LinkedIn Lover Helps Jobseekers Connect the Dots

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In today's story, one man cracks the code to make LinkedIn work and shares what he knows to help others find professional success. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. And you probably heard of LinkedIn. In fact, you're probably on LinkedIn.

Most likely you have a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn has over 722 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. And as I'm reading that sentence, I'm thinking, you know what, the key word is territories there because there are only 193 countries in the world. I know that because I went to all of them. However, once you start counting territories, there are a bunch of those.

Also, if LinkedIn were a country itself, it would be the third most populous on earth. So LinkedIn, quite the behemoth, as we're all quite aware. So if you happen to be good at it, if you happen to be good at making connections and getting engagement there, maybe even using it for various career goals, might there be a way to profit from it? And we've looked at that a couple of different ways through the long archives of South Essel School, but this guy's found a way to do something different. And interestingly, he's found a way to use social media ads to make it profitable.

So I'll tell you all about that in the story. And by the way, just in case we haven't connected yet, like you and me, you know, on LinkedIn, feel free to add me and I will do the same. My name is just Chris Guillebeau there. If you search my name, you'll find it. I also have three free courses on LinkedIn learning, including one that's been one of the most popular in the entrepreneurship category.

It's called 32 ways to make extra money. So feel free to check that out. If you're on LinkedIn learning, again, that is completely free. All right, today's story, LinkedIn Lover helps job seekers connect the dots. That story is coming up in just 30 seconds.

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Deborah Fogarasi has always had a side hustle in addition to his day job in IT. In college, he fixed and sold laptops. Later on, he imported watches. Then came trading stocks, flipping properties, and more. More recently, he found support from a great circle of online entrepreneurs.

It was there he got his idea for his next hustle, creating some kind of course that could bring in more passive income. The challenge, like many people have, was figuring out something he could teach that other people wanted to learn. But then he had his idea. Throughout his career, it had always been easy for Caboor to find a job. Recruiters called him frequently.

He never struggled for employment offers. As he reflected on what was helping to make him successful, he realized a big part of it was because of the way he manages his LinkedIn profile. He thought by sharing his knowledge about how to use the platform, maybe he could help other people find jobs too. He already had a few shy attempts at helping people by offering personalized LinkedIn profile reviews on Fiverr. But doing it right took way too much time to justify the $20 to $40 most people were willing to pay.

That's why he knew an online course would be better. Startup costs were mostly his time. He had the course idea at early December 2019 and began the real planning in mid-January 2020. Used his notes from the Fiverr work and sketched out the topics he should cover. Soon, the lessons took shape and the final course ended up covering three main areas, setting up your profile, managing your settings, and applying for jobs.

Once the course was outlined, Kabor spoke to a videographer friend. They agreed on the format. It's been a few days setting up a professional recording studio. Shot the videos right after he wrote the scripts. This made sure he was always a step ahead, but not so far ahead that he forgot the material.

To keep those startup costs almost non-existent, he agreed that the videographer friend would get a cut of sales. And speaking of friends, Kabor got about 15 of his buddies to test drive the course. Their feedback helped him fix inconsistencies and squash bugs. He launched the course at the end of May, 2020. And guess what happened?

It was a huge success. Sold thousands of copies. Nope, not quite. Actually, nothing happened for over a month. He tried using Google ads to get traction, but the results didn't seem promising.

So he switched to Facebook ads in mid-June. Then on July 3rd, he got a new kind of inbox notification. It wasn't a subscriber alert. It was an actual sale. Someone had found his course and chosen to sign up.

He stuck with Facebook ads and now spends around $200 a month targeting people aged 21 to 40 who have at least finished high school. That sale wasn't the one off. He now sells one or two courses a day for $87 each. After deducting the ad costs, he nets about $2,000 a month. He loves the fact that he has another revenue stream in the family budget and hopes it stays for a long time.

The best part is feeling that he's doing something that benefits other people by giving them knowledge that might have a huge impact on their lives. Of course, no side hustle is perfect. One thing Gabor regrets is spending too much time figuring out his website. At first, he wanted to offer the course through WordPress, but soon realized it was beyond his current knowledge. He didn't have the energy to learn all there was to know.

He also didn't want to spend $2,000 to $5,000 on a professional website developer for a project he wasn't even sure would work. That's when he realized there are ready-made platforms that take care of everything. He tried a few options and found that Learn Worlds works best for him. Again, that's Learn Worlds. I'll link it up in the notes.

He now pays $100 a month for the service, plus another $10 to $20 a year for his domain name. So far, Gabor has sold a few hundred courses. Looking ahead, he's excited about his prospects to sell more. Since the pandemic forced a lot of people to become unemployed, he now has a lot of potential customers he hopes to help. He plans to market to them directly on LinkedIn, perhaps using the open-to-work status on many profiles or the hashtag #OpenToWork to better target his results.

In fact, Gabor himself happens to be looking for a new job as well. In the last 14 years, he's worked in five countries over four continents. Given how much he's improved his skills with LinkedIn, taking his own advice should help him land the next job of his dreams. [Music]

Here is a final tip from Gabor. He says, "When launching a side hustle, it's good to have a clear timeline and stick to it." For example, during the content creation phase, when he was outlining his course and figuring out what goes where, he used a simple Kanban board to track what he had to do, what he was currently doing, and what he'd already done.

And if you're not familiar with the concept of a Kanban board, I'll include a link to that in the notes as well. But in short, it's just a way of tracking, you know, items in three different categories, like what you need to do, what you're working on right now, and what has been completed. So it's got three different columns for it essentially. And in his case, it helped him understand like where he was, how much he had accomplished, as well as the whole roadmap of how much further he had to go. A very simple productivity tool and one that I have used myself a few times.

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode, listeners. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. What kind of course could you offer? What kind of knowledge could you share? How could you impart what you have learned to someone else, hopefully helping them out, making the world a better place, and also helping yourself out as well.

That's what it's all about. Today's notes are at sidehustleschool.com/14871487. I'll be back again tomorrow with another episode and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the "Onward Project."