Use Your Data Skills to Make Money Online
By: Rebecca Vickery
Tags: Covid 19, Money, Data Science, Technology, Coronavirus

Online Courses

If you have been working in the field of data then you have valuable skills and knowledge that others can learn from. There are many online platforms which allow anyone with the appropriate skills and experience to create and market online courses and earn an income.

Datacamp has a network of 270 instructors which you can apply to join. They state that they currently have an audience of over 5.9 million data scientists, and course instructors can earn royalties through their revenue sharing platform. The current FAQ’s on the website state that average monthly earnings for instructors are in the region of $1,000-$2,000.

I am currently in the application stages to become an instructor here and I will update this article with actual earnings data if I am successful.

If you don’t have luck with Datacamp or it doesn’t feel right for you there are many other online course platforms where you can make money. One of these is Pluralsight. This course platform recruits data experts to create video-based, written or hands-on educational material. Similarly to Datacamp, payment is based on royalties which are linked to the number of views that your content has achieved and the volume of paying subscribers the platform has. This excellent article by Troy Hunt gives some insight into working for Pluralsight including some information on earning potential.

There are a huge number of other places where you can publish online course content and earn money. These include course platforms such as Udemy and Skillshare. You might also consider publishing a series of tutorials on a social media platform such as Youtube where you could earn money from paid advertising.

Blogging

I have been blogging and earning a modest additional income through the Medium Partner Program for the past year and a half. As far as blogging platforms go Medium is probably the easiest to get started with and earn money from. You don’t necessarily need to have a large following, if your writing is interesting and of high quality, then it is possible for Medium to distribute it in tags from which you can gain a high number of views.

I currently earn around $400 a month and spend 5–10 hours a week writing, typically publishing once a week on the platform. I’ll be writing a follow-up article soon on how, when and why I write about data science on Medium.

An alternative to Medium is to host your own blog as a standalone website. Wordpress is a great platform for this. You can start a blog for free or you can pay for premium features such as a unique domain name and more storage. If you can get enough traffic to your blog there are a variety of ways to earn money including Google Adsense and affiliate programs such as Amazon Associates.

Freelance work

The final areas I will talk about in this article are freelance agencies and websites. There are a number of platforms online where you can offer your skills, experience and services in return for payment. Upwork is probably one of the most popular sites. Here you can create your profile and apply for freelance jobs.

A quick search for data-related jobs advertised right now reveal 16,744 results.