It could be audience quality, buyers versus browsers… but then it hit me: the amount of money LinkedIn makes me, Instagram probably won’t (at least for me).

But why’s that?

Today, this issue is not about blaming Instagram.

We’re exploring LinkedIn and what turns it into the golden opportunity for YOU to start making some extra money through your daily posts…

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Every platform makes ONE decision about how it pays you, and that decision goes on to determine what kind of creator you turn into on it ( + how easy it is to monetize what you’re putting out).

It decides what you post about, how often, how wide you aim, and eventually how much you can charge.

The ones that actually pay per view

There are two:

YouTube is the real one. Creators keep 55% of long form ad revenue and 45% of the pooled Shorts revenue (YouTube Help).

Long form RPMs land between $1 and $10 for most channels, and business and finance in the US routinely clear $10 to $25 (OutlierKit, June 2026), which is why every finance bro you know has a channel.

Shorts pay somewhere around three to ten cents per thousand views (vidIQ, 2026) -I don’t think you were planning on building a business on Shorts but if you were, don’t...

TikTok pays through the Creator Rewards Program, roughly $0.40 to $1.00 per thousand qualified views (Elev8or, 2026), and “qualified” is doing a LOT of work in that sentence.

The video has to be over 60 seconds. It has to be original, no duets, no stitches. It has to clear 1,000 For You feed views before it earns a cent.

You need 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the last 30 days, and you have to live in one of the eight countries where the program even runs (TikTok Creator Rewards eligibility).

So if your 22 second video does four million views, congratulations, you made nothing from the program.

The ones that pay you nothing

Instagram, Reddit, and… you guessed it: LinkedIn.

Reddit technically has a contributor program that converts awarded gold into cash once you hit 1,000 gold, and most Redditors describe it as bonus money. Most subreddits will also remove you for self promotion, so the audience you build there can’t follow you anywhere (or you have to be extremely smart about it, so that the community accepts you which is unlikely).

Ok, so let’s do the math on this

A creator with 5,000 to 20,000 followers charges $500 to $2,500 for one sponsored thought leadership post. Call it $2,500 for a strong one with a good creator.

To make that same $2,500 through TikTok’s Creator Rewards at a typical RPM, you’d need something like 3.5 million qualified views.

3.5 MILLION. On videos over a minute. From an account that already cleared the eligibility bar.

YouTube is the only one that competes, and it competes well.

At a strong business channel RPM you’re looking at a couple hundred thousand views for that $2,500, and unlike LinkedIn, that video keeps paying you in 2028. I’m not going to pretend that isn’t a real advantage… but not everyone’s born a YouTuber, not everyone has the energy to keep creating that kind of content over and over again, AND not everyone’s gonna get those couple hundred thousand views anyway (even if they try).

P.S. Rate bands for every LinkedIn monetization path, including retainers and the indirect income most creators never price, are in Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn → The Complete, No-BS Playbook to Monetizing Your LinkedIn Presence — Even with 1,000 followers.

The payout model builds the creator

When a platform pays you per view, the correct strategy is volume and reach.

More posts, wider appeal, bigger numbers.

You build your entire creative life around being interesting to strangers, because every extra thousand strangers is money, money, money.

LinkedIn pays you nothing per view. So volume gets you nothing. Reach gets you nothing. A post that hits 200,000 people in the wrong industry can end up being worthless.

That’s why LinkedIn creators niche down while everybody else generalizes.

When you’re talking to your audience + having something useful, valuable, special to share = impressions come and the real value behind the whole thing is finally perceived.

We. get. paid.

A creator in “email deliverability for B2B SaaS” competes with maybe 50 to 100 serious people and can charge three to five times more for that specificity.

A creator in “business growth” competes with 100,000 people and can’t establish authority anywhere (if they do, they have to work hard!!).

On TikTok, niching that hard would be financial self harm.

Reminder: You’re usually your own ICP, bestie.

Most of us sell to people doing the job we used to do, which means our content research is mostly just remembering our last job. That’s rare and you should use it more than you do!!

Your comment section contains people who can hire you, buy from you, or introduce you to whoever will✨

100% of LinkedIn creator income comes from a relationship. Brand deals, retainers, consulting, advisory, speaking, fractional work.

You are never competing against a platform payout, so you have to price the relationship properly.

What LinkedIn is worse at

I’d rather you hear this from me than figure it out six months in (spoiler alert: you may not like this).

You stop posting, the money stops. A YouTube video from 2023 is earning today.

Growth here on LI is slow and it compounds through the network you keep nurturing.

There’s no viral lottery. A genuinely great post might do 40,000 impressions. That’s a slow Tuesday on TikTok.

And very few LinkedIn creators ever cross a million followers. Plenty of TikTok accounts do it in a year.

If what you want is a big audience fast, this is the wrong platform.

If what you want is 5,000 people who can sign a purchase order, there is nowhere better✨

These are free, these are for you!

Some resources you'll love!

Move to the platform where your particular kind of expensive is the thing being bought.

Pick the one that matches what you’re actually building!!

💗

I hope to see you around and thank you for being here!

-Melissa

“we tried LinkedIn creators. the campaign flopped.”

and it’s usually the same story:

1. they found a creator with a big number next to their name,

2. they sent a brief. the creator posted,

3. the post did a few hundred impressions and two comments from other creators.

so the brand walked away deciding LinkedIn doesn’t work and stopped trying.

LinkedIn worked FINE, but some things could’ve been done better in order for the campaign to actually deliver

creators, brands: you’ll want to read this one😉

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1. you picked the creator wrong

follower count is the laziest possible filter, and it’s the one almost every brand starts with.

okay, count their followers, but also pay close attention to…

who is in the comments. open the creator’s last ten posts and read the job titles of the people commenting: who are they talking to? who cares about this person and what they have to say?

the company size behind those titles.

proximity to the use case. a creator who has actually done the job your product supports will explain it in a way your marketing team cannot (same thing that happens when a celebrity actively wears and talks about a brand: people follow, people see, people buy…)

posting rhythm. is this creator consistent? are people expecting content from this person?

profile alignment. LinkedIn reads the headline, about section, and experience to verify credibility on a topic. if your creator’s profile says one thing and the sponsored post says another…trust? damaged. alignment? gone. time to look for a different creator…

2. the content was written like an ad

AI wrote it. readers can tell (and we’re sick of it). the creator’s audience follows them for a specific voice; as soon as that voice is not found, the post loses credibility.

it centers the company. yes, your company should be in the post, it can be in the carousel, the one pager, the caption copy, but it shouldn’t be mentioned every two lines… the post should talk about a problem your buyer had on a Tuesday afternoon, and let the product you’re selling appear at the moment in the story where it actually got used (and can be helpful for people).

it’s a company update in disguise.

the image is an ad. use the creator’s own visual style, a screen recording, or their face if that’s what they usually post. give people what they’re expecting, you are there to add value not to steal it.

jargon. we don’t need it…

wrong format for the goal. what do you want the audience to stay with? are you comparing tools? one pagers or videos. are you showcasing a workflow? carousels, screen-recordings and one pagers. are you sharing case studies or testimonials? text only, one pagers or carousels.

and confirm: does the visual look natural? would it stop the scroll? are the colors okay for the creator i’ve selected? would that person have created something similar on their own?

»»brands that give creators the opportunity to write their own posts usually get better results.

let the creators be themselves.

ask for the drafts, suggest edits. repeat.

that’s always going to beat trusting one brief to land in five different creators’ feeds.

3. the mechanics broke it before anyone read it

timing. the post should go live when the creator can sit in the comments, interact with the audience or go live when the platform is the most active (8-10 AM -2-4 PM OR when the creator has noticed the best results! ask them)

stacking. if your creator already posted that morning, your sponsored post may end up competing with their own content.

your team. employees engaging thoughtfully in the first hour helps enormously.

your Slack channel. dropping the post link into a company-wide channel with a “please engage” note produces a burst of engagement from accounts with no topical relationship to the content and that pattern looks a lot like an engagement pod from the outside. LinkedIn hates it, we hate it.

your UTMs. name UTMs after the campaign, not the channel type.

4. boosting, and when to do it

boost the post that already earned attention. let organic signal choose where your spend goes.

one more thing brands keep underestimating: LinkedIn content gets pulled into AI search results. when your buyer asks an assistant for options in your category, the content that gets cited names a specific mechanism, a number, and a threshold. a creator post explaining your use case in plain language is far more citable than your product page.

5. why the marketplace route underperforms

someone on your team who has never run a creator campaign is choosing the creator from a profile page and a follower number.

the brief goes out and nothing else does. no coaching, no messaging session, no draft review before publish.

the creator doesn’t understand the product well enough to describe the use case, so they describe the category instead, and it reads generic.

the campaigns that work have a human in the middle who understands both sides. someone who can tell a brand “this creator is wrong for you” and tell a creator “this draft sounds like your client wrote it.” that’s the entire reason I built Citrine.

6. three objections

“LinkedIn doesn’t feed LLMs.”
public LinkedIn posts and articles get surfaced and cited in AI search. your buyer is asking assistants for vendor shortlists right now, and a well-structured creator post about your use case is exactly the kind of source that gets pulled.

“my ICP isn’t on LinkedIn.”
if your buyer has a title, a budget, and a job they’d like to keep, they’re on this platform. what may be true is that your ICP isn’t reachable through the creators you picked, which puts us back at point one.

“there’s too much AI slop on LinkedIn, nobody goes there.”
the slop is REAL. it’s also the strongest argument for working with creators...

when the feed fills with generic AI posts, the ones that sound like a specific human stand out more than they used to. readers have gotten very good at telling the difference, and they reward the humans now.

Check Out These Free Resources

Just because you’re here. Thank you! Click here!

»» “Seems like AI slop”

The platform just rolled out a button under every single post: "Seems like AI slop”

→ Every report you submit feeds their model training. Srinivasan explained that "slop" resists a clean definition and keeps shifting, so they're relying on crowd labeling instead of a rigid rule.

→ If people flag your posts, you find out but only privately. It shows up as a dashboard note saying your content reads as inauthentic. Nothing public, no visible mark.

→ Getting flagged costs you reach outside your existing followers. Your posts get deprioritized from suggested content and recommendations beyond your network and that's the only kind of reach that actually grows an account.

→ Meanwhile, they've killed their own AI writing tool. The "enhance with AI" button is gone from the composer. What replaced it just checks spelling and grammar, it leaves your voice alone.

How LinkedIn Creators With Under 15,000 Followers Are Landing $500-$10,000 Brand Deals

Join me for a free 60-minute live training where I break down the exact system
my creators use to get paid to post without a massive following: Save your seat.

what that button actually means for your campaign

go back and read the third bullet again: getting flagged costs you reach outside your existing followers.

that’s the whole ballgame for a sponsored post. the creator’s existing followers were going to see it anyway. the second ring is what you’re paying for... suggested content, recommendations, the people who have never heard of your company and now see a name they trust explaining what you do!!

a post that reads as inauthentic never gets to that ring. nothing gets taken down. no one comments about it. the number just stays small, the brand assumes the creator underperformed, and we’re back at the top of this email.

so “write it in the creator’s voice” stopped being a style preference around the time that button shipped. LinkedIn is crowdsourcing the definition of slop from millions of readers, and your sponsored post sits in the same feed getting judged by the same people, with a report button one tap away.

the flip side is the good news I’ve been repeating all year: a real human explaining a real workflow has never been easier to spot. that’s an advantage you can BUY right now, and it gets more valuable every month the feed fills up.

before your next campaign goes live

five questions. if you can’t answer all five, it isn’t ready:

1. who is in the comments on this creator’s last ten posts? job titles, company sizes. if you can’t describe the audience without saying a follower number, you picked on vibes.

2. does the draft describe a workflow or a company? if the product shows up in the first three lines, send it back.

3. can the creator be in the comments for 90 minutes after publish? if the answer is “they’re traveling that day,” move the date (or make sure the content is just TOO GOOD: it doesn’t need the creator to be engaging because it just goes viral…no effort needed)

4. does anything signal sponsored before the reader hits sentence one? remember: it doesn’t have to be hidden but we don’t want it to be overwhelming!

5. what’s the plan for week two? organic tells you if the message lands. budget behind the top performers is where the reach actually comes from.

If this conversation would help a creator you know, forward it to them!!

next week: what a LinkedIn audience is actually worth next to TikTok, IG and YouTube, and why the rates are so far apart. bring a calculator, we’re being smart smart 🤓

Thank you for being a part of this community, I appreciate you!

Talk soon,
Melissa 💌

I want to talk about the sentence that makes every creator’s stomach drop on a brand call:

“We love your content... but you only have 6,000 followers. We’re also talking to a TikTok creator with 300,000. Can you do something on rate?”

If you’ve heard a version of this, you know the feeling. You start doubting your number before the call even ends.

So today I’m giving you the full argument: the buyer psychology, the budget math, and the exact words to say back. Because that comparison is broken math, and I want to show you exactly where it breaks.

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The two feeds are different rooms

Think about the last time you opened TikTok. Probably on the couch after 9pm, with your brain fully OFF.

Now think about the last time you opened LinkedIn... probably between meetings, or while researching a tool your team might buy.

Same person, two completely different mindsets.

TikTok attention is entertainment attention. People are there to relax, and a brand message interrupts that. LinkedIn attention is professional attention. People show up already thinking about work, tools, hiring, and budgets... which means a post about a product belongs in the feed instead of fighting it.

That context is what a brand is actually buying when they book you. And context changes what an impression is worth.

Who is actually holding the budget

And this is where the follower math falls apart completely.

LinkedIn reports that 4 out of 5 of its members drive business decisions at their companies.

That means the person leaving a thoughtful comment on your post might be the VP who approves the software budget this quarter. Or the founder choosing a payroll platform for her whole team.

On TikTok, a conversion is usually a $30 impulse buy. On LinkedIn, one customer can be a five-figure annual contract. Twelve of the right people seeing your post can drive more revenue for a brand than a million entertainment views.

I put an example of this in my Get Paid to Post guide and I will never stop repeating it:

Lisa has 4,100 followers. Her posts get comments from 28 VP-level people, most of them working in SaaS. Brands pay her $2,800 per post.

Jason has 32,000 followers and 800 reactions per post... mostly from students and job seekers. Brands have declined him 12 times.

Brands paid Lisa 7x more with 8x fewer followers, because they were pricing the audience. And Lisa’s audience signs budgets.

Check Out These Free Resources

Just because you’re here. Thank you! Click here!

The CPM math brands already do

This is my favorite part, because it turns the “you’re too small” conversation into pure arithmetic.

CPM is what advertisers pay to reach 1,000 people. Every brand you talk to knows their CPMs cold, so use their own numbers:

TikTok ads in 2026 average around $5 to $10 per 1,000 impressions.

LinkedIn ads average $30 to $50, and targeting senior decision makers routinely pushes past $100.

Brands pay 5 to 10x more on LinkedIn for one reason: the audience converts. One 2026 analysis of B2B ad accounts found LinkedIn was the only major paid channel delivering a positive return on ad spend.

Now layer YOU on top of that. When a brand books your sponsored post, they get those same expensive impressions plus your credibility, your comment section, and a message delivered in a voice your audience already trusts. A cold ad can’t borrow any of that.

So when a brand compares your rate to a TikTok creator’s rate, they’re comparing prices in two different currencies. The honest comparison is your rate against what LinkedIn charges them to reach the same buyers with zero trust attached. Against that number, you’re a deal.

Say this on your next brand call

Word for word. Screenshot it, save it, practice it in the mirror if you need to 💅

When they say “but you only have X followers”:

“Totally fair question. My audience is [X] followers, and the people engaging are [titles] in [industry]... the exact buyers for [product]. Reaching this audience with a LinkedIn ad costs $30 to $50 per 1,000 impressions before any trust is attached. My rate reflects the room, and this is the most expensive room on the internet.”

When they say “a TikTok creator with 10x your following quoted us half”:

“That rate makes sense for selling a $25 product to consumers. You’re selling [product] at [price point] to [decision makers], and those buyers are here. Reaching them costs more everywhere, including your own ad account.”

When you feel yourself about to discount out of panic:

Take a breath and hold. Say: “I hear you on budget. The rate stays where it is. What I can flex is the deliverable mix, the timeline, or usage terms... which of those helps you most?” Then stop talking and let them answer.

How LinkedIn Creators With Under 15,000 Followers Are Landing $500-$10,000 Brand Deals

Join me for a free 60-minute live training where I break down the exact system
my creators use to get paid to post without a massive following: Save your seat.

One last thing

I’ve been telling my Citrine creators this all year: brands will always try to price you by follower count, because followers are the number everyone can see. Your job is to move the conversation to the numbers that matter... who your audience is, what they buy, and what it costs to reach them any other way.

If you’re niched with a decision-maker audience, price at the top of your band. That range exists for a reason, and so do you 🩷

What’s the wildest lowball you’ve ever gotten from a brand? hit reply and tell me... I read every single one, and the best story might show up in a future issue (anonymized, promise).

If this issue would help a creator you know, forward it to them.

Talk soon,
Melissa 💌

If you’ve been on the fence about going all-in on LinkedIn, this is your sign!

Business Insider got their hands on internal LinkedIn documents a couple of weeks ago. And what’s in them is wild.

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LinkedIn is building a paid creator events business. They’re piloting it now with creators like Codie Sanchez and Chris Do. They want to host up to 4,000 creator events a year. And they estimate the paid virtual creator-led events market could be worth $5 billion this year, growing to $25 billion by the end of the decade.

Read that last number again.

$25 billion. By 2030. On a platform you’re already posting on for free.

Why this matters (and why I’m so hyped about it)

For years, LinkedIn has been the platform creators ignored when they thought about monetization.

Instagram had the brand deals. YouTube had AdSense. TikTok had the Creator Fund. Patreon had subscriptions. Substack had paid newsletters.

LinkedIn had… a “Top Voice” badge.

That’s changing. Fast.

Here’s what LinkedIn has quietly rolled out or is testing:

• Paid creator events (the Business Insider scoop)

• Subscription access to creator content (planned)

• Licensed instructor monetization through LinkedIn Learning

• Better creator tools, newsletters, analytics, video features

• An algorithm that now actively rewards original POV content

The platform finally figured out what creators have been saying for years: we’ll prioritize the platforms where we can monetize.

So they’re building the rails.

The shift that’s already happening

I want you to zoom out for a second, bestie.

In 2020, “LinkedIn creator” wasn’t really a job title. People posted to build their personal brand, maybe land a job, maybe drum up some sales leads.

Today? Creators are pulling in retainer deals, sponsored post packages, paid newsletter subscriptions, course launches, paid community fees, and consulting income. All from one profile.

And we’re still early.

Most creators on the platform are not monetizing yet. The infrastructure for paid events doesn’t exist publicly. Subscriptions aren’t live. Native creator funds haven’t launched.

When those things go live (and they will), the creators who are already there with an engaged audience, a clear niche, and a real point of view are the ones who win.

Not the ones who started yesterday chasing the trend.

What you should be doing right now

1. Build the audience now, monetize on the rails later

The creators who’ll cash in on LinkedIn’s paid events, subscriptions, and partnerships in 2027 are the ones building their audience right now in 2026. Don’t wait for the features to launch. Build the runway.

2. Position yourself for the partnership pipeline, not the one-off deal

Most LinkedIn brand deals still happen in the shadows. DMs, email threads, referrals. Brands aren’t looking for aesthetics or viral moments on LinkedIn. They’re looking for credibility, relevance, proof of thinking, and community. Build those four things and the inbound starts.

3. Own your topic before LinkedIn picks its event creators

When LinkedIn rolls out paid creator events at scale, who do you think they’ll feature? The creators with a clear, recognizable lane. Codie Sanchez owns ownership economy. Chris Do owns design and business. Pick your lane. Defend it.

4. Start treating LinkedIn like the platform it’s becoming

It’s not the resume site anymore, bestie. It’s a content platform with a B2B audience worth more per follower than almost any other social platform. Show up accordingly.

Some FREE resources I’ve created for you:

The Creator Playbook and more guides worth saving!

The bigger picture

LinkedIn is doing what every smart platform does when they realize creators are the growth engine.

They’re building the monetization layer.

YouTube did it. TikTok did it. Instagram is still trying to do it. LinkedIn is just later to the party, which means there’s still room at the front.

The creators getting in now, building the audience, the credibility, the frameworks, the niche, will be the ones LinkedIn invites to the paid events. The ones brands DM with retainer offers. The ones who get featured in the LinkedIn Learning instructor program.

We are at the very beginning of LinkedIn monetization.

And the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is right now.

The takeaway

LinkedIn is no longer optional for creators who want to monetize their expertise. It’s the platform with the highest commercial intent audience and the lowest creator competition.

The features are coming. The infrastructure is being built. The money is being earmarked.

The only question is whether you’ll be one of the creators positioned to receive it.

Reach is rented on every other platform. On LinkedIn, reputation is owned.

Your turn, bestie

What’s one thing you’re going to do this week to position yourself for LinkedIn’s monetization wave?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every single one.

📌 P.S. If you’re ready to actually get paid for your LinkedIn content, my free guide Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn walks you through the exact behind-the-scenes of how LinkedIn brand deals get done, what brands are looking for, and how to position yourself for inbound partnerships. Grab it here.

See you in the next one 💗

— Melissa

Lindsay is a fractional CRO. She posts about revenue, go-to-market, and what the F is for dinner😅 She has around 16,000 followers and she has signed over $25,000 in brand deals so far this year!! My goal is to write her checks up to $50,000 by December 🤩

Now read that follower count again, because most creators would look at 16K and assume the money is small (nope, it is the opposite!).

And the reason why is the most useful thing I can teach you about getting paid…

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Your follower count is not your rate

The first thing brands ask is “how many followers.” The first thing creators do is price themselves on that number. Both are looking at the wrong thing.

I have creators with fewer followers who charge more than creators with double their audience. I have larger creators who price lower than people a fraction of their size. Followers carry weight in a rate. They do not decide it.

When a brand sends you a sliding scale (”5K followers gets $X, 15K gets $Y”), treat that as a warning sign. It tells you they see you as ad inventory instead of a partner.

If you found yourself thinking: “How do I actually start making money on LinkedIn without 50K followers?”, this is for you.

Go grab your copy: Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn Booklet

What really matters💕

Who is in your audience. Lindsay’s followers are mostly founders, CEOs, and C-suite. Decision-makers. The people who control budget and who are the actual customer the brand is trying to reach. A smaller audience full of buyers is worth more to a brand than a huge audience full of people who will never purchase. This is the entire reason a tight LinkedIn following can out-earn a much larger following on another platform.

How your content performs and what it delivers. Not vanity reach. Whether your posts actually teach, persuade, and get the right people talking in the comments!! Real conversations, people showing up and actively caring.

Whether you fit what the brand needs. I’ve had brands tell me they only want AEs in the audience, or only founders, or only people in the UK. I had one brand that cared about nothing except UK reach. If your content is great but your audience or style doesn’t match their target, you don’t get picked, and that has NOTHING to do with your worth✨

Action for you this week: open your analytics and learn who actually follows you. Job titles, seniority, location. That profile is your real pitch, and most creators have never looked at it.

Set the expectations before you sign, not after

The fastest way to ruin a partnership is to let a brand expect something the format can’t deliver.

A single one-off post buys awareness. That is what it is for. If a brand wants conversions and signups from one post, that expectation is broken before you start, and you will get blamed for their math.

I had a brand tell one of our 7K-follower creators they would only commit to three months if the creator hit 9,000 impressions per post. I asked them one question: show me a creator with 7K followers who has hit 9K impressions on a sponsored post for you. They couldn’t. So we restructured the deal. The brand paid up front, we coached the creator hard, and we tied zero dollars to a number nobody could promise.

Never let your pay hang on a performance metric you don’t control.

You own the work, the message, and showing up. You do not own the algorithm or someone else’s buying decision.

You can still help conversion when a brand wants it. Put the link in the post instead of the comments. Build a lead magnet. DM everyone who engages. We did all of that for a brand called Kendo, and a webinar drove their highest conversion of the campaign. Real results came from a longer, more strategic build, not a single post.

Action for you this week: before any deal, write down what the brand defines as success. If it’s conversions, propose a multi-month structure. If it’s one post, set the expectation that you’re delivering awareness and price it that way.

“We don’t have budget” is almost always a negotiation

Brands cry poverty the same way buyers do in sales. Most of the time the money exists, and someone needs to make the case to move it.

I walk into every brand deal assuming they have a million dollars to spend. My only job is to get them to spend it on my creator. That mindset changes how you negotiate.

Do not drop your price to rescue a brand’s budget. If a company truly cannot afford a fair partnership, they should not be running partnerships yet. Lowering your rate to fit their problem trains every future brand to underpay you.

The way you grow your rate is one deal at a time. Lindsay raised her price a little with every new partnership and watched what held. Her rates were low when we started. They are not low now. Recently we got a brand to add $700 on top of another creator’s existing rate, simply by making the case.

Action for you this week: set your next partnership rate slightly above your last one. Hold it. See what the market says.

The relationships that make a brand say “only her”

This is the part almost nobody does, and it’s the reason brands tell me they will run a campaign only if it’s Lindsay.

She doesn’t just build relationships with her audience. She builds them with the brand side. The social media managers. The community managers. The founders. She comments on their posts, connects, sends a message, shows up at their events, helps with their webinars. By the time a deal is on the table, these people already feel like she’s theirs.

She also pitches the brands she actually wants. She approached a company that had never done a single brand partnership. She worked her way from a contact, to a partnerships lead, to the founder. When a direct competitor came knocking at the same time, that interest became the reason the first brand finally signed. It took three months of calls to close, and it became a multi-month commitment we are still expanding.

Action for you this week: pick three brands you genuinely use and want to work with. Follow the people who run their social and community. Comment on their content for two weeks before you ever pitch. Warm beats cold every single time.

Want help making this real?

Wherever you are right now, there’s a path:

🚀 Building, but not monetizing yet? (under 25K followers or under $2K/month in brand revenue) The Creator Accelerator is a 6-week group program that takes you from “content creator” to “paid creator”, alongside a cohort at your stage.

The mindset underneath all of it

Your impressions are an indicator of what the algorithm decided to pick up that day. They are not a measure of how good your post was, how valuable your idea was, or what you’re worth to a brand. The baseline shifted for everyone. A smaller number now is the new normal (shouldn’t be taken as a personal failure).

Lindsay said the thing I want you to keep: no one is more valuable because of a follower count or a title. If you have fewer followers right now, that means you’ve got a lot of space to grow. That is the only difference.

Know your value before you walk into the room. The brands can feel it when you do.

Bigger numbers get you noticed. The right audience and a real relationship get you paid.

And for the ones who actually read to the bottom:

✨Get FREE resources HERE!

Pick one. Use it this week :)

Talk soon💗

— Melissa

P.S. If this was useful, forward it to one creator friend who’s still posting into the void. They’ll thank you ✨

I’d open LinkedIn in the morning, scroll for a few minutes, and feel like I’d already read every post before. Different headshots. Different industries. Same cadence, same hooks, same “I went from X to Y and here’s what I learned” arc.

I assumed it was burnout.

I was reading too much LinkedIn, my pattern recognition was getting punishing, and I needed a break.

Then I started saving posts that felt genuinely different and looking at what they had in common. The list was shorter than I expected. A handful of creators were doing something the rest weren’t. Most of the feed had collapsed into one big homogeneous draft.

I told myself this was a discipline problem.

Creators were getting lazy, leaning on ChatGPT to fill the gaps, and accepting whatever it gave them. The fix would be obvious: better prompts, stronger voice, more editing.

Then the research started coming out. And the research said the problem is much bigger than discipline.

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The “Artificial Hivemind” is real, and it has a name now

In late 2025, a research team out of the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, and the Allen Institute for AI published what won Best Paper at NeurIPS. They tested over 70 large language models on 26,000 real-world prompts. The kind of prompts creators are typing into ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini every single day.

They called what they found the “Artificial Hivemind.”

When they asked 25 different models to write a metaphor about time, the answers didn’t spread out the way human answers would. They collapsed into two clusters. One group wrote variations of “time is a river.” The other wrote variations of “time is a weaver.” That’s it. Different models, different companies, different countries, two metaphors.

When asked to write product descriptions for iPhone cases, DeepSeek (built in China) and OpenAI’s GPT-4o (built in San Francisco) produced identical phrases: “Elevate your iPhone with our,” “sleek, without compromising,” “with bold, eye-catching.” The measured similarity between those two systems came in at 81 percent.

These are not the same model with different branding. These are independent systems built on opposite sides of the planet, landing on the same words.

That’s the part that should stop every creator cold.

When I tell people “your AI-generated posts sound like everyone else’s AI-generated posts,” they assume I mean because everyone is using ChatGPT. The research says it goes deeper.

ChatGPT sounds like Claude sounds like Gemini sounds like DeepSeek. The convergence is baked into the tools. You don’t have to be using the same model as your competitor for your posts to land in the same place.

The feed is flattening because the infrastructure underneath the feed is flattening.

Better prompts won’t save you

This is the part I really didn’t want to be true.

A study published in PNAS Nexus this past March tested whether you could fix the homogeneity by adjusting the “temperature” setting in LLMs. Temperature is the parameter that controls randomness. Crank it up, you should get more varied outputs.

You don’t. You get gibberish.

The researchers found that raising temperature didn’t restore creativity. It just broke coherence. There was no setting that gave them genuinely diverse, usable text. The models went from repetitive to incoherent with nothing useful in between.

Then a separate team analyzed 2,200 college admissions essays across three preregistered experiments. They tested every intervention you’re currently being sold by AI consultants on LinkedIn: better prompts, more specific instructions, custom GPTs trained on your voice, the works. The gap between human-written and AI-written essays didn’t close. It widened as volume increased.

More AI output, more sameness, every single time.

I want to be honest about what this means, because the most popular advice in creator content right now is “use AI but make it sound like you.” (even I have posted stuff about this!)

And yes: brand voice docs help. Custom GPTs help. Editing helps…none of them solve the core problem, which is that the tool is architecturally pulled toward the statistical center of all language ever written.

You can drag it out of that center. You cannot get it to stay there.

What this looks like on LinkedIn specifically

Step back from the research for a second and think about your own feed.

How many posts this week opened with a stat-then-promise hook? How many had a numbered list with arrow sub-bullets? How many ended with “♻️ Repost if this resonates”? How many used the same five words in the same five places?

I’m not knocking the templates. I teach templates. Structure is what makes content scannable, and a good template is the difference between a post that gets read and a post that gets scrolled past in half a second ⭐

The problem is that the templates have been absorbed into the AI tools, and the AI tools are now serving them back to every creator at industrial scale.

The template was supposed to be the skeleton you hung your point of view on. For a lot of creators, it’s now the whole post.

Anyone who tells you they’re immune to this is either lying or hasn’t looked closely enough at their own last twenty posts.

Your audience already knows

The thing that finally made me stop ignoring this was the consumer data.

Klaviyo published their 2026 AI Consumer Trends Report a few weeks ago. They surveyed 8,000 consumers across eight countries. Only 13 percent said they completely trust AI. When consumers notice AI-generated content in brand marketing, they are four times more likely to trust the brand less than more. 31 percent reported decreased trust. Only 7 percent reported any increase.

SmythOS found that roughly half of consumers can now correctly identify AI-generated content on sight. When they spot it, 52 percent disengage. Not occasionally. As a default response.

The number that genuinely changed how I think about this came from Klaviyo’s “AI Enthusiasts” segment. These are people who actively use AI every day, like it, and integrate it into their daily routines. Even in that group, 39 percent said they would trust a brand less for using AI-generated content. 38 percent reported seeing what they called “AI slop” from brands multiple times a week.

The people who love AI the most are the ones most turned off by AI-generated brand content. If they’ve already moved on, your normal audience moved on a long time ago.

LinkedIn is no different. Your followers can tell. They might not be able to articulate exactly what’s off, but they can feel the difference between a post written by a real person with a real point of view and a post that came out of a tool. The save rates know. The DM rates know. Reach is a lagging indicator, but the quality signals show up first.

It gets worse, not better

The last piece of research I want you to sit with is the part about model collapse.

As more AI-generated content gets published online, the next generation of models trains on it. The variance narrows. The center of gravity pulls tighter. According to a 2026 audit, 74.2 percent of new web pages already contain detectable AI-generated content. The training data is getting less diverse, not more.

For LinkedIn specifically, this creates what I’ve started calling the sameness spiral. Your competitor uses ChatGPT to write a post. So do you. So do the other 500 creators in your niche. That content floods the platform. The next round of models trains on it. The next round of posts narrows further. Every quarter that passes without a deliberate intervention makes the problem harder to reverse.

The floor keeps rising toward identical. The window where you can sound different is open right now, and it gets smaller every month.

So what do you actually do about it

I want to be honest. I don’t think “stop using AI” is a realistic answer, and I’m not going to give you that one. I use AI for plenty of things. Research synthesis, transcript cleanup, batch repurposing. It’s a useful tool when it’s in service of something I already had to say.

The shift I’ve been making in my own work, and pushing my Citrine creators to make, is structural. It looks like this:

The point of view has to exist before the AI ever touches it. The post starts with a position you’ve earned through experience, a story only you can tell, or a take you’ve watched the rest of your industry get wrong. Then, if you want, you use AI to tighten the structure. Not to generate the idea. Not to write the opening. Not to give you the seven bullets. Those are the parts that come from you.

Audit your last twenty posts the way I had my creators audit theirs last month. Read each one and ask whether the central insight could have been written by any other creator in your space. If yes, that post is part of the sameness spiral. If no, that post is your moat.

Lean on the three things AI cannot do well. Specific personal experience that only you have lived through. Strong opinions you’re willing to defend. Connections between ideas that don’t usually sit next to each other. Every post that leans on at least one of those three is a post the hivemind can’t replicate.

Stop optimizing for the metrics that reward sameness. Reach is a popularity contest with the algorithm. Saves are a popularity contest with your reader’s future self. The first one rewards posts that look like every other post. The second one rewards posts worth coming back to. Choose accordingly.

If you want help working through this with me🌟

A quick note before I close, because everything I just walked you through is the kind of work that’s much easier with a room of other creators doing it alongside you!

I run free masterclasses every few weeks where we get into this. The room is usually a mix of creators who are trying to get paid for what they post and figure out how to sound like themselves while they do it. I love these sessions, honestly. They’re the part of my week where I get to meet the people on the other side of the inbox and hear what’s actually getting in your way. If you want to be there for the next one, [grab a seat here]💕

If you’d rather start on your own, I keep a small library of free resources that go deeper on the specific moves I mentioned above. The voice audit, the joy audit, the framework for finding your contrarian edge. [You can get those here] at no cost🌟

And if you want the full system, the one I actually use with the creators in Citrine, that lives inside the Paid to Post guide. It’s 60+ pages, built for creators who want a strategy they can start running today instead of next quarter. It comes with the dashboards I use to track partnership pipeline, content cadence, and revenue, and they’re built to be personalized to your numbers and your niche. If you’ve ever wished I’d hand you the playbook instead of teasing it across thirty posts, this is that. [You can grab Paid to Post here]💕

No pressure on any of it. Pick the one that matches where you are.

The window is open

When the State of Brand wrote their original Great Flattening piece, they ended on a line I keep thinking about: the companies that sound like themselves will own the next decade.

I’d say the same thing about creators, with one update. The creators who sound like themselves on LinkedIn right now have a real, measurable, compounding advantage. Not because their content is better. Because their content is theirs. Every flattened post in your feed is making the original ones louder by contrast.

That advantage has a shelf life. Right now you can build a recognizable voice with relatively little distinctive content because the background noise is so uniform. A year from now the bar will be higher. Three years from now, the creators who built recognition early will have a head start the latecomers can’t easily catch.

The question I keep coming back to, both for myself and for the creators I work with: if you removed your name and headshot from your last post, would anyone in your audience know it was yours?

If the answer is no, you have time to fix it. The window is open. It won’t be forever.

Talk to you soon,

— Melissa💗

Sources: Klaviyo’s study; Emarketer’s study; Smythos’ study; Einpresswire.com’s article; Arvix.org’s study/study 2

P.S. If this was useful, forward it to one creator friend. They'll thank you. ✨

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LinkedIn in 2026 is a completely different platform than it was even six months ago. LinkedIn rebuilt the algorithm from scratch with 360Brew AI, and the result is that views are down 40-50% across the board. Everyone you follow is panicking. Most of them are giving you advice that worked in 2023…

These are 23 tips that DO work today. You can start every single one today.

Grab your coffee. Let’s go ☕

The Profile Tips Most Creators Skip

The line I want you to screenshot

Anyone can post on LinkedIn in 2026. Almost no one is doing it on purpose.

The creators winning this year aren’t the loudest. They’re the most intentional. They picked a lane. They wrote shorter. They replied faster. They built systems instead of chasing trends.

Your homework this week

Pick 3 tips from this list. Just 3. Do them every day for 7 days. Reply to this email and tell me which ones you picked. I read every single one.

Just launched: Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn

The playbook is live. If you want to monetize LinkedIn right now (not in two years), this is the one.

62 pages, 5 interactive tools, zero fluff. Works even at 1,000 followers.

What’s inside:

⭐ Proven monetization frameworks ⭐ Real examples from LinkedIn creators ⭐ 5 interactive tools: Affiliate Program Tracker, Comment Quality Dashboard, Weekly Engagement Tracker, Retainer Income Calculator, Niche Validator

If the 23 tips above are the strategy, this is the system that turns it into revenue.

👉 Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn Guide!

One more thing before you go.

Remember: posting with strategy is way better than posting consistently with no direction. And this goes for everybody. Me included.

I’ve been checking my own account lately and adjusting too. Leaning harder into frameworks, into content that feels human, into giving you things that genuinely help. Because you change. You’re not the same person you were six months ago, and your content shouldn’t be either! What worked for me at 5K followers isn’t what works at 45K. What I cared about last year isn’t exactly what I care about today. That’s not a problem to fix. That’s the whole point.

So I keep asking myself, what can I give my people for free that they’d actually appreciate? And then I make it. Not to win anything from you. To build something real between us. That’s what makes it worth coming back to post, week after week: knowing it’s actually making a difference for someone.

And that’s my advice to you too: even if you’re doing everything pretty well, are there any gaps to optimize? Can it be even better? That’s the version of LinkedIn I want to build in 2026. I hope you’ll build it with me.

And for the ones who actually read to the bottom:

✨Get FREE resources HERE!

Pick one. Use it this week :)

Talk soon, bestie💗

— Melissa

P.S. If this was useful, forward it to one creator friend who’s still posting into the void. They’ll thank you ✨

Before we dive in, if you’ve been DMing me asking “how do I actually start making money on LinkedIn without 50K followers?” this is for you.

Go grab your copy: Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn Booklet

This week’s issue connects directly to what’s inside that booklet, so let’s get into it:

Subscribe now

The data nobody is talking about (yet)

Semrush just analyzed 89,000 LinkedIn URLs to figure out which posts AI search engines actually cite when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Mode a question.

The headline number: 11% of all AI responses cite a LinkedIn URL. Across all three engines.

That’s massive. LinkedIn is now a primary source for the AI tools your future clients are using to make decisions.

But here’s the twist that flipped my whole brain inside out:

The posts AI is citing? They’re almost never the viral ones.

The median cited post got 15 to 25 reactions.

Let that sit for a second.

The posts pulling in citations from the platforms that will increasingly shape how people discover experts… are the same posts most creators consider “flops.”

What AI ignores

Before I tell you what AI loves, let me tell you what it skips right past:

Reshares. 95% of cited posts are originals. If you didn’t write it, AI strips it out.

Viral reach. Likes don’t translate to citations. A 50,000-impression post and a 500-impression post have roughly the same shot at being cited (IF the writing is right).

Big followings. Accounts with under 500 followers still get cited. Audience size barely moves the needle here.

Read that again, babe. Because if you’ve been waiting to “grow your following first” before you start writing the deeper stuff?

You’ve been solving the wrong problem.

What AI actually rewards

Four things. Let’s go through them.

1. Original content. 95% of cited posts are originals: your own writing, your own framework, your own take. Not a reshare. Not a recycled quote graphic. Your IP.

2. Educational depth. Between 54% and 64% of cited posts share useful knowledge. They teach a thing. They explain a concept. They walk through a process. AI extracts explanations, not opinions.

3. Consistency. 75% of cited accounts post 5+ times per month. AI rewards a body of work, not a single hit. One brilliant post a quarter won’t cut it.

4. Right length. Cited posts run 50–299 words. Long enough to actually teach something. Short enough to actually get read.

If you’re nodding right now thinking “oh wow, that’s literally what Melissa keeps telling us to do”... yes, bestie. Yes it is.

This is the framework I’ve been beating the drum on for months:

✨ Pick 2–3 core topics

✨ Stay in your lane 80% of the time

✨ Hook → Context → Insight → Takeaway

✨ Post with intention, not for the algorithm

✨ Build a body of work, not a highlight reel

The reach vs. relevance shift

Here’s where this gets really interesting for creators who care about monetization (so… all of us).

For years, LinkedIn coaching online has been optimized for one thing: reach.

Hooks that stop the scroll. Controversy. Short, punchy, repeatable formatting. Likes, comments, dwell time.

That’s still a real game. The algorithm pays you in impressions for playing it well.

But there’s a second game running in parallel now. And it pays in something different:

Citations. Authority. Discovery by AI.

That game rewards specificity over snappiness. Concrete claims over hot takes. Useful and complete over short and punchy. The outcome is being the source AI sends future clients to.

The creators who win the next 24 months are the ones who learn to write for both readers.

Because here’s the thing nobody is saying out loud yet: when a CMO asks ChatGPT “who should I hire to teach my sales team how to use LinkedIn?”, that answer is a sales pipeline. And it’s being built right now, in posts you might be writing or skipping this week.

Your “get cited” formula

If you want to be the LinkedIn creator AI surfaces 6 months from now, here’s the equation:

Original (not a reshare) + Educational (teach, don’t just opine) + 50–299 words (useful but tight) + 5+ posts per month (consistent cadence) + Specific claims with sources (concrete > clever) = Cited by AI

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Notice what’s NOT in the formula:

❌ A trending hook

❌ A massive follower count

❌ Going viral

❌ Posting daily

❌ A polished personal brand photoshoot

You don’t need any of that. You need a clear topic, real expertise, and the discipline to write it down 5+ times a month.

What to do this week

Three moves. Pick the one you’ll actually do:

Move 1: Audit your last 10 posts. How many were originals? How many taught a specific thing? How many landed between 50–299 words? If fewer than half check all three boxes, you’ve got your edit list for next week.

Move 2: Pick ONE concrete claim you make all the time in DMs or calls, and turn it into a 200-word post. No hook gymnastics. Just: here’s the claim, here’s the proof, here’s what to do with it. Watch what happens.

Move 3: Block 30 minutes this Sunday to plan 5 educational posts for the next 30 days. Topic. Claim. Proof. Takeaway. That’s your monthly minimum to even enter the citation game.

The bigger picture💌

For the last few years, “creator” on LinkedIn has been measured in impressions and follower count.

The next chapter measures something different: are you the source AI trusts?

That’s a much better game for people like us. People who actually know things. People who teach. People with real frameworks and real experience.

You don’t have to chase virality to win it.

You just have to write what you know: clearly, consistently, and on your own terms.

I love this for us 🤍

Want help making this real?

Wherever you are right now, there’s a path:

📘 Just getting started or want the full playbook in your hands today?

Get Paid to Post on LinkedIn — the 62-page digital booklet with 5 interactive tools. Instant download.

🚀 Building, but not monetizing yet? (under 25K followers or under $2K/month in brand revenue) The Creator Accelerator is a 6-week group program that takes you from “content creator” to “paid creator” — alongside a cohort at your stage.

And hit reply and tell me: which of the three moves above are you actually going to do this week? I read every single response.

Talk soon,

Melissa ✨

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Hey stars,

So I need to tell you something.

In August, I was laid off. No severance. No safety net. Just… nothing.

And by November, I had launched a proof-of-concept cohort, signed my first creators to the talent agency, and committed to a strategy that terrified me.

Fast forward to today: Citrine’s first-ever real quarter just closed.

$114,000 in cash collected revenue.

Two people running the entire operation. Multiple creators getting PAID. Zero missed bill payments.

But here’s the thing nobody tells you about those kinds of numbers: they don’t show you what it actually took to get there.

So let me show you the part that doesn’t fit in a revenue screenshot. Because if you’re scared right now, if you’re in survival mode, if you’re wondering if you can actually do this... I need you to see what that number really represents.

The Part Where Everything Falls Apart 💔

August hit different.

Laid off. No severance payout. My savings already thin from building Citrine on the side while working full-time.

And suddenly? I was completely on my own.

September and October were pure survival mode. I was selling anything I could. No clear direction. No clear ICP. No clear problem statement that I was solving better than anyone else.

Just panic. And hustle. And this sinking feeling that maybe I’d made a massive mistake.

My bank account was at an all-time low. I was TERRIFIED. Like the kind of scared where you wake up at 3am doing mental math on how long you can stretch $847.

You know that fear? The one where you’re like “okay I can make rent this month but what about next month and also I haven’t bought groceries in a week and also WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE”?

Yeah. That one.

The only reason I didn’t completely spiral? My husband never once made me feel like I needed a backup plan. Just quiet support and this belief that I’d figure it out 💕 (hope you have someone like that in your life!)

The Only Thing I Knew How to Do 🎯

So I did the only thing I knew how to do when I didn’t know what to do.

I started talking to people.

Not pitching. Not selling. Just... talking.

“Hey, what’s actually hard about being a LinkedIn creator right now?”

“What would make brand partnerships easier for you?”

“If you could pay someone to solve one problem in your creator business, what would it be?”

I had 70 of these conversations between August and October.

SEVENTY.

Some were 15 minutes. Some were an hour. Some turned into friendships. Some never replied to my follow-up.

But every single one taught me something.

And after about 40 conversations, a pattern started emerging.

The same problem kept coming up. Over and over and over.

Creators were getting opportunities. But they didn’t know how to:

• Price themselves without undercharging or scaring brands away

• Negotiate without burning the relationship

• Structure deliverables so brands actually understood what they were buying

• Turn one-off posts into retainer relationships

• Build a content system that didn’t eat their entire life

They needed structure. Systems. Strategy. Not just “post more and hope.”

And I realized: I know how to do this. I’ve been doing this. I can teach this.

So in October, I built the proof-of-concept for the Creator Accelerator.

In November, I sold the first cohort seats.

In January, I went all in.

What “All In” Actually Looks Like 🔥

When I say Q1 was Citrine’s first real quarter, I mean it.

October was testing. November was validating. December was building.

But January? January was the moment I stopped hedging my bets.

No backup plan. No “let me just keep one foot in corporate.” No safety net.

Just: this is the business. This is what we’re doing. Figure it out or fail trying.

And here’s what “figuring it out” actually looked like:

Week 1-4: Onboarding the first cohort

Teaching rate negotiation frameworks at 9am. Reviewing pitch decks at 11pm. Answering Slack messages at midnight because someone just got their first brand inquiry and needed help responding.

Week 5-8: Launching the talent agency

Signing creators. Pitching brands. Negotiating contracts. Learning how to be an agent while simultaneously teaching other people how to be better creators.

Week 9-12: Scaling without breaking

Adding systems. Documenting processes. Hiring help. Realizing that $114K in revenue means nothing if you burn out getting there.

Every single dollar was earned. Not handed to me. Not lucky. Not “right place right time.”

EARNED.

Through calls I didn’t want to take. Pitches that got rejected. Late nights building slide decks. Early mornings answering emails. Conversations where I had to say hard things. Moments where I had to hold boundaries even when it felt uncomfortable.

$114K sounds impressive until you see the 900 hours of work behind it.

But you know what? I’d do it again. Because those 900 hours bought me something I’ve never had before:

Proof that I can build the thing I said I was going to build.

To Every Creator Who Bet on Me: Thank You 💕

Look, I’m gonna get real for a second.

When you’re building something new, every person who says yes is taking a risk on you.

They’re betting their money, their time, their trust on your ability to deliver.

And in those early months when I was still figuring it out? That bet felt HEAVY.

Every cohort member who signed up when the curriculum was still half-built.

Every creator who joined the agency when I’d never placed a deal before.

Every person who said “yeah, I trust you” when I barely trusted myself yet.

You gave me the opportunity to build my dream.

And it’s my absolute honor to help you build yours.

I don’t take that trust lightly. Not for a second.

Every win you get, every rate increase, every brand deal, every “I finally feel like I know what I’m doing” message... that’s why I do this.

Not the revenue. The impact. The fact that you’re out here WINNING because we built something together.

That’s the part that actually matters 💕

And Speaking of Bets... It’s My Birthday 🎂

So here’s the thing: it’s my birthday this week.

And I’m not really a “please buy me things” person. But I AM a “let me give YOU things to celebrate” person.

So here are your birthday gifts from me:

Gift #1: The 70-Question Framework The exact questions I asked in those 70 conversations that helped me go from “no clear direction” to a $114K business model. How to spot patterns, validate problems worth solving, and find your million-dollar insight hiding in plain sight.

Gift #2: From Survival Mode to $114K – The 90-Day Revenue Roadmap My actual playbook from August to November. Month 1: Validation. Month 2: Proof of concept. Month 3: All in. What I did each week, what worked, what I’d do differently, and the exact checklist for each phase so you can follow the same path.

Gift #3: Q1 Revenue Breakdown – Where $114K Actually Came From The transparent breakdown nobody shows you. Talent agency commissions (60%), accelerator cohorts (25%), personal brand partnerships (10%), and subscriptions (remainder). Plus how each revenue stream serves a different purpose and why diversification matters more than you think.

Download all three here: FREE Guides!!

Because honestly? The best birthday gift I could ask for is watching more creators win.

So let’s make that happen 💕

If You’re Scared Right Now, Read This 🌟

I know some of you are in the place I was in August.

Scared. Uncertain. Wondering if you can actually pull this off.

Maybe you just got laid off. Maybe you’re thinking about going full-time creator but terrified to leave stability. Maybe you’re already creating but not making enough to justify it yet.

Let me tell you what I learned:

The fear doesn’t go away. You just get better at doing things scared.

In August, I was terrified AND broke.

In November, I was terrified AND launching a cohort.

In January, I was terrified AND going all in.

In March, I was terrified AND closing a $114K quarter.

The terror is part of it. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re doing something that matters.

So if you’re scared right now, good. Use it.

Let that fear fuel you to:

• Have the conversations you’ve been putting off

• Build the thing you’ve been planning

• Pitch the brand you’ve been stalking

• Raise your rates to what you’re actually worth

• Go all in on the version of your life you actually want

If I can figure this out, you can too.

I’m not special. I’m not lucky. I’m not more talented or connected or “naturally good at this.”

I’m just someone who refused to let fear win.

And I’m betting you’re that person too 🔥

What Happens Next 💸

The mission stays the same: help creators build sustainable, profitable businesses without burning out or selling out.

Learn more and apply here: https://citrinecreators.co/creator-accelerator

Because here’s what I know for sure:

You don’t need more followers to make more money.

You need better strategy. Better positioning. Better systems.

That’s exactly what we build together 💕

The Real Real Talk 💬

That $114K? It’s not the goal. It’s proof of concept.

Proof that you can go from laid off and terrified to profitable and thriving in 90 days.

Proof that when you solve a real problem for real people, they’ll pay you for it.

Proof that betting on yourself isn’t reckless. It’s the smartest investment you’ll ever make.

So whatever you’re scared of right now... I see you. I’ve been you. Hell, some days I still AM you.

But I’m also proof that you can do the scary thing and come out the other side stronger.

Every single dollar was earned. Every single win was fought for. Every single moment of doubt was worth it.

And if you’re reading this thinking “maybe I can actually do this...”

Yeah babe. You absolutely can 🌟

See you next week,

Melissa 😘

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P.S. If this hit you in the feelings, forward it to another creator who needs to hear it. We rise together 💕

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Before we dive in: This newsletter is brought to you by Rebrandly - the link management platform I use to track every click, prove ROI to brand partners, and build the performance case studies that help me close premium deals. More on how I use it below, but if you’re serious about turning your LinkedIn presence into actual revenue, this is the infrastructure piece nobody talks about. Check them out here.

So LinkedIn tells me my last post got 47,000 impressions.

Cool.

Wanna know how many people actually clicked the link in my post?

That’s a 0.66% click-through rate.

And out of those 312 clicks? Only 89 signed up for my newsletter. Only 23 booked a call. Only 4 became paying clients.

But here’s what’s wild: When I pitch brands, they don’t ask about my 47K impressions. They ask “how many people actually took action?”

And that’s the number most creators can’t answer.

Because LinkedIn analytics are designed to make you feel good about your content. Not to help you run a business.

Let me show you where the platform is lying to you (and what to track instead if you actually want to make money).

I’ve created this for YOU 💛

In this PDF guide I teach you which LinkedIn metrics actually matter and how to track them: Get It Here for FREE.

The 3 LinkedIn Metrics That Are Not Really Telling The Entire Truth:

1. Impressions LinkedIn counts an impression if your post showed up in someone’s feed for 0.3 seconds while they scrolled past it.

Brands don’t pay for “showed up in a feed.”

They pay for “got someone to stop, click, and convert.”

2. Engagement rate LinkedIn’s engagement rate = (reactions + comments + shares) / impressions

Notice what’s missing? Clicks.

You can have a 10% engagement rate and zero clicks. Which means zero traffic. Which means zero conversions. Which means zero ROI for a brand partner.

3. Follower count I’ve seen creators with 100K followers get worse partnership results than creators with 8K followers.

Why? Because follower count doesn’t tell you:

• How many are active

• How many are in the target audience

• How many actually click through to offers

Brands are getting smarter. They’re asking for link click data, conversion rates, and off-platform behavior.

If you can’t show them that data, you’re leaving money on the table.

What Brands Actually Want to See:

I’ve closed some big partnership deals in the last 18 months. And every single negotiation came down to one thing: Proof that my audience takes action.

Here’s the data I show in every partnership pitch:

✨ Link click-through rates by content type

• My carousels average

• My text posts average

• My videos average

✨ Conversion rates by traffic source

• LinkedIn → newsletter

• LinkedIn → sales page

• LinkedIn → partner offer

✨ Audience behavior patterns

• When do most of the clicks happen? In the first 3 hours, 6 hours, 10 hours?

This is the data that makes brands say “yes” at premium rates.

But here’s the problem: LinkedIn doesn’t give you any of this.

How I Actually Track What Matters (The Infrastructure Brands Respect)

Okay so if LinkedIn analytics are useless for partnership conversations, how do you get the real data?

You need to track off-platform behavior.

Here’s my actual system:

Step 1: Every link I share gets a unique tracking URL

• Newsletter signup links

• Partnership landing pages

• Lead magnets

• Booking calendars

• Affiliate offers

I don’t use generic short links anymore (bit.ly makes you look like a hobbyist tbh).

I use custom branded links through Rebrandly because:

• They look professional in posts (go.melissagaglione.com vs bit.ly/3x7kQ2m 👀)

• I can track every click by campaign, platform, and time period

• I can edit the destination URL without breaking the link (huge when you’re split-testing landing pages)

• I get click data that LinkedIn will never show me

  

Step 2: I organize every link by campaign type

I tag all my links so I can see performance patterns:

• Brand partnership content

• Newsletter growth content

• Lead gen content

• Affiliate content

This lets me tell a brand: “Here’s how my last 3 partnership posts performed compared to my organic content. Here’s the CTR. Here’s the conversion rate. Here’s why your offer is a fit.”

Step 3: I build performance case studies

After every brand partnership, I create a 1-page performance summary:

• Total impressions (from LinkedIn)

• Total link clicks (from my tracking)

• Conversion rate

• Cost per acquisition

• Audience sentiment (based on comments)

I send this to the brand. And then I use it in my next pitch to a different brand.

This is how you prove ROI. This is how you raise your rates. This is how you go from “influencer” to “strategic partner.”

Share Monetized with Melissa

The Shift That Changed Everything for Me ✨

I used to think my job was to create great content.

And yeah, that matters.

But the creators making real money? They’re not just creating content. They’re running data-informed creator businesses.

They know:

• Which content types drive clicks (not just likes)

• Which partnerships convert (not just align)

• Which platforms send quality traffic (not just volume)

And they can prove it with numbers.

When you show up to a brand conversation with a performance deck that includes click-through rates, conversion data, and audience behavior patterns? You’re not competing with other creators anymore.

You’re positioning yourself as a marketing channel with measurable ROI.

That’s when brands stop negotiating rates and start asking “how do we lock you in for a retainer?”

Here’s What to Do Right Now ✨

If you’re serious about landing brand partnerships (or raising your rates on current partnerships), you need to start tracking off-platform behavior today.

Here’s your action plan:

1. Audit your current tracking setup

• Are you using trackable links in every post?

• Can you see click data by campaign?

• Do you know your conversion rates?

2. Set up professional link infrastructure

• Get a custom domain for your links (I use go.melissagaglione.com)

• Organize your links by campaign type so you can spot patterns

• Start building a historical performance database

3. Create your first performance case study

• Pick your last partnership post (or high-performing organic post)

• Pull the click data and conversion data

• Build a 1-page summary showing the full funnel

This is the difference between “I got 10K likes” and “I drove 247 qualified clicks with a 12% conversion rate.”

Brands pay for the second one.

Want a head start? I’m using Rebrandly to manage all my links, track campaign performance, and build the case studies that help me close premium partnerships. They’ve got a free plan to get started, and it’s the same infrastructure powering my 6-figure creator business. (Seriously, this is the behind-the-scenes tool nobody talks about but everyone needs.)

Stop trusting LinkedIn’s vanity metrics. Start tracking what actually makes you money.

Subscribe now

Talk soon, Melissa ✨

P.S. If you landed a brand deal but have no idea how to track its performance, reply to this email. Let’s fix that before your next pitch.

Okay so can we talk about something nobody wants to admit?

You’re probably undercharging. Like by a LOT.

And before you’re like “Melissa I don’t even charge yet so this doesn’t apply to me”…oh babe, this ESPECIALLY applies to you.

Because here’s what I’ve learned after working with hundreds of creators:

The pricing problem isn’t actually a pricing problem. It’s an identity problem✨

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Let me explain what I mean because once you see this, you’ll never look at a rate card the same way again.

The Moment Everything Broke for Me 💔

I’ll never forget the first time a brand asked me: “What are your rates?”

I literally froze.

My brain went: “$500? No that’s too much. $200? That feels insulting to them. $1000? WHO AM I TO CHARGE THAT MUCH.”

So you know what I said?

“Oh I’m flexible! What’s your budget?”

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

That one sentence cost me probably $3K on that deal alone.

Because they came back with $300. And I took it. And I felt grateful.

GRATEFUL. For $300. To create content that would live on their page forever, reach thousands of people, and make them look good.

I wasn’t just undercharging. I was training them to undervalue me.

And here’s the brutal truth: every time you undercharge, you make it harder for the next creator.

When you accept $200 for a carousel that should cost $800, brands start to believe $200 is the market rate. And then the creator after you has to fight that expectation.

We’re doing this to ourselves babe😭

But Here’s the Thing About Raising Your Rates...

You’re going to start attracting better opportunities. But you’re also going to start seeing the red flags you used to ignore.

When you were desperate for any deal at any price, you said yes to everything. “Great exposure”? Sure! “What’s your budget?” Cool! “Can we start small and see how it goes?” Absolutely!

Now that you know your worth? Those phrases hit different.

So before you go into your next partnership conversation, you need to know what you’re actually hearing when brands try to lowball you. Because they will. And they’ll make it sound reasonable. Even generous.

Here’s your decoder:

Why Smart People Undercharge (It’s Not What You Think)

Most people think they undercharge because they don’t know the “right” number.

That’s not it.

You undercharge because you haven’t made the identity shift yet.

Here’s what I mean 👇

When I was posting on LinkedIn while working full-time in sales, I saw myself as:

• An employee who posts sometimes

• Someone with opinions who shares them

• A person building in public

I did NOT see myself as:

• A media channel

• A business asset

• Someone brands pay to access an audience

That shift? That’s everything.

Because once you see yourself as a media channel, $500 for a post isn’t expensive. It’s a steal.

A billboard costs $2K-10K per month. A podcast sponsorship costs $5K-50K. A single Instagram story ad costs $500-3K depending on reach.

You have:

• An engaged audience that trusts you

• Expertise in a specific niche

• The ability to create content that converts

• Direct access to decision-makers

And you’re charging... $200? 🥴

Babe. No.

The Real Cost of Undercharging (It’s Not Just Money)

When you charge too little, here’s what actually happens:

You attract the wrong clients

Cheap clients are the WORST clients. They want everything. They change scope mid-project. They question every deliverable. They ghost you after posting.

Premium clients? They respect timelines. They trust your expertise. They pay on time. They come back.

I learned this when I raised my rates by 3x overnight. Lost some inquiries. Gained clients who actually valued my work.

Best trade I ever made 💅

You burn out faster

When you’re undercharging, you need MORE deals to hit your income goals. More deals = more pitching, more revisions, more client management, more everything.

You end up working 60-hour weeks to make what you could’ve made in 20 if you’d just charged properly.

Your time has a cost. Factor that in.

You damage your positioning

Here’s something wild: people judge quality by price.

When I charged $500/post, brands saw me as a mid-tier creator. When I charged $2500/post (for the exact same work), brands saw me as a premium partner.

Same content. Same audience size. Different perception.

Pricing isn’t just about covering costs. It’s about signaling value.

If you price yourself like everyone else, you’ll be compared to everyone else. If you price yourself as premium, you get compared to premium.

Choose your comparison group wisely✨

The Framework I Use Now (Steal This)

Okay so here’s how I actually price partnership content now:

Base rate by follower count:

• 1K-5K followers: $300-500 per post

• 5K-20K followers: $500-2,500 per post

• 20K-50K followers: $2,500-4,000 per post

• 50K+ followers: $4,000+ per post

This is just a reference point. You may charge more or less depending on the situation; the goal is simply to know what others are charging so you can price confidently and avoid underselling yourself💕

Then I add multipliers for:

• Video content: 3-5x base (video = higher trust = higher value)

• Usage rights beyond 90 days: 2-3x the base rate

• Exclusivity clauses: 50-100% premium

• Multiple deliverables in one package: bundle pricing (always higher than à la carte)

• Expedited timelines: 25-50% rush fee

So a single LinkedIn video post with 6-month usage rights at 25K followers?

Video Base rate: ~$3,000
Usage rights: ×3

That’s $9,000

And I charge it. And brands pay it. Because the math makes sense for them.

The Mindset Shift You Need Right Now 🔥

Stop thinking: “What’s the least I can charge and still get the deal?”

Start thinking: “What’s the value I’m creating for this brand?”

If your post generates:

• 50K impressions

• 500 meaningful engagements

• 20 inbound leads

• 3 closed deals

And those 3 deals are worth $30K to the brand...

You charging $2,500 is a STEAL for them.

Your pricing should reflect the outcome you create, not just the time you spend.

Time-based pricing is for freelancers. Value-based pricing is for partners.

Be a partner 💕

What to Do Right Now

If you’re currently undercharging (and you probably are):

Option 1: Raise your rates for NEW clients

Grandfather existing clients at old rates if you want. But every new inquiry gets the new number.

Option 2: Add premium tiers

Keep your base tier. Add a premium tier at 3x the price with extras (usage rights, exclusivity, video, etc).

Let clients choose. You’ll be surprised how many pick premium.

Option 3: Just rip the band-aid

Email every past client: “As of [date], my rates are updating to reflect current market value and demand.”

Scary? Yes. Necessary? Also yes.

You’ll lose some people. That’s fine. They were gonna leave eventually anyway. The ones who stay? Those are your real clients.

Need the Exact Words? I Got You 💬

Look, knowing you should charge more and actually SAYING the number out loud are two different things.

So I made you something: The Rate Negotiation Script, a free guide with word-for-word scripts for:

• Responding when a brand asks “what are your rates?”

• Pushing back on lowball offers without burning the relationship

• Negotiating usage rights, exclusivity, and rush fees

• Handling “we don’t have budget for that” objections

It’s the exact language I use in real partnership conversations.

Download it here: The Rate Negotiation Script FREE Guide

The Truth Nobody Wants to Hear

You’re not going to “build up” to premium pricing.

You don’t get there by slowly increasing $50 at a time until one day you’re charging what you’re worth.

You get there by deciding you’re worth it NOW and adjusting everything else accordingly.

I didn’t wait until I had 100K followers to charge premium rates.

I charged premium rates and THEN grew to 100K.

Because premium pricing forced me to show up as premium. Better content. Better client experience. Better positioning.

You rise to the level of your pricing, not the other way around.

The Real Real Talk 💕

I know this is scary.

I know you’re thinking: “But Melissa, I don’t have proof yet. I don’t have a big audience. I don’t have fancy testimonials.”

Cool. Neither did I when I started charging premium.

Your proof is that you showed up. You built something. You have expertise people need.

That’s enough.

Don’t wait for permission to charge what you’re worth.

Nobody’s coming to tell you “okay NOW you can charge more.”

You just decide. And then you do it.

And yeah, some people will say no. Some people will ghost. Some people will tell you you’re “too expensive.”

Let them.

Those aren’t your people anyway🌟

Your people will see the value. They’ll pay happily. They’ll come back. They’ll refer others.

That’s the business you actually want to build.

So go update that rate card babe.

Add a zero. Delete the “I’m flexible” language. Send it with confidence.

You’re not charging for your time. You’re charging for years of experience, a trusted audience, and tangible business results.

Price like it.

See you next week, Melissa 😘

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Okay I need to tell you about the wildest month of my life.

I got laid off. And I was genuinely, truly, deeply... HAPPY about it. 😅

I know that sounds crazy. Let me explain.

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The backstory no one talks about

So I had been poached by another company. Seemed like a great opportunity at the time.

It was not. It was a TERRIBLE experience. Like genuinely awful.

So when the layoff came? I wasn’t devastated. I wasn’t panicking. I was like... oh thank GOD 🙏

I felt relieved. I felt FREE.

And the very next day, I made a decision that would change everything:

I was going to make $30K in 30 days to prove (to myself and everyone else) that I didn’t need a corporate job anymore.

Want to get actionable tips to start earning money FAST? I’ve created this for YOU 💛

: FREE Guide: The First 5K Playbook

The post that broke LinkedIn 📱

I posted about being happy about the layoff.

Not sad. Not “grateful for the journey.” Not “excited for what’s next” corporate speak.

Just... happy. Relieved. Free.

It went MEGA-VIRAL. Like actually insane numbers.

Here’s what people don’t understand about that moment: I wasn’t being performative. I wasn’t trying to be edgy or get engagement.

I was genuinely relieved. And people FELT that. Authenticity hits different ✨

My DMs exploded. People were reaching out left and right. Some said “same, I wish I could feel that way.” Others said “teach me how you built this.”

The sprint (aka the most chaotic 30 days ever) 🏃‍♀️

I sold EVERYTHING.

Eight different offerings. Courses. Coaching. Consulting. Templates. Whatever I had, I put it out there.

I was in full send mode. Posting every day. Hopping on calls. Closing deals. Barely sleeping tbh.

Final number: $34K in 30 days.

I beat my own goal by $4K🥹

But here’s the thing: the money wasn’t even the real win. The real insight came from the conversations.

70 conversations. One pattern. 💡

Over the next 2 months, I talked to 70 people.

Prospects. Creators. Random people who reached out after the viral post. Anyone who wanted to chat.

And a pattern emerged. Like, a VERY clear pattern.

Everyone kept asking the same question:

“How do I get paid for my posts?”

Not “how do I grow my audience.” Not “how do I go viral.” Not “how do I get more followers.”

How do I actually MONETIZE?

That was the question nobody was answering well. That was the gap.

So I decided: That’s the question I’m going to solve.

That’s why Citrine exists💛

How I built the business model

The strategy:

• Creator Accelerator= In 6 weeks, you’ll learn how to build a brand that attracts partnerships.

• Established Creator Track = We fast-track your certification and start handling the business side immediately.

And aligned incentives.

That’s the whole game.

If my creators don’t win, I don’t win. That keeps me motivated to actually help them succeed, not just sell them something 💅

Choose Your Path to Citrine

What this whole experiment actually taught me

The $34K wasn’t really about the money.

It was about PROOF.

Proof that I had built something real over the years. That the relationships I’d nurtured, sometimes for YEARS without any “payoff”, would show up when I actually needed them.

That my content had created trust I could convert.

That I could bet on myself and win.

All those posts that got 47 likes? They mattered. All those DMs I sent with no pitch? They mattered. All those comments on other people’s content? They mattered.

Everything compounds. Even when it doesn’t feel like it 🌱

The real talk for you 💕

If you’re still employed and thinking about going independent someday: START BUILDING NOW.

Don’t wait until you “have to.”

Post. Even when it feels weird. Connect. Even when no one responds. Nurture relationships. Even when there’s no immediate ROI. Create things people want to buy. Even if you sell them while still employed.

Build the plane while you’re still on stable ground.

Because when your moment comes… when you get laid off, or you’re ready to quit, or an opportunity appears, you’ll be READY.

You won’t be starting from zero. You’ll be activating everything you already built.

That’s the game. That’s how you win ✨

See you next week, Melissa 😘

P.S. That $30K goal I set the day after getting laid off? I genuinely didn’t know if I could hit it. I just decided to try. Sometimes the bold move is just... deciding. And then figuring it out as you go. You can do that too. 💛

Hey star!

Okay so I’ve never actually told this whole story in one place before.

People ask me all the time: “Melissa, how did you figure out LinkedIn? How did you get here?”

And honestly? It wasn’t some master plan. It was a series of messy pivots, scary moments, and a LOT of just figuring it out as I went.

So grab your coffee (or wine, no judgment 🍷) because I’m about to walk you through the entire journey.

Here’s something you may want to steal…

My “6 LinkedIn Lessons That Took Me From $9/hr To Head Of Sales At A $4B Company” FREE guide can be found here: https://citrinecreators.co/resources

Now that you’re all set, let’s gooo ✨

Chapter 1: The $9/Hour Starting Point

Picture this: I’m a news reporter in Amarillo, Texas making NINE DOLLARS AN HOUR.

Nine. Dollars. An hour. 💀

I was miserable. I wanted out. I wanted Tampa specifically (the vibes, you know?)

So I did what felt logical at the time: I got on LinkedIn and started hunting for news directors. Recorded a video intro for a station in Sarasota. Connected with a Fox Tampa director. Put myself out there.

None of it worked out.

But here’s what I learned: LinkedIn gets you in front of people.

That one lesson? It would literally change everything🔥

Chapter 2: The Call Center Era (glamorous, I know)

I moved to Tampa anyway because I’m stubborn like that lol.

Took a $20/hour call center job. Not glamorous AT ALL. But hey, it was double what I was making!

Then I found an event producer role at IQPC Exchange through LinkedIn. In my interview I said: “I cold call people who trust me with their Social Security numbers.”

They looked at me and said: “You’re going into sales.”

And just like that... I was in sales😂

At IQPC, we were doing things SO old school. Printed ZoomInfo lists. Manual dialing. Copy-paste emails. It was painful.

My stepdad told me: “Get on LinkedIn and actually USE it.”

So I did. Started prospecting there. Started closing Fortune 500 C-suite executives for events.

And then... COVID hit😳

Chapter 3: Survival Mode Activated

I saw an email about a virus spreading in China. I KNEW the event industry was about to collapse. I was only 3 months into this job.

My thought: “I need to outsell literally everyone or I’m getting fired.”

So I went into full survival mode 👇

Went remote. Found a $20 email sequencer tool. Started “multithreading”: LinkedIn messages PLUS email sequences running at the same time.

I posted on LinkedIn constantly. Made graphics. Created LinkedIn groups and events. Slid into DMs asking: “Who else should be invited?”

I was HUSTLING.

The company assigned everyone to Groups A, B, and C. I called my friend Jully immediately: “We’re in Group B. Group C is basically the chopping block. Group A is managers and top closers. We NEED to get to Group A.”

Layoffs came. Group C? Eliminated. Group B got called in.

Only Jully and I kept our jobs. We actually got swapped for some Group A people.

We survived because of LinkedIn activity. Period. That taught me something I’ll never forget.

Chapter 4: The Video That Changed Everything 🎥

A college friend posted on LinkedIn about hiring SDRs. I messaged him. Got hired.

All of a sudden... I’m in tech sales???

Plot twist: My first month as an SDR? I was a LOSER. Like genuinely terrible. Not booking meetings. Struggling.

Then I heard about a teammate using voice notes for outreach. And I thought: “Wait. I was literally a news reporter. I should be making VIDEO.”

So I made a video for the COO of King’s Furniture. Full newscast style because that’s what I knew! Started with a problem. Mentioned my grandmother loves their furniture (true story). Pitched LivePerson messaging bots for their clunky website.

Within 30 minutes: meeting booked. ✨

THIRTY MINUTES.

Here’s what I did:

Chapter 5: The Climb (Cue Miley Cyrus 🎵)

An enterprise AE named Netta Goldberg took me under her wing. She pulled me aside and said: “You’re special. Let’s make a shit ton of money.”

I mean... YES MA’AM🙌

She pushed me toward big accounts. I built a whole crypto vertical. Started working enterprise deals.

I made a course on video prospecting because people kept asking how I did it. At 7K followers, I made $5K in 2 months just from LinkedIn posts. No ads. No fancy funnel. Just posting.

A company approached me to buy the rights to my course. I said no because I knew I could make more independently.

(Always trust your gut on these things!!)

I got promoted to enterprise AE. Then... laid off. 😅

But here’s the thing…

…I had spoken at Sales Success Summit, which I found through LinkedIn. I met someone from DEEL there.

After the layoff, I sent a cold video to DEEL’s sales director. Within 1 HOUR: interview scheduled. Within 5 DAYS: hired as Founding Mid-Market AE.

I was the first person in the US to sell a product that’s now worth $4 billion.

I went from SDR to Head of Sales in 3-4 years.

Like WHAT 🤯

Chapter 6: What Every Chapter Taught Me

Okay so looking back, every single chapter taught me something different about how LinkedIn actually works:

✨ It gets you in front of people: Even when my early outreach “failed,” I was building the muscle

✨ Activity keeps you employed when others get cut: Jully and I survived layoffs because we were VISIBLE

✨ Video cuts through noise: Everyone’s scared of it, which is exactly why it works

✨ Content builds trust before you ever pitch: By the time I DM someone, they already feel like they know me

✨ Relationships from one chapter pay off in the next: The DEEL connection came from a speaking gig I got through LinkedIn posting

The Real Talk 💕

I didn’t have a master plan, besties.

I wasn’t strategic about “building a personal brand” or “optimizing my content pillars” or whatever.

I just kept showing up. Kept posting. Kept reaching out. Kept saying yes to scary things.

LinkedIn isn’t magic. It’s a tool.

But if you use it consistently (even when it feels like nothing is happening) doors open that you didn’t even know existed.

That $9/hour news reporter had NO idea she’d be running a creator business, hosting yacht events, and teaching thousands of people how to monetize their LinkedIn presence.

But she kept posting anyway🥹

So wherever you’re starting from? It’s not too late. It’s not too small. It’s not too weird.

Just start. Keep going. Trust the compound effect.

Your future self will thank you.

See you next week, Melissa 😘

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Okay star, let’s talk about something that’s been driving me crazy.

Every week someone DMs me like: “Melissa, the algorithm is broken. My reach is dead. LinkedIn hates me now.”

And every time I’m like... no, babe. The algorithm isn’t broken.

You’re just still playing the 2023 game in 2026. And that game? It’s over.

I see it so often that I turned it into two FREE PDFs: one on the content mistakes that quietly cap reach, and one on the growth traps that stall progress even when you’re consistent.

Get them here 👉https://citrinecreators.co/resources

Let me explain what’s actually happening because once you get this, everything changes✨

LinkedIn isn’t ranking your posts anymore. It’s ranking YOU!

Read that again.

The algorithm is now trying to answer one question:

“Is this person actually credible on this topic for this audience?”

That’s it. That’s the whole game now.

This is why two creators can post the same exact format and get wildly different results. One person’s carousel flops. Another person’s identical carousel gets 500K impressions.

The difference isn’t the content. It’s the person behind it.

You’re not being rewarded for activity anymore. You’re being rewarded for consistency of expertise.

Here’s what LinkedIn is actually looking at in 2026:

What your profile says you’re good at. What topics you post about repeatedly. How people interact with your content. Whether conversations continue after the post. Whether people come back to you over time.

LinkedIn’s latest update (internally they’re calling it 360 Brew) now reads your headline, about section, and experience to verify your authority BEFORE distributing your posts.

If your content doesn’t match what your profile claims? LinkedIn limits your reach.

Think about it: A healthcare professional randomly posting about crypto? The algorithm is like “...girl, what? This doesn’t match. I’m not showing this to people.”

Your profile and your content need to tell the same story. Period 💅

The new game is topic ownership, not virality

I know everyone wants to go viral. Trust me, I get it. When my layoff post went mega-viral, it felt amazing.

But here’s what I’ve learned: Virality is unpredictable. Topic ownership is not.

The accounts winning right now do one thing extremely well: they train both humans AND the algorithm to associate them with a small number of ideas.

Not five topics. Not ten. Two or three.

I talk about brand partnerships, LinkedIn strategy, and creator monetization. That’s my lane. I don’t randomly post about fitness or politics or whatever’s trending. I stay focused.

When you do this consistently:

Your posts travel further without crazy spikes. Old posts resurface weeks later (this happens to me ALL the time now). New audiences find you automatically.

Reach feels slower but lasts way longer. That’s the trade-off. And honestly? It’s so worth it.

Why video matters and why most people still get it wrong 🎥

LinkedIn isn’t pushing video because it’s trendy.

Video resolves uncertainty faster than text.

In 30 seconds of video, someone can figure out: Do I trust this person? Do they actually know their stuff? Do I want to hear more?

Text builds authority. Video confirms it.

This is why I’ve been saying forever that video commands 3-5x higher rates for brand deals. Brands know video builds trust faster. The algorithm knows it too.

I learned this back when I was an SDR. I was a news reporter before sales so while everyone else was scared of video, I leaned ALL the way in. Made a newscast-style video for the COO of King’s Furniture. Meeting booked in 30 minutes.

That edge changed my entire career.

Most people avoid video because it’s harder. That’s exactly why it pays more. That’s exactly why it works😉

What actually performs on LinkedIn video right now:

Forget fancy production. Think clarity delivery.

Winning video in 2026:

• 2-4 minutes (not 30 seconds, not 10 minutes)

• Starts with a specific insight, NOT “hey guys welcome back”

• Explains ONE idea clearly

• Ends with a perspective shift or action step

No fancy edits needed. No virality tricks.

The algorithm watches retention and replays, not production quality. Your iPhone is fine. Your ring light is fine. Just be clear and be YOU.

Here’s my simple framework if video feels scary:

Write a strong text post first. Find the core insight. Record yourself explaining that insight like you’re talking to your best friend. Post with a short caption.

You’re not creating extra content. You’re reinforcing the same idea in a higher-trust format. Easy ✨

Saves are the metric that matters now. Not likes.

Likes don’t mean much anymore tbh.

What matters is interaction depth:

• Comments that add real thought

• Replies that keep the conversation going

• Saves that signal “I need this later”

Every meaningful interaction tells LinkedIn: “This content is worth staying with.”

When someone bookmarks your post, LinkedIn interprets it as content worth resurfacing. Posts that get saved can show up in feeds for WEEKS after you publish.

So create content people want to reference later. Frameworks. Checklists. Practical guides. The stuff worth bookmarking.

If your post contains information worth saving, you’ve created something the algorithm wants to push📌

The creators winning right now:

• Don’t chase formats: they master ideas

• Don’t post daily: they post deliberately

• Don’t optimize for reach: they optimize for recall

People don’t remember your best post. They remember what you consistently help them understand.

What do people associate YOU with? If you can’t answer that in one sentence, that’s your problem.

💫Remember:

LinkedIn is becoming less forgiving AND more rewarding at the same time.

Less forgiving of:

• Topic chaos

• Shallow takes

• Performative posting

More rewarding of:

• Clear expertise

• Repeated insights

• Trust built over time

If your content clearly signals expertise, your profile reinforces it, and your engagement deepens it, well… the algorithm does the heavy lifting for you.

Stop asking how to beat LinkedIn.

Build something worth amplifying and let it work FOR you.

Now go fix your profile and stay in your lane 😘

See you next week, Melissa.

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Hey Stars! ⭐

Can we have a real talk for a sec?

I see so many creators posting consistently, trying all the “right” tactics, and still getting crickets.

And they always blame the same things:

“My hook wasn’t strong enough.” “The algorithm didn’t pick it up.” “I posted at the wrong time.”

I used to think this too. Like maybe if I just found the perfect posting time or wrote a spicier hook, everything would click.

Turns out... that’s not the real problem.

Most posts fail BEFORE they ever hit publish.

Not because of execution. Because of misalignment ✨

Here’s what I mean:

When your content doesn’t match how you’re positioned, two things happen:

1. LinkedIn doesn’t know who to show it to

2. Your audience doesn’t know why to trust it

And your post just... floats. Into the void. Never to be seen again.

That gap between a solid idea and a clear position is exactly why I put together a super simple ✨ “Before You Hit Post” checklist ✨for my creators.

Not to help you create MORE content (please, we have enough content). But to make sure you don’t post something that quietly messes with your positioning.

✨ Want more FREE goodies? I put together this Downloadable Guide full of deeper prompts and strategies to help you plan your posts with intention 💖

And now, let’s break down the 4 quiet reasons content dies early 👇

Mistake 1: You’re Writing for Engagement, Not Belief🙈

Okay this one is SO common and I totally get why.

Engagement is easy to chase. Belief isn’t.

So people default to:

• Hot takes that get reactions

• Relatable pain that gets “omg same” comments

• Broad opinions everyone agrees with

And it works... kinda…

You get likes. You get comments. You feel good for a day.

But here’s the cost 👇

You get:

• Comments from peers (not prospects)

• Agreement without action

• Visibility without authority

People like the post. They don’t remember YOU.

Mistake 2: Sounding Smart Instead of Being Useful🤓

We all want to look credible.

• Over-explain everything

• Add fancy jargon

• Stack frameworks on frameworks

I’ve 100% done this. Written posts that made ME feel smart but made my audience feel confused.

Mistake 3: Posting Ideas You Don’t Actually Live😬

Oh this one. THIS ONE.

• “Consistency beats intensity”

• “Build in public”

• “Add value first”

They’re not wrong. They’re just... empty when you’re repeating someone else’s wisdom.

• Generic

• Forgettable

• Safe

I have a rule now: Before I write anything, I pause and ask myself, “Have I actually earned this take? Do I have receipts?”

Mistake 4: Not Being Clear Who the Post Is For🎯

This might be the biggest one tbh.

Write fewer posts. Make each one do more work.

Every strong post should:

1. Signal expertise

2. Build trust

3. Move the right person closer to action

If it doesn’t hit at least two of those? It’s noise. Don’t post it.

The algorithm doesn’t reward volume anymore. It rewards clarity + resonance✨

And honestly? That’s exactly what clients and brands respond to too. They don’t want to work with someone who posts a lot. They want to work with someone who clearly knows their stuff and speaks directly to the right audience.

Quality over quantity. Always.

Now go check your drafts folder and ask yourself: “Does this post actually align with how I want to be known?”

If not? Delete it babe. Your positioning will thank you😘

See you next time, Melissa.