Hi Peetie,
I think Blender is becoming much more visible and used within the creative community. It’s much more powerful and user friendly than it has ever been. We are now seeing amazing works done with Blender more than I’ve ever seen before. Even pro level stuff is now appearing everywhere from twitter, Facebook, BlenderArtists, YouTube, Vimeo, etc… I’m also seeing up and rising students creating incredible stuff with Blender. I’m sure they will bring that into their jobs or businesses. See Gift of Nature by Jerzy Gorski to see an example of what I mean. Just amazing (on top of that he did it without addons). Gift of Nature - Animated Short Film
I think you’ve already helped the community with your addon site which helped artists and Blender users find useful tools that made things just a bit easier and quicker to do in Blender. For Pros they will use whatever will make it quicker/faster and ideally cheaper for the job at hand. If Blender fits they will use it. If not they use other tools (as they can afford it). I’m seeing production houses and small studios now including (or at least) testing Blender within their pipeline so Blender usage it growing. Still room though. I am seeing more Blender coverage in 3D Magazines than ever before to (like 3D Artists Magazine - which I subscribe to). Also, people like Ian Hubert and others like him are opening allot of eyes! He’s already got over 600K views.
Checkout this amazing Largest GC Challenge put out by Clinton Jones (aka pwnisher) . I would bet some of these where done with Blender. To bad they don’t list the software used but I guess they wanted it to be about the art not the software.
The other thing also to consider as more people jump into Blender the more competition there will be so this will make it harder for those who want to make a living using Blender and it’s ecosystem. It’s like you said that one will need to “market” themselves if they want to become more visible. Which also puzzles me as to why you stopped your blender-addons.org site. It’s a great vehicle for just that. I’m guessing you have something else in the works.
Cheers and good luck,
Paul