Words: Alex Woodhall
Social networking and media has truly taken over the world. From Facebook and Instagram to Twitter, we’re all engaging some way or another over cyberspace platforms nowadays. But when it comes to making money, one in particular stands out, the video sharing platform YouTube.
Of course we’ve all heard of YouTube. Hours have been whittled away watching amusing clips on the website, and it’s all but replaced MTV when it comes to watching music videos. However, some young entrepreneurs are using it for far more than watching cats on the Internet. They’ve begun to take advantage of the platform and make a full-time income from it; the best of them are earning astronomical amounts, with very little in the way of overheads.
Here are 5 people who have turned YouTube into estimated million-pound-plus businesses, largely through advertising revenue.
PEWDIEPIE: EST. EARNINGS, £11 MILLION
The Swedish personality, real name Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, plays video games on the Internet to a subscriber base of over 34 million, that’s more than One Direction and Katy Perry combined. His videos are far from polished, but his loud, brash and often incomprehensible commentating style evidently resonates with today’s youth.
SMOSH: EST. EARNINGS, £2.5 MILLION
Comedic duo Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla started their YouTube channel back in 2005 and now have 19 million subscribers; being the most subscribed channel on the website on 3 different occasions. Primarily known for their pop culture and video game referenced comedy; they now have a feature film in the works with Lionsgate and have lent their voices to an Angry Birds film also.
THE FINE BROS: EST. EARNINGS, £3.1 MILLION
Siblings, Benny and Rafi Fine are best known for their React series where they film a specific group of people reacting to a video i.e. Teens React To ‘80’s Fashion. With over 11 million subscribers, the brothers have cultivated a conveyor belt of viral videos and have now had a show green-lit on children’s TV show network Nickelodeon.
STAMPY LONGHEAD: EST. EARNINGS, £6.4 MILLION
Another video game player, Joseph Garrett has positioned himself as an über-popular new-age children’s entertainer and has amassed a following 5 million strong on his channel. Unlike Pew Die Pie, Garrett’s commentary is void of profanity and is aimed at the very young, giving the usual children’s TV a run for their money.
JEANA AND JESSE WELLENS: EST. EARNINGS, £3 MILLION
The couple have two YouTube channels, Prank vs Prank and BFvsGF, with 7.2 million and 5.8 million subscribers respectively. The first is, as the name indicates, a channel where the two play pranks on each other and the other a log of their daily lives. The couple have spectacularly capitalised on society’s increasingly voyeuristic tendencies and fascination for reality TV on the self-publishing platform.
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