How to collect data to sell to big tech

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Mar 30, 2023

For Thinker Thursday we’ll be featuring a business idea from another newsletter:

Today’s idea is from Nic over at 3 ideas on Sunday. Every Sunday they send out a new side hustle or business idea you can start today.

Check out 3 ideas on Sunday

Never fear, we have the usual collection of tweets and books at the bottom.

Local Data Reports

Do you know what the best types of products are?

I’ll give you a hint.

You can’t touch them. But you can sell them over and over.

You got it! The best types of products are things you can create once and sell twice.

This includes products like software, data, courses, etc.

It takes a lot of time to create, but once it’s built, you can sell it to an unlimited number of customers.

And they’re extremely valuable if they provide a solution or insight to a customer that they don’t have.

This is why US companies are spending over $10 billion per year to get data on their target customers.

So how can we create products like this?

The idea

Collect local data, package it into a report, and sell it to businesses that need the insights.

There’s a ton of different sets of data we can collect, but let’s take a look at some ideas.

Lawn Care: Knock on every door in a neighborhood and ask how much they're paying for their lawn care.

Pools: Find every house with a pool in your area and ask how much they paid for their pool and how much they pay for pool maintenance.

Roofing: Find every house in your area that had a roof replaced in the last 1-5 years and find out how much they paid and what materials they used.

Once you collect the data, you’ll package it into a market report that highlights the insights, trends, and forecasts.

Potential buyers include:

Companies that provide these services in the area.
PE firms looking to buy these businesses in the area.
Large landlords or property management companies.

Now let’s get one thing straight. I’m not saying collecting this data will be easy.

But it’s not impossible. And the data is extremely valuable to the right buyer.

This is a high-ticket offer, meaning you can charge a lot of $. Especially if you’re the only one with the data.

Since you only have to build the product once it can be an extremely high-margin product depending on how you collect the data.

Companies like CB Insights use this same business model (on a much larger scale). They collect data on the tech industry, package it in easy-to-digest reports, and sell it for big money to Fortune 500 companies.

If you like this idea, be sure to check out 3 Ideas on Sunday!