YouTube’s biggest star, PewDiePie (real name: Felix Kejeliberg), has had one of the best years of his career so far. His channel hit 100 million subscribers, he married his fiancee, and if you ask his fans, it was the year he beat the Ender Dragon in Minecraft. He also experienced huge financial success with excitement around his channel year round.
There is a lot of confusion about how much YouTubers make on the platform. That’s because there are a lot of variables. You would think that a channel with more subscribers than other channels would be making more money. However, that isn’t always the case. It depends on sponsorships, ad revenue and many other factors.
How much did PewDiePie make?
So, that begs the question, how much did YouTube’s most subscribed individual content creator make this year? The online marketplace OnBuy.com was curious to find out how much he made this year from ads and merchandise. The site discovered that PewDiePie made an insane $70,740,630.50 from ads and merch in 2019. The data used was gathered using a tool created by Sellfy.
How did he fair monthly?
OnBuy.com broke down PewDiePie’s year’s total earnings month to month. His most successful month in 2019 was September. In that month he made a total of $9,148,005.50 from ads and merch. This is the same month when his Minecraft series reached its peak and when he received his 100 million subscriber award. His award unboxing video acquired 43 million views.
On the flip side, PewDiePie’s ‘toughest months’ were recent ones: November and December. For both months he has earned a little under $4,000,000. Still though, that is no small chunk of change.
PewDiePie has said recently on his channel that he’s gotten to a point where he hopes he can start thinking less about making money on his channel.
“Making YouTube videos is what I signed up to do because I want to do it,” PewDiePie says in one of his recent videos. “To be honest, I feel like a lot of times like a hypocrite because I keep saying I don’t care about money, but I’m obviously still generating a lot of money … it’s like if I don’t care about money, why do [midrolls, sponsorships, selling merch]” He notes that in many ways, YouTubers feel the need to validate their work by making money. Additionally, YouTube recommends videos that are more financially successful more often.
“I hope in 2020 I can start living by my own ideals more,” PewDiePie says.