500 Subscribers!! -- Thanks... and thoughts

Got a little email in my inbox from Google this morning informing me I had 500 subscribers! Wanted to mark the occasion with a little thanks to everyone out there who follows this channel.
Next up is getting 1,300 more watched hours in order to monetize the channel. I'm not worried about chasing big numbers just to get more attention, but would be nice to get a little $$$ for doing these videos.
Also a little discussion about why I don't appear in the videos, other than snippets and time-lapse stuff, in case anyone was wondering.