I think we all fall into our own way of doing longarming, just as we do with just about everything else. I do a *lot* of SITD when I longarm, and don't find it that difficult, probably because I'm pretty tolerant of drifting outside the ditch occasionally. I don't float the top, which means that I attach the bottom of the top to a rail rather than let it float free. I find that I can keep the sides where they belong that way. I often baste the entire quilt before starting the real quilting, because I can then roll the quilt back and forth, making it easier to do all of a particular motif at once, or to start in the middle (or anyplace else) if that's what I want to do. This also makes it easy to do all the quilting for which I want one color of thread, then switch threads for another part of the quilting. I have my own way of loading the quilt that works for me, but it isn't the way I was originally taught, or the way I've seen others do it online. I developed my habits based on what works for me, after trying lots of techniques that didn't work for me.
I do only free motion and ruler work. I have friends who have robotics (which I would definitely want if I quilted as a business), and friends who do mostly pantographs, which I've never even tried to do.