> Or they might have just created the content and monetised it through their own site.
Assuming you could find it since discoverability would probably be lower. Then if a particular video 'went viral', it could cost them a lot of money in sudden and unexpected hosting and bandwidth costs. They would also now have to spend time on dealing with 'infrastructure' instead of focusing on creating content.
There's a reason why so many people use Youtube and Patreon instead of DIYing it: few folks are interested in re-inventing that entire stack on their own.
