On Cumulative Advantage and How to Think About Luck
There's a similar experience I've seen with YouTube. The first hundred subscribers(assuming you don't ask friends and family to subscribe) is always the hardest, and even if you're putting out higher quality content than the big channels, it's difficult to break that barrier. Once you cross that barrier, getting from 100->1000 usually takes half the time, and it becomes successively easier to get more views and subscribers with less effort. Once you're in the hundred thousands you can earn a decent side-income from just putting out a video a day, and once you're in the millions you can be set for life with little effort assuming you don't have high production costs.It is a snowballing effect, but most people never cross the initial tough barriers(after 10k, it becomes relatively easy to keep growing). In order to cross it, it either involves luck, or you have to know someone more popular than you who can boost your channel.