Jimmy Donaldson, 22, is the ‘youtuber‘most famous and millionaire in this industry, in which he is known worldwide as MrBeast, because according to ‘Forbes’ his fortune reaches USD 24 million, which gives him a place in the list of 30 richest under 30s in the world.
But a few years ago his life was totally different. He started creating content for YouTube at age 12. At that time he was uploading videos playing ‘Call of duty’ and ‘Minecraft’, then he became more interested in the platform and talked about the estimated earnings of the best ‘youtubers’ of the time.
When he was 18 years old, in 2016, he dropped out of college to devote yourself to studying the YouTube algorithm, I was obsessed with figuring out what it was that made a video go viral.
“I woke up, I studied YouTube, I studied videos, I studied film, I went to bed and that was my life,” he said in an interview with ‘Bloomberg’.
Together with a group of friends they began the arduous work of solving the ‘great mystery’, they not only analyzed each video that was a trend, but also made phone calls and they were looking for data about the publications with more interactions of the most famous channels of that time.
He had already created content, but hadn’t gotten the reception he expected until one day, in the middle of his research, an idea came to his mind that he was sure would give him the success he was hoping for.
On January 8, 2017, he posted ‘I counted to 100,000’, a video of just over three minutes in which he is seen sitting quietly in front of the screen counting to one hundred thousand.
After 40 hours straight By saying number after number, MrBeast achieved his goal: he went viral. So much so that, to date, it has more than 21.6 million views, 118 thousand comments and 926 thousand ‘likes’.
Since then it has not stopped, only that today and thanks to the fame it has obtained, it creates more produced content, investing up to USD 300,000 in each video.
Video: YouTube / Canal: MrBeast
The key to success
The first MrBeast videos were obviously not like the ones they are now, back then he only recorded with his phone, he had no microphone and even his laptop was faulty at the time of editing.
Then, when he decided to leave university, the conditions were not very different, he was aware that he did not have much money so he would have to think about going viral to start living on the famous video platform.
“I didn’t have a lot of money, so I wanted to do something big,” he told ‘Bloomberg’.
Finally, thanks to the video counting the upcoming ones, he realized the elements that were key to reaching more people: weather, miniature, Title e introduction. For MrBeast it is very important not to share such a long or short video, to have a thumbnail according to the content, a simple and striking title and, above all, explain what the subscriber will find in the video in the first 30 seconds.
Furthermore, according to ‘Bloomberg’, MrBeast’s success is also related to the fact that it handles the three most striking ‘genres’ on the platform: challenges (challenge), invite celebrities and react to something.
Still, he assures that there is no single formula to go viral and that his fame lies in the video telling, because “people are attracted by demonstrations of sheer force of will.”
And he stressed, for those who want to start in this, that “the first million subscribers you get will take years, but the second will come in a few months.”
Its content
The fact that its contents are among the most viewed on YouTube has allowed different brands to search for it to advertise. In fact, their viewing revenue (around 4 billion a year) is compounded by million dollars in advertising sales on all your social networks.
Money that you have managed to invest in the production of your videos. For example, spending 24 hours in prison, in a madhouse or in the desert. But, lately its content has taken on a philanthropic tinge, it has planted 20 million trees around the world, emptied entire stores to donate products and has also given money to the homeless and their subscribers.
In addition, behind all the logistics and production of your videos there is a team of 50 people who help you, since the vast majority of contents require several days of recording.
“Money is a vehicle to make bigger videos and make better content,” he said, because unlike other influencers, MrBeast likes to invest his profits in your videos and in your new businesses.
At the end of 2020, his representative convinced him to invest in MrBeast Burger an application created under the model of phantom kitchens, that is, it is associated with around 300 restaurants who prepare hamburgers according to their instructions.
Even so, and although he has other plans in mind, he assures that he will continue creating content for YouTube, his great obsession.
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