LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 810 million members worldwide. As of October 2022, LinkedIn has 57.4 million users in the United States alone. With its huge user base, LinkedIn presents a major opportunity for affiliate marketers looking to tap into its audience and promote LinkedIn Premium subscriptions.
What is LinkedIn Premium?
LinkedIn Premium is LinkedIn’s subscription service that provides members with additional features and benefits beyond the free basic account. There are three premium membership levels:
- Premium Career – $29.99/month
- Premium Business – $44.99/month
- Premium Sales – $64.99/month
Premium members get benefits like:
- Seeing who viewed your profile
- More InMail messages
- Expanded profile views
- Premium profile badges
- Advanced search filters
Essentially, the premium subscriptions allow members to get more out of LinkedIn for recruiting, sales prospecting, job seeking, and branding.
Does LinkedIn Have an Affiliate Program for Premium?
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not currently have an official affiliate program for Premium subscriptions. LinkedIn used to have an affiliate program that allowed promoters to earn commissions from Premium sales, but this was discontinued in 2014.
After shuttering their in-house affiliate program, LinkedIn began referring promoters to partner with third-party affiliate networks that had special deals in place to advertise Premium. However, over the past few years, these third-party offers have largely disappeared as well.
Why LinkedIn Discontinued Their Affiliate Program
LinkedIn has not provided an official reason for closing their Premium affiliate program. However, industry experts speculate that it became too expensive to maintain and promote. The commissions LinkedIn would have to pay out likely did not justify the additional Premium subscriptions generated.
LinkedIn also may have decided to focus more on growing Premium memberships through internal marketing campaigns. As a publicly traded company, reducing external promotional costs helps improve profitability metrics.
Are There Any Workarounds to Promote Premium?
Without an official Premium affiliate program, the options for legitimately promoting Premium subscriptions are limited. However, some current workarounds that marketers use include:
- Promoting Premium’s free 30-day trials – These can be promoted via organic content or ads. The goal is convincing people to activate trials and then retain a percentage as paying members.
- Soft selling Premium in content – Creating blog posts and articles that highlight Premium benefits and subtly encourage readers to upgrade.
- Promoting LinkedIn’s credit card offers – Eligible members can get discounts on Premium by applying for LinkedIn’s cobranded credit cards.
The caveat is that explicitly stating you will earn a commission for promoting Premium is not permitted without an official affiliate program. Any promotion must be done organically without directly mentioning commissions. And results will likely be relatively low converting compared to a proper affiliate program.
Does LinkedIn Offer Any Affiliate Programs?
Currently, the only active affiliate program offered by LinkedIn is for their LinkedIn Learning platform.
LinkedIn Learning provides over 16,000 online video courses taught by industry experts on topics like business, technology, and creative skills. It is designed for both individual professionals and enterprise organizations.
The LinkedIn Learning affiliate program allows partners to earn commissions by driving learner sign-ups to the platform. The commission earnings are as follows:
| Program | Commission |
|---|---|
| LinkedIn Learning Individual Subscriptions | 25% recurring commission |
| LinkedIn Learning Enterprise Sales | 10% first-year sales commission |
So promoting LinkedIn Learning currently offers the only sanctioned way to earn affiliate commissions from LinkedIn. But it does not provide any earnings related to Premium.
Why Isn’t There a LinkedIn Premium Affiliate Program?
LinkedIn has clearly taken a step back from affiliate marketing over the past decade. While their reasons are not public, we can make some educated guesses on why Premium no longer has an affiliate program:
Risk of Affiliate Spam
Affiliate marketing has always carried the risk of partners resorting to spam tactics to drive conversions. Since Premium is LinkedIn’s main monetization model, maintaining the quality and reputation of the user experience is critical.
Spammers promoting Premium could quickly become a problem within LinkedIn’s community. Turning off the affiliate channel reduces this risk meaningfully.
Maximizing Lifetime Value Over Acquisitions
Premium has relatively high renewal rates, with some analysts estimating 80%+ of members continuing to subscribe after the first year. With such strong retention metrics, LinkedIn is likely focused on maximizing lifetime value of Premium members over bringing in new users.
Affiliate programs incentivize driving new conversions. But LinkedIn may have decided lifetime value is more important than acquisition volume for Premium’s unit economics.
LinkedIn is Self-Sustaining Now
During LinkedIn’s earlier years, an affiliate program made sense to help rapidly grow awareness and subscriptions. But today, LinkedIn has reached mainstream adoption levels and has profitable growth. Its Premium business likely no longer needs the stimulus of affiliate promotions.
The massive organic reach of the LinkedIn platform itself gives them ample ways to promote Premium internally through content, emails, and targeting. External traffic from affiliates is a much smaller consideration nowadays.
The Future of LinkedIn Affiliate Marketing
While LinkedIn currently does not offer a Premium affiliate program, there are a few possibilities that may change in the future:
Bring Back Official Affiliate Program
LinkedIn could decide to relaunch an in-house managed affiliate program for Premium. This seems unlikely in the short-term given their current strategy. But never say never.
Third-Party Affiliate Partnerships
LinkedIn may allow third-party affiliate networks to offer Premium promotions again. These offers would likely have stricter policies and limitations than LinkedIn’s past affiliate program. But it could be an option for reviving their affiliate channel.
Creator Monetization Programs
Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are tying influencer promotions to direct affiliate commissions. LinkedIn may eventually follow suit with its own version, potentially including Premium as a monetization option.
Conclusion
LinkedIn Premium no longer offers an official affiliate program. After discontinuing their in-house offering in 2014, third-party affiliate opportunities also faded over time. The only current affiliate option is for LinkedIn Learning.
Driving Premium conversions indirectly through content and soft-selling offers the best current option. But hopefully LinkedIn eventually brings back sanctioned ways for influencers to monetize Premium subscriptions. That would be a win-win for LinkedIn’s business and affiliate marketers.