Here's my two cents.
1) You have 40 subscribers and that usually means it is made up of just family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. This is just a reality check for you. Everyone starts off this way.
2) You are an entertainer so act as one. EVERYTHING your audience sees impacts your channel. That includes you and what you wear as well as what is in your background.
2A) Dress what you aspire to be, but, even more important, dress to stand out. Be visually rememberable. Now if you want to make a little (and I do mean little) money, you can create a unique t-shirt and then try selling that to your viewers. However, if a t-shirt doesn't fit the style you're trying to create for your image, don't sell out your image for a very very very VERY little bit of cash.
2B) Give your background as much thought as what you wear. What kind of image are you trying to project? Intellectual? If so, put in bookcases filled with HARD-cover books. Artsy? Cover the walls with paintings whose frames butt up right next to each other. Want to be viewed as a philosopher? Get photographs and painting of philosophers who have impacted you the most and/or you admire the most. You want to be viewed as eclectic? Do something along the lines of what Mental Floss's list show did for its background.
3) You need to work on your YouTube homepage. Create an intro video and that it is between 30 second and a minute long. First talk about what kind of things you talk about on your channel ... then who you are (people subscribe to people, not channel) ... then tell your release schedule ... and then do ONE call-to-action and that is for them to subscribe. Don't monetize your intro video. The intro video is an ad for your channel. Don't have another's ad hurt your ad.
4) Put your bio on your Description page. You are your channel and, again, people subscribe to people, not channels.
5) As you're doing a vlog, be very topical. Watch the news and when a big story breaks, crank out a video about it right away. Don't wait for your release schedule. Immediate release. The video's metadata (title, first five lines of its description, and tags) is key. Make a clear connection to the news story. When a big news story breaks, Google goes crazy with searches about that news item and then typically interest falls off quickly. You want to ride that wave.
6) If you are monetized, you can use the scheduler to regularly release videos. Always always ALWAYS build up a backlog of videos sitting in your scheduler. Do this not just for vacation time but in case you get sick, your computer crashes, your internet connection goes down, you get writer's block, etc. It also gives you breathing space. If you release a video everyday, fourteen videos in your scheduler represents two weeks of episodes before you have to produce another video.
7) Work on your thumbnails and video titles. Do a YouTube search on how to do thumbnails and video titles. There's a lot of good videos out there about both topics.
8) Subscribe to Tim Schmoyer's "Video Creators" and mine its archive. You can and should spend days in its archive.
9) Make up a flyer. Use yellow paper to draw the eye. Have tear-off tabs at its bottom that has your channel's name and its YouTube URL. Post it everywhere you can within reasonable driving distance. By "reasonable" I mean as far as you are willing go to promote your channel. Laundry mats, bus stops, supermarket bulletin boards, and telephone poles at intersections are good places to post. Get a map of your city and mark on it where you've posted them. Once a week, revisit those locations and replace missing, all tear-off tabs gone, torn, etc. posters. Always keep a box of these flyers in your car so when you travel, you have them right there with you and you can post them wherever you go. If you go on a trip, put a stack of posters into one of your suitcases and take a half day and post everywhere there.
10) Take viewers on a tour of your region. Title it "Tour of [your region's name]: [landmark name]". Make these videos short and sweet. Try to be funny yet informative. Do one for every landmark in your region as well as unique places in your region.
11) Go to your local museums and the historical archives of your local libraries and dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, and, oh yeah, dig some more. Every historical event that has happened in your region, do a video about it. Take the viewer to the spot where it happened and weave us an interesting story about what happened there. Include as many photographs, paintings, and newspaper headlines as possible to visually spice it up. One historical event per video.
12) After you've done every landmark in your region, email your local media (newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations) by sending them a press release about your channel and you. Stress that you're a local boy. Newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations are ALWAYS on the look out for "local color". If you get on a radio talk show, try to be funny on it. The more funny you are, the more likely they'll ask you to come back again.
13) At your college, start a YouTuber Club. Meet weekly. Every meeting, show all the videos that all the members did over the last week. Applaud and comment. Encourage. Help each other. Collaborate with each other. Appear in each other's videos. Do skits. Have a group discussion video. Make cookies together. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. But most importantly of all, have fun.
14) Make TONS of videos about your university. Take people on a five-minute tour of it. Big overview. Name it "Five-Minute Tour of [your university's name]". Then do separate videos about everything about your university. My bet is all your academic buildings are named after someone. Show the building and then tell about the person it is name after while showing photographs and/or paintings of them. Interview all the professors on your campus. Interview the chairs, deans, and the chancellor and vice chancellor. Interview all the coaches, team captains, and star athletes. Interview all the presidents of all the student organizations.
15) Lastly but most importantly, collaborate, collaborate, and collaborate. You're a very small channel right now but everyone has to start from somewhere. Your best bet is to contact local YouTube channels. As you grow, contact larger and larger vlog channels that match your new size. Always propose an activity for the collaboration and never just that you want to do one. After you release a collaboration video, send links to it to other local YouTubers to show them how you do collaborations and invite them again to do one with you. Go to ALL YouTube conventions that you can afford to go to. Find out who's going and suggest you meet up for at least an interview of them. Doing it while you're at a friendly restaurant gives it a good backdrop. Don't worry about the sound.
