Thanks (for my wife).

I understood where you got the numbers, but that was exactly my point. You can't easily compare your unique selling point in Russian for expats from Ukraine / -stans with the other channels in English.

My wife has seen this particularly with multiple German and English channels. The particulars of language, culture, humor, figures of speech, etc. make a huge difference in how your videos will be received.

Luck is also a huge factor. I watch "over my wife's shoulder" (so to say) different vloggers over the last 10 years. Channels with extremely similar content will have vastly different success rates.

My wife has taken the attitude that she is doing something she likes to do anyway (particularly video editing) and posting on YouTube covers her costs, if not her time.

She also uses YouTube as it was originally marketed, as a "free repository" of home videos. My wife is a HUGE "puppy mama" and loves to post videos of our dog. It is hard to put a value on being able to look at videos from years ago of our dog who passed away (3 years now 😢) and enjoy seeing him again. One of those videos went viral, and has 1.4 million views! That's pretty cool.

In any case I wish you the best of luck with your new content!!!