What's the link juice for? I mean... it's nofollow right? What purpose does it have?
My friend even have 1000 comments in da day...and that is okay haha
Yeah think of it like this with YouTube: Don't wait for people to come to you, go out and get the people. These days in 90% of niches, it's too competitive to grow a channel by just "uploading good content and uploading often" like everyone says when people ask how to grow a channel. I have been commenting for the last 2-3 weeks and gained 80 active subscribers, which isn't bad considering if I didn't comment I wouldn't have gained any.
Has the subs come from direct traffic from people clicking your username or has your channel started to rank in search better? If it's the first then do you add a call to action like "check my channel out for xyz" or "I do a lot of xyz videos and blablabla" or is your username related to the niche so people click on it because they want to see what your channel is about in that niche?
I do comments on videos very similar to mine in regards to type of content posted so that way my comment can relate to them. Usually I'll tell them their video was good and ask them to come check out my channel because I post videos like they do. Also, yes the subscribers have come directly from commenting.
I won't disagree with you on that! However I will say that I do still provide some feedback on the video I'm commenting on so them it's not 100% self-promotion. I wouldn't do it if the niche I'm in wasn't so saturated and controlled by the large channels to an insane degree. I won't be one of those 10,000 subscriber channels promoting their shout-out series haha.
