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A nine-year-old boy made nearly $ 30 million in a year by ‘unboxing’ 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 won $ 29.5million (£ 22million) on his Ryan’s World YouTube channel, as well as an additional $ 200million in Ryan’s World branded toys and clothing, including Marks & Pajamas. Spencer. He also signed an undisclosed, but likely multi-million dollar, deal for his own Nickelodeon TV series.
Kaji, who is described as a “child influencer,” started creating YouTube videos in March 2015 after looking at other toy review channels and asking her mom, “Why am I not on YouTube when all are the other children? ”
His family – who changed his real last name, Guan, to his on-screen last name, Kaji – now operates 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 Eggs Surprise Toys Challenge, has over 2 billion views, making it one of the 60 most viewed videos on YouTube.
However, Kaji and her family now face the threat of an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into allegations that the sponsors of the videos are not being properly disclosed. “Almost 9% of Ryan ToysReview videos included at least one paid product recommendation aimed at preschoolers, a group too young to distinguish between an ad and a review,” a complaint from the dog said. consumer custody, Truth In Advertising. “These ads often feature unhealthy food.”
Benjamin Burroughs, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies emerging trends and social media, warned that there was a danger that other children would be “Targeted by child influencers in a way that parents aren’t aware or aware of. “
“As a child influencer, [Ryan] is being courted by companies to play with the latest toy so that other children can see it. But now the influencer kid himself has grown into a brand that is then put into Walmart, Target, and Amazon as a force and influence, ”Burroughs said. “It’s quite shocking.”
Burroughs said he became interested in the phenomenon of influential children after his own children asked him to do the things Ryan’s family did. “I thought, ‘Oh, there’s something going on here if my kids are expecting our family to be like Ryan’s family.’ In Ryan’s family, they are able to consume content and products constantly. They open a new toy every day and then play with that new toy every day, so there’s this constant consumerism that’s built into these messages for kids.
In total, the 10 highest-earning YouTube stars took home a total of $ 211 million, according to business magazine Forbes, which released its analysis of their estimated earnings between June 2019 and June 2020 on Friday.
In second place was Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, who made around $ 24 million and was the new entry on the rich YouTube roster.
Donaldson, 22, is known for his stunts, including freezing in ice and giving huge sums of money to strangers who participate in his challenges. He also makes money through the sale of merchandise and partnerships with brands such as Microsoft and Electronic Arts.
Donaldson Director Reed Duchscher said: “The ideas are going to keep getting crazier and crazier, and he’s going to keep spending large sums of money to improve the quality of the output. I mean, he just tweeted today that he has all these great ideas costing $ 10 million. And he is not wrong. He does.”
Top 10 YouTube earnings
1. Ryan Kaji, $ 29.5 million
2. Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson), $ 24 million
3. Perfect Guy, $ 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 struck and professional sports were banned, the group’s YouTube channel hosted the Quarantine Classic, in which they faced off in three-point basketball shootouts and du wheelchair hockey. The video series has raised approximately $ 160,000 for the Red Cross and Feeding America.
4. Rhett and Link, $ 20 million: Rhett James McLaughlin, 43, and Charles Lincoln, 42, are among YouTube’s oldest stars, having started out as a nerdy talk show in 2012.
5. Markiplier, $ 19.5 million: Mark Edward Fischbach has released popular video game breakdowns since 2012, including a 31-part series examining Cry of Fear 2013.
6. Preston Arsement, $ 19 million: Preston hired two dozen people to help him make videos exploring the pixelated world of Minecraft.
7. Nastya, $ 18.5 million: Six-year-old Russian Anastasia Radzinskaya has 191 million subscribers to her channel, which features her with her father playing with Lego, doing housework and explaining viruses .
8. Blippi, $ 17 million: Stevin John, 32, is the only adult creating children’s content on the list. He plays Blippi, the colorfully dressed childish character who educates through videos such as Blippi Visits the Aquarium and Learning Colors with Blippi.
9. David Dobrik, $ 16 million: The 24-year-old is known for his stunts, including driving a convertible through a car wash and shaving someone’s entire body. But Dobrik is trying to move his fans to TikTok.
10. Jeffrey Lynn Steininger, $ 15 million: A former singer who left the stage to film makeup tutorials on YouTube and launched his own line of cosmetics.
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