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Forbes has declared Mr. Beast as the highest earning YouTuber in 2021, earning as much as $54 million from different income sources. His income comes from various sources such as sponsorship contracts and advertising, as well as business investment in numerous startup companies in industries like clothing and video games. Mr. Beast stated that all of his earnings, every dollar of it, came from YouTube. He is currently one of the most famous and wealthiest YouTubers in the world. Take a look at how he started and how he built his massive fortune.
Mr. Beast’s Start As A YouTuber
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Mr. Beast was born as Jimmy Donaldson on May 7, 1998 in Kansas. His family did not come from money and he was raised alongside his brother named CJ at the Greenville, North Carolina. He graduated high school at the Greenville Christian Academy which is among the secondary school in their area. In his venture to be a successful YouTube vlogger, he uploaded his first video in February 2012 at an early age of 13 under the account name MrBeast6000. At the time, his content ranged from videos mainly focused on Minecraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Aside from playing, he also uploads contents estimating the wealth of other YouTube vlogger as well as offering some tips to the aspiring YouTube creators.
Donaldson began gaining popularity on YouTube because of his worst introduction series where he criticizes videos for their horrible intros. The said series rounded up and even poked fun at some YouTubers at the time. Around the middle of 2016, he already gained 30,000 subscribers. At the time, he was attending the East Carolina University before eventually dropping out of school for good in 2016 to pursue YouTube full time since he was gaining popularity in 2015. Unfortunately for him, his mother did not approve of his decision and he was eventually forced to move out of their home.
Gaining Popularity Through His Comical Stunts
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At the start of 2017, Donaldson decided to publish a video which took almost two days where he was counting to 100,000. The video took him almost 40 hours and some of its parts were sped up in order to keep under 24 hours. He then followed it up with a video of him counting to 200,000 which was uploaded the following month. The said video was also sped up since it took him 55 hours and also exceeded the limit of YouTube’s upload. With this stunt, he started gaining popularity combined with a few more stunts such as attempting to break glass with the use of a hundred megaphones, watching some paint dry for about an hour and even attempting to stay underwater for a day which failed because of some health issues.
A year of this has gained him followers and earnings from YouTube. By the year 2018, Donaldson decided to give out $1 million through his comical stunts which made everyone call him as the YouTube's biggest philanthropist. During this time, Donaldson has helped PewDiePie at the PewDiePie vs T-Series, a competition for whoever becomes the most subscribed channel on YouTube. Donaldson decided to buy some billboards and advertisements on TV and radio to help PewDiePie gain subscribers.
Rising To Fame As The YouTube’s Highest Earning Vlogger
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With the popularity of Mr. Beast on the YouTube platform, he is already earning at least three to five million on a monthly basis on his YouTube videos. His videos are known to have certain elements which could help the content go viral. With these kinds of videos, he was able to gain advertising sales amounting to millions of dollars as the YouTube recommendation system of YouTube shows his content to a lot more people. Donaldson made an effort to get to where he is now. He has studied making YouTube videos and even studied film making just so he can produce quality content, although his videos approximately costs a lot in production. According to numerous reports, he tries to invest as much as $300,000 to produce some of his videos and even spending $3.5 million to produce one video.
This is not the only source of income for Donaldson as he tries to invest his YouTube money. He is known to reinvest his YouTube earnings as well however his revenues on these projects are not disclosed to the public. He has invested in a multiplayer mobile game called Finger on the App, another investment he made is the virtual restaurant called Mr. Beast Burger. He also partnered with tech startup Backbone which produces a controller for smartphones just like in Nintendo Switch controllers. In March 2021, he also partnered with Creative Juice financial network which is an investment fund to help YouTube creators create content in exchange for some equity in their YouTube channel.
Sources: Marca, Forbes, Rolling Stone