TYTD
If it's radioactive, Its on TYTD
Just to chime in with what the others have said here, the most important thing to bear in mind as a content creator on youtube is that you should only really focus on competition within your topic/niche area. I know hundreds, if not thousands of "Bad" channels that are doing significantly better than me. why? because they're working in fields that are much more popular than the stuff I do and theres literally NOTHING I could ever do in my field to change that.
I run a movie review channel, it would be pretty silly of me to try and compare my stats to say; a sports channel or a vlogger because they're completely different kinds of content, produced differently, targeted at different audiences with different levels of appeal.
So instead; I focus on mainly having fun and setting small goals/challenges against other youtubers in my niche and around my levels. I'll set myself the challenge of reaching a sub milestone before another user who's vaguely in my area. or hitting a certain number of views before another user in my niche. theres no wallowing if I dont hit it because it's just a bit of fun, but it puts a bit more of a competative/motivational push in it for me to try and work on my marketing and contnet.
the specific field I work in within my niche generally peak at around 5-10k subs with the really popular channels sitting between 15k and 50k. it's a super small slice of the pie in terms of the WHOLE of youtube...but that seems like a reasonable goal to work towards in my mind...like; I could see myself hitting 5-10k subs at some point if I keep doing what I do now...if I sat here and thought about only really "Making it" if I had Redlettermedia or Channel Awesome level of subs/views (1m+ subs) id have quit years ago.
Dont worry about other channels. worry about your own channel, where it sits in the youtube ecosystem and what your competition is doing.
I run a movie review channel, it would be pretty silly of me to try and compare my stats to say; a sports channel or a vlogger because they're completely different kinds of content, produced differently, targeted at different audiences with different levels of appeal.
So instead; I focus on mainly having fun and setting small goals/challenges against other youtubers in my niche and around my levels. I'll set myself the challenge of reaching a sub milestone before another user who's vaguely in my area. or hitting a certain number of views before another user in my niche. theres no wallowing if I dont hit it because it's just a bit of fun, but it puts a bit more of a competative/motivational push in it for me to try and work on my marketing and contnet.
the specific field I work in within my niche generally peak at around 5-10k subs with the really popular channels sitting between 15k and 50k. it's a super small slice of the pie in terms of the WHOLE of youtube...but that seems like a reasonable goal to work towards in my mind...like; I could see myself hitting 5-10k subs at some point if I keep doing what I do now...if I sat here and thought about only really "Making it" if I had Redlettermedia or Channel Awesome level of subs/views (1m+ subs) id have quit years ago.
Dont worry about other channels. worry about your own channel, where it sits in the youtube ecosystem and what your competition is doing.