Monetize your unfair advantage, not adjacent services
Identify your unfair advantage before choosing monetization strategy. Monetize what you're uniquely good at, not adjacent services that require different expertise.
When to use
When choosing monetization strategy; when expanding services
Don't do this
Trying to monetize services outside your expertise
8 Founders Who Did This
His unfair advantage was the ability to reverse-engineer AI detectors, which became the core product value, not adjacent services
Built portfolio of income: book royalties ($125-130K), Strategy U course, workshops, and minimal freelancing rather than focusing on just book sales
Acquired a digital nomad newsletter while working at email outreach startup EOC, giving her access to sophisticated targeting tools and domain expertise that typical buyers lacked
Leveraged deep expertise in direct response copywriting and market research to build both a consulting practice (D2C creative testing) and educational products (frameworks, courses) rather than pursuing adjacent services
Left education tech (LearnBoost) despite it being a viable business because he realized developer tools aligned with his deep technical expertise and open source reputation. Pivoted to building ZEIT/Vercel
After wasting $12K on SEO over 4 months, pivoted to leveraging his open-source community growth expertise - his actual unfair advantage from years at Novu (31K stars) and founding Gitroom consultancy
After 15 years of free open source work, realized his unfair advantage was deep email protocol expertise, not goodwill from free software. Pivoted to monetizing that domain knowledge directly through commercial licensing.
Recognized he was far better at scaling than building from scratch, so built an acquisition-based business model leveraging that strength