I have been writing this blog, on and off, for almost eight years. Ever since I have started making free educational video lectures and publishing them on YouTube (since early 2016), I have not once posted about it on this blog. I did not think then, nor do I think now, that those video lectures are some sort of an investment that can or should be directly monetized and advertised for the end-goal of monetizing them. This is primarily why I did not enable monetization and ads on my videos so far. Honestly, even if I did, it would be more of a bother than any real gain. But also, there are more reasons and I will elaborate.

At this moment, I have about 50 thousand monthly views and over 4 thousand hours of viewing monthly, with a total of a little over 7 thousand subscribers. Those figures would not result in any serious revenue even if I chose to enable monetization. However, I am certain that it would send the wrong message. As I have already said, I do not do this for the prospect of earning money from it.

My goal always was to help people who are interested in this field of work get a bit more educational content than is already available out there and make it that much easier for them to learn and start working in this field. Lately, I have been getting messages from people asking me why I do not monetize, why I do not accept sponsorships, etc. There have been a few offers here and there. It was nothing too serious and also not from a famous company. It was mostly from people who are fans of my work and are or know someone who is a subscriber or a viewer of my channel. So I finally felt the need to write a short blog about my FREE YouTube Video Lectures and the reason why I am making them.

I do not like to repeat myself too often, but just in case someone missed or skipped over some of the previous text, here are the key points: I love programming. I love programming. I have been doing it for twenty years. I have been learning a lot about it. I love learning about it. And, I love teaching programming to people.

For those who do not know, I work at a university as an assistant teacher, primarily in the fields of programming, but also databases, GNU/Linux systems, web development, etc.

I know how hard it is to teach someone skills. You can teach knowledge to someone much more easily than you can teach them skills. Skills take time and effort and a lot of practice and materials. My goal, with these video lectures that I have been publishing for almost 4 years, always was to provide more learning materials and to tailor those videos to young people eager to learn. It takes a lot to make them, but I do not do it for the prospect of earning money from it through monetization and I do not want to bother people watching those videos with random and mostly non-interesting advertising. Ads hinder concentration. People trying to learn need concentration and showing them an irritating ad now and then does not help.

Therefore, at this moment, on my YouTube channel, I have published over 220 hours worth of video lectures that are completely free and are entirely recorded in my native language. This is my contribution to the education of young people and their introduction to the field of computer programming, computer science, and information technologies.

I will continue to record and publish more videos on all of the topics I can. Hopefully, they will be a welcome addition to an ever-growing body of materials available and I hope that they will not get outdated too soon. But even so, they will remain free and ad-free for as long as this platform supports it.

I make these videos in my free time, from home and I do it knowing full well that I do not expect, nor want, any monetary return from it. Simply knowing that they are helpful to people wanting to learn is just enough incentive for me to continue.

And, if someone still does not know what I am talking about, go check out my YouTube channel at youtube.com/c/MilanTair.