Everyone knows the saying "you have to spend money to make money." With that being said have you invested much money into making videos or even for just one video? Do you like to spend money hoping to make it back?
Yt is a business. Businesses need money, both for startup and operating expenses. Some channels are more expensive to operate that others. I think kids/toys channels and travelling vloggers would be the most expensive. Unless there's a rich/dead relative/beneficiary funding operating expenses in the background, you gotta find and then spend a lot of money to startup and operate the business.
The tax year here is finishing up next week, so I'm deep in prepping the tax paperwork. Our operating expenses all up run at about 15%-20% of revenue - that's props, costumes, petrol, % property utilization, % utilities, advertising, toys, office equipment, depreciation, travel, subscriptions, software, etc, etc. Startup costs were quite significant for the channel, I maxed out 2 credit cards, from memory about $20k in debt before we started making income and could pay off the debt.
It's not an easy gig to get into that's for sure. While I totally agree that's it's possible to bootstrap a channel with virtually zero $ by borrowing your Mom's iphone, digging through thrift shops for props and stuff, in some highly competitive, fast moving and saturated verticals such as kids toys, not sure how far that would get you these days. A few years ago, ye sure, now days the competition is well capitalised, on the ball, highly adaptive and fast moving. You have to compete at a high level to get views. That needs lots of cash or debt.
