Alby is great, yes!

For anyone who want to earn serious sats I don't think it matters too much if the solutions you use to receive sats are self-custodial or not, as long as you can pull it onchain say once a week, or even through other payment gateways into fiat or goods.

It seems to me that its not possible to set up Alby desktop without opening a channel?

For now I've pulled what I had with Alby custodial into Phoenix, then onchain into Cake. Around 1100 sats in total, if I got the numbers right.

Ease of use and workflow is by far the most important with the focus I have!

Will probably get around to testing out Alby desktop for real once I decide that the whole project is going forward, I need to see it grow steadily until I invest what I have onchain now...