You hit this one right on the nail, @indigoocean. It deserves a resteem as well, given how many I know follow me too as newbies looking to carve out a living online.
The world has changed so much over the last few decades. It's no longer easy like it was in the late 90's/early 2000's to get a site or page listed in the top few on the search engines. The internet has opened up a whole new ocean that in so many ways really is an ocean of chaos when looking for certain things through the limited number of monopoly gateways, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. You said it well, when you said,
let me just emphasize that whatever you do, you want to aim to reduce competition.
Yes. I hate to say it because I know a lot of people have this dream of self employment but right now the approaches that work are shifting. We have to be responsive to that if we are to succeed. I’m more interested in helping people succeed here on steemit right now than with a bootstrapped business.
You do well to speak the truth from your experience and heart. I had been telling my sons very much the same thing recently how things have changed the game and made it far more complex from what so many have been taught to believe.