YouTube’s most followed creator, MrBeast, has revealed that he makes an eye-watering £550 million a year but claims not to be rich.
The social media star, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, said everything he makes from a video or post gets reinvested into future content or giveaways.
MrBeast, 25, became the most followed individual on YouTube in 2022 and with 240 million subscribers and counting at the start of 2024 he is only closely behind Indian record label and production company T-Series in the race for the top spot altogether.
Despite those huge numbers pulling in millions of dollars-worth of advertising revenue and brand deals per video, he told TIME: ‘I’ve reinvested everything to the point of – you could claim – stupidity, just believing that we would succeed. And it’s worked out.’
The star’s high-ticket giveaways over the years have included a $2.5m private jet and $2m private island, on top of millions more in cash prizes, so how does he afford it all?
On top of the value of the prizes themselves, each video tends to involve a big budget, purpose built set, and hours of filming – up to 12,000 hours of video for just a 15-minute clip.
In return for the whopping investments, he said that each video brings in ‘a couple million’ in revenue through YouTube adverts, plus a similar figure for adverts inserted into the video itself – for which the brand pays a hefty fee.
In January, he made over a quarter of a million dollars through ads on one X post alone, which played before a video he reuploaded from September.
The Wichita, Kansas, native has been building up to this since February 2012, when he uploaded his first video, aged 13.
His early content revolved around harmless pranks on friends.
His first hit was a video of him taking four hours to count to 100,000. As his following grew, MrBeast moved towards the giveaways that have become his trademark.
It started small, giving away cash prizes to members of his community, but quickly gathered momentum and by 2018 he was donating $100,000 worth of products to a homeless shelter.
He has since repeated the dose to an Uber driver, a waitress, and people in parking lots.
In one video, he dropped $20,000 out of a drone and gave a pizza man the house he was delivering to as a tip.
Steffie Solomon, a stand-up comedian who worked remotely on MrBeast’s TikTok channel in 2022, admitted that coming up with ideas to warrant such big budgets can be challenging.
But the YouTube sensation has also branched out to grow his brand and diversify his income – launching burger and chocolate brands as well as apps and video game tournaments, with his Feastables chocolate contributing to 70 per cent of his 2023 revenue.
However, these ventures, along with his philanthropic videos, have sometimes drawn criticism.
His burger company – MrBeast Burger – was criticised for serving up raw meat and cold fries, which led the figurehead to sue the ghost kitchen he hired for reputational damage.
But Virtual Dining Concepts hit back by accusing the lawsuit of being ‘riddled with false statements’, as well as ‘a thinly-veiled attempt to distract’ from alleged breaches in agreements between the two parties.
Amid the scandal, the YouTuber’s burger venture ended in July 2023.
In the previous January, he was also criticised after releasing a video showing scores of people from the US and across the world whose severe cataracts he had removed with the help of a not-for-profit eye care organization.
Some questioned whether he was being kind for clicks, but the doctor who performed the surgery said many patients had benefited.
Similarly, he was slammed online for gifting a young waitress a new car – with critics alleging the gesture was a shameless publicity grab as the Toyota was adorned by logos for his Feastables brand.
MrBeast explained his generosity in a video in 2018.
‘I genuinely enjoy helping people’, he said, ‘it’s something I’ve had an issue with, I’m that much of a nice guy. I don’t know why – and I’m not just saying this to look good – I’ve just always been a really nice guy.’
A less easily explained area of criticism involves the workplace culture when cameras are not rolling.
In 2021, The New York Times spoke to 11 people who worked for the YouTuber and said his ‘demeanor changed when the cameras weren’t around’ and described ‘a difficult work environment’.
Matt Turner, an editor for the internet icon in 2018 and 2019, said he was berated almost daily and posted a video explaining the allegations.
He also wrote in a now-deleted Twitter thread that he was ‘yelled at, bullied…and called replaceable by MrBeast every single day’.
Nate Anderson, who worked for MrBeast for just a week, also alleged that the YouTuber was a perfectionist who made unreasonable demands.
Gareth Boyd believes such allegations could be particularly damaging for Donaldson’s business model, saying he has relied on an impression of likeability.
‘His personal brand is that he is an average guy who reinvests his money and he’s doing it for fun,’ Boyd said.
‘He’s not driving around in a Lamborghini, he’s giving them away.
‘But as he gets more and more popular the smaller inner circle that he has – he is still pretty much surrounded by childhood friends – there will be a few that eventually leave and leak stories and sometime or another the inside accounts will come out.’
Similarly, TIME reportedly spoke to a dozen former employees who spoke of a lax attitude towards safety norms or maintaining a healthy work culture, with one believing they were let go for raising concerns.
However, a MrBeast spokesperson told the outlet the company has never let anyone go for querying safety.
They added that ‘safety is incredibly important and taken very seriously,’ and medics and ‘experienced professionals tailored to the needs of production’ are on every set, stating that the company is OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) compliant.
