It's important to take your location into consideration with your approach. Not only where you live, but where you hope to play. We live in the midwest where travel ball at the high school level (it's rampant for 8U-14U ball) is in it's infancy stages. And it's fighting hard with high school coaches who are hell bent on keeping Legion ball alive. Those coaches have a death grip on the outdated cliche that "if you're good enough, they'll find YOU." The best avenue might be having a travel coach pre-sell, but that option isn't possible for everyone. And yes, it puts you at a distinct disadvantage. The kids with the best offers, rankings, reputations, etc in our state are those that got into traveling and did so early as freshmen and sophomores. For those that don't, you're forced to get creative, highly strategic and work much harder when not on the field.
You truly have to build your own HIGHLY customized magic bullet from the ground up.