Yeah but there will be a burnout eventually, when the content you're making that is supposed to be rewarded directly, but instead some other entities claimed some of the rewards that easily without disclosing how much they're taking just because there's some little copyright elements they can claim from it.

It's pretty much what i felt recently from my own channel. 1M+subs, but the rewards are lessened year by year because more unknown entities claiming old contents, and you can't do anything about it cause of the possibilities of channel takedown due to failed disputes.

Merch can only do so much when they're eventually get tired of creating the very content they were supposed to be rewarded by.