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Stark spends his career arguing that specializing is what lets you raise rates, which is the direct counter to the fear that a narrow niche forces you to stay cheap. This short piece separates niching by skill from niching by market and shows how each one changes your pricing power. Treat it as a starting point: narrowing your focus is a route to premium pricing, not a discount coupon.
Skill vs Market Specialization
From jonathanstark.com by Jonathan Stark ~5 min read
- Specializing moves you from a commodity position (where you compete on price) to an expert position (where you can command a premium).
- Skill specialization lets you charge more with buyers who already found you; market specialization is what actually attracts those buyers in the first place.
- A narrow niche is a pricing lever, not a cap, because the fewer people who do exactly what you do, the less your price gets compared to a generalist's.
