LinkedIn has claimed that over 100,000 freelancers have registered on its Services Page till date, which is about 48% more than the previous year.
LinkedIn is a platform which is used by people to connect with professionals in their respective fields. This platform, which was initially created for the purpose of networking has recently, in 2021 launched a freelancer marketplace on its platform. The users can now register themselves in this marketplace and provide specialized services to their consumers.
The reason for LinkedIn to launch such a marketplace can be linked to the excessive layoffs of employees from traditional jobs. As per the data provided by LinkedIn, more than 100,000 people have been laid off in the technology industry alone this year. Therefore, either due to unavoidable circumstances or by choice, at least some of them are not returning to their original jobs. Taking advantage of this situation, LinkedIn has launched its freelancer marketplace.
This move proved to be extremely beneficial for LinkedIn as it has managed to gather around 10 Million freelancers on its platform. Further, LinkedIn has also stated that the number of requests for services on its platform are also rising to around eight requests per minute and up 65% overall year-over-year. This data is excluding the actual commercial engagements. LinkedIn has not shared any such data yet.
Though the figures provided by LinkedIn look promising, it is pertinent to note that LinkedIn has so far managed to just attract 1% of its users on the freelancing platform. This is because, the total number of users on LinkedIn are more than 1 Billion and it just has around 10 Million freelancers on its platform.
Also, the information related to the level of interest on the buyer side is not so clear. This is because LinkedIn has not provided any information on the number of services which are being sold, how much sellers are charging or any other trends.
This makes it difficult to compare LinkedIn with its competitors. The two major competitors of LinkedIn freelancers marketplace are Fiverr and Upwork which have around 4 Million and 868,000 buyers respectively. These platforms gained prominence during the Covid 19 pandemic. The shares of both Upwork and Fiverr rose significantly and therefore, they focussed on an ‘on demand’ model to fill their needs.
However, now that the pandemic has come to an end and people are shifting back to their traditional jobs, the demand for freelancing is decreasing. Because of this decrease in demand, the platforms are increasing their ‘take rates’ to keep their revenues up. However, there is still hope that this trend might change and people may again opt for freelancing if more AI services take hold in the coming years.
The fact that LinkedIn has publicly announced this news shows that the company still believes that it can gain revenue through freelancing despite its modest gains. At the moment, the company gains revenue through premium subscription. However, it aims to gain revenue through other modes in the near future.
LinkedIn provides certain special benefits to people who opt for this subscription and it helps the users to boost their profiles using the LinkedIn Services Page. Also, as per the statistics released by LinkedIn, 51% of their revenue is through premium subscriptions which is about $1.7 Billion. This remains a small part of the bigger picture for the company, however, which made over $16 Billion in the last fiscal year.
This statistics published by LinkedIn clearly shows that it has the potential to be a leading player in the freelancing market. This is because it helps the users to not only connect with professionals in their respective fields, but also to provide freelancing services to their clients. Therefore, it is clear that a person can definitely opt for providing services through LinkedIn if he wants to start his freelancing journey.
