To “compete” in web search results is somewhat absurd.

To “compete” in web search results is somewhat absurd. One-off retailers are rightly viewed with suspicion, and making a living off web advertising is something available only to sites at the scale of BoingBoing.

Make good content, ignore monetization, and you may end up with the self-satisfaction of a job well done. Engage with any form of monetization and you lose even that. Good content doesn’t need to appear high in search results, and doesn’t require monetization: if you post things that are of interest and aren’t already on the web, you will attract an audience; break either of those two rules and you are not posting good content but instead are at best acting as an aggregator (and then you’re competing with reddit). If you have an audience and a community, you can get support when you need it.