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A Newsletter for Data Science Enthusiasts. What do you think of it?

Hey everyone!

I am currently working on Next Side Project (still under construction 🚧) to encourage Data Science students or enthusiasts to find inspiration and share their side projects with others' in the community.

I've made a poll recently on LinkedIn and found that 7 out of 10 people find it difficult to get the next idea for their Data Science side project. They randomly pick a dataset from Kaggle and start working on it without any clear path. I myself have faced this problem and I thought I could solve this through no-code and building in public. I've started a new newsletter on substack for the same: Next Side Project - Newsletter. If you're an aspiring Data Science student, consider subscribing to it.

I was wondering if you could help me by giving your opinion regarding this idea. What do you think of it? How can I scale it so it reaches more people? Are there any forums or communities I can join so that I can collaborate with more and help the growing community?

Is there any way I can monetize this to support myself in the process? (I'm aiming to make it free as much as possible but I want something to keep me motivated in the long run)

Please let me know your thoughts & ideas. Thanks in advance. :)

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    @learnwithvidya, I must say this is a really great idea to get started for a newsletter. You have a huge number of data enthusiasts out there who are struggling with this issue. Here's what I can share with you after going through the process of building my product, ruttl -

    1. I think the idea you have got is great. I myself did the idea verification first. One trick you can do is talk to 100 data enthusiasts out there (use LinkedIn filters to connect with right people for cold conversations) and treat them like a focus group for your market research. See how they react so you'll learn if people are interested in such a newsletter.

    2. Social media marketing. Believe me, its the best way you can grow initially without having to pay a single dollar on ads. Just start putting out content on a regular basis (Tip: Again use LinkedIn because it has the maximum reach right now. If you need some profile optimization help, you can check out this person)

    3. Consider joining communities groups of data science oriented people. You find a lot of Slack and Discord channels out thereby searching on google. Here is a list you can get started with!

    4. As far as newsletters go, don't have a purely paid option. It mostly never works unless you are a highly influential personality in your domain (even then it's a tough thing to execute!) Rather, like you said, keep the aim of having free content and paid content. Once you start gaining few subscriptions, consider sponsoring other peoples projects or affiliate marketing courses in your content for further monetization.

    I have learnt a fair share of these things while building ruttl so I hope this was helpful to you! Good luck with your newsletter!

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      I wish I could give you more than 1 upvote for these gems you dropped here! 💎

      @harshvijay Thanks a lot for these suggestions. I've already saved these points and will soon work on them.

      1. This is something that I'm already working on. I'm collecting profiles who are actively into side projects and few who struggle to find ideas as and when they show up on my LinkedIn feed. Planning to drop some cold DMs and build a relationship with them to get more ideas.

      2. I've followed the person you suggested and I myself got a guide to optimize LinkedIn profile. Will write this down to work on it actively.

      3. Thank you for the list. I'll be participating in them soon based on the time I have at my hand.

      4. Thanks for the ideas for monetization. I'll keep them in mind and iterate on them.

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      Really happy with your suggestions, Vijay. Thanks a lot once again!

      I must say, your website ruttl looks amazing!

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        Thanks for the appreciation on ruttl. Glad I could be of help!

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    I like the idea. And if I understand it right, the goal is to guide learners towards good projects so that they can become better data scientists? The poster below has provided good resources, and my general advice is to simply network as much as you can, there's simply no downside to it and lots of upside.

    On monetization, it feels like a natural add-on is to help folks with their projects. For instance, make a project that looks a lot like a company take-home project. And then everyone can work on it, but you can charge them for getting feedback on their answer. Either you or a team of subject matter experts can then help people. Alternatively, work with companies so that they can use good answers and recruit folks.

    For now I've simply subscribed to the newsletter. But very happy to support the projects, I've got many years of industry experience in DS and some fun unique datasets that have never been analyzed.

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