Why Selling Skills as Products Can Extend Their Value

In a recent LinkedIn post, Justin Welsh discusses how packaging professional expertise into a product can extend its reach beyond a single employer. This article examines Welsh’s account and argument; it is journalistic coverage of his post, not a piece written by him.

“A salary sells your skill to one buyer. Your employer.”

Welsh describes spending the first 16 years of his career working for companies that paid him for skills in sales, hiring and leadership. In return, he says, each employer received nearly everything he knew and his intense work ethic. The arrangement worked, he reflects, until he began to consider how much leverage he was giving away.

A small product, a different way to think about income

In 2020, Welsh says, he packaged one of his skills into a $50 product. He had about 21,000 followers at the time, and the product generated $10,482 in its first month. He is careful not to describe that amount as life-changing wealth. Instead, he presents the result as a turning point in how he thought about compensation.

“A product can sell the same skill to thousands of people.”

According to Welsh, the contrast is about the number of potential buyers: a salary connects a skill to one employer, while a product can make it available to a much wider audience. His post suggests that professionals may have opportunities to earn from knowledge they already use at work, by turning it into something customers can buy online.

Building alongside employment

Welsh does not frame a product business as a reason to leave a job immediately. He says he enjoyed his final decade of employment and explicitly encourages readers to keep their jobs and do excellent work while exploring ways to package their skills. That caveat makes his argument less a call for a sudden career change than a case for adding another route to market.

Start with existing expertise

Rather than urging readers to acquire an entirely new skill, Welsh points to capabilities they already have. His closing message is that professional knowledge may hold value beyond the paycheck it currently earns. The post also directs readers to a free guide to starting a one-person business, providing a next step for those interested in his approach.

“Your skills are worth more than one paycheck.”

Welsh’s experience is a personal example, not a guarantee that every product will reproduce his first-month sales. Still, his central proposition is straightforward: employment and independent products can coexist, and packaging expertise may let a worker reach buyers beyond a single organization. In his view, the first move is to identify something useful people may pay to learn or use.