[trogdor]

>I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving.

That is very surprising to me, and I am a reasonably-successful YouTuber.

For nearly everyone, YouTube is not a viable career path. It’s not even a viable path to making money. Any money.

YouTube is the most saturated market that I know of. There are almost no barriers to entry, and your competition is everyone else on the planet who has a YouTube channel, plus, to some degree, the entire entertainment industry. Success on YouTube requires hard work, but hard work doesn’t guarantee even a bit of success. To succeed on YouTube, you don’t just have to create great content; you have to create content that people want to watch more than everything else that is available to them. That, obviously, is very hard. And even if you do it, a significant luck component remains.

Why did you “decide against the channel?”

[gabereiser]

because of all the hard work you just described. Sailing channels boil down to 2 sub-genres that are successful. Boat Projects. Babes in Butt Bikinis. I'm too old for butt bikini's and I'm not proficient enough to guide you through my frankenstein boat projects. It's not about making money from YouTube itself. It's about directing your viewers to avenues where the odds are in your favor. Patreon, Merch sales, Monthly subscriptions, even a little OnlyFan's if that's your jam. YouTube is like public broadcasting. Your content brings the audience. It's up to you to compel them to visit another site and part ways with that money beyond $0.0000001/view.