While listening to a group of employees talk about money and motivation in the workplace, what came to mind was Frederick Herzberg’s “Two-Factor Theory”. If you have taken some performance management related courses, you would have come across Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory. According to Herzberg, Motivation factors, true to the name, are factors that motivate employees. They are not to be mistaken with Hygiene Factors such as Salary which do not motivate. Yes, Salary is not a motivation factor but rather an Hygiene factor. If your salary is doubled, it won’t make you double your efforts or double your productivity. However, while motivation factors motivate, the lack of or insufficiency of hygiene factors lead to dissatisfaction, it demotivates.

But the truth is, everybody likes money and we care less whether it is motivating or hygienic, we love it, we need it, and we will make it in any legit way.

One of the easiest ways to make money is carrying a product in your brain. To put it in context, anything you know is a product, and there are several ways you can make money from it.

I have seen someone pay $200 for a course and charged $8,000 to deliver the same course to a class of 30.

In this article, I will discuss four ways you can make money with Power BI. 

What is Power BI?

Without boring you with too much details, Power BI is a Microsoft tool for self-service Business Intelligence and Data Analytics. This is its simplest form is basically a process of analyzing data to gain insights for making intelligent business decisions.

I once asked a supermarket owner on my street why she closes her store at 8pm on Sundays and her response to me was “Since 10am? the body needs rest”. I spoke to her about BI and Analytics, promised to do a free analysis for her with Microsoft Power BI using 2 years of her sales data (I was in a joyous mood, my team had just won the UEFA Champions League Trophy a day earlier).

“How long will this take”? she asked and I told her I would be done in less than 5 minutes. Who would believe that? Analyse 2 years of sales data with insights from a dashboard in less than 5 minutes. I dashed across the street to get my laptop from the house and returned.

We found out from her data that about 25% of her total daily sales every day from Mondays to Saturdays happen between the hours of 8pm and 10pm. The data also showed that sales volume and values on Sundays usually pick up from 4pm. So I told her, “You want more rest time on Sundays? open your store later than you do, and close later than you currently do”.

I hope the above story has been able to clarify Business Intelligence, Self-service business intelligence and Power BI to you. With Power BI you can quickly go from data to insights within minutes and really anyone can do this as much as anyone uses Excel. If you own a business, that’s one way to make money with Power BI. Analyse your data, get insights and make intelligent decisions. But this article is not for the business, it’s for individuals. You can learn more about Power BI from Power BI website. 

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4 Ways To Make Money With Power BI

If you want to make some money with Power BI, you first have to arm yourself with the skills required. And it is not so difficult, though I must also warn that it is not easy either. If you already have a background with Microsoft Excel, then you are both at an advantage and a disadvantage. Even with zero experience, you can learn this tool from ground, crawling to walking within a couple of weeks and with a lot of practice, you’ll soon be running fast and even fly. So, here are some of the ways to make some money:

1. Employment income

With Power BI knowledge, getting a new job with better package is much easier, if your organization refuses to improve your package based on your new powerful skill. Perhaps your current role has no use for data analysis skillset, you can show your organization the value you can bring to the table with Power BI and negotiate new terms.

You probably don’t work in an analytics related role, that should not be a barrier. Use the data generated from you unit to dig insights using Power BI. Then walk up to you boss and start asking/telling him or her a bunch of “Did you know’s”.

You may also pick up a report that takes forever to prepare and automate with Power BI. Bottom line is, show what you can do to add value and your next performance appraisal/promotion would have been given a huge boost. Or perhaps, you should start looking elsewhere.

2. Become a trainer

Once you perfect your skills, one of the easiest ways to earn is to begin to train people on using this in-demand skills. The good thing here is, unlike Microsoft Excel training, the market for Power BI training is not yet saturated. Training an individual for 2 to 5 days period can go for up to $300 – $500 and I have come across some Power BI training as high as $2,500. If you are able to train 100 individuals in a year for $300 each, you are looking at $30,000.

Another good thing is there are so many courses you can create under the umbrella of Power BI. For example, you can have courses on Data Preparation, Data Visualization and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). That is 3 different courses. And guess what? Each of these 3 can also have “intro” and “advanced”. 1 tool, 6 courses, multiple income lines.

You can also record these courses and place them on platforms like udemy so you can join the league of those who earn even while sleeping (if you aren’t one already).

3. Become a consultant

So many companies are looking for ways to improve their bottom line. They are looking to increase revenue and reduce costs. They have answers in their data, and you as a Power BI analyst can help them answer their questions. Just identify your ideal clients, work out your pricing strategy, have a solid marketing plan, go to market and come back home with money.

If you are looking at training, it is in your best interest to also take up consulting. The will expose you to so many challenges, build up your arsenal and make you deliver better trainings to your clients.

Again, you stand a chance of doing well here because the number of excellent consultants is not very as much at the moment. You can even source Power BI jobs from sites like upwork.com and fiverr.com.

4. Write a book

Another cool way to make some money is by writing books. Power BI is just 3 years old at the time of this writing and you can make some money providing valuable content. This is not the easiest of the 4 ways, but that is something you do once and continue making the money. It will be good you revise your book from time to time though.

There are many Power BI books in the market now, but we can always have more. You may want to look at other areas that have not been covered yet. Maybe you are good with French or Spanish, write yours in other languages. Or maybe you write in your native English and look for a way to translate it to other popular languages. Power BI currently supports Spanish and I wouldn’t be surprised if they announce support for Mandarin Chinese in any of their coming updates.

I have not come across any Power BI pocket guide either. (If you later pick up this idea, please remember to pay me for the idea).

I have seen one or two books on Power BI & R. I haven’t seen any on Power BI & Python. These are areas that are still short in terms of both Trainings and Books. If you are skilled in those Languages, you should consider writing.

You can actually combine some or all the options as long as you have the capacity and capability to do so.

To conclude, Power BI has come to stay. More companies are starting to adopt Power BI and looking for “datawise” individuals. More companies are also looking to train their workforce on data analytics. You can be the Power BI Analyst/Developer in a good firm And more people are looking for resources to learn data analytics. You can be a Power BI trainer or Consultant and you can write your own Power BI books. The world has finally realized the power of data.

Put powers into your hands, learn Power BI ASAP. The best time to start was yesterday, the next best time is Right Now!