1000 subscribers, 103 videos and 164,000 views. Took about 2 years and 7 months of organic traffic growth. I started the channel in 2019 but only tried to grow it from 2023 where I had 21 subscribers.
It seems to me that you either get subscriber growth or watch time growth on your channel. In my case its subscribers so I have completed the first milestone in monetisation. The second milestone is to get watch time which is 4000hrs in 365 days. Then you get ad revenue. After you qualify you dont need to get 4000 hours again as you only need to qualify once. so far I have only 218 hours so I need to make the videos more interesting for people by talking. However this means upping the production value and editing which is why I have not done it yet.
So phase one is complete and here is some data from ChatGPT o3 model about it:
| Milestone | Channels that have reached it | Share of all ~114 M active channels | 1-in-N odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 000 subs (your tier) | ≈ 10 M channels | 8.9 % – top ~9 % | 1 in 11 |
| 100 000 subs (Silver Play Button) | ≈ 321 000 | 0.28 % | 1 in 350 |
| 1 million subs (Gold) | ≈ 29 000 | 0.025 % | 1 in 4 000 |
| 10 million subs (Diamond) | ≈ 700 | 0.0006 % | 1 in 150 000 |
| 100 million+ subs (Red Diamond) | 14 channels | 0.000012 % | 1 in 8 million |
So I am in the top 9 percent of all YouTube channels in the world since 91 percent never get to 1000 subscribers. This means that out of people with a YouTube channel (114 million in the world) I have beaten over 100 million channels.
