In the last 5 years as a data-preneur, I’ve done mostly done consulting and education. I’ve built dashboards, machine learning algorithms, and statisical models for all sorts of companies. And I’ve built (what I think is) the best “land your first data job” bootcamp in The Accelerator.

But I’ve never built & launched a data product. Until this week.

A data product (in my definition) is a platform where provide insights and analytics or give users a tool to generate their own insights. And hopefully, you monetize it in some way.

I’ve been wanting to build a data product for a long time. And a few months ago, I asked you on LinkedIn what I should build. And you answered (to my delight) Pokémon cards.

So when Replit asked if I could do a sponsored video showcasing their AI agent that builds production-ready apps, I knew this was my chance!

🎴I built a Pokémon card analytics tool

So I built PokemonCardAnalytics.com (clever domain, I know).

It’s a Pokémon card pricing insights platform. It let’s you see how the price of individual cards has changed over time. It also finds undervalued cards or cards that are changing rapidly in price recently.

It’s 100% free to use. So how do I make money?

I put eBay links on each individual card page to purchase the card on eBay. Each link is an affiliate link so I’ll earn a small commission (like 4%) if anyone purchases the card through eBay after visiting my site.

The goal is to have such a helpful & cool product for free that lots of traffic will use the site and some will eventually add to their collection by purchasing through our eBay links.

Win for users. Win for me.

If you want to see exactly how I built it, without writing a single line of code, you can catch my full step-by-step guide here.

🤑 Will this tool actually make money?

Will this work? Maybe. Maybe not. It could work if I put more work into it.

I’d need to work on marketing the tool, probably primarily through word of mouth and SEO (search engine optimization). The tool itself needs a lot of work too. Some of the data needs to be fixed and improved.

But for me, it was more about how quickly I could build an MVP (minimal viable product) and get some feedback from users (hopefully you).

And Replit made this super easy. With just normal English language, I was able to build a production ready web app in a couple hours.

I was already a paying user of Replit when they reached out so it was an easy “yes” to showcase their tool. If you have a cool app idea, it’s never been easier to bring it to life with Replit. Click this link to get started and get 10 extra bonus credits!

🛠 What will you build?

I’m curious…do you have a cool app idea you want to build in Replit? Hit reply / leave a comment - I’d love to hear about it.

Also, what do you think about my tool? Are you a Pokémon nerd like me? Do you think this tool has a future? Should I keep working on it?

Finally, I know this is a bit of a deviation from my usual “become a data analyst” content. Did you enjoy it? Would you like to see me talk more about this type of stuff? Or should I stick to the usual stuff?

I really value any feedback you’d like to give. About 25,000 people will read this and 99.9% of the time I have no clue what people think about it 🤣

So I will read and reply to each response I get. Hit reply and let me know.