Hello Play Owl
Sorry to hear that you feel that the Freedom partnership isn't the best deal for your money. As previously mentioned it isn't like you are loosing money by partnering with Freedom instead you are actually gaining 5% more than you would if you were not with a partnership, further to this one of the main big things is not having to wait for a payment threshold - if you were to go alone you wouldn't be paid until you hit $100 whereas with Freedom you get paid any amount you earn.
Further to this Freedom offers its members loads of sponsorship, as noted by LW001 above, including varies music libraries, free to use content, game giveaways, monthly competitions (on the forums) and others to name just a few, Don't think that the forums are the only thing on offer - as noted this is a free forum, and available for both Freedom partners and non partners alike, who know's who you might bump into?
At the end of the day the choice of whether or not to be partnered with Freedom is yours to make, if you don't like it or feel like something else is better suited then you can always leave, if you wanted. Likewise if you think of something that you would like to see in the network and think this would be a big benefit to your channel, and others like yours then you can always reach out and offer this as a potential future sponsorship / investment - George has always said he's open for users suggestions.
Lastly I find your comment of 'Another thing I've noticed is that whenever a question is posted, the person to respond has so few subscribers to their channel. That doesn't breed any confidence in freedom for me' a bit disconcerting. Your basically saying oh someone answered a query available on a public forum but because they don't have many subscribers that's worrying. Not everyone grows at the same rate as others, and people such as myself only do YouTube as a hobby and that's all I see it as - I don't put as many hours into it as I should but I would never let that stop me helping others in need - for example I've stayed up three / four hours longer in some nights to help out with complex issues or questions on the forums, just knowing I helped is good enough for me. Also just because people may have smaller channels doesn't mean that there answers will be any less valid or correct, as long as they are providing correct answers and helping out then why should a subscriber number matter?
