Welcome to New American Dream, our weekly email series where we learn about 3 tactics and 3 tools from Creators earning over $100,000 annually with under 100,000 followers.
Brenda Baran
Brenda Baran earns $120,000 annually with just 13,700 followers by selling LinkedIn profile makeovers, websites, and branding through her agency, My Digital Makeover.
Until last year, she was a global marketing manager at a fintech company in Cyprus. She quit after burning out, then started this business by accident with one LinkedIn post in September 2025.
This summer, she says she's earning 8x her old net salary. She has time for a morning swim, and she just put in an offer on a home for her mother, whom she has cared for for years.
Annual earnings per follower: $8.74
Audience Breakdown
Platform | Follower Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
13,733 | Her only platform. Posts 4-5 times a week. | |
Email list | Not disclosed | Built from lead magnets. Never emailed (see Tactic #3). |
Earnings Breakdown
Income Stream | Share of Income | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Websites and branding | ~60% | $3,500 up to $15,000-$20,000 for B2B tech clients. |
LinkedIn profile optimization | ~30% | Base package a bit over $1,850, plus add-ons. |
Brand ambassadorship | ~10% | One startup deal, now ending. |
LinkedIn coaching | Just launched | 3-week program or a single Power Hour. |
Three Tactics
The top 3 tactics Brenda uses to earn outsized income per follower:
Tactic #1: Offer free help in public and see who raises their hand
I wrote a post, completely randomly, offering to help three people with their profiles. And the post blew up overnight. I had 30 messages in my inbox.
Brenda was about to launch a content agency for fintech companies. Her free offer showed her where the demand was, and she enjoyed the work so much that she rebranded within a day.
How to use it:
Pick a problem you can fix with low effort that others find much more challenging.
Tie it to something happening now; Brenda's hook was layoffs and job seekers with weak profiles.
Cap it at three people. Every DM is a demand signal, and how people describe the problem becomes your sales copy.
Tactic #2: Build your profile like a website
You have the holy trinity, as I like to call it: the banner, the headline, and the profile photo, which act like the hero section of a website.
Posts send people to your profile. The profile's job is to turn that visit into a booked call or an email signup.
How to use it:
Hero section: in one glance, your banner, headline, and photo should say who you help and point people down the page.
Featured: Keep it to three items: a consultation link, a work sample, and one email capture, which she calls "something to deplatform people into their own lists."
Rotate Featured every few weeks so repeat visitors see something new.
If you have Premium, use the slideshow banner: one slide listing every service, then one slide per service, each pointing down the page.
Tactic #3: Use email collection to qualify leads
People that sign up for your newsletter are warmer leads than even people who reach out to inquire about your services on LinkedIn. They're people who you know have a problem that you can solve, and it's easier to tap into that audience.
Brenda has never sent her list a single email. She builds it anyway, because a download of a lead magnet tells her what problem someone has and indicates they are serious about solving it.
How to use it:
Write one short guide on one problem your paid work fixes, and gate it behind an email collector in your LinkedIn Featured section. (Bonus: If you write multiple guides for multiple problems, you’ll know exactly what problem your prospect has!)
Email prospects yourself, rather than sending a newsletter. Early on, ten real conversations beat grinding for 20-30 reactions a post.
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Three Tools
The three tools Brenda says she'd keep if she lost everything else:
Tool #1: LinkedIn
Her only platform and her whole sales engine. She posts short text with a photo 4-5 times a week, comments and starts conversations by hand, and removes AI commenters from her feed so the platform stays fun enough to show up daily.
I'm on LinkedIn every single day. I try to be there at least for half an hour on a busy day when I have a lot of client work. I start conversations with people, and I act like a human.
Tool #2: Canva
She designs in Figma but delivers in Canva, so clients can edit their own banners and templates after the project ends.
A lot of my clients also ask for editables, so it's much easier for them to use Canva than to give them editable access in Figma.
Tool #3: Cursor
Websites are now 60-70% of her service revenue, and she vibe codes many of them in Cursor, an AI code editor. Her fiancé, a principal full stack developer, reviews the code before launch. An AI coding tool plus a qualified reviewer can get you into higher-priced work without being a developer.
I am practically vibe coding, and then before I deploy any project, I'll have him proofread my code.
Also in her stack: Claude, Figma, Squarespace, and Google Workspace.
Learn More
You can find Brenda Baran and her work here:
LinkedIn: Brenda Baran
Website: My Digital Makeover
Email: [email protected]
Thanks for reading!