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A nine-year-old has made more than € 24 million in a year “unpacking” and reviewing toys and games on YouTube to hold the title of highest paid YouTuber for the third year in a row.
Ryan Kaji, of Texas, earned $ 29.5 million, or € 24.1 million, from his YouTube channel Ryan’s World, as well as another estimated $ 200 million, or € 163.5 million, from the brand’s toys and clothing. Ryan’s World, including Marks & Spencer pajamas. He also signed an undisclosed, but likely multi-million dollar deal for his own television series on Nickelodeon.
Kaji, who is described as an “influential kid”, started making YouTube videos in March 2015 after watching other toy review channels and asking his mother, “How come I’m not on YouTube when all the other children yes? “
Kaji’s most popular video, Huge Eggs Surprise Toys Challenge, has over 2 billion views, making it one of the top 60 most viewed videos on YouTube.
His family, who changed his real last name, Guan, to his on-screen last name, Kaji, now run nine YouTube channels. Ryan’s World was the most popular, with 41.7 million subscribers and 12.2 billion views. Kaji’s most popular video, Huge Egg Surprise Toy Challenge, has over 2 billion views, making it one of the top 60 most viewed videos on YouTube.
But Kaji and his family now face the threat of an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the sponsors of the videos are not being properly disclosed. “Nearly 9 percent of Ryan Toys Review videos have included at least one paid product recommendation targeting preschoolers, a group too young to distinguish between a commercial and a review,” said a consumer regulator complaint. Truth in Advertising. “These ads often show unhealthy foods.”
Benjamin Burroughs, an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies emerging trends and social media, warns that there is a danger that other children “will be attacked by influential children in ways that parents cannot be aware or aware of ”.
“As an influential child, [Ryan] he’s being courted by businesses to play with the latest toy for other kids to see. But now the influential kid himself has become a brand that is then being positioned at Walmart, Target and Amazon as his own strength and influence, ”says Burroughs. “It is quite shocking.”
Burroughs says that he became interested in the phenomenon of influential children after his own children asked him to do the things that Ryan’s family did. “I thought, oh, something is going on here if my kids expect our family to look like Ryan’s family. In Ryan’s family, they can consume content and products constantly. They are opening a new toy every day and subsequently playing with that new toy every day, so there is this constant consumerism that is embedded in these messages for children. “
The top 10 highest-earning YouTube stars took home a total of $ 211 million, according to Forbes business magazine analysis of their Estimated earnings between June 2019 and June 2020.
In second place was Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr Beast, who made an estimated $ 24 million, or € 19.6 million, and was the newest entry on YouTube’s rich list.
The 22-year-old is known for his stunts, including freezing himself in ice and gifting large sums of money to strangers who compete in his challenges. You also earn money by selling products and partnerships with brands like Microsoft and Electronic Arts.
Reed Duchscher, Donaldson manager, says: “Ideas will continue to get crazier and he will continue to spend large amounts of money to improve the quality of production. I mean, you just tweeted today that you have all these great ideas that cost $ 10 million. And he is not mistaken. It does. “
Top 10 YouTube Revenues
1 Ryan Kaji, $ 29.5 million
2 Mr Beast (Jimmy Donaldson), $ 24 million
3 Dude Perfect, $ 23 million: Five friends – Coby Cotton, Cory Cotton, Garret Hilbert, Cody Jones, and Tyler Toney – play stunts with lightsabers, Nerf guns and paintballs. In March, when the coronavirus first hit and professional sports were banned, the group’s YouTube channel hosted the Quarantine Classic, in which they competed against each other in three-point basketball shootouts and wheelchair hockey. The video series raised about $ 160,000 for the Red Cross and Feeding America.
4 Rhett and Link, $ 20 million: Rhett James McLaughlin, who is 43, and Charles Lincoln, who is 42, are some of the oldest YouTube stars, starting out as a nerdy talk show in 2012.
5 Markiplier, $ 19.5 million: Mark Edward Fischbach has been posting popular video game breakdowns since 2012, including a 31-part series examining Cry of Fear from 2013.
6 Preston Arsement, $ 19 million: Preston has hired two dozen people to help him make videos that explore the pixelated world of Minecraft.
7 Nastya, $ 18.5 million: Six-year-old Anastasia Radzinskaya from Russia has 191 million subscribers to her channel, in which she and her father play with Lego, do housework and explain viruses.
8 Blippi, $ 17 million: Stevin John, 32, is the only adult creating content for children on the list. He plays Blippi, the brightly dressed child character who educates through videos like Blippi Visits the Aquarium and Learn Colors with Blippi.
9 David Dobrik, $ 16 million: This 24-year-old is known for his stunts, which include driving a convertible through a car wash and shaving someone’s entire body. But Dobrik is trying to move his fans to TikTok.
10 Jeffree Star (Jeffrey Lynn Steininger), $ 15 million: A former singer who left the stage to shoot makeup tutorials on YouTube and launched his own range of cosmetics. – Guardian
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