And after our LinkedIn lesson, Joe's got a business idea to donate, so be sure to stick around for that.

1:53Plus, we've got the triple threat. This is Joe's favorite tool, tactic, and book from the last 12 months. But let's kick it off with those three types of posts that every LinkedIn side hustler needs to do. So I try and keep things really, really simple. There is a lot of advice out there. For me, it is as simple as three types of posts. The first type of post that I look at is really about awareness. So this is usually going to be a story about you, about your side hustle, about where the idea came from, about why you love what you're doing, why you're passionate about it, maybe some of the struggles or the fails that you've had along the way.

2:28And so this kind of a story-based post is really meant to reach as many people as possible to drive awareness and to get your photo and your headline and your name in front of as many people as you can. So I think that's kind of the starting point is going broad and telling a story. Okay, we'll go into some examples of all these. Yeah, sure. But go ahead. So the second type of post that I think of is really around educating your target audience. So we're starting to get a little bit narrower in who we're speaking to here. You want to try and demonstrate that you're the expert or you're the person that they should reach out to when they face the problem that you solve.

3:06So you're trying to either educate them around a problem that they might have and teach your target audience how to solve that problem. Okay. You might unpack how you got a result for a client or a great client story. You might share a mental model or a framework or something that you apply in your side hustle with clients. And so really that next kind of layer of your three-layered content strategy is around building trust and demonstrating your expertise with a relevant audience. So it's less about kind of breadth and volume of eyeballs and more about focusing in on who you're talking to and targeting them more specifically.

3:41Okay, got it. And the third post that you really need to, and this is where I see a lot of people leaving money on the table, is to make an offer. So a lot of people assume that by telling some stories and building some trust that customers will come to them and that can happen. But it's really important to consistently and regularly remind people exactly what you do, who you help, how you help them, and then how they can work with you and kind of make that offer and put that in front of them. with a clear, simple call to action that someone can follow. That might be send me a DM, that might be join my newsletter.

4:16So making that offer, making an offer of some kind and putting it in front of your target audience rather than hoping that they kind of come to you and know what action to take. Got it. So at the end of the post, or even it could be the whole post itself, this is an offer type of post. Hey, if you want more of this, I send out a newsletter every Thursday on this topic. Make sure you join so you never miss one. Send me a message, book a discovery call, inviting people to take that next step to deepen their relationship or do business with you. Yeah, absolutely. So that call to action kind of sits at the end, whether it's what I think of as a light lift call to action, which would be join my newsletter or follow me, through to a really like a heavier lift, kind of a higher value call to action, which is, as you said, book a discovery call, book a strategy call, depending obviously on your side hustle and the service you're offering.

5:05And what goes really well as kind of the content of those offer-led posts is customer testimonials, great client results that you've received, where you can demonstrate ROI of whatever it is that you're offering. If you kind of start with that and potentially a story, a customer story around that and then have a call to action that follows, that's a really powerful combination. Okay, so I could put something like I could reformat a story from the podcast and put that on LinkedIn as a text-based post or maybe with some image. We can talk about those type of tactics too. And then if you want more stories like this, make sure to follow the Side Hustle Show, some framework like that.

5:45Absolutely. So if someone gets to the bottom of your post, you've grabbed their attention, you've obviously piqued their interest. It's really important to give them a next step to take before they just go scrolling by. Has LinkedIn gone more algorithm-based versus more follower-based, where if you create something, maybe you only have 100 connections or something. I don't necessarily need those people to see it, but I would like the broader world to see it. If I hit that viral thread just right, is that going to happen, or do I have the ability to go beyond my existing network here? Yeah, absolutely.

6:20That shift is coming to the algorithm on LinkedIn. it's kind of arrived already. And I think I'm seeing it getting more exaggerated. So you are more likely than ever to see viral type, more algorithm led content versus content from your direct network. And I think that can be a good and a bad thing. Yeah, as a user, it's good and bad because it's like, you know, Facebook, Instagram, like they're serving me up all sorts of stuff from accounts, pages that I have never followed, never really interacted with. But they're like, well, you watch this one ski video, so we think you're going to like this one too.

6:52and you're like dang it you're you know you're right or you looked at this one data map i don't know i love looking at these so and of course you take it you spend a long time staring it so they're like oh this guy's really engaged with this stuff and so they show you more of that and it's good back you're like well i didn't ask for that you know you didn't uh i didn't follow this page but you know for those content creators they're able to reach a much wider audience than they otherwise would have so i could see the the positive side of it too yeah it is certainly a mixed bag but if you do have a small audience, it's possible to go viral.

7:22It's possible to reach much wider than your own kind of first degree network. But for me, I'm still trying to bring it back to your target audience and who is likely to buy from you. That's ultimately who you really want to get in front of. The eyeballs can feel good and going viral can feel good, but really you're there, especially on a platform like LinkedIn and for side hustlers, you are trying to turn that into a commercial opportunity. So getting in front of the right audience is the most important thing. Are you proactively making connection requests or is it kind of relying on this content first strategy to grow that network or that follower base on the platform?

7:59I think you definitely need both. So I think one of the most powerful aspects of LinkedIn is this ability to search by industry, by job title, by company. So if you're selling a service or have an offer that kind of relates to a certain type of worker or someone who works in a specific industry or with a certain job title, it's a really powerful tool to do that proactive outreach and build your audience, like take it into your own hands to build, curate an audience that's going to be relevant to you by sending those connection requests. then your content strategy is really what becomes your shop window kind of becomes your the proof point that you know what you're talking about when they look at that connection request from you when they see you show up in the feed that's that's where that kind of trust building comes in and hopefully you then able to put an offer in front of a relevant audience later so i believe the two really need to sit together you need to go out and build your own audience and then create content to feed that audience and nurture them.

8:56Is there a rule of thumb for how many requests to send on a daily or weekly basis without hitting some spam and red flags? It's more of a rule of Microsoft than a rule of thumb. I think you can send a hundred connection requests per week. And I think that doubles if you have LinkedIn premium. Okay. If you're doing it manually, you'll just get told that you've hit the limit. There are some automation tools out there, which LinkedIn is aware of and is cracking down on some of that stuff. I've never used kind of an automation tool to grow my audience. You can and they plug in, but I know that LinkedIn is tightening the screws on those.

9:31Got it. Okay. I want to go back to the top of the funnel, this awareness type of post. Can you give us some examples or frameworks of it's got to be, you know, hook story. Imagine there's a handful of tools in your tool belt that work really well to try and drive this initial awareness. Yeah, absolutely. Look, something that I'm seeing work really well at the moment, because I think like all social media, LinkedIn can be a place of overblown positivity. It feels like everyone's making seven figures in their sleep and conquering the world. And so talking about a challenge that you faced, talking about a fail that you had or a mistake that you made along the way in starting your side hustle or building your side hustle is a really great way to, like people want to see, that's compelling content.

10:16People do want to learn what happened. But it's also a way to be authentic and share, I guess, a little bit behind the scenes and build that trust kind of at the same time. So I try and use LinkedIn in a really honest way. There is obviously some polish and some curation that goes into putting something out in public. So I guess what I think of is we have a personal life and we have a private life. And if you can get close to that line, so if you can share something from your personal life, especially like as a side hustler or as a solopreneur, we are the brand, we are the business. You can get close to that line where you're kind of almost in your private life without breaching any trust or sharing anything that you're not comfortable sharing.

10:55That can be a really rich vein of stories and ideas and things that you can share that will resonate with a wider audience. Okay. The opening line that I see over and over again, and you can probably apply this to just about any niche is like, you know, a hundred million people use chat GPT, but 99 % of them, you know, are using it wrong or, you know, half of America has a side hustle, but, you know, 99 % of the people aren't doing it right. And then, you know, it kind of goes in, is this just a factor of people ripping off what has worked for other people, like other viral threads or other viral posts and saying like, well, how can I apply this to my, I mean, I guess that's one way to reverse engineer it.

11:33Yeah, look, there certainly are. And, you know, if you spend as much time as I have on LinkedIn, over the last couple of years, you do start to spot these almost canned templated hooks. Yeah. The 99%, you know, really specific numbers and figures in opening hooks are really popular. So there is a lot of that. And I think that can, tactics like that can help. And, you know, there's any number of creators you can go and purchase some hook templates or some post templates from. But I predict in 2025, we're going to see more focus on, I'm calling it norm core content. So more your Crocs and Socks style content, like content that is genuine, it's real, it may not be as polished, but it's based on kind of genuine insight, I guess, is what I'm hoping at least to see take over more this year.

12:22There will always be that tendency to viral kind of templated style hooks, but I don't think it serves you in the long term. As somebody who creates a lot of content, but never finds the time or prioritizes the time to post on social media because there's some where it's like how can i take this this long form podcast interview as one example and like you know crank it through some machine where it comes out as like a coherent you know linkedin formatted type of type of post so there's a few so i mean for video repurposing specifically you've got opus pro which does a really good job of taking long long form content and creating clips okay i think you're a descript user descriptors has started offering that as well.

13:03So vertical video as a format on LinkedIn is really trending upwards. LinkedIn has installed a kind of a TikTok style video feed. So for you as someone who's going to have a lot of video content up your sleeve, some simple repurposing, some shorts, that kind of thing could work really well. In terms of going from a video into like a text-based post, ChatGPT can be really helpful to help you kind of pull out key stories and moments. I tend to lean towards moments in a conversation like if it's a podcast or for me if it's a coaching call with a solopreneur with a client the moments when i'm feeling like i'm leaning into the conversation and there i can tell they're leaning in if i'm sharing an example or a framework or a story my brain is kind of just is tracking those moments when it feels like something important is is kind of passing through the airwaves if that makes sense so i i use a lot of tools to help what i do but i'm also So at the end of the day, just trying to use my own antenna from the conversations I'm having to go, you know, that felt like a moment or that felt like an anecdote or a story or a model that would be relevant, would be good to share.

14:08So for me, it's that combination of tools and then that human element of just feeling the moment, I guess, if that's kind of hard to explain. Yeah, I mean, and you can look through your own feed to see what is showing up, what is working, and obviously apply that to your own voice and to your own niche. Absolutely. I think there is an element of reverse engineering that's possible and that's helpful. You know, see the types of posts that you resonate with and see what you could apply from your own history, your own story, your own lessons. But novel content, I think, is really important as well.

14:42You know, what's something that only you could write about or a post that only you could create? More LinkedIn tactics with Joe in just a moment, including what not to include in your posts, plus the best times to post right after this. A lot of side hustlers suffer from what-if-itis. What if it doesn't work? What if I don't have the skills? What if I pick the wrong path? But one thing 100 % of our amazing guests have in common is they took their shot. They phased down those what-ifs and they got their answers through taking action. Our partner Shopify helps turn what-ifs into why-nots. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to the very guests on this show.

15:24What if I can't design a website? Shopify's got you with ready-made templates to match your brand style. What if people haven't heard about my brand? Shopify helps you find customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. And what if I get stuck? You can tap in to Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support. Let's turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. One of the tools I personally see make a huge difference for business owners is Quo, formerly OpenPhone.

16:05It's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before, just with a new name. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. So Quo, formerly OpenPhone, this is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or your computer. So no more using your personal number as your business line, no more carrying two phones around. With Quo, your team can share one phone number and collaborate on customer calls and texts just like a shared inbox. So anybody can jump in to keep response times fast.

16:36And this is where it gets super cool. You can set up Quo's built-in AI agent in just a few minutes to handle calls after hours, answer customer questions, and capture leads on autopilot. I want to invite you to get started for free. Plus, Side Hustle show listeners get 20 % off your first six months at quo.com slash side hustle. That's q u o.com slash side hustle. Look at them getting that three letter domain q u o.com slash side hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, quo will port them over and no extra charge. Whoa, no missed calls no missed customers as far as the format of this is really helpful like oh there may be a somewhat of a blue ocean in short form video on this platform because this hasn't historically been a short form video platform and so that's like you know getting more eyeballs anything else best practices as far as images versus text versus video versus putting a link in the text like all these little nitty-gritty tactics yeah absolutely so linkedin really wants to keep people on platform.

17:39So posts that include external links will get punished by the algorithm. You know, LinkedIn will try and suppress those to an extent. So if you include like a YouTube link in your post or a link to your sign up to your newsletter directly, that will really harm your reach. The flip side is you're going to get a better conversion rate if it's easy for someone to see your post and then click out to something. So that's sometimes a trade-off that you might be willing to make. Adding images to posts certainly helps, particularly if they are a story-led post. The classic LinkedIn selfie is a bit of a thing for a reason.

18:11It does seem to help the algorithm. Sorry, what do you mean by that? Well, it's just, again, I've spent a lot of time in the big blue box and you'll see a lot of creators who are just adding random selfies to every post. And it's a grab for reach and it definitely works. Just for me, it's where's that line of how you want to present your brand and what's relevant to the post or to the story. But adding a selfie, adding a photo of yourself will definitely improve the reach of that post. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. What other tips can I share? So video is absolutely on the rise. Like I'm really leaning into video for 2025, short form video.

18:46And then your text posts, I think the key is to avoid slabs of text, like paragraphs and paragraphs of text are just hard to digest. Use plenty of white space, you know, hit the enter button, give it lots of line breaks, short paragraphs, make it easy on the brain. And for yourself or for your clients, any rules regarding, well, I got to post three times a day, I got to post three times a week. Like what kind of frequency are you finding works best? The kind of 80-20 rule where you're going to get 80 % of the value is three times a week. And for me, I would suggest Monday, Wednesday, Friday, sometime before most people would start work in your own local time.

19:24So for me, like I try and schedule posts to go out at 8.30 AM where I am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That's a really simple, and again, if you tie it back to that three posts that we're looking at, you could share roughly one of those each week on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And that's a really simple, manageable, effective content strategy that's going to help you kind of feed the algorithm the way it needs to be fed, but also not spend forever creating content for LinkedIn. Is there a way to batch, schedule those, like upload and schedule in advance? Or do they prefer you like drafting them in platform and just hitting enter like live?

19:57No. So scheduling is a thing. So you can absolutely, there's a little clock icon when you write a post, you'll see a little clock icon next to the post button and that's where you can schedule. So for me, I'm trying to batch at least a week in a time and get myself a week's runway in advance. You can get it done really quick. You know, the second type of post we talked about, the awareness post, these were norm core content. This could be short form videos. This could be struggles, fails. You know, I used to think this, but now I think this. It could be trying to build awareness for who you are, what you do kind of thing.

20:31The education piece seems perhaps simpler. It's like, well, especially if you're building a business around stuff you already know and do, here's the seven steps to do X, Y, Z. It could be some results that you've gotten for a previous client. It could be a tool or tactic that is helping you. I think the education piece is maybe easier to come up with then like, oh, what would be a viral idea in this niche? Like, oh, that's more intimidating. But what do you see working on the education side? The secret sauce with this is that the best content, the most relevant content that's going to resonate with your target audience is not going to be created from scratch.

21:09It's going to be harvested. It's going to be found in the interactions you're already having with your customers. So like I was saying before, if I'm on a coaching call and I'm sharing a lesson or a client shares a problem or a question that they're facing with me, that question or that problem can kind of become the opening hook. And then my answer, the way I respond to that or how I help them solve that is the body of the post. And so I'm always looking at repurposing content, not across formats or across platforms, but really across like between delivery, between sales and between marketing.

21:44I think you can always be repurposing across those. So you might get onto a discovery call and the objections that you commonly hear or the questions you get before someone decides to purchase from you. Those can be fantastic ideas for content that builds trust. Answer those questions in content. Yeah, I really like this Q &A type of creative process where, especially if you're already going through the trouble of answering this question, it's like, okay, could you make a note or could you repurpose that to a new platform? Sure, you're going to have to reformat it. You're going to have to find an image or take a selfie and figure out how to answer that.

22:23But we had a guest years ago. He said, this is the single most important document that I keep on my computer. It's my questions database. It's the list of questions that people ask me. And the reason it's important is one, it fuels this future content. But second, it kind of gives you these little hints and clues as to what your perceived areas of expertise are, where, you know, even if you don't have a side hustle yet, well, what are people asking you questions about. That's something that they think you might have the answer to that you probably know more about than the average person, at least more than the person asking you.

22:54And so I tried to do this for a while, like in a Google sheet, and it was like really tedious. So I just have in Facebook, I have a saved label as questions and same thing in email and in Gmail, like I have a label as questions, so I can drag stuff over there when I get email questions. And you know, in my case, that turns into Q &A episodes, but it could just as easily turn into Q &A content here on on LinkedIn under this education category. Yeah, absolutely. It's such an important way to think about harvesting content rather than starting from scratch. And the hardest thing about creating any content is that blank page.

23:27And so whatever you can use to get past that is super valuable. The other one I would touch on, this idea of trying to take people onto the workshop, give them a tour of the workshop of what it's like to work with you or to engage with your, to receive your service or your product or your offer, kind of showing them behind the scenes, whatever that might look like. So it might be a shot of your, you know, where you record the podcast or a deliverable that you give to clients or what the onboarding document might look like. Things like that, assets, collateral stuff that you've got lying around your side hustle that give people a tour of the workshop, I think really valuable content resources as well.

24:08Yeah. How the sausage gets made. You know, my friends in e-commerce do this really well. Like, hey new shipment just came in like okay great you know or we don't have any room in the warehouse like now it's an excuse to throw a liquidation mini sale or something uh our local ski area does this really well they're always like over even over the course of the summer like it's not ski season nobody's thinking about this but they're showing like here's the improvements that we're making to our mountain look we're you know airlifting in new chairlift poles with a helicopter and it's like they got some cool drone footage of this and you may not have that but you might have it on a smaller scale so i like this behind the scenes type of content i think that could be really cool, like building that trust, like another touch point to build, build up that trust.

24:48Now, Joe, the question that comes up a lot specifically related to LinkedIn is, hey, I'm trying to start a side hustle. LinkedIn is like my professional workplace network for my day job, where there may not be a lot of overlap between the two, or I may not necessarily want my bought, hey, I saw you posting about some random, like, you know, what's that all about? It's like, how do you toe the line of what do I post publicly? Where do I need to set up a separate profile for my side hustle? Like, and I get that this is the kind of a unique situation, like facing people trying to, trying to start something on the side.

25:26Yeah. A lot of people are in this situation for various reasons. They haven't had the conversation with their employer or it's not a possibility to have that conversation. I think you can still get a lot of value out of LinkedIn without doing anything above the surface, let's say. So I touched on before, you know, the ability to search by job title, by industry, by company. The direct message capabilities in LinkedIn and the people that you can reach and how focused you can get to a target audience is really valuable. So if you're in that situation where you're not necessarily wanting to publicize what you're doing, then get into the direct messages.