Buy LinkedIn Connections

Invitations start arriving no sooner than 30 minutes after payment clears, then keep coming at the pace printed above, somewhere between 500 and 2,000 a day. Each one waits in My Network under Invitations, on the Received tab, with two buttons beside it: Accept and Ignore. LinkedIn's help centre also points to the Notifications tab, where pending invitations appear as well.

Only an accepted invitation becomes a connection. A pending one adds nothing to your total, an ignored one never will, and LinkedIn does not tell the sender when you ignore it. At the time of writing LinkedIn's own interface has no button that accepts everything at once, so an order of 1,000 means a thousand clicks, best spread across the days it takes to arrive.

Resist the browser extensions and scripts that promise to accept the whole queue in one go. LinkedIn prohibits software that automates activity on its site, and members who use it risk a restriction on their own account, which is a far bigger problem than a slow evening of clicking through invitations.

Up to 500, LinkedIn prints your exact connection count on your profile. After that it shows “500+” and stops, whether the real figure is 501 or 29,000. The running total is still there for you on the Connections page under My Network, but a visitor to your profile never sees it.

Below the line, then, the useful order is the one that carries you across it with a margin, both for invitations you decide not to accept and for the few accounts LinkedIn may remove later. Past 500 a bigger package changes a figure that visitors never see; better to hear that here than to pay for 2,000 connections nobody can count.

A second line sits at the far end. As things stand LinkedIn caps a member's connections at 30,000, and its help centre says that at the cap you can neither send nor accept invitations until you remove some, with Follow becoming the default button on your profile. Within a couple of thousand of it, order no more than the room you have left.

The service suits one situation well: a profile below 500 connections whose owner wants the count to read like an established one's. Outside that situation, these are the cases where we would talk you out of it, even though it means one order fewer for us.

You want a network you know

A connection is worth the person behind it: the introduction, the reference, the reply to a message. No order can supply that, and invitations to people you have worked with will serve you far better.

You are close to the cap

Within a few thousand of 30,000, an order can run out of room part-way, and at the cap LinkedIn stops you accepting anyone, including people you actually want in your network.

A recent restriction

If LinkedIn has limited your account or asked you to verify your identity in the last few weeks, hundreds of new connections from unfamiliar profiles is the last thing to add while it is watching.

A merge coming up

LinkedIn's self-merge moves connections across but leaves pending invitations behind, and it will not merge an account holding more than 30,000 connections. Finish the merge before ordering.

The two relationships are easy to confuse and behave quite differently. A connection is mutual and has to be agreed; a follower is one-way and needs nobody's permission. Because connections follow each other automatically, every invitation you accept also adds one to your follower figure, unless that account unfollows later.

The main thing connections change is the top of the profile: a count that reads “500+” rather than a few hundred. Once that is done, followers are the figure that keeps moving where visitors can see it, and they ask nothing of you at all.

A connection is a two-way door, and the accounts you accept come through it. LinkedIn itself advises accepting invitations only from people you know, because first-degree connections see whatever you have chosen to show your network. That advice applies here as much as anywhere, so look at these settings before the first invitation arrives.

Your email address

Settings & Privacy → Visibility → Who can see or download your email address. Set to 1st-degree connections, it lets every account you accept see it; Only visible to me closes that.

Connection visibility

In the same Visibility section. While it is on, your first-degree connections can browse your connections list, which would let the new accounts look through your real contacts. Switch it off before accepting.

Your feed

Connections follow each other, so their activity can surface in your feed. Unfollow any of them from the three-dot menu on a post: you stay connected, their updates stop, and LinkedIn does not tell them.

Your suggestions

People You May Know leans on shared connections, among other things, so for a while it may fill with profiles linked to the accounts you accepted. Suggestions you remove stay removed, up to the last 500, LinkedIn says.

Buying connections is against LinkedIn's rules, and there is no point pretending otherwise. The User Agreement bars fake profiles, the community policies bar inflating engagement by artificial means, and LinkedIn removes profiles it judges to be fake. When it removes one you had accepted, that connection simply disappears from your list, and no seller can promise it won't.

Connections that vanish inside the first 30 days get replaced on every tier: send support your order number and the missing ones are sent again. On this service a refill arrives exactly as the order did, as fresh invitations in My Network, so it is only complete once you have accepted those too.

The tier decides who is behind each invitation. High Quality sends them from real-looking profiles, VIP from profiles with photos, posts and activity, and Elite from established profiles with a history, with each step also moving the order further up the queue. Since accepted accounts sit in a list your contacts may be able to browse, and older profiles are removed least often, the upper tiers earn their place here.

The size that makes sense is the gap between where you are and 500, plus room for invitations you choose to ignore. These are our own suggestions, worked out from that gap; LinkedIn publishes nothing like them.

Under 150 connections

500. It takes you over the line even if you pass on a fair number of the invitations.

150 to 300 connections

400, or 300 if you sit near the top of this band and plan to accept nearly everything.

300 to 450 connections

250. Enough to clear 500 with a margin, without crowding your list with unfamiliar names.

Already past 500

Visitors will see no change, so we would point you to followers instead. The 750, 1,000 and 2,000 sizes move a total that only you, and any connections allowed to browse your list, can see.

Once the count reads “500+”, a visitor's next question is whether anyone pays attention to what you post.

• FollowersPast 500 the follower figure is the one that still moves in view, and nobody has to accept it.from $7.99
• LikesA bigger network above posts with no reactions looks unused; a modest order on your latest post evens that out.from $3.99

Something else? Write to support or read the help centre.