I have read the entire thread and it does make sense, however I feel that with my channel (car spotting and short videos of super sport cars) I don't match the majority of gaming channels here at all.
While most guys here play games and record the same in some sort of way (purely gaming/ advise/ tips & tricks) my channel has nothing or only very little with the here described.
While gaming seems to be a huge area on YouTube Sonia car spotting and it has developed over the years a lot!
My initial post here in YTtalk was an introduction to my channel and since that time (July 2012 is when I got partnered) my channel grew from May last year to May this year from close to 380 subs to now 3225 subs.
I have made the experience that in my area of interest (cars) you need to post always the latest content (meaning the newest model of cars or you have to be the first to spot and upload it). Since last year I invested heavily into delve ping my channel and improving the overall quality of my content. This includes a new DSLR to record the video footage, a GoPro Hero3 for then action shots and a MacBook Air with iMovie for better editing. Furthermore I have started some time ago with an intro and outro (to both promote my channel for new viewers as well as promote my other videos with clickable annotations to subscribe and to the next video).
Furthermore, I started using Twitter and not long ago heavily Facebook to cross promote my channel more and have a second platform to discuss and interact with my viewers more. One very important factor I believe is to be consistent, in my case it means I upload 1 new video/spot every day since last year May, usually around the same time during the day and I post the same video link with picture on Facebook and twitter.
Moreover, I study YouTube analytics daily and check other big channels with the same topic to see what they do (in regards to editing and cross promotion and try to do either something similar or better).
Very important is as well to interact with your viewers and I answer all comments on my videos. This keeps your viewers who took the time to reply to your videos interactive and they come back to your videos and you get more traffic and comments which might encourage others to leave a comment too.
Unfortunately, despite my growth I see a stagnation of views and monthly subs gain of approx. 11-13k views per day and approx. 11-13 new subs per day over the past 6 months. I was expecting to increase the overall views with more subs but they pretty much stayed the same.
My channel and my name/brand "Patrick3331" are known in the scene but I am still waiting to really kick off as I do more unique videos which I call featured videos where I don't just spot but meet with the owners and do actions shots of their cars which are really good and get better with every video, however these time robbing videos don't get the desired views.
I am thinking of what I could do further to enhance the viewing experience of my viewers and I am open to your suggestions.
Thanks for the devise and I hope I was able to give you guys some tips too.
Cheers
Patrick3331