Why almost no one is making a living on YouTube

Unless you're aiming for that top 3% spot as an entertainer, you're meant to treat YouTube as a funnel. It's a market place for you to place some free content that you use to (help) build your brand, offer value back to the community for free, all the while building commercially viable options behind the scenes which you funnel those viewers into.

People who rely purely on YouTube's AdSense for income are the Internet's buskers and YouTube is their tip jar.