Just came across your post, and happened to be ranting about this exact issue today. We used to be one of the larger YouTube channels years back with nearly 100000 subs (a lot at the time) going into 2011. We were even invited to and attended YouTube Live in 2008. Check out some of the comments I wrote on the following post, explains a bit why we finally just gave up on it:

https://www.facebook.com/michellecoudon/posts/10210532834741099