Over the last year, I'm 97% unsubb'd views. Though more of my content is specific stuff that probably comes up in searches. I've never done the whole nagging viewers to subscribe in my videos though, be it specifically telling people to 'subscribe down below' or click on the subscribe button type animations, dunno if I should. Anyone found these actually work much?
Yes but its a part of the recipe, unless you have the other ingredients it won't do anything on its own.
In my younger days I used to be guilty of just taking cold medicine and continuing to work 60+ hours a week, have a crazy sleep schedule, and not eat well enough. I would end up sick for weeks or months instead of days. I didn't have the rest, fluids, and nutrition part down so the medicine alone was useless.
Asking people to subscribe if your content is missing things is like me taking cold medicine and then working two shifts for two different jobs in one day and wondering why I feel like crap. You need the rest of the good stuff to get results.
Assume people don't give a shit about you, because you're a stranger to them, and one of a million YouTube motovloggers, and you need to win them over. You should be able to provide value usually in the form of either information and or entertainment, to the point where when you suggest people subscribe, they're immediate reaction is "hey good idea!"
If you haven't been asking people to subscribe and you're wondering if they will think it's a good idea or not, look at your video retention time, see if you can filter by new visitors, ignore what the returning visitors are doing because those guys are already your loyalists, and if you're a small Channel that will skew the data so focus on the new visitors retention. I think YouTube calls it average view duration.
I can tell you from experience that when I have had garbage videos (hindsight is 20-20) asking people to subscribe, it did nothing for me. I didn't have the other ingredients, I wasn't providing good value.
When I had a good video that didn't ask people to subscribe I didn't get a lot from it.
But when I I started experimenting with making good videos that also asked people to subscribe, that's what I can see a slow but steady increase, so I started asking towards the end of my videos.
Motovlogging is interesting because it's a bit of a creative thing and I guess like any hobby you can do it for fun and/or do it for financial success. Unfortunately there's this kind of in between where doing it for fun will really slow down the potential growth, and doing it for growth and money can come at a cost to the fun side, until you're big enough that you can just do whatever you want and people will watch because they like you.
Anyway to answer your question long story short yes I've seen good results from asking, but I only ask on videos that I know are good stuff.
Case in point, my video going live tomorrow I don't even ask for likes or subscribes. It's just a quickie 3.5 minute video and a little off niche.