Comment by Tanoc

There are great channels that have had acceptable audience growth without resorting to bucket scraping like that. In fact the channels I see that have the most engagement and the most stable view numbers video to video are the ones specifically avoiding the "gaping maw pointing at a red circle" sort of thumbnails and the "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT" or "X PHENOMENON - THE RESULTS WILL SHOCK YOU" titles. Knowing how Youtube works it's more of a detriment to have those unstable views because that screws with how well Youtube promotes you in the Recommended and Trending pages, and makes it harder to have high paying deals with sponsors since they don't know if your video's going to do five million views or seven hundred and fifty thousand. The only way you can make that work consistently is if you have a captive audience, but people do get tired of it quickly and will start to reflexively avoid your videos. They'll especially avoid them if someone else tried that clickbait format and annoyed or even offended them.