The hard part about building a sustainable publishing business model online that avoids the largest single channel is that margins matter & if you have 5% margins or such, a competitor that clones your model AND is in Google's good graces can use their search-driven profits to noise up other channels and drive your margins into negative territory. (In social media competitors can target ads at just your followers, competitors can buy your branded keywords in Google, etc. ... most of the big platforms sell access across that way.)
It is not uncommon to see market participants take profits from one line of business or one channel & use it to undermine competitors who were succeeding in other channels.
So lets say you avoid search entirely...how do you sustainably compete against a competitor who has a similar footprint to you AND is leveraging search-driven profits to come after you?
Good point, you need to do everything right. But I think my point about over-reliance on a single source of traffic (and thus, indirectly of income) stands.
It is not uncommon to see market participants take profits from one line of business or one channel & use it to undermine competitors who were succeeding in other channels.
So lets say you avoid search entirely...how do you sustainably compete against a competitor who has a similar footprint to you AND is leveraging search-driven profits to come after you?