I’m starting the year shifting focus again. If 2024 was the year to go all-in bootstrapping a product, 2025 is going to be the year when I am stabilizing my finances and take a less risky approach to entrepreneurship.

This is why I have been spending a lot of time this month applying to part-time positions, networking and sending CVs. The idea is to have one or more part-time gigs that will help me reduce the stress on my finances, increase my runway and make my wife less worried. Now that we have a baby to take care of, I can’t afford to take too many risks.

Data Freelance

I have spent some time this month writing and publishing a new article on the channel. The inspiration for these articles often comes from talking to other Data Scientists that want to start freelancing. They write me in private (usually on Reddit) and I just answer their questions. These conversations turn into an article like the first one that went viral more than one year ago, and still brings hundreds of people to this website every month. A guy contacted me on X, I replied to his questions and turned that chat into an article.

I already have something in mind to write this month, and I think I will have more and more to talk about once I start freelancing again. Looking at the stats, I have got 19 members, which is 6 more than last month.

Data Internships

Since Google has decided to gift me some more traffic in their last update in December, I have started to work a bit more on this. I sent 2 newsletters in January, and plan to send another couple in February.

But my subscribers’ growth has stagnated. I am now around 2050 subscribers, almost 20 less than last month. I am still not sure how to monetize this, and I haven’t made any effort to list and sell it on any platform. I have also reached the point where I should automate the process a bit more, because I am spending too much time reviewing the job offers. Once I have done that, I will try to sell newsletter ads, or even try to become an affiliate for some Data Science related course.

X Topics

I have been slacking on this. No new feature, and very little, maybe even zero promotion on socials.

I have already started working on it again in February. The goal is to convert a few registered users into customers. There are too many of them who register and don’t even connect their Threads account.

Soccrbets

I kept improving automations and publishing new articles. I also tried to automate the Reddit posting, so now I am now able to fire a script that auto-posts the latest suggested bets when needed. I also published a 2-parts analytics article, and a couple of new videos on my personal YT channel. January sales are not as good as December, but I think these videos are still contributing to bring more visitors to my books on Gumroad and Amazon. I should see the effect on sales in the next weeks.

I have got now 30 subscribers on my YT channel and the subscribers on the TG channel grew up to 31.

The cashflow

Time to look at the income for this month.

Overall, book sales decreased a lot. Which is expected in January. If I compare it with last year, I am just $5 below. This month I also managed to keep the HuggingFace costs down at the expected levels. And I got paid for my shitposting on X, which is always nice because I love to do it. I also bought TG Premium for one year. A bit of an experiment, but I hope it will help me grow my channels.

I am now below $100 in revenue, which is worrying, and the main reason why I started to look for freelancing gigs. I will be working with a friend who owns an Italian agency in February, and that should give me some room to breathe for a few months. Let’s see how it goes.