LinkedIn announced four new product launches on May 12, 2026, headlined by Advice Sessions, a tool that lets members charge for one-on-one video consultations directly from their LinkedIn profile. The company cited internal data showing that founder growth in the United States grew roughly 70 percent year over year, with 69 percent of users saying it has never been easier to start a company.
For freelancers, consultants, and solopreneurs, the most important change is that LinkedIn now handles booking, payment, and video calls inside a single platform. That removes the Calendly-plus-Stripe-plus-Zoom stack that has been standard for paid consulting workflows since 2020.
What Advice Sessions Actually Do
Advice Sessions allow Premium Business subscribers in the United States to set an hourly rate, accept bookings from their public profiles, process payments, and host video calls without leaving LinkedIn. The feature began rolling out in May 2026 and will extend to higher-tier Premium plans in subsequent waves.
LinkedIn also announced three companion tools the same day. Competitor Analytics now tracks up to nine competitors under Premium Company Page, Premium All-in-One added mobile post boosting and prospect post surfacing, and Hiring Pro picked up a plain-language chat interface for applicant evaluation, along with team-based shortlisting.
Why This Matters For Self-Employed Consultants
The single biggest friction in selling paid expertise has been the off-platform handoff. A prospect who finds a consultant on LinkedIn has historically needed to click out to a scheduling page, then a separate payment processor, then a video conferencing link, with conversion dropping at each step.
Advice Sessions collapse all three steps into the discovery surface. Consultants who already have a strong LinkedIn following and consistent inbound profile traffic will be able to convert that audience without rebuilding workflows in third-party tools, and LinkedIn’s built-in identity verification reduces the no-show and fraud risks that plague open scheduling links.
What Self-Employed Pros Should Do Next
The first move is to enable Advice Sessions within Premium Business and set an hourly rate that reflects current positioning in the consulting market. LinkedIn has not published a fee structure for the payment processing, so testing the first few bookings at a discounted rate is the safest way to learn the platform mechanics before pricing at full retail.
The second move is auditing the LinkedIn profile to make sure the headline, banner, and About section signal a clear expertise area that buyers will pay to access. Self-employed pros who also rely on freelance marketplaces and AI tools should compare LinkedIn’s take rate with those of Upwork, Contra, and Toptal before consolidating client work on a single platform.
What To Watch Next
The first signal worth tracking is whether LinkedIn discloses a take-rate on Advice Session payments, which it has not done publicly yet. Standard creator-economy marketplaces charge between 10 and 20 percent, and the LinkedIn rate will determine whether the feature is competitive with Stripe-plus-Calendly stacks that charge closer to 3 percent.
The second signal is the rollout pace for higher-tier Premium plans and international markets. If Premium Career and free-tier members get access in 2026, the feature will quickly reshape how independent professionals price and deliver consulting outside of LinkedIn-native workflows.
Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva: Unsplash
