With almost 5 billion views a day, YouTube has gone from 1-minute skateboarding miss videos to a factory of mega-millionaires. Many of those millionaires are not even legally old enough to buy an alcoholic beverage.
Some people are still surprised that money can be made via YouTube. Not everyone makes it big but there are some great examples of people who have stepped outside the 9-to-5 to do something more interesting and have made a successful career out of it. YouTubers primarily make money off YouTube through advertising. Of course, Google takes its own cut – about 45% as their own cut.
Despite this, there are the richest youtubers who have cracked the model and have built their own empires. Their business models have been the subject of business case studies because of their novelty and success. Let’s look at a rundown of the seven richest YouTube sensations of 2020.
Jeffree Star
One of the most popular and polarizing figures on YouTube, Jeffree Star’s humble beginnings started on Myspace. He became well known for his personality and androgynous appearance which got him fans, particularly outcast teenagers.
Jeffree’s love for makeup started when he was 13, and he would experiment with his mother’s makeup. He made a brief attempt at a music career, which did not amount to much. In 2014, he started his own cosmetics company and promoted it on YouTube. The initial line sold out within minutes. In 2018, he reportedly sold 100 million dollars’ worth of makeup. Star also has investments in real estate and marijuana businesses which are hugely profitable. Jeffree Star has a net worth of about $200 million.
PewDiePie
Also known as Felix Kjellberg, PewDiePie is worth about $40 million as of 2020. A video game commentator and Internet celebrity from Sweden, PewDiePie’s humble beginnings were just a kid in the Chalmers University of Technology who played more video games than his parents wanted him to. PewDiePie dropped out of university and pursued a career in YouTube full time, working at a hot dog stand and selling artwork to sustain himself.
In 2011, he quit his job at the hot dog stand when he hit 60,000 subscribers. By the end of 2013, he had nearly 19 million. His format consists of him playing video games and supplying his audiences with humorous commentary. He has expanded outside video games to other content, since then. He has had several run-ins with controversy due to certain comments making light of subjects like terrorist groups. Despite that, he remains one of the highest-earning YouTubers to this day.
DanTDM
Daniel Middleton is an English gamer with a subscriber base of 24 million subscribers who rose to popularity for his Minecraft game commentaries. Middleton has since then expanded to reviews of video games and video gameplay of other games.
Middleton has also published several graphic novels and starred in a few television shows. However, the majority of his income still seems to flow from his Minecraft videos and commentary.
Ryan’s World
Ryan Kaji has an impressive net worth of $32 million as of 2020. Something else you should know about Ryan Kaji: he is 8 years old. Kaji started by making videos of himself opening toys and playing with them. Somehow, these videos garnered millions of views and thousands of subscribers. “Huge Eggs Surprise,” a video by Kaji, got him 1.9 billion views. Toy manufacturers have cashed in on the impact Kaji has had, as he is known for his ability to work his audience.
Dude Perfect
Five former college roommates come together to create YouTube’s second most-subscribed sports channel. Content created consists of various sports stunts and gravity-defying trick shots. Their first video, a compilation of trick shots made by the buddies when they were in college, went viral.
Dude Perfect is worth nearly $30 million and the guys put their skills down to lots of practice, in spite of most people alleging the stunts are all about the camera angles. The “dudes” all hold Christian values and have even turned down an alcohol sponsorship and certain features in men’s magazines. These values have helped them earn a family-friendly subscriber base and even their own iPhone game.
Markiplier
Worth $28 million, Mark Fischbach started on the back of a difficult time in his life in 2012. He decided to take matters into his own hands and do his own thing: make sketch comedy and play video games. He started to release videos that were a mix of his two loves, particularly in the realm of indie and horror video games.
In the middle, Mark’s YouTube account was prevented from being monetized, due to certain technical issues. He started a new channel called Markiplier Game and asked all his subscribers to jump ship, which they did. By the end of 2013, he earned himself a million subscribers. That is very quick in YouTube terms. His channel currently has 23 million subscribers. Impressive for a guy playing video games in Hawaii.
VanossGaming
Video gamers make up a huge chunk of this list. Evan Fong started the Vanoss Gaming channel in 2011. He dropped out of his second year in college to pursue YouTube full time and had to convince his parents that it was a viable career option. Fong eventually got mainstream attention which is evident from his 11 million subscribers in 2015. Considered one of the main video game commentary figures, Evan Fong is worth a whopping $25 million.