The hybrid model has worked for me for several years now. The V4V portion remains very low though, probably less than 5% at the current time.

After building out my own system - where I post the same videos as I do on YouTube without the ads and sponsors - I can now smugly direct people to my website whenever they complain about seeing another sponsored section in my videos. They nearly always choose to stay on youtube though, and it seems convenience also plays a factor in this whole story.

Like nostr:npub1clk6vc9xhjp8q5cws262wuf2eh4zuvwupft03hy4ttqqnm7e0jrq3upup9 also touched on in the video, "the ask" can create tension and easily appear desperate or greedy if you do it too often. Whereas I can land a new sponsor, get more money into the pipeline, plan ahead, and there's almost no friction from my audience.

The other important aspect of the "lifeboat" in my case is maintaining a newsletter email list of my audience, and then keeping it trim so it represents my core fans as much as possible. I've been using Sendy for about a year now, and if a platform suddenly disappeared, I could stay in touch with the most important followers.