Data Scientist Profits from Viral Article

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

There's an online writer I read. His name is Evan Armstrong. He recently went full-time. We should probably feature him on the podcast at some point. But his newsletter or series of articles is called Napkin Math. And he monetized this business by selling subscriptions.

This is not an ad, by the way. I'm just a fan of Evan. I like his model a lot. And for the right person, it still works very well. It is a model of independent writing. And

so in today's story, you're going to hear another model of independent writing. It's all about a data scientist who is a bit earlier in this journey. All right. So when an article she publishes on Medium gets a lot of attention, she takes it as a sign to dig in. She then goes on to create an online community and series of courses resulting in a new source of monthly income. She's doing really well. Data scientist profits from viral article.

That's the story. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. And I'll bring you that story in just 30 seconds. Oh, and here is the real sponsor of this episode. You remember March 2020. We all do. Just as the coronavirus pandemic began to surge around

the world, Nicole Janeway-Bills began publishing articles on Medium. As a data scientist, she had a unique set of skills that were becoming increasingly valuable for a variety of fields. These articles featured both her detailed knowledge as well as her technical experience with programming languages like Python. Then in August, she published another post about the Certified Data Management Practitioner Fundamentals exam. That goes by the acronym CDMP. And Nicole called it the best data certificate you've never heard of, which I certainly hadn't

heard of it just to be fair before this episode. But the reason CDMP is so great is that it is an open book exam centered around learning the concepts of data science, not just memorizing a bunch of facts. And not only that, but receiving the certificate bolsters the credibility of people who are new or old to the data management scene. So in other words, achieving this credential can be a major career booster for people in this field. And Nicole was helping them learn about it, as well as learn how to improve their performance on it. So that post gained

a wide readership, which got her thinking about making a community for anyone interested in the field. So to begin, Nicole started two Facebook groups. One of them was focused on helping people who are studying for this CDMP exam. And the other was a more general group for people who are just hoping to break into data science. As the groups began to gain traction, Nicole added others on LinkedIn and meetup.com. She had cultivated both her

own community and a captive audience for her writing. Now with this much engagement, she figured that there would be a market for online courses. She had more knowledge to share and she wanted to do it in a structured manner. All the other work she was doing was free. So it would be nice to get paid. And not only that, but she had already built a whole network

of potential buyers. By blogging consistently for over six months, publishing those articles, she'd established her authority. After a few more months of research, Nicole learned how to sell a course through email. She launched it in February 2021. And in the first month, she made $172. And business picked up from there. In terms of profit margin, this is

a very good business, a very healthy business. Payment services like Stripe and PayPal, they take just 3% of the revenue, which means that Nicole gets to keep up to 97% of the profit. Towards the end of 2021, those profits from that first course and another one she developed, they were hovering between $650 and $700 a month. Around that time, she taught herself web development and built a site called Datastrategypros.com. Naturally, she did all the coding herself.

And what she's doing seems to be working because her profits keep growing. Just a few months later, Datastrategypros had its biggest month of profit yet at $1,500. And that took place after Nicole launched a new product called the CDMP Fundamentals Notes. After two years of building trust with her community, Nicole believes that the best option to increase profit further is to offer more products. She also plans on introducing membership soon to create recurring revenue. Now, all this takes some time and energy, of course. Nicole

has worked to maintain the sense of community in her brand. With the help of a virtual assistant, she still consistently posts on social media. And she also publishes a monthly newsletter with book recommendations and study tips. For anyone looking to follow a similar path, Nicole recommends paying attention to what's gaining traction in your field of expertise. If it hadn't been for her article going viral, Nicole says she never would have thought of selling courses. And naturally, she had to publish that article in the first place. Since

beginning this journey in 2020, Nicole has found great personal fulfillment. She loves teaching people about Datastrategy, and she really appreciates her thoughtful, helpful community. Oh, and because one side of the cell isn't enough, next, she's experimenting with mobile apps centered around wellness. You might notice some themes in some of these case studies, especially the content marketing ones, the ones who are building up an independent writing business, or sometimes it's through a different medium like podcasting, YouTubing, could be something different. But effectively, what they're doing is building authority through a series of repeat articles or again, other deliverables, and eventually seeking to transfer that authority to the sale of online courses or other forms of education. And I talk about these stories a lot because it works. It is

a model that you can follow. So I'll leave you with that today. Oh, just to mention as well, Evan Armstrong, the independent writer I mentioned at the top of the episode, he writes a newsletter called napkin math, if you go to evry.to/napkin-math, you can find it there. If you just Google Evan Armstrong napkin math, I am a subscriber, check it out. And of course, check out Nicole's work as well. We're going to link it up on the notes

page, sidehustleschool.com/1984. Thank you so much for being out there. I hope you will subscribe, follow, come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.