A year ago I took the advice of a couple of well-respected YouTubers and decided to monetise my channel. I never expected to make much money but monetization enabled me to control when and where adverts would show in my videos, and even a degree of control over what type of adverts I wanted shown (or more accurately what I didn't want to appear). I have earned more than I expected and all of that revenue has returned to my hobby and the channel instead of going to 'the man' at YouTube.