Channel growth not quite there

[TheRafter]

I need help. I put serious work into my youtube videos (at least my most recent ones), yet I have a friend that has uploaded a quarter amount of the videos and puts less effort into them, yet still is growing faster than me and gets 4x more views on each video. The content types are pretty similar. I don't know what I'm doing wrong or what can help this. I seriously spend stupid amounts of time trying to grow my channel, doing everything all the creators suggest. I go around and become part of the community by leaving comments on videos, being active in forums, etc. I put a lot of work into my titles, seo, and thumbnails (again, at least the last 2). I'm posting my videos around on relevant forums when they come out, etc. I'm doing all this stuff trying a lot harder than my buddy, but doing a lot worse, and I don't get it. Frankly, its a bit frustrating spending so much time and effort with little payback. I'm not expecting to go viral and gain thousands of subs all the sudden, but I do want more than 1 subscriber per week. Any suggestion?

Also, I'm not quite sure how the algoritm works, but I recently changed content type. My previous stuff did especially poorly. Would it be worth privatizing those videos? Would that make the algorithm more likely to recommend my videos because It doesn't see as many "bad" videos on my channel?

My channel name is TheRafter

Edit: I hid my subscriber count to experiment and see if I get more subs that way. I've heard yes and no. I currently have 41 subs.