Flip to hub-and-spoke model: own your content hub, treat platforms as distribution spokes
Instead of building your business on a platform (YouTube, App Store, etc.), treat your owned site as the hub and all platforms as spokes for distribution. Link social posts to your site first where you capture emails and own the relationship, then let platform content amplify reach. This protects against platform risk (strikes, bans, algorithm changes) while building an owned audience you control. The key shift: platforms used to be the hub because that's where people were, but with platform risk and AI making site building easy, owned sites should be the hub.
When to use
When you're building significant presence on any platform (YouTube, App Store, marketplace), when platform revenue is less than half your total revenue (showing you have products beyond the platform), or when you've experienced platform warnings/strikes that made you realize the risk.
Don't do this
Making your site the hub when you have no existing audience - platforms are still valuable for discovery early on. Also avoid if 100% of revenue comes from platform (e.g., purely YouTube AdSense) - fix business model first. This strategy works when platform is distribution, not the product itself.
1 Founder Who Did This
After YouTube strikes threatened to delete channel, rebuilt video platform in a weekend. Now links all social posts (Twitter, LinkedIn) to starterstory.com first with login-gated videos, treating YouTube as spoke for discovery only. Downloads all videos for backup ownership.