Great advice my friend. Although here is another question. What if you are really making good content but you are still not getting views or real subs, would it be because YT hasn't recognized your channel and doesn't even promote it? What could be the best way to get recognized by YT algorithm?
The problem is the chicken and the egg. What comes first? To get subs you need traffic. To get traffic you need subs and unsubbed viewers, which you won't get because you don't have traffic.
There are only a few ways to grow.
1. s4s (fake traffic, low retention, churn and burn, dangerous)
2. adwords (several months of expensive campaigns)
3. progressively target larger channels and build recommended traffic (channel shadowing)
4. external social (doesn't work for kids channels)
5. friends and family (low retention, not sustainable)
6. organic growth (really really slow, nothing may ever happen)
7. follow viral trends (can get lucky and have a hit, but have to offer a high value proposition)
8. create your own viral idea
That's pretty much it. Take your pick.
There are actually a number of Yt algos. There's search, recommended, & home page. You may want to target the search also (7) and if you can jump in quick enough on a new trend, you might get #2 or #3 position in search. Imagine the first "the floor is lava challenge" video. If you were #2 to execute that challenge, and then followed up with a few more, before all the big channels jumped in....
If you want to target the recommendation algo, look for (3). Pick 3 channels at 5k subs (that are growing in the last months or two), see what is causing them to grow and try to replicate with your own twist. Don't pick a 100k channel, pick a channel that you have a chance to be recommended on. Yt recommends in levels, if you look at the sidebar of a 1k sub channel you will see many other videos from small channels. If you look at the sidebar of ToysToSee you will likely never see a channel under 750k subs on there.
