2023-08-11 15:47:02
By Tom GerkenTech Journalist
32 minutes ago
image copyrightGetty Images
Jimmy Donaldson, known to internet users as MrBeast, is the biggest YouTuber on the planet – and with that popularity comes big money.
The 25-year-old got into making videos and now owns his own fast food chain, MrBeast Burger. This made headlines this week when he sued the company behind the chain, claiming fans found the food “revolting”.
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But it is still for his YouTube content that he is best known. In November 2022, Forbes estimated he had earned $54m (£42.5m) in a year from the platform, combining revenue from videos and endorsement deals. He has since gained an additional 60 million subscribers on his main channel, bringing his total to 172 million.
He also has several other channels with tens of millions of subscribers, including one devoted to philanthropy and another to video games.
It is unclear exactly how much money he actually pockets. Donaldson has been known to reinvest the money he earns into his very expensive videos, some of which require millions of dollars to produce. He said on a podcast in June that he reinvests “every penny I make”.
It is this approach to content that perhaps explains why the American YouTuber attracts such a large audience, because it allows him to raise the stakes.
His biggest video to date, with 472 million views, recreated Netflix’s Squid Game in real life, with a $456,000 prize.
Compare that to his 2017 earnings, where his biggest videos included him repeating “Logan Paul” 100,000 times in 5 p.m., and one where he tipped pizza delivery men hundreds of dollars. Each received between 20 and 40 million views.
Outside of his videos, Donaldson is known for his philanthropic actions and his many businesses. He owns a licensed charity that operates as a food bank to feed communities across the United States, and he has helped raise tens of millions of dollars to help the environment.
As well as MrBeast Burger – part of a business he is currently trying to pull out of – he has also launched a range of snacks called Feastables, which he says are selling steadily in the UK.
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image caption,
MrBeast poses with a huge crowd at the launch of his first physical burger restaurant in 2022
MrBeast’s contracts with brands
YouTubers can rely on ads to make up a big chunk of their revenue, but sometimes that doesn’t cover MrBeast’s costs.
For example, Donaldson revealed to his Twitter followers in July that his latest video, which cost an estimated $3 million to produce, earned him $167,000 in payments within days. Even over the life of the video, it’s unlikely he’ll be able to recoup the cost.
This is where sponsorship contracts come in. For some content creators, this can be an even bigger chunk of their revenue than the ads themselves.
Lucy Edwards, a YouTuber with 705,000 subscribers – who became BBC Radio 1’s first blind presenter in 2019 – told the BBC that much of her income comes from these brand partnerships.
“I’m currently the face of Pantene, a shampoo and hair care brand, globally,” she said.
“And then I also have more one-off campaigns quite regularly, maybe around four to five activations a month – we earn a minimal amount through TikTok and YouTube [publicités]”.
She tends to rely on much shorter content than Donaldson, with her most popular video being just two and a half minutes long but racking up two million views.
According to her, YouTubers like MrBeast might potentially earn more from the length of their videos, which are typically between 10 and 20 minutes long.
“If you were a long-form content creator, with post-roll, pre-roll, mid-roll ads, and your content was longer than eight minutes, you would get a lot of ad revenue,” she said.
“But all brands also want short content, so you always have to find a balance between the two.
“When it downloads, people click”
Donaldson’s videos are hard to categorize.
They usually involve a challenge, like a video surviving hours in Antarctica, or big cash prizes – a million-dollar game of hide-and-seek, for example.
But his most recent video, in which a train runs off its tracks and falls into a giant pit, doesn’t fit that format.
Steven Bridges, himself a YouTuber with 470,000 subscribers, told the BBC it was Mr Donaldson’s creativity that was behind his growth: “I think what’s interesting regarding MrBeast is is his absolute dedication to making what he considers to be the best video possible.
“When he uploads a video, people click. They know that when they click on a video from MrBeast, there will be a lot of effort to make it truly entertaining.”
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In recent years, Bridges has reinvented itself on YouTube, shifting from content regarding magic to content regarding card counting. His most popular video, which features a popular scam used to trick tourists in London, has been viewed 4.6 million times.
“It’s very, very difficult to sustain a 10-year career on YouTube,” he said.
But MrBeast is focused on the one thing that really matters: putting the audience first and thinking, “What can I get them that they’re really going to love?”
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for Donaldson’s success on YouTube is simply his likable personality. Even when he overtook PewDiePie to become the top content creator on the platform, his rival simply praised him and said he deserved it.
But while Donaldson is the individual user with the most subscribers on YouTube, he’s far from having the largest YouTube channel.
T-Series, an Indian music video publishing company, leads in this category with over 246 million subscribers.
But with 172 million subscribers, one would have to be brave to bet once morest Donaldson one day becoming the first YouTuber since PewDiePie to dethrone T-Series at the top.
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