Ali Hasan
2020 was the year of You Tubers and all sorts of content creators. When we were locked in our homes due to the pandemic and were confused what to do, then consuming content became our main source of entertainment.
2020 was a very bad year indeed for most of us but not if you’re a YouTuber as the top 10 You Tubers collectively earned $211 million. This is a straight 30% increase from 2019.
According to research firm Statista, 77% of U.S. internet users ages 15-25 tune into YouTube. The top earner was 9 year old Ryan Kaji, who was at the 1st place for the 3rd year in a row. He’s famous for so-called unboxing videos, in which he takes toys out of their packages and reviews them.
The Texas-based YouTuber earned $29.5 million from his YouTube channel ‘Ryan’s World’ in 2020 – this despite a crackdown on child advertising that cut into his revenue. Ryan Kaji, whose real name is Ryan Guan, began making YouTube videos in 2015 when he was just 4 years old.
YouTube has now become a platform of stardom, success and fortune. If you can produce quality content and have what it takes to engage audience, then you can become the next star in the making. Many people started out small and gradually build up an audience but after they were able to build up an audience, they were able to bring in millions of dollars through various monetization options.
For example, You Tubers earn via many options such as:-
- Merchandise
- Paid Promotions
- Selling Digital Courses
- Guest Appearances
- Brand Endorsements
- YouTube Ads
- Using Fame for other Ventures (Starting a New Business)
Nearly all You Tubers earn the majority of their income from ad revenue generated from their YouTube videos, a number that is boosted when videos are family friendly, in English and longer than 8 minutes. And while those ad rates did dip at the beginning of Covid-19, they quickly rebounded.
YouTube is clearly here to stay and its rise among the masses has solidified its position as the next big thing. In the future, it has the potential to compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime even when it doesn’t produces it own content. OTT platforms, YouTube, Spotify and other streaming services such as Twitch have completely dominated the cable TV network. Looks like TV channels are going to extinct.
The top 10 YouTuber and their earnings are as follows:-
#10 Jeffree Star – $15 million
#9 David Dobrik – $15.5 million
#8 Blippi (Stevin John) – $17 milliom
#7 Nastya (Anastasia Radzinskaya) – $18.5 million
#6 Preston Arsement – $19 million
#5 Markiplier (Mark Fischbach) – $19.5 million
#4 Rhett and Link – $20 million
#3 Dude Perfect – $23 million
#2 Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson) – $24 million
#1 Ryan Kaji – $29.5 million
All earnings estimates are from June 1, 2019, through June 1, 2020. Figures are pretax; fees for agents, managers and lawyers are not deducted.
