Popular YouTubers are building their own sites

It makes sense, not putting all your eggs in one basket. With the headline, I thought it would be more of a pivot to personal branding sites for the YouTubers.

Creating an enthusiastic, tight-knit community around a topic has its advantages, says Luke.

For the last few years, Linus and co-worker Luke Lafreniere have been investing in their own platform called Floatplane.

On Floatplane "a lot of the toxicity that exists on public platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, in the comments, just does not exist", he explains.

One of the most successful rival platforms, Nebula, was built on a simple premise: giving creators independence from YouTube's algorithms.

"Starting a business on YouTube is like opening a brand new store in a shopping centre," founder Dave Wiskus explains.

"Except you might come in to open your shop one day, and the shopping centre has just moved you to the other end where there are no customers, there's no foot traffic. And you'll never know why."