My 7 Sources of Income as a Data Scientist
All the ways I make money as a practising data scientist
Being a data scientist gives you many opportunities to generate multiple streams of income. In this article, I want to break down my 7 sources to hopefully give you some ideas that you can try yourself.
Nothing in here is financial advice.
Full-Time Job
My primary and most significant source of income is my full-time job as a data scientist. I have been in this career for over three years, and I love it.
I get to work on so many interesting problems, apply various algorithms, and use cutting-edge technologies like Generative AI daily.
As I have discussed in previous articles, becoming a data scientist is not easy. It takes a lot of effort and learning to break into the field, especially now.
However, that effort is rewarded very well. I can’t state my salary to respect my employer, but I earn quite a bit more than the average salary in the UK.
This is by no means to “flex,” but I am just being honest about the pay scale you can expect as a data scientist — and I am far off from being a millionaire!
As an entry-level data scientist, you will earn around the mean UK salary, which is about £30k. So, as that is only the beginning of your career, you can see how data scientists are compensated pretty well.
Glassdoor puts the average UK data science salary between 41k and 67k. There is a lot of variation due to location and sectors, but this sounds right from what I have seen.
I have a whole data science roadmap in case you are interested in becoming one!
How I’d Become a Data Scientist (If I Had to Start Over)
Investments
I try to invest as much as possible because it’s probably the most “passive” income stream. There is not much maintenance or work you need to do after you invest your money.
My investing strategy is as follows:
- S&P 500 Vanguard ISA — 75% Portfolio
- Blue Chip Stocks (Amazon, AT&T, Coca-Cola, etc.) — 10% Portfolio
- Premium Bonds (my emergency fund) — 10% Portfolio
- Crypto (Bitcoin and Ethereum) — 5%
Needless to say, I am not a financial adviser, and this is not investment advice; I am just documenting what I do with my money.
In general, my investing performance has been pretty good, and I am averaging a market return of 8–10% for the past 5 years in my stocks, which is when I started investing properly.
Crypto is… well, crypto. I have it mainly for FOMO and see it more as a gamble. I try to forget the money exists in my Coinbase account!
Finally, I use premium bonds as an emergency fund because it’s easy to access my money, and it can also make me money at the same time if any of my bonds “win” in a given month.
I am sure there are much better ways to invest, and people would argue that I am too much into equity and stocks. However, this works for me and allows me to sleep fine at night, which is what matters!
YouTube Adsense
From my data science videos, I get some money from YouTube AdSense, which are adverts placed at the beginning and middle of videos, as I have more than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours.
Advertisers would pay Google to display a particular ad, and the demand for that ad slot would dictate its price. The money the advertisers pay is then split, with 55% going to the creator and 45% going to YouTube.
The revenue you get from Adsense varies quite a bit, but as I am in the tech niche, my RPM (revenue per thousand views) is typically on the higher end, and my income from Adsense is normally in the hundreds of pounds per month range. Again, this is very volatile and not exactly a stable income stream.
If I were purely in the finance niche, my RPM and earnings would be more, but it would be less if I were in the entertainment niche for example. So, loads of things go into determining your RPM, which fluctuates quite a lot every month and it would be very difficult to build a career solely from ad revenue.
YouTube Sponsors
In addition to AdSense, I also earn income from my YouTube channel through sponsorships. This is where companies or businesses will pay to have their product advertised in a video, generally in a 60–90-second mid-roll clip but requirements vary between companies.
However, I don’t accept all sponsorships I am offered, and I only collaborate with brands I like, use, and find relevant to my channel and audience. I would feel like a sellout advertising a product I don’t like just to make money!
Interestingly, the money I’ve made from the sponsorships I’ve accepted is actually less than the total amount I’ve turned down! I am not trying to virtue signal but being honest about my approach to sponsors.
Unfortunately, I can’t disclose the amount sponsors pay me, but an average ballpark metric used in the YouTube ecosystem is $15 per 1,000 views. Again, this varies a lot between niches and what the sponsor wants out of the collaboration, but this number is consistent with what I have seen.
Mentoring/Consulting
From my content and online presence, people started asking for 1:1 mentoring and consulting calls about helping them with data science projects, careers, CV’s etc.
Naturally, I started offering paid calls that people could book to discuss anything they were struggling with. I don’t actively promote this, but I leave a link in my video descriptions if any of my viewers want a more targeted conversation.
I find this the most rewarding part of my online “business” as I can personally help a person and tailor my advice to suit their needs. I can’t do that with my videos and articles, as every person is very different and it may not be relevant to everyone.
I don’t earn much money from this; I charge about $30 a session, which is half an hour long. However, I mainly do it to help people and don’t want to feel like my mentees are wasting their money!
Blogging
I have been blogging on Medium for over three years now and have long been part of the Medium Partner Program (MPP). The Partner Program, as described by Medium, is:
As a partner, when your best stories are read by Medium members, a portion of their membership dues will be shared with you.
It’s similar to YouTube Adsense, where you get paid based on metrics like views, claps and comments. In fact, Medium is often cited as the “YouTube” of writing, which I feel is very true.
The MPP is slightly less transparent than Adsense regarding how your earnings are calculated and is not based solely on views but other forms of interaction. I have some articles that pay really well despite the low view count and vice versa.
In my opinion, the main thing determining an article’s earnings is whether it is “boosted” or not. It’s essentially when an article is chosen to be “pushed” more and naturally attract more viewership. You can read more about it here.
So, the money I earn from Medium fluctuates a lot monthly. My highest earning month was in the thousands, but I tend to average a few hundred pounds normally throughout the year.
Affiliates
My lowest earning source of income are the affiliate links I have in my YouTube descriptions and newsletter articles.
Wikipedia defines affiliate links/marketing as:
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant.
If I am talking about a book, product, or piece of tech, I normally leave an affiliate link somewhere. If anyone buys that product with my link, I get a small commission.
I am not necessarily advertising the product, but I leave the affiliate link in case anyone wants to check it out, and it’s a nice passive income source.
I use Amazon Associates as my main affiliate site because pretty much everything is found on Amazon, and they make it easy to add links. They pay between 1–10% depending on the product.
I don’t make much money from affiliate links; it’s about a couple of pounds a month. It’s more of a “nice to have” than anything else!
Another Thing!
I have a free newsletter, Dishing the Data, where I share weekly tips and advice as a practising data scientist. Plus, when you subscribe, you will get my FREE data science resume and short PDF version of this AI roadmap!
Dishing The Data | Egor Howell | Substack
Connect With Me!
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- My YouTube Channel to learn technical data science and machine learning concepts!
- 👉 Book a 1:1 mentoring call
My 7 Sources of Income as a Data Scientist was originally published in Towards Data Science on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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