I am working on creating a YouTube educational channel in my spare time, with content about about game development, electronics, and also bits of science/general knowledge (explained visually). I know growing an audience takes time and perseverance but I was wondering if there is a way to bootstrap an initial audience of say an average of 5-10 views per day? This way I could have (ideally) some feedback from people (what to change, improve, stop doing, start doing, etc.)
Since posting to forums, communities, etc. is frowned upon as spam / self promotion / etc. (which I'm not saying is wrong), what other options are there?
It also crossed my mind about promoting the channel with Youtube AdSense Ads. But is this "legal"? I don't want my channel terminated for misconduct in this regard. I mean it's perfectly OK to promote a Google Play app/game like this, but what about promoting an actual YouTube video with a 5-10 snippet from the video itself ?