LinkedIn Advice Sessions: Decide What One Paid Call Fixes Before You Switch It On

LinkedIn now lets some members sell paid 1:1 calls straight from their profile. It's called Advice Sessions, and it was part of the October 15 announcement that also brought back pinned comments and added the creator Dashboard.

Most coverage treated it as one item on a long list. It deserves its own look, because it changes what your profile is for. Until now, a LinkedIn profile sent people somewhere else to buy. With Advice Sessions, the profile can be the place they pay.

That sounds great. It also means a vague offer is now one tap away from a stranger's card.

What LinkedIn actually shipped

Here's what's confirmed by LinkedIn and its help pages:

• You can offer paid 1:1 consultations from your profile. LinkedIn handles the booking, the payment and the video call in one place.
• Right now it's for Business Premium subscribers in the US, with more markets "coming soon."
• Hosts set their own availability and their own rate. Payments run through Stripe, and you have to finish Stripe onboarding first.
• People who book also have to be US-based and verified, according to the Advice Sessions FAQ.
• LinkedIn says it won't take a cut of what you earn from sessions (Engadget).

SocialDay reported on October 20 that hosts can set a price of up to $500 and take bookings within a 30-day window. The same piece says beta users ran into people missing the button or not realizing the session was paid. Its read was that the feature removes the scheduling hassle but not the work of explaining what you're selling. That's worth remembering. The button being there doesn't mean anyone knows what it's for.

If you're in India or anywhere outside the US, you can't host yet. Honestly, that's useful. You get time to plan the offer before you can switch it on.

The refund rules are stricter than you'd guess

Read the FAQ before you set a price. A few lines matter a lot:

• Bookers get a refund if the host cancels, or if they cancel at least 24 hours before the start time.
• If the host cancels, it's the host's job to refund the booker.
• During the beta, a no-show doesn't trigger an automatic refund. Either side has to report an issue, and they have up to five days after the meeting to do it.

So a missed session isn't just awkward. It's a support ticket with your name on it. If your calendar is messy, fix that before you take money through it.

Decide what one session fixes

The hard part isn't the setup. It's the offer.

"Book a call with me" asks the buyer to work out what they're paying for. Most won't. A paid session sells when someone can read one line and think, "Yes, that's my problem."

LinkedIn's own FAQ lists the common uses: career moves, job search and interview prep, role or industry expertise, and feedback on someone's resume or positioning. Notice how narrow those are. Each one has a clear start and a clear end.

Before you turn anything on, write down:

1. The one question a session answers. Not your whole skill set. One question.
2. Who it's for. A job title, a stage, a situation.
3. What they leave with. A rewritten headline. A shortlist of three roles. A yes or no on a pricing plan.
4. What it isn't. If you don't do ongoing work through this, say so.

Here's a made-up example to show the difference. Say you write about B2B sales hiring. "Advice on sales careers" is too loose. "45 minutes to review your sales resume and LinkedIn headline before you apply for AE roles" is a session someone can picture. They know what to bring, and they know when it's done.

Your posts are the shop window now

If the profile is where people pay, your posts are why they show up there.

That changes how you should think about content. Posts that teach in public, one specific problem at a time, now point at something people can buy. If your last ten posts are all over the place, a visitor won't connect them to a paid session.

A simple check: could a stranger read your last five posts and guess what your Advice Session is about? If not, either the posts or the offer needs to get narrower.

Two small things help:

• Pin a comment that explains the session. Pinned comments are back, so use one on a post that's close to your offer. Say what the session covers and who it's for, in plain words.
• Put the offer in your About section. As those beta reports show, people may not understand the button on its own. A sentence that says "I run paid 45-minute resume reviews for sales candidates" does the explaining.

Pricing without guessing

Nobody can tell you the right price, and anyone who says they know is guessing. What you can do is price for the outcome, not the minutes.

Ask yourself what the buyer would pay to fix that one problem some other way. A paid resume review elsewhere? A day of their own time? That's your range. Start where you can deliver well every time, and raise it once your calendar fills.

Also count your real time. A 45-minute call often comes with prep before it and notes after it. If that's 90 minutes of your day, price for 90.

Keep a way out

Running everything through LinkedIn is convenient. It also means your bookings, payments and buyer history live on a platform you don't control, on a subscription you have to keep paying for.

You don't need to avoid the feature. Just keep your own list of who booked and what they needed, and stay in touch with good clients outside of LinkedIn too.

Where to start

If you're eligible, set up one session type, not five. Give it a narrow title, a clear outcome and a price you'd be happy to deliver ten times in a row. Then write posts that make that session the obvious next step.

If you're not eligible yet, write the one-line offer today and test it in your posts. When the feature reaches your market, you won't be starting from a blank box.