We are proudly independent and work with many brands. But I won't work with a brand that doesn't already fit into what we're doing (except on one of our other channels), nor will we have time deadlines and what they want us to do. They can see what we do and determine if they want to be a part of it, I'm not changing our formula. Even with a very good brand deal, Adsense is still the best payout because it's perpetual, passive residual income. I won't do stuff with brands that doesn't have the possibility to go really really big (into the millions of views within a few months) because I'm in it primarily for the long term Adsense. I'm looking years down the road, not for the "brand deal" with a payout, otherwise I might as well go shoot a corporate video for $10,000, which we could do all day long. But I don't enjoy that. But we do make videos that I know won't go big on views because there are lots of types of videos we enjoy making that we don't do for the $$. Actually, even if we weren't doing this full-time I would be making the videos we make, because we already were before we even knew about monetization. We just have fun! I don't want a forced brand deal to mess that up. But thankfully there are plenty of brands that like what we do as is! Whether going with an MCN or not is more dependent on your personality than whether they'll do anything for you or not... do you like to be a 'part' of something, or are you fine with running on your own. We have been offered absolutely amazing MCN deals, 100% Adsense pass-thru, big signing bonuses, great cuts on premium ads, off-platform opps, merch, etc., but then they send you a multi-page fine-printed contract and I just am not going to sign. Lots of changes are in the works, opportunities will arise (and have for us) that I don't want to re-read fine print or have to be limited by my MCN or get them in on the deal too. I'm spontaneous, we jump on a lot of stuff that fine print would hold us back. And we have big plans. We built this on our own and we've only just begun. We have our own style (as do all channels), the only thing an MCN could do for us is hold us back. I know, I was part of a big one for a couple of months and they promised the world and they hadn't even thought about our channel in that time. MCNs also take away to see your Adsense real-time and seeing my Adsense real-time whenever I want fuels me. Take that away and it's not as exciting. I like to look through the windshield ahead, not the rear-view mirror seeing what we just passed. If you have a successful formula, that's all you need. But lots of people thrive even better in an MCN environment, so it's more about how you work best.[DOUBLEPOST=1425850382,1425850267][/DOUBLEPOST]The nice thing is when you have view counts that attract brands, they will contact you, and if you want a specific brand, you can contact them and they will listen. But get those view counts cranked first. Everything happens with big views, its the currency of YouTube.
