we did have channels on various sites, yes. However, its difficult to maintain a steady stream of content there for people to consume. Not only that, but you have the same discoverability problems as you do for the main site. Also, a blog outlining how you built the site may be of limited value. At least my experience on that front was it would generate short-lived bursts of traffic, but wouldnt generate returning users. So I think those articles were mostly appealing to technical users, and not necessarily users who were looking to do some shopping. Of course technical users do also shop, but after reading a technical article, they probably arent looking to immediately shop, and without some other mechanism putting the site in front of them again when they needed to shop, we would miss the opportunity.