Building a portfolio is one of the best ways to showcase your skills as a beginner in data analytics. It tells employers, clients, and mentors: “I can apply what I know.” But you do not need a big job or corporate data to get started. With simple, practical mini projects, you can create compelling portfolio pieces that reflect real-world analysis.

At Jeks Analytics, we recommend learners start with relatable and achievable projects. Below are five mini project ideas to help you build a solid portfolio, even with no prior experience.

1. Personal Budget Tracker (Excel or Power BI) 
   Use your own expenses to build a monthly dashboard.
   – Track income, spending, savings, and categories
   – Create visuals for your top spending areas
   – Add slicers to filter by month or expense type

Tools: Excel or Power BI 
Skills shown: Data entry, cleaning, visualisation, storytelling

• Sales Dashboard for a Retail Store (Fictional or Real) 
  Download any open-source retail dataset or create your own.
  – Analyse monthly revenue, product performance, and region-wise sales
  – Include KPIs like gross profit or average order value
  – Add interactive filters

Tools: Power BI or Tableau 
Skills shown: DAX basics, business KPIs, dashboard design

• YouTube Channel or Social Media Growth Report 
  Scrape or manually collect data from a growing YouTube channel or social page.
  – Monitor views, likes, comments, and upload frequency
  – Highlight top-performing content
  – Recommend content strategy improvements

Tools: Excel + Power Query or Python + Matplotlib 
Skills shown: Trend analysis, web data handling, reporting

• COVID-19 Impact Analysis 
  Use freely available global COVID data.
  – Track cases, deaths, and recovery trends across countries
  – Compare government responses and case outcomes
  – Use maps or time-series visuals

Tools: Tableau or Power BI 
Skills shown: Data visualisation, public data analysis, comparative reporting

• Survey Results Breakdown 
  Run a small survey among friends (e.g., favourite apps, productivity tools).
  – Clean and organise the responses
  – Use charts to visualise key insights
  – Create a summary report with recommendations

Tools: Google Sheets + Excel or Power BI 
Skills shown: Data wrangling, insight presentation, recommendation writing

Conclusion 
Your analytics portfolio should be practical, not perfect. It is better to have 3 well-documented small projects than a single messy one. Each of these mini projects shows your curiosity, tool skills, and ability to communicate insights.

Bonus: Add each project to a public GitHub repo, Tableau Public profile, or share them on LinkedIn to show your learning journey.