How to protect open sourced data-centric project?

I have a few ideas for open sourced projects I want to work on. Over the years I've realized something I have a knack for is collecting, organizing, and curating information. To help fund this I was planning on having a website to make this information accessible to the average person and sprinkle in affiliate links where organically relevant. However, this type of website is something that could easily be duplicated as it'll just be a front end to the open source content.

I want to work on these projects for the benefit of everyone, but at the same time I'd like to be compensated (even if it's peanuts). I guess part of this is also because it'll give me a little bit of sense of self and would suck to put in all that work and get little recognition after a bigger player rolls that information into their website.

Has anybody dealt with this before? Am I over thinking it? Should I go with something other than an MIT license that would require updates to a fork to also be submitted to my repo? Is it harder to attract contributors when it's not an MIT license?