Freedom! partnership review

Around a month ago, I finally was able to join a Network through YouTube called "Freedom!" And it seems to be all the rage to do a testimonial and give, in my opinion, a weak observation on their involvement. Meaning, these people joined within days or a week or two, and think it's worthy enough to be considered a testimony. I purposely held off on giving my two cents, because the longer I'm with them, the better I can educate you.

Since you guys are already aware that I'm not very vocal... literally when it comes to general public speaking, your just going to have to settle for a written out testimony. And I'm not going to sugar coat it either. All these videos I've seen spoke such great praise to the small network, and that's bs. It definitely has just as many down sides to it like any other network out there. Granted, it definitely has a lot fewer than most, but still has a bit of a sting to it.

I signed up on January 19, 2014 after learning and investigating the network's information hours before. Thinking they wouldn't accept me, I tried anyways. Figuring I had nothing to lose. Unfortunately, it took one month, and two e-mails to finally get them to do anything to my account. With the last e-mail stating:

"...I request somebody to review my application as soon as possible. If this cannot be possible in an appropriate amount of time, then I wish to cancel our pre-agreement by next written letter from me."

Within a couple of hours, I got a reply something along the lines of "We'll review it as soon as possible." And the very next day, I was accepted in. Everything else went along smoothly. What made me feel more discourage was others were mentioning they were accepted in days or a week. I just hope it was an oversight.

Before I go into my pros and cons, and a nice good-ol'-hachi-rant, let me give you a backstory on what Freedom! and what it takes to get in there.

As quoted from the forum itself -

"Freedom! is an MCN founded by George Vanous, who also founded TGN and any.TV."

Freedom! offers a 60%/40% no set amount guaranteed ad revenue profit which can you can increase up to 110% by doing a lot more work aside from uploading or by naturally growing. You require 1,000 views per month, or 33 views per day and no strikes on your account to be eligible. Your contract begins immediately, and instantly are managed. Meaning your videos are automatically monetized, assuming you had no copyright or third party content. The one thing I've noticed which I see as a huge problem is if you didn't want a specific video(s) monetized, it switches back without your permission. You're not locked into a contract, and can leave at anytime, so as long as you give one months notice.

Now that I got the required FAQ stuff out of the way, I'll go into the pros and cons real quick, and leave you to decide. I'll highlight each point, and explain in a sentence or two as to why.

Pros -

Competitive requirements - 1,000 views per month is the lowest requirement to get into a network that offers almost all the same features. Next to Zoomin Games and Social Blade.

Polite community - Moderators and almost all of the community are helpful and friendly. Assuming they pay attention to what you say, e.g. forum post.

Fast growing network - With George behind the helm, its only a matter of time before Freedom! goes against someone (ironically) like TGN.

Exclusive features - If accepted as partner, you get exclusive features like a music library, XSplit, personal dashboard, private Minecraft server, and more.

Cons -

Questionable revenue - Since your only guaranteed $1, no matter what, beyond that, is questionable what you make based on CPM. e.g. $3.00 for the first 1,000, then $1.35 the next 1,000.

Lack of royalty free genre music - Most songs advertised is a lot of staple type music you could hear in say, CoD or Minecraft. but lacks foreign music, chiptunes, symphony, etc.

XSplit is not free -They advertise XSplit free to all its partners, but in exchange, take $5 from your revenue from your adsense to continue using it per month.

Your channel will not explode in popularity - Freedom is no different from anyone else. If you're small, don't expect the community to show support, and watch the bigger channels keep getting bigger over you, as you're held down.

On a neutral note, the community is very bland as far as content creation go. A good chunk only play Call of Duty, Battlefield, Minecraft, Titan Fall, Angry Birds, Happy Wheels. Basically, everything everyone else has over saturated to no end.

Overall, Freedom! Has some unique features not found anywhere else. Unfortunately, everything else in between makes them no different than a bigger network. Revenue split is no different than most that offer the same split. And expect you to work on top of the videos you make, render, and upload on a regular basis if you want more revenue. Add the fact a bigger channel can instantly get a better split, and a good chance to be promoted, and it makes for interesting sight to see yourself competing against yourself in hopes you get George's attention.

I personally say go for it, but unless you're hyper social towards the community, interest in the games they enjoy, or super popular, its just best just to accept you're part of the network, and ignore everything else. In other words, treat it as if your in Machinima.


One last thing before I go, and that's how I'm probably not going to use their forums again. Because what happened was stupid and not fair that there was no warning or response.

I decided to contribute on the forums to show I wasn't trying to leech off the network. So, I wrote this extremely extensive guide for people trying to start doing Let's Plays on the internet. Seven hours later, half asleep, with still spelling and grammar errors littering about, I posted and went to bed. Next morning, I went back to check, and much to my surprise, my guide gained enough notoriety, it was stickied on top of the forums topic. I was quite flattered, and felt pretty proud.

About a couple weeks later after being partnered, the post was moved to the partner section, which kind of confused me. It was meant to people who were trying to get into Let's Play. If it was in the partner section, didn't they already have an idea how to do it? Regardless, I wasn't going to object, considering moderators don't listen anyways.

I got pretty angry when I had to find out myself that they removed it from the sticky shortly after. I asked why a few days ago, and people are still continue to praise it, but no one is responding, and it's still going down the list. In about a week from now, I'll ask again, and if the mods won't say or do anything, I'll take the post down and post it on here, as I feel I'm being treated unfairly. Which is the reason why I won't participate in forums these days much anymore.

So, that's my two cents on everything, and I hope it found it somewhat helpful, despite me going into a tangent at the end there. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you over on Freedom! soon. Until then, see you soon~

If you would like to join, please use this link http://www.freedom.tm/via/HachiPlays which helps me out if you use it and apply.