I joined RPM Networks via ProLax (recruiter) in late December. I have owned my YouTube channel for 5 years now and never really thought about becoming a partner and monetizing my videos. That's purely because becoming a partner was much stricter back then, and there were no such things as YouTube Networks as there are now. You had to develop 100% original content, or if your videos are solely gameplay footage, you had to had commentary on all of them. Even if all the above applies, YouTube are notorious for rejecting channels with limited reasons as to why, regardless if they have a heavy amount of subscribers and views or not.
Being the uninformed fool I am, I continue to maintain a regular old YouTube channel until finally last December. That's when I ultimately heard about YouTube Networks, and how they are pretty much accepting virtually anybody without bearing YouTube's strict requirements. Partnering with a network instead of directly with YouTube isn't different at all, depending on who you partner with. With most, you'll obtain all the partner features YouTube offers, the ability to monetize all your videos and more importantly being able to have complete creative control over your channel and its contents.
As a matter of fact, I already had a slew of networks offering me partnership in my YouTube message inbox. I read all of them, read up on their offerings and terms of service. There were a lot of good ones and ones with deceptive messages that makes you think you'll be earning huge money with them. In the end, I went with ProLax. Their message to me was simple to understand and it offered everything I wanted. Thus, I applied to them on around December 20th. I had to sign a contract that would require me to be a part of this Network for at least a year and we agreed on a 60/40 revenue split. Within a week later, I had all my partnership features and was then seeing my earnings on YouTube itself.
As it turns out, I was signed to RPM Networks and not ProLax. ProLax was just one of RPM's many recruiters such as SocialBlade. I actually should've applied through SocialBlade instead, because I would have had the bonus addition of being advertised on their website. With ProLax, I did not get anything extra besides one mention of me in their YouTube channel. Oh well…
I have to say that after being with RPM Networks for 7 months now, there has been some ups and downs. I'm earning very good consistent money with them and they pay on time, but I have to highly stress on how TERRIBLE their customer support is. One of the worst of all companies I had the displeasure of dealing with.
They don't respond to customers in a timely fashion at all. I had an issue with YouTube estimated earnings in my analytics disappearing abruptly for a few days. I sent them a message about it on the day it occurred, but they did not answer me back until a week later, when the problem was already fixed by itself. This is quite deceiving as they clearly stated all messages would be responded to in 24-48 hours. Another time I could not log into my dashboard at their website—actually, I was never able to log into it since the beginning of my partnership. I sent them a message about it on Twitter, yet they fail to ever respond to it. I had to send them another e-mail about why I couldn't log into my dashboard and a week later, I finally got an answer saying they will forward my account to get it dashboard access. It's been a few days following that and I still have no access to my dashboard. Grrr…
So in summary, if you want a good Network to join that grants you the full grid of YouTube partner features with high and unrestricted CPM, RPM Networks is great. If you want good, fast and responsive customer support, just simply stay away. And it's not just me either that are having dilemmas with their customer support, just read all the reviews of RPM Networks around on the internet.
I'm contemplating on switching to TGN (The Gamer Nation) when my contract with RPM Networks expires. However, RPM Networks may be moving me up to their supposedly much better TGS Network. Only time well tell...
Sorry to hear your frustrations with RPM Networks, guess I'll stay away from them if I get a chance to be partnered.
ReplyDeleteI'm with RPM and yes their support sucks!!
ReplyDeleteGreat rreading this
ReplyDelete