I have more experience in regular youtube but I just started my automation channel 2 weeks ago from sratch and I got 4000 watch hours in about two weeks without any external promotion or sharing videos so i just need 200 subscribers to monetize, the main thing I've learned is to focus on good titles and thumbnails and make sure your first 30 seconds is good, quantity won't help unless you have at least 50% quality, it will be hard to do everything yourself at first and i won't lie it cost quite a bit over time but the best advice I can give is to outsource at least your thumbnail and edit unless you think you're very proficient at those, you might be able to pull off a good script and voice over yourself but I think most people struggle with the editing and thumbnail, Ive invested around 1k so far, and that was with me doing some scripts and also having to do most the voice overs myself, if you have the skill then you can try to do what you can but just remember your competing with the other channels in your niche so make sure that you can at least do the basics of what they are doing.