> Subs on YT don't mean revenue... they're just people who may watch your videos later.

Right on. I always tell people that I can’t pay my employees with subs and likes.

For most videos, an overwhelming majority of views come from traffic suggested by YouTube in some manner (home page, sidebar, after a video). I have millions of subscribers across a few channels. Subscriber notification and feeds invariably account for a very-low-single-digit percent of video views.

And then even if they do watch your video, your topic of choice will strongly affect your revenue per view. For example, a personal finance channel makes a lot more per view that say, a channel about thrift store finds.