Informed: the podcast for LinkedIn® users

450. How To Fix The Services Marketplace!

·44 min·4 clips

Mark Williams dissects LinkedIn's claim of 10 million service pages as PR spin on its worst feature.

Mark Williams hosts this episode of the Informed podcast while sick, focusing on LinkedIn's services marketplace. He opens by mocking LinkedIn's PR about 10 million service pages and a 65% increase in requests, calling it spin on a flawed feature. Williams explains that many profiles with services are not freelancers, and most requests are inappropriate or spam, like asking for training he doesn't offer. He references comments from users like Christine Gallucci and Fatima Abuchi, who report poor experiences and scams. To be constructive, Williams outlines seven proposals to fix services: create a dedicated marketplace page like Fiverr, add subcategories for better search, change search results to prioritize delivered assignments over network connections, redesign the services page for urgency and messaging, allow company pages for services, and restrict access to premium users to reduce abuse. He criticizes LinkedIn's focus on large corporations and suggests a revenue opportunity if improved. The episode includes a segment on adding videos to his newsletter and ends with a post of the week featuring Jason Varner's creative video about differentiation.

As heard by us

A short, practical argument for making LinkedIn's services marketplace easier to search.

Mark Williams uses episode 450 of the Informed podcast to make a plain, focused case that LinkedIn's services marketplace is one of the platform's weakest features, though the critique stays modest rather than sweeping.

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Why you'd press play

Your LinkedIn services search gets the bedside manner it probably needs, in episode 450 of the Informed podcast with Mark Williams.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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