9 Ways I Made Money as a First-year (Data) Entrepreneur
An honest summary of my journey so far
In July 2023, I made a big life change and left my 6F data science job to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. While entrepreneurship tends to get glamorized, the reality is often anything but that.
Here, I want to pull back the curtain on my personal experience and share all the ways I scrapped together cash in my 1st year of entrepreneurship. This article is not meant to be a flex (it wouldn’t be very impressive 😅), but rather it is meant to serve as a realistic reference for those considering a similar journey.
Before diving into the income sources, here’s a quick review of my background.
- 2019: Stumbled into data science while getting my Physics PhD.
- 2020: Started “copy-pasting” sections of my dissertation onto Medium as blog posts and adapted them into YouTube videos.
- 2021: Picked up freelance side gigs via Upwork and my research advisor.
- 2022: Got my Physics PhD and started working as a data scientist at Toyota.
- 2023: Left my data science role to make my “side hustles” my main hustle—more on why I left my role here.
1. Medium Earnings ($6,123.49)
Somewhat surprisingly, my top revenue source over the past year was Medium. This works via the Medium Partners Program, where writers get paid based on the engagement that their “Members-only” stories receive.
While I write articles about a wide range of topics, my top-earning stories tend to be those about data science topics and are published in Towards Data Science. In a previous post, I shared a more in-depth review of my top-earning articles in 2023.
2. AI Consulting/Freelance ($5,825.38)
When I left my job, I had some freelance experience under my belt, so I expected this to be my main income source. However, that’s not how things worked out.
One reason was I wasn’t using platforms like Upwork to get clients. Instead, I relied solely on my content channels (mainly YouTube). Although I took about 36 discovery calls over six months of pursuing consulting, only two became contracts.
During this time, I also realized that consulting work was too much like working a job (i.e. trading time for money), so in March 2024, I killed this part of my business. I talk about that more in the video linked below.
3. YouTube Earnings ($5,066.26)
I made my first dollar on YouTube the month I left my full-time job. Similar to Medium’s Partners Program, YouTubers get paid for making content. The key difference, however, is that monetization works based on ad revenue rather than a premium membership.
My top-earning YouTube videos tend to track with my top-earning Medium articles, which isn’t surprising. However, I get significantly more inbound leads from my YouTube channel than from Medium.
I break down my YouTube earnings here and here.
4. Paid Calls ($3,263.24)
A lighter version of AI consulting/freelance work is doing paid consulting calls via Calendly. The key difference here is that instead of working on medium- to long-term projects with clients, consulting calls are limited to short interactions that last 30–60 minutes.
I like this because it doesn’t require the overhead cost of discovery calls, contract writing, and meeting scheduling. A platform like Calendly streamlines the process further by allowing me to set my availability and giving clients an interface to pick the most convenient times. This convenience is why I still take these calls.
Here’s what my booking page looks like.
5. AI Workshop ($2,250)
Now, we are starting to get into the long tail of my revenue sources. This came from a single 90-minute AI workshop for a large enterprise.
While this opportunity sort of fell out of the sky, I realized a couple of things after doing it. One, I enjoyed putting the workshop together. Two, I could provide this as a formal service to businesses.
This led me to launch my custom AI workshop offer last month.
6. Referrals ($1,000)
Even though I closed the door on project-based consulting work in March, I still get inquiries about these opportunities. Rather than saying no and moving on, I pass these leads to a curated list of AI consulting firms.
Out of the seven introductions I’ve done like this, one closed, and that firm paid me a $1000 referral fee.
7. Buy Me a Coffee ($533.13)
Buy Me a Coffee is a platform that allows audiences to support creators. Although I don’t advertise this much, my “Give a tip” button on Medium and “Support” button on GitHub are linked to this page.
Here’s what that looks like: https://buymeacoffee.com/shawhint
8. Book Review ($350)
A popular data science series I did was on Causality. This led to the opportunity to review a recent textbook called Causal Inference in Python by Matheus Facure.
In addition to getting paid for this review, they sent me a copy of the book :)
9. Brand Collab ($233.42)
The final revenue source was a brand deal with MySignature. This consisted of me putting a link in the bio of a popular YouTube video on making a custom Gmail signature.
While brand deals are the main way most creators get paid, I’m usually hesitant about them because I’d rather channel the attention from my content to my services or website.
Takeaways
Adding these together comes to a total of $24,644.92. While this is a fraction of my yearly expenses (thank you savings), it’s not a trivial amount of money, which gives me (just) enough confidence to keep going.
A key takeaway from this past year is that entrepreneurship is not about how much you can earn but how much you can learn. Money comes and goes, but skills (i.e. the ability to solve problems) allow you to build a sustainable business.
Although starting early via my “side hustles” was certainly beneficial, many things I’ve learned this past year were only possible by committing to entrepreneurship full-time. Additionally, the rate at which I’m learning now is at least 2X of what it was when I wasn’t working full-time.
Of course, entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. It is one of the most emotionally and mentally challenging career paths. However, for those who are called to it, I hope my experience provides at least some value.
