I have a friend who made $14, he has 30 subscribers and never breaks 300 views per video, but he did have one that cracked 2,000 views.
I don't think you need a high viewer count to make money, it's just the volume of money you are getting depends on the ads.
YouTube is a very lucrative place to make money, assuming you can actually get viewers and set up a partnership. It really isn't that hard.
I have another friend who has 1,002 subs, average 300 views/video, but hasn't decided to monetize anything yet. I don't know how many videos he has, but I think it's close to 100... So 300*100=30,000 , $0.001*30,000=$30
$30 potential right there, probably more in reality. If a guy with 43 videos and 120 views per video can make $14,
300 views on 100 videos (Average) could make quite a lot...
I uploaded a video once... I got 60 views in a day , but I took it down because it was.... kinda taken without consent of people in it....
Anyways, it seems rather efficient , but you would need to find a way to get viewers well. You would need to target a specific , niche audience that you could maintain and interest indefinitely.
The thing you said about your friend with 43 videos and 120 views each making 14$ :-
That becomes around 0.33$ per video , around 2.7$ per thousand views.
If each video takes you two hours to make , you should expect atleast 7,000 views each for it to be worth more than working a bit above minimum wage.
For you to have a nice looking 100k salary off youtube videos , you would need to create around a hundred thousand views daily.
TLDR; Its not really likely that youtubing will make you a lot of money , but if you do something that interests you and you want to share it , it may just pay off
