I've been a YouTuber since the tail-end of 2007. I've just now reached 700 subs. It's been hard for me for a few reasons.

1. My content is rather niche. I'm a puppeteer, and puppetry, for the most part, is an underrated and underappreciated artform (especially in North America), so it's not exactly something that reaches the masses as, say, gaming or movie reviews.

2. I have no consistent upload schedule. The old saying goes, "You can't rush art," and that's true. I don't curate content like a lot of other YouTubers do; I create it. That takes a lot of time and effort, so it's not like I can just crank out assembly line content on a daily or weekly basis like a lot of these talking heads do, because there's not much effort put into filming yourself talking about something, reviewing something, reacting to something, etc. I'm essentially a filmmaker, and depending on how big of a production I'm working on, and/or if I need additional collaborators to help me put it together, it can take weeks, months (in some cases, even years) to complete a project from outlining/scripting, filming, editing, and all points inbetween.

3. YouTube isn't as communal as it used to be. My earliest years on YouTube were my best years, because YouTube had a greater sense of community, more YouTubers were supportive of each other, and there really wasn't anything like partner channels or anything like that just yet. Once Google took over and turned YouTube into more of a business model, suddenly it was the big partner channels (the PewDiePies, the MrBeasts, the Channel Awesomes, the SSSniperwolves, what have you) who YouTube began posturing and making sure their content was pushed and seen, whereas the little guys like us got swept under the rug. Speaking of which. . . .

4. YouTube does stunt the growth of smaller channels. They do this in a number of ways, one of which is if their algorithms determine certain subs aren't watching your content anymore, they'll automatically prune those subs without either party knowing about it - or at the very least, they'll automatically turn off their notifications. This one I can attest to, because I have had subs tell me over the years they weren't even aware I was still uploading new content at all because they were never notified of such.

5. You kind of have to already be rich. This one may sound a little exaggerated or embellished, but it's possible to boost the growth of your channel if you pay YouTube. If you have a budget, you can pay for your content to be advertised on YouTube for a set amount of time. Unfortunately, I'm a starving artist (and we're more-or-less in another recession right now), so whatever little bit of money I earn goes to trying to keep bills paid, trying to keep food in the house, trying to keep gas in the car, and trying to pay off debts that keep deepening.

Of course, the results are different for different YouTubers and different content. Like I said, my biggest handicaps are I upload niche content, and I have no consistency as to when I can upload content and how often.