How to Make BIG Money as a Tiny LinkedIn Creator

How accounts with minimal followers are generating big revenue while massive "influencers" go broke.

Have you ever heard the tragedy of Arii the Instagram Influencer?

I thought not. It's not a story the LinkedIn gurus would tell you. It's a social media legend.

Arii was an Instagram creator with 2.6 million followers—so powerful and so popular she thought she could use her influence to sell... t-shirts. She had such a massive following that she believed she could easily sell 36 shirts. The minimum order. To get them printed.

She couldn't sell a single one.

Ironic. She could make others famous with her engagement, but couldn't generate $500 in revenue for herself.

Meanwhile, I watch LinkedIn accounts with 3,000 followers close six-figure deals. The dark side of social media—building actual businesses instead of vanity metrics—is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... profitable.

The Fundamental Issue Nobody Talks About

80% of all B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn. But those leads don't go to the biggest accounts.

I learned this the hard way. For several months in 2023-2024, I posted pick-me content that got over 100,000 likes total. Outside of the odd qualified lead that somehow made it through, the reach had almost no effect on actual productive outcomes (read: revenue).

In 2025, I post technical LinkedIn breakdowns for companies that want to scale revenue through LinkedIn. They don’t get as many likes. But they get many, many more inbound (qualified) inquiries and conversions.

Even Justin Welsh says it plainly: "Stop trying to go viral. Solve a specific problem for a specific person." His viral posts generate zero attributable revenue. The specific ones built him $8.9M (and beyond).

I've seen accounts with 150,000+ followers struggling to book a single qualified client call, while another account with 3,500 followers in the same industry is rejecting clients because they're at capacity.

These massive LinkedIn accounts are basically worthless vanity metrics. They look impressive from a distance, but disappear the moment you try to convert them into revenue.

The PANS Method: How Small Creators Actually Make Money

After working with 40+ B2B founders, here's the framework that separates profitable accounts from popular ones.

I call it PANS—here's how it works:

1. Problem Specialization

Professional services firms with defined niches grow 2x faster than generalists.

Here's how to find yours:

Complete this sentence: "I help [SPECIFIC ROLE] at [SPECIFIC COMPANY TYPE] stop losing [SPECIFIC DOLLAR AMOUNT] due to [SPECIFIC PROBLEM]"

Real examples:

• "I help Series B+ SaaS CTOs stop losing $200K monthly due to technical debt"

• "I help PE firms stop losing $2M per acquisition due to integration failures"

Specialized consultants charge much, much higher margins than generalists. Specificity literally pays.

2. Audience Qualification

65% of B2B decision-makers say specialized thought leadership significantly changes vendor perception. Generic content gets scrolled past.

Start every post with language that filters:

• Wrong: "Leadership lessons for everyone..."

• Right: "If you're a VP Sales at a 50+ person SaaS company..."

The first attracts everyone. The second attracts buyers.

3. Narrowing Content Focus

Most people create a content kaleidoscope: AI on Monday, company culture on Tuesday, random personal stories on Wednesday. It's exhausting and useless.

People with money want to see you demonstrate deep expertise in solving their specific problem. Over and over again.

Focus on 3-5 content pillars that all relate to your core specialization.

Personalized, focused content is king. Your content strategy should revolve around big, one expensive problem that you use your pillars to dissect from every angle:

• Why current solutions fail

• ROI calculations

• Implementation frameworks

• Industry-specific variations

Stop trying to be interesting to everyone. Start being invaluable to someone.

4. Solution Offering

After building credibility with the right audience, create a solution that precisely addresses their problem. When you present it, it should feel inevitable rather than salesy.

Here's what "inevitable rather than salesy" looks like in practice:

The Salesy Approach (what NOT to do): "🚀 EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT! I'm launching my NEW 6-week LinkedIn Revenue Accelerator Program! Limited spots! DM me 'READY' to secure your spot before prices go up! 💰"

The Inevitable Approach (what actually works):

After 60 days of posting about how Series B SaaS companies lose $200K monthly to technical debt, you write at the end of your post:

"PS: Got another DM yesterday asking if I do technical debt audits for Series B teams.

The answer is yes - I work with 3 companies at a time to identify and eliminate the specific technical debt that's killing your velocity. Takes about 6 weeks.

If you've been following along and thinking 'this is exactly our problem,' let's talk."

Why this works:

1. You've pre-qualified them - Only people with that exact problem are still reading your content

2. They asked first - You're responding to demand, not creating false urgency

3. Natural conclusion - After reading 60 days of content about their $200K/month problem, of course they want your solution

4. No pressure tactics - No countdown timers, no "limited spots" (unless actually true), no false scarcity

5. Casual confidence - You're not begging. You're stating facts about how you help

Real example from my client Justin: He spent months creating carousel posts breaking down LinkedIn strategy.

When he mentioned his course, it wasn't "BUY NOW!"

It was: "Several people asked for the full system I use. I packaged it into the LinkedIn Operating System. 25,000+ people have really liked it. Details here if you need it."

Result: Multiple $12K days. Because by that point, buying was the obvious next step for his audience.

The key: Your content should make your audience think "I need to hire this person" BEFORE you ever mention you're available for hire.

The Hard Numbers That Prove This Works

Justin Welsh Case Study We used LinkedIn carousels to promote his LinkedIn Operating System course. Results: Multiple $12K days. Not from going viral—from deeply educating his exact target audience about specific problems only his course solves.

Solon's $130K Transformation Started with scattered content trying to appeal to "business leaders." We narrowed his focus to innovation strategy for specific industries. Result: $130,000 contract from LinkedIn-generated leads.

What Solon said worked:

• Strategic positioning over generic thought leadership

• Content that teaches, not just engages

• Focus on lasting brand value, not quick wins

And if you still don’t believe specialization works—the fractional executive market has grown 150% since 2020. Average fractional CFO retainers run $4K-$15K monthly (GCE Strategic Consulting, 2024). These aren't vanity metrics.

(Another) Real-World Example

An agency founder I just started working with learned this lesson in real-time. She runs a service that could technically work with any tech company. The "intuitive" approach would be to cast a wide net and position herself for the entire tech industry.

Instead, we went ultra-specific: HR technology companies only.

Think about the math here. There are only 21,000 HR tech companies globally—a tiny fraction of the overall tech market. Most advisors would panic at "limiting" themselves this way.

Here's what actually happened:

Week 1: Created hyper-targeted content addressing HR tech challenges

• Employee data privacy in distributed systems

• Integration nightmares with legacy HRIS platforms

• Compliance across multiple jurisdictions

Week 2: First qualified lead books a call

Two weeks. From virtually inactive to qualified pipeline.

Why? Because when an HR tech CEO sees someone who exclusively speaks their language, solves their specific problems, and understands their unique challenges, they don't comparison shop. They reach out immediately.

She differentiated herself by saying "I specialize in this specific thing" while her competitors were still shouting into the void about "helping tech companies grow."

The specialist gets the meeting. Every time.

Stop Building an Audience, Start Building a Client Base

You don't need 100,000 followers to build a six-figure business on LinkedIn. You need the RIGHT 5,000 followers.

If you're the CEO of a SaaS company selling a $50,000 solution, which would you prefer?

• 100,000 followers (mostly students and job seekers)

• 3,000 followers (all C-level executives at target companies)

The answer is obvious.

Ready to implement this?

I've shown you exactly how this works.

You've seen the numbers.

The framework is right there.

The only question is: will you spend the next 6 months figuring this out yourself, or work with someone who's already made all the mistakes?

If you're a leader at a business generating over $5M annually and want to implement this faster, I should probably do it for you. I only work with 15 clients at a time and currently have room for one more.

Not quite there yet? Book a coaching call and I'll help you build your strategy.

Either way, I'll see you in the next newsletter.

Remember: The only metric that matters is opportunity created—revenue, networking, all that stuff. Everything else is vanity.