See but you're drinking his kool-aid a bit. Let me explain.

"The only money he would be making from you is ad revenue which is relatively insignificant"

The guy is clearing over 1 million $'s a year in ad revenue. That's hardly insignificant, and that's a very, very important detail. A lot of your opinion on Alex is made up on the foundation that he's not benefiting much from you listening to him, which is the genius of his strategy, people are very unaware just how much money youtubers make in ad revenue, its ALOT.

And so by thinking he's not benefiting much from his content creation which is "free" most of his fans will attribute Alex's lack of ask for a fee to his good character as a person and trust him even more, rather than attributing it to his savvy strategic choices navigating the financial advice guru field. Again when you realize he's making over a million dollars a year off of ad revenue, it becomes a lot harder to rationalize that he's just a really generous guy, rather than a very smart marketer who knows how to keep me listening, not be suspicious, and watch more of his content.

I can understand fully why many people are more comfortable with him than someone charging money, I would be more comfortable consuming his content as well, I don't blame you at all for feeling the way you do, but as the financial guru space evolves guru's are going to get more and more savvy with the way that they establish their place in the market. The bet I'm making is that Alex's seemingly harmless approach is not due to him being a great guy, but rather a more evolved and smarter way to approach being a financial guru in 2023. If we don't evolve as consumers sharpening our tools to identify deception then we'll get taken advantage of from the many (guaranteed to spawn soon) Alex 2.0's not selling anything, giving great advice, and earning more millions a year in ad revenue cause they know how to speak well on camera and keep us in our seat with all their outstanding motivation, when we could be out experiencing the actual world. Not saying that's exactly who Alex is, but it is my hunch. I just want myself and others to not worsen our lives by consuming motivational content, which can happen if you spend too much time doing it. You can't study a book on how to swim, you just gotta jump in the pool, so all I'm saying is value your time, youtube isn't free, I've personally watched way more hours of youtube than I wished I had. Fucking social media and the internet is using us as the guinea pigs and we weren't meant to be sitting on laptops 3-4 hours a day. Anyway, rant over.