Selling Data (Simple, Not Easy)

Midway through April and I’m on the track to launching my first deliverable: The introductory webinar.

A reminder that the goal for this month is to determine whether I’m able to generate enough leads to make a viable affiliate-type business model in the Malayalee Christian Wedding space.

Before getting to the updates, I wanted to share an interesting business model I dove into this week:

Business Model: Selling Data (Building a Data Moat)

My research on this model came from re-listening to this interview with Anand Sanwal, founder of CB Insights.

He loves the concept of manually capturing hard-to-find data and then selling that information to people.

As opposed to data-scrapping tools or things that are simple to aggregate, his team compiles data by doing surveys and interviews. For example, one of his ideas was to ask/pay recent graduates for their W-2 forms to build a more tangible “How Valuable is a Degree from this University” report.

This sparked a couple of ideas for the wedding space:

• I can call venues across the country (posing as a potential couple) to build a database that captures their capacity, the average price per plate, and features/amenities.

• Compiling the pricing for vendors in different areas. (Something I’ve already started to build.)

This business model isn’t as ideal in the niche I’m operating in because weddings are (hopefully) one-time purchases.

Ideally, you’d have a data set that people stay subscribed to for ongoing insights.

But Anand brought up an example of a one-time purchase: A survey of how much it costs to build a pool in your backyard.

In this case, you’d go around surveying people who have pools to see how much it cost to build/install. Then you could make money by:

1. Selling the contact info of any person that downloads the report to pool developers. (Big one-time purchase for the developer.)

2. Selling the contact info of any person that downloads this report to pool cleaning companies. (Ongoing work for the cleaner.)

I’m excited to give this model a try next month!

Last week’s updates:

• Created a sign-up page for my first “Introduction to Planning Your Malayalee Christian Wedding” webinar.

• Published a new update in our “Live Wedding Planning Series”

• Created the form for couples to feature their weddings

This week:

• Create the slides/content for the webinar

• Get at least 5 sign-ups for the webinar (might run $20-50 of ads and reach out to priests)

• Record my first video conversation with a wedding coordinator. We’ll be talking about creating a schedule. (I’ll use this to make more social media content.)

• I’ve been going through Instagram to capture a list of vendors who have worked with the Malayalee Christian, and ideally, find patterns in groups that have worked together often so I can pitch them on bundling their services.

Talk to you next week!

Cheers,
Aswin from Learn Through Action

Reminder: If you don’t get an email from me by next Monday at 11PM ET, venmo request @monitormonkey for $10.