A few months back, I had several sub4sub requests which I did not entertain. These were small channels like mine with less than 300 subs. 2 months later, these channels have been monetized with 2K-3k+ subs. And I am still at 200+ subs. I know I should not play this sub4sub game but it's discouraging to be left behind.
Just sharing my thoughts.
Trust me, you're not getting left behind. you'll be thankful later on that you didn't go down the sub4sub route when your watch time and views seem appropriate to your subscriber count.
I see so many channels in the 4k subscriber range who always complain about not having the views and watch time. Like, they'll have 4k subs, but only a handful of watchtime hours, and they'll complain about not having the watchtime to become monetised, or they'll have 4k subs but their videos struggle to get 40 views which is pretty obvious result of sub4sub.
People don't really explain why sub4sub is bad other than "rules" but beyond rules, sub4sub harms your analytics, which only you see, but it also harms your view to sub ratrio... people sub but don't watch your videos, so your sub to view ratio will always be detrimentally skewed and there'll be no way of fixing that easily.
So you've set yourself on the right path by doing things organically.. play the long game, not the quick results game
