How I Hit 1k YouTube Subscribers in Under 3 Months

I started a YouTube channel as a marketing experiment for my new business (in the non-beginner / business-oriented programmer space). After three months, I can happily conclude that a YouTube channel is a far better marketing proposition in 2020 than a blog (I've tried that previously too)

The main strength of a YouTube channel is that sharing a video on reddit etc. is often appreciated, whereas a blog is more often regarding as spammy (even if the blog is on-point and well-written).

My primary sources of traffic were:

• 3 reddit threads where I announced what I planned to record videos about BEFORE the channel existed and asked for topic suggestions. When I sent out emails to these people, I netted about 300 subscribers.
• YouTube advertising. This netted me about 70 subscribers. Unfortunately it was much more expensive than I anticipated. They only give ranges, but my cost per subscriber for my best ad was between $2 and $3.80, whereas for my worst, it was between $2.30 and a whopping $46. Not sustainable.
• Drive-by commenting in HackerNews when people ask for "programming tutorials for non-beginners" - I wrote about this elsewhere on Indie Hackers (check my history)
• Time. After having a selection of videos online, my videos started appearing in searches and so on, and I started getting daily growth.

I'm gonna celebrate this milestone with my friends this weekend. Going from zero to 1k feels like a great start to building an audience.