YouTube’s highest earners revealed – and PewDiePie tops list with ‘£6.5million every MONTH’
YOUTUBE superstar PewDiePie rakes in a whopping £6.5million a month, according to a new report.
The Swedish video-maker, real name Felix Kjellberg, makes his fortune through a mix of merchandise sales and ad revenue on YouTube.
With an annual income of £78.9million, Brighton resident PewDiePie is the site’s top earner by some distance, according to figures put together by brand merchandise experts Purple Moon Promo.
“Over the years, the popularity of YouTubers has increased exponentially, some of them could even be considered celebrities,” a spokesperson said.
“This modern career choice hasn’t only brought them fame, but for many of them it has also put cash in the bank.
“We decided to have a look and find out who are the 20 YouTubers earning the most from selling products and from ads.”
Second on the list are American trick shotters Dude Perfect (£2.8million a month), followed by Canadian video gamer VanossGaming (£2.2million).
Two UK YouTubers make it into the top 10.
They include English video gamer DanTDM, who places fourth with monthly earnings topping £2.1million, and Irish vlogger jacksepticeye, who makes around 1.4million.
Data for the report was gathered using a “YouTube money calculator” tool created by Sellfy.
The software estimates someone’s ad revenue by crunching their views per month with YouTube’s average ad payout – between 20p and £3.29 per 1,000 views.
Merch sales are calculated using average revenues from several thousand YouTubers on the sellfy e-commerce platform.
It’s no surprise that PewDiePie – the most followed person on YouTube with nearly 100million subscribers at the time of writing – tops out the list.
According to the figures, PewDiePie makes a whopping £5.6million a month selling branded t-shirts, hats and other merchandise.
Those are flogged over on his personal website, meaning YouTube doesn’t get a cut.
On top of this, the controversial Swede rakes in £935,263 from ads shown over his YouTube videos.
PewDiePie's antisemitism scandal
Here's everything you need to know...
- In 2017, Disney announced it would be severing links with PewDiePie over several controversial videos he had released.
- Some of the videos contained references to Nazis and were found to be antisemitic.
- Among them was one clip in which he paid two Indian nationals to hold a sign saying: “Death to all Jews.”
- A statement from Disney subsidiary Maker Studios read: “Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate.”
- He courted controversy again in December 2018 after doing a shout-out to an anti-Semitic video channel.
- During his Pew News segment he directed viewers to E;R, an essayist which slips anti-Semitic and misogynistic comments into videos about anime and films.
- But the 29-year-old said he wasn’t familiar with the channel’s content and blasted what he called a “shame campaign”.
- He said: “Anyone with the level-headed brain can tell that I don’t know this guy. (It’s) a shame campaign to smear my name.”
- But in his most recent video, PewDiePie said he regretted promoting the channel and wouldn’t have done it if he was more familiar with its content.
- He added: “I removed E;R from that video.
- “If I knew then what I knew now, I wouldn’t have put him in there… I’ll be more careful in the future.”
This takes his total revenue to an estimated £6.5million a month, or £78.9million per year – more than three times anyone else on the list.
While this figure is impressive, it’s at odds with previous estimates of PewDiePie’s wealth.
According to Forbes, the YouTube star made around £12million last year, though a recent surge in popularity means he’ll likely top that in 2019.
When Googling himself during a live stream he read from a website claiming that he earns £2,600 per hour, or around £22.2million.
In response, PewDiePie said: “I don’t know exactly how much I make per day but it doesn’t seem too far off which is pretty crazy when you think about it.”
PewDiePie’s channel has received over 13 billion video views and he was named one of “The World’s 100 Most Influential People” by Time magazine.
Felix was born in 1989 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and graduated from university with a degree in Industrial Economics and Technology Management.
By 2013, he had the most subscribed YouTube channel. The channel was focussed mostly around video games.
Felix currently lives in Brighton with his Italian fashion and beauty vlogger girlfriend Marzia Bisognin with their two pugs, Maya and Edgar.
TOP STORIES IN TECH
In other news, this YouTube tool lets you virtually try on makeup while watching beauty tutorials.
YouTube recently came under fire because it apparently ‘ignored staff pleas to delete hateful videos’ to boost views for years.
And, here’s five upcoming WhatsApp features to get excited about including new ‘share to Facebook’ tool.
Do you watch any of the top earning channels? Let us know in the comments…
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk