I’ve been pollen chucking for a couple decades so always have lots of seeds I can play with so have tried almost every method of sprouting seeds and getting sprouts going fast that you can imagine.
The best by far is straight into media with a few tweaks. I first scarify my seeds in a pill jar lined with 150grit sandpaper. Shake them gently holding the jar horizontally for a full 2 minutes. If you still like to soak them add a few drops of 3% peroxide to a 30ml shot glass to break up any surface oils on the seeds that may prevent water from getting in easily. A very small dab of dish soap will help as well. Handling seeds with your fingers can coat them with oils so don’t do that. I use a pair of long tweezers that I put little rubber booties on with small pieces of shrink fit tubing. Bare metal tweezers can send those seeds off to where you will never find them. 
I used to use those 9-hole seed starter pots filled with ProMix HP screened thru a 1mm mesh screen. Same mesh as window screens so can buy it at a hardware store. Doing a round now of 18 seeds in 3" square pots filled with a 50:50 mix of the HP and ProMix Veg&Herb that has organic nutes in it. In each pot I’ll scoop out a spoonful of the mix and replace that with the screened stuff so the seed is coddled in fine particles for maximum contact about a half inch deep.
IMO it really doesn’t matter which direction the seed gets planted. Base side down or pointy end it’s a bit of a crap shoot. Sometimes the root comes out in a straight line and other times it circles around the seed before heading down. It knows which way to go. Even ones that come out of the soil root first can be flipped over and grow fine.
Sprouting and immediately feeding on normal soil nutes gets them off to the best start. Even light hydro nutes in rockwool is better than no nutes at all for 2 weeks like I see some people say to do. That’s nuts to me. The food stores in the seed are just enough to get it up into the light and it’s needs food to grow with right away.
If you’re happy with what you’re doing keep doing it. There are lots of ways to skin this cat. 
OMFG! Get some decent smilies! Come on over to CC and rip off some of ours. 
