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Own Your Content: Why Creators Need More Than YouTube
Own Your Content: Why Creators Need More Than YouTube in 2026
Two things I keep coming back to in content creation. One, you should own the house — you should own the land where you’re building. And two, you need to understand how to monetize your content. It’s nice to produce great work, but if you can’t turn it into revenue, you’ve got a hobby, not a business. And let me tell you, that monetization piece is trickier than most people admit.
I invited three guests onto the Special Marcoting Live Show to dig into both of these problems: Caren Glasser, a tech evangelist whose mission is to take the fear out of technology; Jan Creidenberg, who manages product and growth at Open Video; and Connor Shield, head of creator success at the same platform. What followed was one of the most practical conversations I’ve had about what it really means to own your content and build a sustainable creator business.
Owning the Land Isn’t a Metaphor — It’s a Business Decision
I’ve been saying this for a while, and Caren has been saying it even longer: if you’re putting your content exclusively on platforms you don’t own, you’re taking a massive risk. And I’m not being dramatic. I had a Facebook page stolen by a hacker a few years ago. I asked Facebook to give it back more times than I can count. Never got it back. All that content, all those followers — gone.
Caren echoed this from her own experience. “I have colleagues — I’m sure you have colleagues, Marco — that have been shut down for no apparent reason. They’re just done,” she said. That’s why she was already storing her content across Google Drive, Vimeo, OneDrive, Apple Drive, and YouTube before she found Open Video. She knew the risk was real.
And it’s not just about accounts disappearing. I’m an Amazon content creator, and I upload videos to Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and Amazon Canada. The same videos — same language, same content. Some get approved on one platform and rejected on the others. AI moderation is wildly inconsistent, and when you don’t own the platform, you have zero control over those decisions.
The Platform Doesn’t Work for You — It Works for Itself
Jan made a point during the conversation that really stuck with me. He said these platforms want to maximise watch time on their platform. They don’t care whether it’s your video or somebody else’s. A YouTube subscriber is essentially a vanity metric — it shows how popular you look, but you have no clue who those people actually are. You don’t have their email. You can’t contact them directly. You’re completely dependent on an algorithm that serves the platform’s interests, not yours.
Connor took this further with a parallel that should worry every video creator. He and Jan have spent years in the publishing space, and they’ve already watched what happened to text-based content. Publishers who built their businesses on Google search traffic saw everything collapse when Google started keeping users on its own platform with AI-generated overviews. Overnight, businesses that depended on that traffic lost their lead generation.
“We see the same risk profile in video,” Connor said. If YouTube decides to stop sending traffic your way, what do you have left? Do your viewers know about your brand, your website, and your products? For most creators, the honest answer is no.
This is the core argument for owning your content on your own domain. It’s not about abandoning YouTube — Caren was very clear about that. Open Video is not instead of YouTube. It’s in addition to YouTube. You still use the big platforms for discovery. But your home base, the place where you truly own the relationship with your audience, needs to be on land you control.
How Open Video Changes the Creator Equation
What drew me to this conversation was how practical the Open Video solution is. Connor walked through the dashboard live on the show, and the first thing that struck me was the simplicity. Creators are already juggling too many platforms, so the last thing anyone needs is another complicated tool.
The dashboard covers everything you’d expect — video management, analytics, channel hosting, audience management, and monetization settings. But the details matter. When someone subscribes to your Open Video channel, you actually get their email address. Compare that to YouTube, where a subscriber is just a number with no way to reach them directly. You can also upload existing email lists, and the platform automatically notifies your subscribers when new content drops.
Caren demonstrated the YouTube import app, which lets you either manually import individual videos or set up automatic syncing so every new YouTube upload also lands on Open Video. The metadata — titles, descriptions, thumbnails, categories — all transfer over. You can tweak everything within Open Video’s interface, which mirrors YouTube’s familiar fields.
One feature I found particularly interesting is the custom domain connection. Caren’s videos live at videos.carenglasser.com — her own property, with her own branding. “It literally looks like a YouTube screen,” she said. “It has all the components. So it’s not foreign. It’s very comforting. But it’s yours.” The platform works with WordPress via a plugin, and also integrates with Webflow and other CMS platforms through DNS settings.
I also asked about playlist segmentation — something critical for me since I create content in at least two languages. Jan confirmed you can set up different playlists and configure email notifications to go out only for specific playlists or areas of the channel. So a subscriber can choose to follow just the topics or languages they care about rather than getting everything.
Monetization Without the YouTube Gatekeeping
This is the part that hit hardest for me. YouTube requires a thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours before you can join its Partner Programme. For most creators — even those with genuine followings — those thresholds are out of reach. And here’s what really bothers me: YouTube still shows ads on videos that aren’t part of the Partner Programme. They just keep all the revenue for themselves.
Open Video takes a completely different approach. Jan explained that the platform covers ad serving fees, and after that, one hundred percent of ad profits go to the creator. There’s no subscriber threshold. There’s no watch-hour requirement. You can start monetizing essentially from day one.
Caren was emphatic about the control this gives creators. You can decide how many ads appear in your video, where exactly they’re placed, and whether to set defaults or customise each video individually. “We didn’t have that control,” she said. On YouTube, ads just pop up wherever the platform decides.
The platform is backed by Ezoic, a company with fifteen years in the digital advertising and content creation space. That backing gives them the capital to offer the platform for free right now. Jan mentioned future plans for premium features — paywalls, live streaming, additional templates — following a freemium model. But everything currently on the platform is free.
I also asked the question I know some people are thinking: what stops someone from gaming the system? Using a VPN to inflate views, or uploading stolen Netflix content to monetize? Connor was straightforward — they’ve built robust detection systems. Between the VPN detection and content verification, they catch it. “Going back to the ten, fifteen years of Ezoic, we’ve dealt with people trying to monetize on the open web in every way possible,” he said. Try it, and you’ll get yourself banned.
The SEO Advantage Nobody’s Talking About
Connor raised a point during the show that I think deserves its own spotlight. Google made changes roughly two years ago to how video ranks in search. For a video to appear in Google’s video search results, it needs to be the main content on the page — not just an embedded YouTube video accompanying a blog article.
Open Video’s watch pages and channel pages are built specifically for this. Jan showed live examples of creators whose videos rank as the top result in Google search on their own websites, above Instagram and YouTube results. All the SEO optimisation is handled automatically — you don’t have to build it yourself.
And here’s the part that really got my attention: Connor mentioned that early signals suggest LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are using Google search rankings as a template for their own answers. So if your video ranks in Google, it’s likely showing up in AI-powered answers too. That’s a significant discovery opportunity that most creators are currently sending to YouTube instead of capturing for themselves.
Smart Stacks: Building a Real Content Workflow
Caren introduced a concept she calls “smart stacks” — a systematic workflow for content distribution. Here’s how it works: you record a video or live show. It goes to YouTube via StreamYard or Restream. The Open Video app automatically imports it. Then you go in and optimise within Open Video and embed it wherever you want on your website.
“Don’t do this by the seat of your pants,” Caren said. And I think that’s the critical mindset shift. This isn’t about adding one more thing to your to-do list. It’s about being intentional with a process that protects your business. Jan reinforced this: “It’s no longer just, ‘Oh yeah, I make a video, I upload it to YouTube.’ It’s being intentional about trying to build that community outside of the platforms.”
I asked Caren to give the audience three reasons to embrace Open Video in 2026. Her answer was perfectly Caren: the first reason is that you need to own the land where you put your content. The second reason is that you need to own the land on which you place your content. And the third? Monetization — available from day one without arbitrary gatekeeping.
The repetition was intentional. And honestly, it’s the whole point.
Key Takeaways
Owning your video content on your own domain isn’t a nice-to-have anymore — it’s a business necessity as platforms increasingly prioritise their own interests over creators’. The combination of direct audience connection through email capture, immediate monetization without subscriber thresholds, and SEO benefits from hosting video as primary content on your website makes a compelling case for building beyond YouTube. The shift requires a change in workflow and mindset, but tools like Open Video — backed by Ezoic’s fifteen years in digital advertising — make it accessible for creators at any level.
Find more about the guests and Open.Video:
Caren Glasser: https://www.carenglasser.com/Caren Glasser | LinkedIn
Jan Creidenberg:Jan Creidenberg | LinkedIn
Connor Shield:Connor Shield | LinkedIn
Open.Video
You might also like:
Want to boost your content? These are the tools I use and love! 😉 Some links are affiliate links (I earn a commission at no extra cost to you):
🎥 StreamYard: Professional live streaming directly from your browser ➡ https://streamyard.com/?fpr=mfcnovo
🌟 Magai: Your new best productivity friend! Join thousands who have already transformed their workflow ➡ https://magai.co/?via=marco
〽️Metricool. Manage and measure your social media performance: https://f.mtr.cool/UQGBYC
📜 Castmagic: Transform audios into ready-made content | Code “marcoting20” = 20% off ➡ https://get.castmagic.io/ozhbxxx1bv3n
🤳 Be Relatable: Authentic content that works ➡ https://berelatable.pro/?fpr=mfcnovo
💰 Streann: Monetize your videos ➡ https://fas.st/t/tFgYFdcY
🎞️ Opus Pro: Viral short videos from your long content | 30% off ➡ https://www.opus.pro/marco30
🤖 Short.ai: Automatic faceless videos with AI ➡ https://www.short.ai/?ref=MARCOTING
📢 Stampede Social: Automatic reach | Code “MARCO20” = 20% off ➡ https://app.stampede.social/svc/onboard?aff=1FjTihKpsAns
📦 Equipment (affiliate links): • My equipment: https://amzn.to/4ahWJVD • For beginners: https://amzn.to/40wQf1L • For outdoor: https://amzn.to/40mytNg
📲 Connect with me on social media:
🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mfcnovo 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mfcnovo/ 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfcnovo/ 🐦 X (Twitter): https://x.com/mfcnovo 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mfcnovo 📝 Substack: https://mfcnovo.substack.com/
Get full access to Marcoting Live at mfcnovo.substack.com/subscribe
View all episodes
By Marco NovoOwn Your Content: Why Creators Need More Than YouTube in 2026
Two things I keep coming back to in content creation. One, you should own the house — you should own the land where you’re building. And two, you need to understand how to monetize your content. It’s nice to produce great work, but if you can’t turn it into revenue, you’ve got a hobby, not a business. And let me tell you, that monetization piece is trickier than most people admit.
I invited three guests onto the Special Marcoting Live Show to dig into both of these problems: Caren Glasser, a tech evangelist whose mission is to take the fear out of technology; Jan Creidenberg, who manages product and growth at Open Video; and Connor Shield, head of creator success at the same platform. What followed was one of the most practical conversations I’ve had about what it really means to own your content and build a sustainable creator business.
Owning the Land Isn’t a Metaphor — It’s a Business Decision
I’ve been saying this for a while, and Caren has been saying it even longer: if you’re putting your content exclusively on platforms you don’t own, you’re taking a massive risk. And I’m not being dramatic. I had a Facebook page stolen by a hacker a few years ago. I asked Facebook to give it back more times than I can count. Never got it back. All that content, all those followers — gone.
Caren echoed this from her own experience. “I have colleagues — I’m sure you have colleagues, Marco — that have been shut down for no apparent reason. They’re just done,” she said. That’s why she was already storing her content across Google Drive, Vimeo, OneDrive, Apple Drive, and YouTube before she found Open Video. She knew the risk was real.
And it’s not just about accounts disappearing. I’m an Amazon content creator, and I upload videos to Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and Amazon Canada. The same videos — same language, same content. Some get approved on one platform and rejected on the others. AI moderation is wildly inconsistent, and when you don’t own the platform, you have zero control over those decisions.
The Platform Doesn’t Work for You — It Works for Itself
Jan made a point during the conversation that really stuck with me. He said these platforms want to maximise watch time on their platform. They don’t care whether it’s your video or somebody else’s. A YouTube subscriber is essentially a vanity metric — it shows how popular you look, but you have no clue who those people actually are. You don’t have their email. You can’t contact them directly. You’re completely dependent on an algorithm that serves the platform’s interests, not yours.
Connor took this further with a parallel that should worry every video creator. He and Jan have spent years in the publishing space, and they’ve already watched what happened to text-based content. Publishers who built their businesses on Google search traffic saw everything collapse when Google started keeping users on its own platform with AI-generated overviews. Overnight, businesses that depended on that traffic lost their lead generation.
“We see the same risk profile in video,” Connor said. If YouTube decides to stop sending traffic your way, what do you have left? Do your viewers know about your brand, your website, and your products? For most creators, the honest answer is no.
This is the core argument for owning your content on your own domain. It’s not about abandoning YouTube — Caren was very clear about that. Open Video is not instead of YouTube. It’s in addition to YouTube. You still use the big platforms for discovery. But your home base, the place where you truly own the relationship with your audience, needs to be on land you control.
How Open Video Changes the Creator Equation
What drew me to this conversation was how practical the Open Video solution is. Connor walked through the dashboard live on the show, and the first thing that struck me was the simplicity. Creators are already juggling too many platforms, so the last thing anyone needs is another complicated tool.
The dashboard covers everything you’d expect — video management, analytics, channel hosting, audience management, and monetization settings. But the details matter. When someone subscribes to your Open Video channel, you actually get their email address. Compare that to YouTube, where a subscriber is just a number with no way to reach them directly. You can also upload existing email lists, and the platform automatically notifies your subscribers when new content drops.
Caren demonstrated the YouTube import app, which lets you either manually import individual videos or set up automatic syncing so every new YouTube upload also lands on Open Video. The metadata — titles, descriptions, thumbnails, categories — all transfer over. You can tweak everything within Open Video’s interface, which mirrors YouTube’s familiar fields.
One feature I found particularly interesting is the custom domain connection. Caren’s videos live at videos.carenglasser.com — her own property, with her own branding. “It literally looks like a YouTube screen,” she said. “It has all the components. So it’s not foreign. It’s very comforting. But it’s yours.” The platform works with WordPress via a plugin, and also integrates with Webflow and other CMS platforms through DNS settings.
I also asked about playlist segmentation — something critical for me since I create content in at least two languages. Jan confirmed you can set up different playlists and configure email notifications to go out only for specific playlists or areas of the channel. So a subscriber can choose to follow just the topics or languages they care about rather than getting everything.
Monetization Without the YouTube Gatekeeping
This is the part that hit hardest for me. YouTube requires a thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours before you can join its Partner Programme. For most creators — even those with genuine followings — those thresholds are out of reach. And here’s what really bothers me: YouTube still shows ads on videos that aren’t part of the Partner Programme. They just keep all the revenue for themselves.
Open Video takes a completely different approach. Jan explained that the platform covers ad serving fees, and after that, one hundred percent of ad profits go to the creator. There’s no subscriber threshold. There’s no watch-hour requirement. You can start monetizing essentially from day one.
Caren was emphatic about the control this gives creators. You can decide how many ads appear in your video, where exactly they’re placed, and whether to set defaults or customise each video individually. “We didn’t have that control,” she said. On YouTube, ads just pop up wherever the platform decides.
The platform is backed by Ezoic, a company with fifteen years in the digital advertising and content creation space. That backing gives them the capital to offer the platform for free right now. Jan mentioned future plans for premium features — paywalls, live streaming, additional templates — following a freemium model. But everything currently on the platform is free.
I also asked the question I know some people are thinking: what stops someone from gaming the system? Using a VPN to inflate views, or uploading stolen Netflix content to monetize? Connor was straightforward — they’ve built robust detection systems. Between the VPN detection and content verification, they catch it. “Going back to the ten, fifteen years of Ezoic, we’ve dealt with people trying to monetize on the open web in every way possible,” he said. Try it, and you’ll get yourself banned.
The SEO Advantage Nobody’s Talking About
Connor raised a point during the show that I think deserves its own spotlight. Google made changes roughly two years ago to how video ranks in search. For a video to appear in Google’s video search results, it needs to be the main content on the page — not just an embedded YouTube video accompanying a blog article.
Open Video’s watch pages and channel pages are built specifically for this. Jan showed live examples of creators whose videos rank as the top result in Google search on their own websites, above Instagram and YouTube results. All the SEO optimisation is handled automatically — you don’t have to build it yourself.
And here’s the part that really got my attention: Connor mentioned that early signals suggest LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are using Google search rankings as a template for their own answers. So if your video ranks in Google, it’s likely showing up in AI-powered answers too. That’s a significant discovery opportunity that most creators are currently sending to YouTube instead of capturing for themselves.
Smart Stacks: Building a Real Content Workflow
Caren introduced a concept she calls “smart stacks” — a systematic workflow for content distribution. Here’s how it works: you record a video or live show. It goes to YouTube via StreamYard or Restream. The Open Video app automatically imports it. Then you go in and optimise within Open Video and embed it wherever you want on your website.
“Don’t do this by the seat of your pants,” Caren said. And I think that’s the critical mindset shift. This isn’t about adding one more thing to your to-do list. It’s about being intentional with a process that protects your business. Jan reinforced this: “It’s no longer just, ‘Oh yeah, I make a video, I upload it to YouTube.’ It’s being intentional about trying to build that community outside of the platforms.”
I asked Caren to give the audience three reasons to embrace Open Video in 2026. Her answer was perfectly Caren: the first reason is that you need to own the land where you put your content. The second reason is that you need to own the land on which you place your content. And the third? Monetization — available from day one without arbitrary gatekeeping.
The repetition was intentional. And honestly, it’s the whole point.
Key Takeaways
Owning your video content on your own domain isn’t a nice-to-have anymore — it’s a business necessity as platforms increasingly prioritise their own interests over creators’. The combination of direct audience connection through email capture, immediate monetization without subscriber thresholds, and SEO benefits from hosting video as primary content on your website makes a compelling case for building beyond YouTube. The shift requires a change in workflow and mindset, but tools like Open Video — backed by Ezoic’s fifteen years in digital advertising — make it accessible for creators at any level.
Find more about the guests and Open.Video:
Caren Glasser: https://www.carenglasser.com/Caren Glasser | LinkedIn
Jan Creidenberg:Jan Creidenberg | LinkedIn
Connor Shield:Connor Shield | LinkedIn
Open.Video
You might also like:
Want to boost your content? These are the tools I use and love! 😉 Some links are affiliate links (I earn a commission at no extra cost to you):
🎥 StreamYard: Professional live streaming directly from your browser ➡ https://streamyard.com/?fpr=mfcnovo
🌟 Magai: Your new best productivity friend! Join thousands who have already transformed their workflow ➡ https://magai.co/?via=marco
〽️Metricool. Manage and measure your social media performance: https://f.mtr.cool/UQGBYC
📜 Castmagic: Transform audios into ready-made content | Code “marcoting20” = 20% off ➡ https://get.castmagic.io/ozhbxxx1bv3n
🤳 Be Relatable: Authentic content that works ➡ https://berelatable.pro/?fpr=mfcnovo
💰 Streann: Monetize your videos ➡ https://fas.st/t/tFgYFdcY
🎞️ Opus Pro: Viral short videos from your long content | 30% off ➡ https://www.opus.pro/marco30
🤖 Short.ai: Automatic faceless videos with AI ➡ https://www.short.ai/?ref=MARCOTING
📢 Stampede Social: Automatic reach | Code “MARCO20” = 20% off ➡ https://app.stampede.social/svc/onboard?aff=1FjTihKpsAns
📦 Equipment (affiliate links): • My equipment: https://amzn.to/4ahWJVD • For beginners: https://amzn.to/40wQf1L • For outdoor: https://amzn.to/40mytNg
📲 Connect with me on social media:
🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mfcnovo 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mfcnovo/ 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfcnovo/ 🐦 X (Twitter): https://x.com/mfcnovo 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mfcnovo 📝 Substack: https://mfcnovo.substack.com/
Get full access to Marcoting Live at mfcnovo.substack.com/subscribe