it would be good to develop a fully sustainable business model for the site and its development.

I thought about that too. Even if you are a top witness, it will be difficult to maintain a project that is not profitable or at least not self-sustaining. I think funding from DAO will be extremely difficult to get. Authors will also be reluctant to share their rewards. The most optimal option, in my opinion, is unobtrusive advertising. This will put the burden of financing the project not on users, but on advertisers. Of course, for this site traffic must be measured in thousands. I think you know all this very well. 🙂

If you have a site traffic counter, then in the future it would be good to evaluate the effectiveness of promoting the project on Facebook and whether it will give the necessary increase in traffic. It will be possible to conduct a test campaign, after which to evaluate whether there is a noticeable steady increase in traffic. It is important that people who learn about Steem Atlas remain regular users.