Story of MrBeast, the youtuber who has more followers than the inhabitants of Russia

Jimmy Donaldson is about to turn 25, was born in Wichita, in the US state of Kansas, and currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Few know him as Jimmy Donaldsonbut more or less everyone knows him as MrBeast (written like this, all attached), the youtuber with the most followers in the world.

More precisely: MrBeast is not only the youtuber with most followers in the world (at the end of 2022 it has largely surpassed its rival PewDiePie) but he is the single most followed person on YouTube, because the only 3 channels ahead of him are an Indian record label, an American TV channel and Sony India.

youtube: MrBeast counts up to 100k

More followers than the inhabitants of Russia

At the beginning of April, MrBeast has reached and crossed another milestone, symbolic but still impressive: reaching 146 million followers, he has surpassed the inhabitants of Russia in followers (who are around 142 million). That’s right: if all the people who follow him formed a statewould be the ninth most populous state in the world.

These are not the only record numbers of this boy who started doing what he does as a child: his first video (probably removed and in any case more complicated to find due to some changes made by YouTube in the search) dates back to when he was just 11 years old and played video games. Since then he has published 738 more, which have totaled nearly 25 billion views, with the tipping point probably coming in January 2017 with I Counted To 100,000in which it literally counts up to 100,000.

Video lasts just under 24 hourswas his first video to exceed one million views (today it has 27 million) and perfectly represents the genre of content created by MrBeast: entertainment, challenge as far as possible, spend money bordering on the morally permissible. Or, precisely: counting out loud to 100,000, hire a killer to kill him and escape him, stay 50 hours in a coffin, drive 1,000 times to the same fast food restaurant or also recreate the challenges of Squid Gameas we reported on Italian Tech at the end of 2021.

And these are just the videos that MrBeast uploads to the main channel, because he obviously diversifies and has others too: Beast Philanthropywith nearly 13 million subscribers, MrBeast Gaming (32 million followers), Beast Reacts (23.1 million) and MrBeast 2 (22.1 million).

youtube: MrBeast and the killer

Illness and charity

Among the secondary channels, Beast Philanthropy is the one that has the least followers but which for Donaldson is probably the most important: another of his distinctive features is in fact that of giving away a lot of money and in general of doing a lot of charity.

It is not clear whether this is related to his health condition (he has the Crohn’s disease), but over the years he has set up many charitable initiatives, has allowed over 1000 people to see again, paying for their cataract removal surgery, has planted about 25 million trees thanks to the Team Trees initiative (which is explained here) and together with other youtubers he created Team Seas, a project to clean up the seas and oceans of the world.

In 2022 alone, according to Business Insider estimatesreportedly donated over $3.2 million in cash through contests and promotions related to videos. Plus a private jet worth $2.5 million and an entire island.

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How much money does MrBeast make?

He manages to do this because he managed to create a real one self-perpetuating empire: he spends a lot of money to make his videos (the one dedicated to Squid Game would have cost more than 3 million dollars), which are seen by tens of millions of people, which he keeps its CPM and RPM values ​​are very high (What are?) and makes his clips very, very profitable. Clip to which, among other things, he dedicates more or less the same commitment as at the beginning, so much so that he is still personally involved both in the editing and assembly phase and in the very delicate one of the choice of thumbnailthe image showing it to the public on YouTube.

Then obviously there are sponsorships, advertising revenues, collaborations: in 2022, according to Forbes and Axios, MrBeast earned $54 million and would now be seeking financing for another 150 million dollars which would bring the total value of its assets to around 1.5 billion.

Returning to what was said at the beginning, Jimmy Donaldson is indeed a hugely successful youtuber, a creator and a philanthropist, but it is not only this: he is above all an entrepreneur, a new form of media entrepreneur, a sort of modern-day Murdoch. But he is not 50 or 60 years old but just 25.

@capoema