Yep, PewDiePie made over $7 million dollars last year. This secures his spot as the wealthiest YouTuber of all time.
When this was recently revealed by a Swedish news outlet (Felix is Swedish), many people were outraged. Here are just a few (of the many!) hateful comments seen on social media:
I find what he does complete garbage. Same goes for people like paris, kardashians, etc…
The one thing that does bother me, and IS a real, serious reason is he makes more money than many of the games he “reacts” to. So… all the man hours, creativity and skill that go into making those games are worth LESS than his idiotic blubbering about them. THAT is SAD AS HELL.
pewdiepie got millions of dollars playing video games and all i got from it was divorced ha ha!!!
In fact, PewDiePie has reacted to these trolls. Watch his reaction video here. He basically says he’s no happier with money than he was when he was barely getting by. He says money doesn’t buy happiness.
However, money must buy something. He definitely wants more of it. No question about that. That’s apparent by the amount of ads he runs on his channel. Not to mention all the other ways he earns money.
This article is about how PewDiePie is able to earn over $7 million from playing video games…
PewDiePie’s Income Streams
YouTube Ad Revenue
As of this writing, his videos have approxmiately 9,388,272,000 views. Yes. Billions of views. These videos contain display ads. When someone clicks on an ad, PewDiePie gets 55% of the money that advertiser paid YouTube to be on their site. The remaining 45% goes to YouTube. If PewDiePie would stop caring about money, he could take down these ads in an instant.
Promotions
What PewDiePie has done is create a massive audience. He has millions of subscribers. Video game companies want him to play their games and hopefully have him say nice things about the product. The individual deals are private but it’s safe to assume companies would pay him tens of thousands of dollars to endorse their game. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. He has said he promotes video games for money.
Merchandise
He also owns PewDiePie.com. Here, you can buy video games and miscellaneous merchandise. There’s a $36 t-shirt as well as many other items.
Speaking Engagements
There are no trustworthy statistics on this but you can bet people are willing to pay big money to have the world’s most famous YouTuber appear on their stage. A lot of people say he’s an internet celebrity. Really, he’s a celebrity. Period.
The Future of PewDiePie’s Reign
While nothing is for certain, it’s pretty safe to say PewDiePie will have plenty of money in his future. In 2013, he made just $4 million. He has near doubled that in 1 year. The power of compounding, am I right??
If his life continues this way, he will earn 15 million this year.
There are about 8,760 hours in a year. That means 25-year-old Felix will earn $1,712 each hour of 2015.
But PewDiePie is not alone. There are thousands of YouTubers making six-figures and beyond each year.