How can you distinguish between people/companies that genuinly try to help you with a method and those who focus on making profit and just using a method as a tool. What different behaviours would you percieve in either case?

What if you're the best restaurant in a street full of restaurants, and they all have ushers except you?

The patrons would have to catch on before you go out of business.

For comparison: Basecamp buys Google ads because if you search for "Basecamp", the first thing you saw was competitors. So if advertising is a heuristic for inferior products, it would mean that Basecamp turned inferior overnight.