On a website where you can buy LinkedIn Connections, you should not expect an article that says it is not a good idea right? Well, this time it will be a little different because we are going to review an article that Mark Anthony Germanos a seasoned sales trainer and author from Sacramento, California who published his article “To buy or not to buy (LinkedIn connections)” on LinkedIn Pulse back in 2015.
Let’s see what did he write about buying LinkedIn Connections
You can go online and buy 1,000 LinkedIn connections for $5. Finding a service and vendor to accomplish this took me 45 seconds. You may find this idea appealing. You may find it appalling. I ran a test back last month on a dummy account. I purchased 1,000 LinkedIn connections for $5.
Yes, that’s true Mark, there are several websites on the internet where you can find services like ours at ridiculously low prices. But let’s read further what are his pro reasons that back up buying LinkedIn Connections:
If you are new to LinkedIn, you may have three or four connections. Not significant, I agree. You want to invite folks you meet online to connect with you. You fear that if they see you have three or four connections, they will sense you are not serious or are making a weak commitment to LinkedIn. They will decline your connection request. If you have 500+ connections, they will feel the opposite. They will perceive you as being serious and making a significant time embrace here. You get credibility for $5.
Yes, exactly that is the point of buying LinkedIn Connections. In real life, one must wear an elegant suit, show up at the business meeting with a nice haircut, flashing your newest iPhone, Rolex and of course an expensive pen to sign the contract. However online we don’t have any of this unless we showcase it on our profile picture, which is not necessarily a good idea, but that is the topic of a different article. Online we need other tools to express our success. Representing success is crucial because success attracts more success. It’s that simple. Just like how more LinkedIn connections attract more connections. And it’s time to see his contra reasons, saying buying LinkedIn connections is not necessarily a good idea:
- Some people feel this is not ethical. When you have 1,000 connections, we trust you have earned them in honorable ways with ethical tactics.
- You get fake accounts. In my test, more than 90% of these connections listed Los Angeles as their home. I also found more than 30% had profile pictures of men even though the names were of women. More than 10% had a profile picture of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
- Real accounts, if there are any, are probably not your target market. Someone outside your profession who has no interest in buying your product, could end up as a LinkedIn connection. What good is that connection doing for you, your brand and your business?
Of course, Mark shared his thoughts about the $5 service he tired. Fortunately, our service on LinkedJetpack is entirely ethical because the connections we “sell” are real people who are genuinely interested in connecting with our customers. The success of buying LinkedIn Connections using our service depends on the client too. For example, if he sells sand in the middle of the Sahara for locals and on top of that, he has a terrible profile without any profile picture and filed information, it’s likely the service won’t work and we will refund the customer. Basically, we are providing a “business matchmaking” service, but since no one is looking for that phrase, we call it “Buy LinkedIn Connections” instead.
We don’t sell connections of fake accounts because it doesn’t make sense. 100% of the accounts provided by us are real. We didn’t check, but it’s likely that 99% of them profile pictures and none of them have Marissa Mayers’s profile picture.
There are several real people on LinkedIn who know networking is a powerful tool, and even if they are not interested directly in our customers’ products, by connecting to each other, they can open up new opportunities on both sides. The best example for this is an IT support professional who specialized in building and maintaining network infrastructures for small businesses. Our customer was a new design company who connected to this IT guy and using his connections they got several small businesses who were interested in their design services, while the IT guy also got closer to a bunch of small companies who are buying design services and might need a proper network infrastructure to their offices.
Buying LinkedIn Connections opens up new opportunities!