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The economic landscape has changed dramatically over the past couple of years. With high inflation and fears of a recession, personal finances are tighter for many professionals. If you work in data science or a related field, you may be looking for ways to supplement your income during these trying times. The good news is that the demand for data skills remains high, and there are plentiful opportunities to earn extra money on the side.
In this article, we’ll explore seven lucrative side hustles that are well-suited for data scientists and other technical professionals. Whether you want to offer your data expertise as a consultant, create online courses, do freelance analytics work, or explore other entrepreneurial ideas, you can take advantage of the flexibility of side gigs and passive income.
Teaching is still a high paying job in the data science field. You can create an online course and get paid through platforms like YouTube, DataCamp, Udemy, Skillshare, LinkedIn Learning, and 365 Data Science. Or you can become a guest lecturer at a university to teach a data science course. For those interested in continuous teaching, you can start your own academy or bootcamp to train aspiring data professionals.
Image from Teaching on DataCamp
By sharing your knowledge through structured lessons and programs, either online or in-person, you can earn a great income through teaching gigs as a side hustle. With data skills still in high demand, students will be eager to learn from experienced professionals. Teaching enables you to set your own schedule and reach a global audience of learners hungry for real-world data science expertise.
Freelancing is a great way for data science professionals to gain varied experience and get paid for their expertise. As a freelancer, you are your own boss and set the timeline and terms for projects. This control and flexibility can be highly rewarding. There are many platforms to find freelance gigs including Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, and LinkedIn.
Image from Toptal
You can showcase your projects and capabilities on these sites and your professional network to attract clients. As you build your personal brand and portfolio, people will start reaching out with freelance opportunities. Freelancing enables you to expand your skills and work with different companies and industries.
Technical writing on platforms like Medium and Substack can be great for your additional income. You can choose a specific niche within data science to write about regularly. As you build an audience and followers, you can monetize through payments per article view as well as subscriber recurring revenue. Many technical writers are earning six-figure incomes simply from content creation on these sites. You can also look for contract technical writing jobs from companies in need of documentation, tutorials, blogs, and other materials.
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The demand for quality tech writing is strong, and your insider knowledge of data science can give you an advantage. Write consistently in your chosen sub-field and promote your articles to gain paying subscribers over time. With the right niche and regular publishing, technical writing can become a steady side income stream.
You can consult for local companies to help improve their analytics capabilities, tooling, data infrastructure, and modeling. Or provide remote consulting sessions to firms across the country and world.
As a consultant, you leverage your experience to review current business challenges and provide strategic recommendations to enhance data practices. You can offer short-term consulting gigs to diagnose issues and provide a roadmap for improvement. Or serve as an ongoing advisor across longer projects to oversee implementation.
Image from Guidepoint
The demand for expert data science guidance makes consulting extremely profitable, with hourly rates often exceeding standard salaries. You can consult across many industry verticals by promoting your specialized abilities in certain domains. Over time, consulting gives you exposure to diverse business problems while allowing you to expand your expertise.
While it is not a steady stream of income, participating in data science competitions can be a lucrative side hustle. Platforms like Kaggle have competitions with prize pools from $60,000 to $500,000 USD and more. Even winning or placing high a couple times per year can equal or exceed your regular yearly salary.
Image from Kaggle
Though success is not guaranteed, with the right skills you can win thousands for solving real-world machine learning challenges. The key is understanding the platforms and continuously participating in competitions aligned with your expertise. While competition winnings should not replace a stable income, for those confident in their data science abilities, competitions provide opportunities to profit from your talent.
With at least 5 years of industry experience, data professionals can offer career counseling services as a high paying side gig. You can get paid per hour to provide guidance to recent graduates or those looking to transition into data roles. Platforms like Skilled allow you to charge for mock interviews, resume reviews, and general career advice.
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You can also find private clients interested in personalized coaching to break into the field. During paid sessions, you will provide insider tips on the data science recruitment and interview process. You’ll recommend courses, projects, and other steps to become a strong candidate. Your real-world understanding of hiring practices and qualifications is extremely valuable. Counseling is also rewarding as you directly enable people to advance their careers.
Collaborating on projects can lead to high paying opportunities for data professionals. You may receive invites to partner on commercial projects, startups, or open source initiatives. While some collaborations are unpaid, many come with compensation, especially if you treat it like contract work. When brought onto a team for your expertise, negotiate fair pay for your time and contributions, even if you believe in the project. There are also platforms like Omdena that offer paid collaborative data science projects you can participate in.
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Contributing to open source projects on GitHub can also open up lucrative opportunities for data professionals. Many popular open source data tools have corporate sponsors who hire from the contributor community. By consistently contributing quality code and documentation, you can get noticed and brought on board. Your open source work serves as proof of your abilities.
Outside of potential employment, active GitHub contributors can be sponsored directly through GitHub Sponsors. Popular repositories can attract financial backing from users who rely on the project. Even without direct sponsorship, your open source reputation can lead to contracting and consulting offers.
With the demand for data skills remaining robust even during economic uncertainty, data professionals have an advantage when it comes to high paying side hustles. Whether you want to consult, teach online courses, do freelance analytics projects, write technical content, or participate in data science competitions, there are plenty of ways to profit from your expertise.
With the flexibility and reward potential of side hustles, data scientists and technical professionals can thrive financially even when corporate salaries stagnate. Rather than being limited to traditional employment, embrace entrepreneurial ideas that allow you to monetize your skills.
Abid Ali Awan (@1abidaliawan) is a certified data scientist professional who loves building machine learning models. Currently, he is focusing on content creation and writing technical blogs on machine learning and data science technologies. Abid holds a Master’s degree in Technology Management and a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunication Engineering. His vision is to build an AI product using a graph neural network for students struggling with mental illness.
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