Being a Youtuber has become a viable source of income and full time job for a select group. The biggest and most popular member of that group, PewDiePie, has had his 2014 earnings revealed by the Swedish newspaper Expressen and they make for some mind boggling reading.
Earning $7 million in a lifetime of work would be pretty good going, but PewDiePie managed to bank that much in the year of 2014 alone. This has come as a surprise to many, even provoking the BBC to cover the story.
PewDiePie’s videos often reach beyond 3 million views and his subscriber count of 37 million continues to grow each day. His most popular videos garner view numbers well into the 8 figure category, with his most watched video ever collecting 67 million views so far. Global stars such as Rihanna, Eminem and Taylor Swift don’t have half the amount of subscribers that PewDiePie does.
Pewdiepie’s videos are monetized, which means that he gets a percentage of what ad companies are willing to pay to showcase their product before or during one his videos. His huge fanbase has enabled him to release an app which is available on Apple’s iTunes store and Android’s Google play store. He also owns his own webshop where you can purchase PewDiePie themed clothing. In addition to that, he has deals in place with G2A (a website which sells digital keys for games and currency codes) and Razer - a PC accessory merchandise company.
After a while, it all begins to stack up.
It’s possible that he could make even more. In an AMA (ask me anything) post on Reddit in 2014, PewDiePie replied to a question about his earnings by saying that “luckily, I make more than I need from YouTube. With that freedom, but also to respect my fans for making that possible, I don’t end up doing many endorsements.”
The revelations about Pewdiepie’s income seems to have generated a lot of bitterness towards him, prompting the famed Youtuber to react with a video covering the event.
It’s hard to see why there’s so much anger towards someone who has found success doing what he loves for a living, but as he states in the video: “haters gonna hate”.
