As we watch many of these startup dot coms grow, many wonder where's the revenue. Linkedin has a paid model to enable commercial contacts via the Linkedin network dubbed InMail.

The scant contact allowance for these accounts is no doubt an attempt to soften the blow of commercial solicitations for their service users. However, the value is weak for the marketer. At the Business level of $24.95 a month and just three messages, your per contact cost is over eighteen times the cost of a stamp. Conservatively that's ten times the cost of a direct mail piece. That can't be a good value, unless you're to believe somehow that a commercial solicitation via Linkedin is going to better received than a commercial solicitation through the USPS. Even at the $499.95 level, the per contact cost is nearly ten dollars. The search alerts and profile search allowance may have some value for companies, though it may be difficult to justify the price.