What comes to your mind when you think about a bank? An office where people go mostly for depositing or withdrawing money. Apart from these, there are many services that banks provide. They provide loans, credit cards, debit cards, merchant services along, and many other services. Even before a decade ago there were no significant changes in the banking systems across the globe. You had to go to the bank if you wanted to get anything done. It doesn’t matter if the work is small or big but you had to be present if you needed something. You have to go to a bank in which you want to open your bank account and give them all the details and open your account. Once you got the account you were capable of transferring or receiving money. But if you wanted to withdraw the money you had to go to the branch which has your account. Only then you could withdraw your money.

This continued till debit cards and credit cards came into the picture. But in the past few years you there have been significant changes in the banking sector. Even though online transfers were a thing not many people could use them. This is because not everyone knew how it worked and also due to the lack of a good internet connection. But those are the things of the past. Today you don’t have to go to a bank to send or receive money. All you have to do is open your smartphone and use an application that allows you to send the money to complete the transaction. A lot of people are using neo banks these days. 

For those who don’t know what a neo bank is, it is a virtual or online bank. Unlike a traditional bank, it does not exist in the physical world. It does not have any branches. All the services are provided through an application using the internet. Today you can find a lot of people using these applications. In fact, even you could be using an app like that. One such application is Revolut. Many people have been using this application because of the various services it offers no one knows any about its business model or the way it makes money. This article is completely about that. But before learning about the model and revenue-generating streams let’s know a little bit more about the company. 

What is Revolut?

As mentioned earlier, Revolut is a neo bank that offers its services through an application. It is a fairly young company as it is not even a decade old. It was founded in the year 2015 by Vladyslav Yatsenko and Nikolay Storonsky. Before starting their own company both of them had different jobs. While Yatsenko was building various software products for the companies in the financial sector Storonsky was working as a financial trader. Both of them had a good amount of experience in what they did. When they started Revolut it did not offer a wide range of services as it does now. Initially, Revolut was just a money exchange service. This is because of the experiences Storonsky had when he was traveling. As he was traveling frequently Storonsky noticed how much money he was losing. A considerable amount of money was charged as an exchange commission and transaction fee.

Storonsky did not feel that the amount of money charged as a commission by the existing financial services was justified. That’s when he got the idea for the company. The company was originally based in Level39 which is considered to be the world’s most connected tech community. Only after it raised a good amount of money in the funding round it was able to become a privately held company. Revolut managed to raise a funding amount of $250 million dollars. Revolut managed to get a specialized bank license from the European Central Bank in 2018. In the same year, it got an Electronic Money Institution license from the bank of Lithuania. Revolut has announced that it would facilitate a commission-free stock exchange in 2019 in the New York stock exchange. In the same year, it also got a global deal with Visa. This allowed it to venture into 24 new markets. 

Business model of Revolut

Now that you have learned about the company let’s take a look at the business model of Revolut. The business model of Revolut depends on the wide range of features it offers. Some of them are key to their identity. Here are the services that are very important for Revolut. 

Free transactions

This is a surprise to many people who don’t know anything about Revolut. But it is actually true. Revolut allows you to transfer money to other people without any transaction fee. This is not only true for the country you are living in but it also does not charge any fee if you transfer money abroad. But it doesn’t mean that you won’t lose any money in the transaction. The transaction fee may not be charged by Revolut but the recipient bank will charge a transaction that has nothing to do with Revolut. 

However, this does not mean that you can transfer an unlimited amount of money internationally. There is a limit to it. A person can only transfer money upto £5000 Euros every month without getting charged. Any amount that is above that will result in a transaction fee. But it is still a good deal. Another great thing about Revolut is that it does not charge huge amounts of money as a transaction fee. Once you cross the limit it only charges a small percentage as commission. It usually charges 0.5% as commission which is really less for an international transaction. 

Easy international payments

Only the people who used to transfer money to other countries in the past will know how hard it was to do it. But today you can do it quite easily. But the service may charge you a hefty transaction fee. However, Revolut is not like that. Even when it charges a transaction fee it is very less compared to what others charge. 

Buying cryptocurrencies and Trading Stocks

These are some of the advanced features of Revolut. You don’t have to emphasize how popular cryptocurrencies are becoming with each passing day.  If you are someone who is interested in cryptocurrency but don’t know how to buy them then Revolut provides a problem for you. Trading stocks is another thing that many people in the current generation are interested in. There are many platforms that allow you to trade stocks. But they do not provide all the services provided by Revolut. The great thing about this is that it does not charge any money for buying or selling stocks. 

Budgeting

This is another great thing about Revolut. It not only allows you to send or receive money but also track it. Because of this, you will be able to keep an eye on your spending. You can make sure that you do not spend too much money every month. To help you understand the spending habits the application will give you spending analytics automatically. It will give you analytics on a day to day basis or a monthly basis. You can even set a budget to see whether you are sticking to it or not. Apart from these features it also offers another feature called a vault. You can use this feature to set aside the amount of money you want to save every month. 

How does Revolut make money?

Since it offers so many services there are multiple ways in which it makes money. Let’s go through them one by one. 

Subscription fees

This may come as a surprise to many people but unlike many other neo banks, Revolut offers subscription plans to its users. The user may choose one according to their needs. The first plan is a Standard plan which is free. This plan allows you to convert your money into 150 different currencies and the limit to do it for free is £6000. The second plan is called the premium plan which is priced at €7.99/month. Apart from the features of the standard plan, it allows you to convert your money into 30 different currencies without any limit along with the ability to access 5 cryptocurrencies. The final plan is called the Metal plan and it costs €13.99/month. If you subscribe to this plan then there is no limit on money transfer and currency exchange. You can do it for free. Apart from that, it offers 1% cashback abroad and 0.1% cashback in Europe. It also offers travel insurance. 

Transaction fee

The Revolut app allows you to order a physical card once you have added the money. You can use this card to pay bills or withdraw money from ATM machines. Every time you use this card to spend money a small amount of money is charged as a transaction fee by Revolut. This commission depends on the standards of MasterCard. After receiving the commission it is shared between Revolut and MasterCard. 

International money transfers

The money can only be transferred without any transaction fee upto a limit. After the limit exceeds Revolut charges a transaction fee. It is usually £5000 pounds. This limit is higher for users with paid plans. Once this limit is crossed it charges 0.5% on each international transaction. 

Fee on trading stocks

If you use a standard or premium plan then there are only a limited number of stocks you can trade. It is 3 for the Standard plan and 8 for the Premium plan. If someone trades more than this limit then they will be charged. The fee is one pound sterling for every transaction after exceeding the limit. 

Conclusion

This is the business model of Revolut. It offers a wide range of services through one application. The best part about all this is that it charges very little money. Its services benefit a lot of people in many countries across the world. You can know more about other interesting business models on Postling. Click here to know about the business model of Transferwise.

When was the last time you transferred money to someone? Probably not long ago. Transferring money to people is quite easy these days. Thanks to the advancements in technology banking transactions have become easier than ever before. But have you ever transferred money to someone who is living in other countries? Some of you may have transferred it and some of you might not have. But the ones who did this know how difficult it is. People most commonly use two ways to transfer money. One is to transfer money through a worldwide financial service like western or they do it through online banking. Unlike the previous generations transferring money in the current world is very simple. All you need is a mobile phone with an internet connection, an application that allows money transfers, and the bank details of the recipient. If you have these then it takes only a few seconds to transfer money. 

But the problem with international transfers is that the services charge too much transfer fees. So depending on the count you want to transfer money to the fees are decided. There is no way in which you can decrease this transfer fee. Because of this transferring money to some countries becomes difficult. Not everyone is willing to pay that fee. Many people don’t even know why the transfer fee is so high. It depends on many factors. The first is the minimum fee, it doesn’t matter how much money you are transferring you have to pay a fixed amount on every transaction. After this comes handling charges. If the banking service you are using to send money is not associated with the other bank then the recipient bank charges handling fees. Apart from these, there are some other factors that influence the transaction fee. But there is one service that makes international money transfers cheap. Many people who make international transfers use this service. But no one knows much about the company or its business model. This article is completely about that but before knowing about the business model let’s know a little more about the company. 

What is Transferwise?

As you already mentioned, Transferwise is an online money transfer service. It is a UK based company which was founded in the year 2011. It was founded by Kristo Käärman and Taavet Hinrikus. Kristo Käärman was a financial consultant and Taavet was one of the first employees of Skype when it was founded. The idea for the company was inspired by their personal struggle. Both the founders were from Estonia, a country in northern Europe. When they were working in the UK they saw how much of a pain it was to transfer money. They had to convert the money from pounds to euros and vice versa. Due to this, they were losing a lot of money. In Taavet’s own words he said that he was losing nearly five percent of the money every time he moved it. This was the same time when Kristo was also losing money for the same reason. 

The duo thought that instead of relying on a traditional system they should make a private arrangement. So Taavet started transferring euros to Kristo’s Estonian account and Kristo started to send pounds to Taavet. Because of this both of them didn’t have any conversion fee. This idea led them to develop a crowdsourced currency exchange service that offered international money transfers at a cheaper rate compared to the already existing services. When the company started offering its services it facilitated €10 million transactions in the first year. In 2016 the company claimed that it can save upto 90% of the transaction fee compared to other companies. By 2017 the company claimed that its users are transferring over €1 billion each month. It launched a multi-currency MasterCard for the people living in the European Union in 2018. This private company offers its services in 12 languages.

Business model of Transferwise

Now that you have learned about the company learn about the business model of Transferwise. There are only a few things that make the business model of Transferwise work. Let’s take a look at them. 

Offering cheap international transactions

This is the main reason why online money transfer is such a hit among the people. It has done what needed to be done. Transferwise offers money transfers for such cheap rates that you don’t want to use any other service to transfer money to other countries. Not only that but the efficiency with it does this process is another reason why people like it so much. While traditional institutions charge anywhere between 3% to 5% on each transaction Transferwise charges way less. On average, it only charges 0.6% on each transaction made by the users. It saves the customers upto 90% of the transaction fee compared to other services. If a service offers you transactions for this cheap then why would you use another service that charges way more? 

Money without any borders

Transferwise allows you to send money anywhere in the world. It would not even feel like you are transferring money to another country. The transaction fee is so low that you won’t mind it. This service allows people to transfer money without any second thoughts. It is a great thing because people in the past were very cautious about sending money as the transaction fee was so high. They would feel sad looking at the amount of money they are losing on every transaction they make. But Transferwise gave them a platform that would allow them to send money from anywhere at any time as if people were living in their own country. This platform definitely feels like a wish come true for the people who transfer money to or from third world countries. The people who are from there or living there cannot afford to lose too much money on transaction fees. 

Customer service 

Transferwise has over 1 million customers. This means that they have to make sure that there is no problem for all these people while making transactions. Anyone who uses a money transfer system or any banking service will expect great customer service. After all, the matter is related to money. Fortunately, Transferwise offers great customer service. No one seems to complain about the customer service offered by the company. The company almost always gets a five-star rating for its customer service. Transferwise offers real-time customer support to its customers. You can call them if you have any questions or need any assistance. 

How does Transferwise make money?

Now that you have learned about the business model of Transferwise let’s look at the ways in which it makes. All of these are similar but let’s go through them one by one.

Transaction fee

This is probably the most obvious way in which it makes money. After all, it is an online money transfer service. Transferwise charges anywhere between 0.6% to 0.7% on each transaction. If you have any questions about that you can use the compare tool of Transferwise to check out the price. If the amount is less than £200 then it charges £1. But if the amount is more than that it charges at least 0.5% of the total amount that is being transferred. 

Borderless account

It is a bank account provided by Transferwise. You will also get a free debit card for this account. Using this card you can make payments in multiple currencies. A small conversion fee is charged every time you make a payment using a different currency. The amount that is going to be deducted is already mentioned in advance so that users don’t get confused. 

Transferwise for banks

This service allows banks to plug into the API of Transferwise and offer money transfers at low prices. When a customer uses the bank to make a transaction it pays a small amount to Transferwise. 

Transferwise for business

This service is also similar to the borderless account but it is for businesses. The businesses can create an account and get a MasterCard. They can use this card to make payments in multiple currencies. Apart from this, it provides them an API that they can use to manage invoices and balances. It charges a small amount every time a cross-currency payment occurs. Transferwise shares some of this fee with MasterCard. 

Conclusion

This is the business model of Transferwise. It is one of the best services to make international money transfers. One can make money transfers in more than 50 different currencies. You can learn about other interesting business models on Postling. Click here if you want to know about the business model of SoundCloud.

Upwork Global Inc., commonly known as Upwork is an American freelancing platform that connects enterprises with individuals to get their work done. Upwork, which is available on both website and mobile app, does not just help businesses to move ahead by matching them with skilled freelancers but it lets freelancers conduct their small businesses. It is the world’s largest remote talent platform that facilitates jobs in various fields from software development, writing, sales & marketing, accounting, customer service to engineering & architecture, data science & analytics, etc.

More than 5 million businesses trust Upwork and they save millions of dollars by hiring on-demand talent at the best rates. The company has over 1.8 million registered freelancers and individual recruiters and enterprises post millions of jobs on the platform which worth about $1 billion annually.

Curious to know how this giant freelancing platform, Upwork makes money? Then, let’s quickly jump into it. But before that let’s see the short history of Upwork, how it works, and its business model to understand how it makes money. So shall we?

Short History of Upwork

Upwork was founded by Beerud Sheth, Srini Anumolu and Sanjay Noronha in 2015. Although it was founded five years ago, it has its roots in the late 1990s.

Originally Upwork was known as Elance-oDesk as it was formed with the merger of Elance and oDesk. Elance was a small business marketplace that was founded in 1998 by Beerud Sheth and Srini Anumolu in Jersey City. Whereas oDesk was founded in 2003 by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis (who are already friends). In December 2013, the companies announced their merger and named it Elance-oDesk. oDesk was an online marketplace that enables businesses to find, hire and collaborate with the right remote workers. The merger of the two companies resulted in the platform that looks like a newer version of the oDesk platform.

In 2015, the company was finally rebranded as Upwork. Upwork has its headquarters currently in Santa Clara, California, U.S. The company went into public firstly on October 3, 2018.

How does Upwork Work?

Hiring on-demand workers for occasional work is a tough challenge to most enterprises until freelancing platforms like Upwork arrived. Upwork makes businesses get more work done by letting the talented and skilled freelancers on the platform. The company lets its clients (enterprises) shortlist, interview, hire, work, rate and pay the freelancers or freelancing agencies much easier.

Read: LinkedIn Business Model – How LinkedIn Makes Money

It requires the clients to post a job description, and price range they can pay to the candidate. The registered freelancers will have some credits (known as Connects) with which they can bid for jobs. After the hirer finds the right match, he/she can collaborate effectively with the freelancer on an online workspace and get the work done. 

Upwork has multiple features that ease the job of both hirers and freelancers. It has a searchable directory of freelancers based on relevancy, a real-time chat feature, timesheet application to check or track the exact time the freelancers spent on projects.

Upwork allows its clients to pay by the hour or a fixed price. It delivers global payments with Upwork Payment Protection to over 170 countries. Both hirers and freelancers can access the invoice and transaction history.

The company charges a certain percentage as a service fee from freelancers (contractors). The fee it charges depends on the total amount, the lesser the amount, the more commission it takes. Upwork also charges clients in the form a membership fee which you will learn in the below sections.

Read: Canvas Business Model – How Canvas Makes Money

Upwork Business Model

After the two brands, Elance and oDesk started operating under one name, Upwork in 2015, they also launched a new mobile app, improved website performance, and a new real-time chat feature in Upwork. These upgrades resulted in favor of the brand. All these changes were executed under the leadership of Stephane Kasriel, the CEO who was later replaced by Hayden Brown in December 2019.

Consequently, under the leadership of Brown, the company has grown bigger with 1.8 million users as of early 2020. The new CEO has brought many changes such as increased client payment fees and the fee of Connects to deliver the quality of freelancing work and freelancers on the platform. However, the changes resulted in financial gains for the company.

Thus with the revised business model and features on the platform, not only Upwork generates huge revenue. The active freelancers are able to make million-dollar businesses and enterprises are able to pick the best talent at the best costs to get their in-demand work done.

Okay, enough said! Now let’s see how exactly Upwork makes money.

Read: Duolingo Business Model – How Duolingo Makes Money

How does Upwork Make Money?

Upwork generates income from

1. Service fees it costs freelancers and

2. Membership fees from clients

Service Fee

The platform is free to join or post a job. It doesn’t charge either freelancers or enterprises for joining Upwork and this strategy is working well in attracting new users. Also, it helps the supply of both parties to remain balanced and high. However, the company charges its contractors for every payment they receive after finishing the gig.

As said in the above lines, Upwork charges freelancers a percentage from every payment they receive from clients, which it calls service fees. The service fee depends on the total transaction value. So, here is how it bills its contractors.

20% if the total fee is less than $500

10% if the total fee is between $500.01 to $10,000

5% if the total fee is above $10,000.01

In addition to this service fee, Upwork also charges a payment processing and administration fee of 2.75% for every payment they receive.

It is assumed that Upwork makes about 90% of its revenue from the fee it collects from its users.

Membership Fee

Upwork offers membership plans for clients to deliver them tailored services. The plans are intended to let the clients hire better and faster.

There are three membership plans; Basic, Plus, and Business

Basic is free of cost and consists of only essentials to get started, hire, work, and pay.

Plus costs $49.99/month and offers additional features such as dedicated account managers to help clients, project tracking, collaboration tools, featured top rated search results.

The business plan costs $849/month and has everything in Plus. It has some advanced features to get the job done effectively.

The company also charges an additional 3% payment processing fee and a 10% service fee for Business plan members.

So, this is how Upwork makes money through its business plan. Now, let’s see the company’s funding, valuation and revenue information below.

Upwork In Numbers

Upwork is available under Stock symbol UPWK has raised a total funding amount of $168.8 million in 12 funding rounds. The company raised $1.5 billion when it went public first and made $187 million in the process.

Although there was a decrease in revenue when compared to previous financial years. But a recent report stated that there is a 24% increase in sales YoY to $96.7 million. The company also stated that its contractor base in the US has grown to 2 million during the pandemic.

Final Thoughts

So as you can see, this is how the largest freelancing platform that connects millions of freelancers with businesses makes money. The company has been introducing new features and improving the user experience to keep its position in the market. Hope this Upwork business model helps you in making effective business decisions.

Have you ever heard of Linkedin? Oops, wrong question. The question should be how often do you use this platform. Linkedin is also a social media platform like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. But this platform has more working professionals. This is the first social media platform that is for working people. It connects professionals across the globe. And it has successfully established itself in the market too.

As you it has brought professionals closer and has also become a social media platform where working people can learn from each other. Another important thing about this platform is that it has brought recruiters and job seekers closer. If you see, LinkedIn has become the most sought out platform to find potential candidates for jobs. People have understood the importance of networking, the more connections you have within people who work in your industry the more opportunities will be known at your door. This platform has become a boon, especially for freelancers.

Yup, the freelancers are connecting with more and more people that could help them introduce to new work. As you see people can also post their thoughts on the platform. Not only that they can like, share, comment and follow other professionals on the platform. From CEOs of top companies to office workers, this platform can bring you a lot of useful connections. If you want to go forward in your career then it is important to network and makes good connections. 

Linkedin is one such platform that is particularly for working professionals, freelancers. But have you ever wondered what the business model of Linkedin is and how it makes money? If yes, then you’re at the right place. Stick till the end of this article to find the answers to these questions.

LinkedIn 

If you want to know more about Linkedin then first you must know what it is and how it operates. What are you waiting for? Then let’s dive into the topic then.

Linkedin was founded by Reid Hoffman. He is a well-known American venture capitalist and internet entrepreneur. As of August 2004, this platform has around 1Million users. It was founded back in 2003. Apart from Reid Hoffman, the other founders include Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Konstantin Guericke and Jean-Luc Vaillant. LinkedIn is also a social media platform the primary reason for creating this platform is to create a community for the professionals to connect.  As of 2020, this platform has around 706 million registered users.

This platform is available in 24 languages and it is available in 150 countries. LinkedIn has become the primary source for many job seekers to find information relating to jobs. The companies are posting about the job openings on this platform. So whenever a jobseeker comes across an opening they can apply to it directly on the platform. Cool, right? Not only that when the recruiters search for a particular position they can come across different users and approach them directly to see if they are interested in the job opportunity.

The users can create profiles that include all their details from their education to previous jobs. So once they create a profile and become part of LinkedIn they can connect with their colleagues, college alma mater. Not only that you can connect and follow top thought leaders, businessmen, etc. If you’re a start-up, you can build your brand online. Not only you can even create connections that will help you in furthering your business.

Thanks to this platform the business doesn’t have to go out of their way to recruit fresh talent. LinkedIn has become a hub for talent. So it is making everything easy for the businesses as they can do everything right from the Platform. With the growth of the internet, this platform has also grown tremendously.

This brings us to the business model of LinkedIn. Apart from connecting the recruiters with talent this platform also connects companies with recruiters too. Yup, you heard it right. This is the reason why most of the businesses are using LinkedIn to advance in their business. It provides businesses with endless opportunities to advance.

In this industry, LinkedIn has established itself to be the best platform when it comes to professional networking. Companies and professionals pay extra to avail the premium services it offers. Not only them, but users also pay extra to stand out from the rest. As you see they will be welcoming a lot of opportunities when they stand out from the rest. So this is the only platform where users pay to stand out. If you want to know how this platform makes money then you must first understand about its customers.

Key partners of LinkedIn

As you already know, apart from the professionals it also serves for the customers. So here are the key partners of this platform. LinkedIn has four major customer segments. What are you waiting for? Let’s know more about them then. 

Recruiters 

Recruiters are people looking for talented individuals with a promising talent for their organisation. Sometimes these recruiters may work to bring together companies and job seekers. They help companies find the right candidates they are looking for. So these are the people who search for talent on this platform.

Professionals 

These are the people who create profiles on this platform. They can access the platform online. Simply put, they are the internet users, who have a profile on this platform. 

Third-party developers 

These are the people who are part of the developer’s community. As you as the members of this community they are quite interested in deploying and developing software tools with the help of LinkedIn API.

Marketers and advertisers

These people are part of every social media platform. Be it Facebook or LinkedIn. With these platforms, they can reach a wider range of audiences. And not to forget the reach of this platform is also worldwide. So the advertisers and marketers use this platform to reach decision-makers along with their targeted audience.

How does LinkedIn make money?

Now that you have understood about the business model and key partners of this platform. It is time to talk about finances. As you see this platform has been in the market for a long time. To be precise it has been in the market for around 17 years. For any platform to stay in business for this long is not a small thing. Also over the years, it has established itself to be the best platform for networking and improving brand image. With all this being said. You must be curious about how this social media platform makes money. Let’s dive right into the topic then. 

Premium services 

First, let’s talk about the most obvious source of income for this platform. Premium subscriptions are one of the major sources of income for this platform. As you already know, LinkedIn offers premium services to its users. And many professionals are interested in using these services to stand out from the rest of the profiles in the platform. The premium plans are catered to the specific needs of the users. The premium subscription includes four plans, they are

Career

Business Plan

Sales Navigator

Recruiter Lite

Career 

One of the subscription plans is a career. This is usually for job seekers who want to be visible to recruiters. One of the fastest ways to get hired is to stand out from the crowd and this plan will get exactly that to your profile. You see there can be hundreds of qualified people for a job, but the job belongs to the one who catches the attention of the recruiter first. So if you want to win against other qualified applicants like you then subscribing to this plan is perfect.

Also not only that you will also users will get an exact look of who is looking at their profile. By subscribing to this plan you will also get access to insights and exclusive tools that will help you in advancing your career by finding a new job. You will receive access to LinkedIn learning, LinkedIn salary insights, 3 or 5 Inmails per month and also the gold logo on their profile picture. It costs around $29.99/month.

Business Plan 

With the business plan subscription, the users can grow their business and nurture their network. If you want your business to succeed then you must find and network with the right people. This subscription plan will help you in doing just that. It opens up a new set of benefits to you that will help you in promoting and growing their business. Apart from that this plan also helps you in enhancing your brand by learning new skills. This plan will improve your growth and help you in taking your business to new heights.

The LinkedIn business plan is undoubtedly one of the oldest plans. It is created with executives and professionals in view. Some of the functionalities it offers are access to LinkedIn learning, unlimited browsing and searching, company insights, more Inmails (15 Inmails) to reach people and promote your business. Lastly, it also provides you with 90 days of access to check who viewed your profile. See you can know who is checking your profile and most importantly you will be able to reach more people through inmails and promote your business. It is available at $59.99/month.

Sales Navigator 

Next tier in this subscription plan is the Sales Navigator, and this is one of the fastest-growing plans in LinkedIn. This will be highly helpful for salespeople. As you see, this plan opens up around 660 million people to the salespeople. They can definitely create a strong network, don’t you agree? Before a sales Navigator, most of the business people have to resort to a business plan subscription plan. But with the introduction of this plan, the salespeople can generate more leads and sales.

With this sales Navigator plan, the salespeople can focus and follow their targeted accounts. The benefits that this plan offers are doing better searches, allowing people to follow people for engagement and lastly, they can use inmails to send messages to anyone. If you’re a team and are taking the team plan then you can get more insights into their team members network. Not only that they can point drive to generate leads and also share content with clients. This plan costs around $79.99/month.

Recruitment 

This plan focuses mostly on engaging, focusing and managing the recruitment process. You see one of the main reasons more and more people are interested in this platform is because it brings both job seekers and recruiters together. The reason behind the popularity of this platform is that people can interact with recruiters and find jobs. Many people have found jobs thanks to this platform. This plan is suitable for recruiters only. In case you’re not hiring then this plan may come off as expensive. Some of the benefits that recruiters will receive through this plan are wider visibility into your connections and network, you can build candidate pipelines, partner up with the recruiters to initiate hiring, enable advanced search so that you can get your hands on the best talent in the industry. This plan costs around $119.95/month.

Talent solutions 

More than 65% of the revenue for this platform comes from Talent solutions. As you already know, recruitment was one of the most important aspects of this platform. Talent solutions have two parts i..e, hiring and learning and development. Hiring helps the recruiters in attracting, recruiting and hiring the right candidates.

However, Learning and development offer users with content that helps you in learning like online courses to both individuals and clients. Not only that talent solutions include all the tools that will help recruiters in finding the right talent. Some of the primary solutions that are offered by talent solutions are recruitment media, job slots, work with our ads, etc.

One of the best things about LinkedIn is that apart from looking for jobs, people also come to this platform to promote their personal brand. Most of the recruiters trust LinkedIn more than any other job portals because they can get a better understanding of the candidate.

Partnerships & Acquisitions 

One of the sources of income for this platform is through partnerships and acquisitions. Some of the renowned acquisitions LinkedIn made are LinkedIn Learning and SlideShare. Slideshare platform was acquired by LinkedIn in 2013. The main reason to acquire this platform is that they want their users to discover connections through content.

Slideshare is a platform on which users can share their content either publicly or privately in PDF, Powerpoint, OpenDocument or Keynote format. And the best thing about this platform is that it is absolutely free for everybody. Apart from SlideShare, LinkedIn has also acquired Lynda. This eLearning platform is the most recent acquisition of LinkedIn. It is a subscription-based revenue model through which users can learn software, business, creative skills and technology through videos.

Marketing solutions 

Most people think that this platform is a job recruitment platform, it is true, But they must not forget that it is a social media platform too. This is one of the most sought after platforms by marketers to execute their marketing campaigns. Marketing solutions contribute to around 18% of the total revenue of LinkedIn. This platform provides marketers with amazing features that will help them in creating their company page. Not only that it also enhances their marketing efforts by creating text advertisements, sponsored Inmails and content.

Wrapping up   

As you have made it to the end of this article, hope you have got more insights on LinkedIn, its business model and how it makes money. LinkedIn has been one of the most popular social media platforms among job seekers and recruiters. As you know, this is one of the first platforms that has brought job seekers close to recruiters and improved their chances of getting hired.

Recruiters also use this platform so that they can search for the best talent and get their hands on them before their competitors can. One of the major sources of income for LinkedIn is its premium subscription plans. It has something to offer from job seekers to sales navigators. Since they want to stand out from the rest of the applicants they will opt for premium services. Are you interested in knowing more about such business models? If yes, then check out other articles in Postling business models category.