How I’m building a job board for Data Analysts, Update #09 - for September 2023
Hi all,
on Dec 19th I launched DataAnalyst.com - this is the ninth update.
Want to make sure I document the journey, and keep myself honest, so each month I will be making a post about the statistics, progress, some thoughts and what are the next steps I want to be focusing on.
So, just a reminder that early stages vision is to become the #1 job board for data analysts - hand-picking interesting data analyst job opportunities across industries.
Let’s dive right in:
Statistics
1. General Observations
Stats
DataAnalyst.com has been online for just over 9 months, and we’re bringing new, hand curated data analyst jobs onto the site daily - all of them including a salary range.
There’s now 2,000+ people subscribed to the newsletter, and I can’t thank you enough for your support and for joining us on the journey.
Google impressions and clicks are accelerating, with organic traffic outperforming direct for the first time since the launch. I know there’s been multiple Google SEO updates over the last month, but not sure how much of an impact it actually had. I’m attributing the increase to my efforts over the summer to clean up on-page SEO (but that’s just a hunch)
I’d be grateful if someone could please explain to me Google Search Console Clicks vs Google Analytics Visitors - shouldn’t each click that comes from Google Search, leading to the site, also mean that’s a visitor coming in?
Where did 4,552 people come from?
- Organic - 42.8%
- Direct - 42.2%
- Social - 12% (automated job postings on Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit, FB/IG)
- Referral - 3% (honestly no idea where that’s coming from)
Also worth noting that Google Analytics finally gave up on the site, and I’ll need to shift to GA4. Expecting tons of issues and inconsistencies, since I’ve been running GA4 in parallel, and none of the numbers line up with GA.
Things on top of my mind
a) Ads & Affiliates
I’ll put my commercial hat on for this part here - and really open to feedback and thoughts from people who have experience in this field, as I’m starting to unpack this topic.
When I was preparing to launch the site, I knew ads & affiliate partnerships as a revenue stream would be an option, but it wasn’t an option that I actively pursued nor considered. Personally, I use ad blocks myself, but I do understand that in certain cases, advertising and affiliate partnerships can do good for all parties - the site owner, visitors and advertisers.
A very simplistic view of this world is that aspiring and professional data analysts are an extremely valuable audience.
On the entry level side, people are usually driven, bright, in higher level education and searching for an edge how to enter the in demand and well paid industry. (Target audience for bootcamps, course and certification providers)
On the experienced, these are people with higher salaries, disposable income, and at a managerial level also in many cases decision makes on what tools, conferences etc their division/team/company runs. (Target audience for tools, platforms and other tech providers as they are building up and scaling their propositions + leadership level certifications and coaching)
As the site keeps growing, over the last few weeks I’ve had several companies (across both segments) reaching out, and inquiring about options to advertise on the site.
My response was that I don’t really have an advertising proposition defined yet, but when I do, I want it to be transparent to all parties involved (now and in the future).
What I do know, is that I don’t really want to have the site filled with various ads and affiliate links.
What I don’t know, is what those terms & conditions should look like in the case where I go exclusive (with 1 or 2 advertisers) for longer period of times.
Doing some initial research on other advertising platforms, if we take the segment of bootcamps/courses/certifications, the top 5 advertising organisations pay upwards of $100,000 a month on Google ads, to reach (imho) minuscule appx 16,000 clicks combined ($6.25 cpc) , on targeting audience searching for “data analytics / data analyst + courses / certification / bootcamp”
Now, now, don’t compare yourself to Google, I get that.
At the same time, the people visiting DataAnalyst ARE the exact audience these companies are trying to reach, all on one site + directly reachable and responsive through a growing newsletter.
It is something that I need to really shape going forward, but as it stands, ads were never really my intended primary revenue stream, and I’m not really looking to make rash decisions just for a couple of $.
I don’t have this one figured out yet, and I am trying to do research + data driven approach, but if anyone has direct experience and ideas, please do reach out, would love to learn.
b) Spray and Pray University outreach
I mentioned in last months’ update that I noticed quite a few .edu emails signed up to the Newsletter. Thought it could be an interesting angle to explore, reaching out to universities, sharing that their students are using the site. I was hoping this would lead to both driving in visitors, as well as potentially getting a backlink that would help increase the authority of the site.
Well, that’s a lot easier to say, than to achieve, and I’ve classified my efforts as a surprisingly spectacular fiasco - altho as a retrospective, it couldn’t have ended in any other way.
Why?
Well, I found a .xls spreadsheet online, with approximately 1,700 educational institutions in the US and their admissions’ email address.
Mistake #1 - timing - I thought with Universities/Colleges starting in September, it would be a good time to get on their radar - just as they new students coming in and discovering what those institutions have to offer. Truth is, it’s also the time when you have an enormous amount of freshers spamming the admissions office looking for directions to their dorms.
Mistake #2 - audience - on the topic of admissions office - they do not care of anyone reaching out to build partnerships, literally, that’s probably the last thing on their mind.
Put the two together, and I ended up with 2 (thanks but no thanks) replies out of appx 800 emails sent. Silver lining - the email still had appx 50% open rate, so no harm done to email deliverability (spam score).
Good idea, awful execution, but it did provide me guidance for my next steps. Will repeat the process, this time however looking at .edu backlinks at some of the similar job-boards, and directly reaching out to the institutions’ career centres.
BusinessAnalyst.com
As I’ve mentioned before, I recently launched BusinessAnalyst.com - where I’m looking to replicate step by step what I’ve done over the last 9 months with DataAnalyst. The overall idea is to create a network of sites, benefiting from the same infrastructure, serving and helping different career paths, and making a collaboration with organisations much more appealing (after-all, most companies who hire for data analysts also look for business analysts and vice versa). Arguably, this might not make much sense seeing that DA still hasn’t brought any consistent revenue in, but on the other hand, I can reuse the whole tech stack and structures already in place, halve my cost per project, while doubling the surface area to catch me some luck.
TLDR update: Still dead, but slowly starting to see signs of life
2. Data Analyst Salary guide update
As you’ve probably noticed, a lot of time over the last few months has been spent on updating the data analyst salary guide.
While there have certainly been positive steps made in the legislation toward salary transparency, there’s currently only 9 states (with New York being the latest) currently requiring employers to disclose to job applicants how much a position pays.
Job seekers across industries are in most cases put in a position where they have no idea about the compensation prior to making time for interviews, case studies and other shenanigans - that’s one of the reasons why I am so adamant on only having job opportunities with salaries on the site (and yes, I admit, there are cases where the salary range listed is bigger than King Kong’s first dump of the day - brownie points for those who get the reference).
Now, back to the salary guide.
With approximately 1,350 data analyst jobs listed on the site up to this date, in the salary guide and respective pages, you can now find the following breakdown:
Industry
- breakdown by specific industry, overall minimum, maximum, median and average salary + salary breakdown by years of experience
Years of experience
- breakdown of all jobs on the site by years of experience - entry level (0 - 3 years), senior (3 - 5 years), lead (5+ years)
State
- this is where it gets tricky. Now, as it usually is with this kind of exercise, lumping the data all together you come up with an insane range. On the other hand, if you split the data in 52 different ways, you’ll get a whole different set of issues where N is not large enough to draw any conclusions - and for some states, there’s simply no data at all (not to single any state out, but I’m looking at you, Wyoming).
As an experiment (and primarily targeting SEO benefits) I’ve also included average data analyst salaries at all the companies that are listed on the site. Truth be told, it’s probably a useless metric, but I am hoping to rank for some of the long tail “what is a data analyst salary at X” keyword searches.
As the site grows, and the number of jobs on the site increases, I do still believe that I’ll be able to bring an addition source of information about salaries, complimenting those already available on other sites.
So far I’ve done this quarterly, with the next update expected in January to close off the year, and will move to 2x year updates starting in 2024.
As a side note, I am considering releasing the full database of jobs on the site (for 2023) in January. This could probably provide some value, as anyone can deep dive and analyze for themselves (for example what are most in demand skills, qualifications etc.). It could be an interesting data analysis project to showcase in a portfolio, or if you’re having troubles falling asleep.
If that’s something of interest, please send me a message and happy to collaborate in sharing the insights back with the community.
Things in the pipeline
- New data analyst jobs, added daily
- Actually launching the weekly newsletter with the pick of best jobs directly to your inbox
- Monthly US data analyst market summary
- Improving the overall site experience (this one is a never ending activity)
- Continuing to bring you Data Analysts across their experience levels, to share tips, tricks and their thoughts
3 ways you could help
- Looking for a new challenge? Check out the website - I’m adding new jobs daily
- Looking to hire a data analyst to your team? Do you know anyone looking to hire? Shoot me a message at alex@dataanalyst.com and I’ll upgrade your first listing for free!
- As I mentioned, we have an ongoing “Day of a Data Analyst” series. For those of you who are open to do an email based interview about your data analyst career journey, please just send me a message and we’ll organise something - would love to get you featured and share your experience with our readers!
If you have any questions, concerns, come across glitches - please just reach out, happy to chat.
Thank you all again, and see you in a month.
Alex