He has 37.7 million subscribers, 9 billion video views and a fat annual paycheck.
YouTube gaming star Felix Kjellberg, better known by his online persona PewDiePie, has uploaded thousands of comedic clips of himself playing video games. His YouTube profile has the most video views of any account on the site, and it's the fourth most-subscribed in the world, according to Social Blade. And all of those numbers pay. Quite well.
Kjellberg made $4 million last year, Swedish newspaper Expressen reported, and the 25-year-old raked in more than $7 million this year after adding an additional 10 million subscribers.
The news seems to confirm two facts: You can still make a ridiculous amount of money via social media, and the industry centered on watching people play video games is here to stay.
Kjellberg recently uploaded a video to his YouTube channel to address the news -- and criticism -- that he's made so much money in his non-traditional career path.
"Money is a topic that I purposefully avoid," he says in the clip. "I just want to make entertaining videos. It was never a career that I just quit college to pursue, it's just something I just love to do. Here we are five years later, and it's exploded."
Kjellberg notes that a lot of people have responded to the news in anger, saying it's "unfair" for him to profit for basically "sitting on [his] ass all day" yelling at a screen, "which is true."
"What people I guess don't really think about until it's in their face is that I have 9 billion views, and that translates to something," he says.
Kjellberg doesn't dispute that he makes millions every year posting videos to a social network. But he also has used his social capital for good causes, including a fundraiser that garnered $630,000 in donations to celebrate his 25 millionth YouTube subscriber.
And for the angry among his fans, he has a simple message:
"Haters gonna hate, right?"
Related
Before You Go
