After listening to @Matej @ Apify ’s answer to this same question in today’s office hours, I wouldn’t so readily tell developers, “then for sure go for it.” If I understood correctly from what Matej said, basically the sales team is not going to like this, and your actor could get somewhat shadowbanned in the store for doing it. This makes sense, because if Apify is removing the rental model, why allow a backdoor to something that works almost the same way?

I don't think Apify is going to shadowban anything in the store. However, we will "privilege" Actors with transparent pricing, giving them a higher listing in the store, as it's a better user experience. This won't matter if your Actor is niche, as you're not likely to have front-page Apify Store listing with a niche Actor but you'll have customers for it all the same

So if my niche is "super-specific-thingy" and the user searches in the search bar "super-specific-thingy", I can expect the search to list my actor even if I'm using this approach. Am I right?

I would vote yes but this is not determined yet, we will discuss it more and let you know