MrBeast reveals he made $250,000 from X video

The world’s most popular YouTuber, MrBeast, has revealed he made more than $250,000 (£197,000) from posting a video on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He had previously said it was not worth posting on the social media site as creators only got a small amount of advertising revenue.

However, after a U-turn last week, he posted an old video – which has generated more than 155 million views.

The stunt has been closely watched as X’s business struggles.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, has tried various strategies to boost engagement on the platform since buying it in October 2022.

These include sharing advertising revenue with high profile creators, something that other sites, including YouTube, already do.

But the plans have faced doubts, as traffic to the site has declined.

X’s advertising revenue has also plunged as Mr Musk’s feud with advertisers over issues such as hate speech and misinformation rumbles on.

MrBeast – real name Jimmy Donaldson – had previously said that even a “billion views” would not make it worth his while to post videos on X.

But he said he was “super curious” to see how much advertising revenue he could make from the video.

He said on Monday that the big sum seemed “a bit of a façade”.

“Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is [probably] higher than what you’d experience,” he wrote in the post, adding that he planned to choose 10 “random people” to give the money he made.

Analysts said an equivalent haul would be hard to repeat without MrBeast’s massive profile.

“He said he made $250,000, so not bad for one video,” said Karsten Weide, principal at W Media Research. “It’s good numbers but you have to have a massive amount of traffic.”

The amount so-called influencers can make varies from person to person. The terms of individual deals are kept confidential, although it is thought the biggest names online may be able to negotiate special rates.

In November 2022, Forbes estimated that MrBeast made $54m in a year from his YouTube channel.

Since then, he has gained millions of subscribers on his main channel, to make a total of 233 million.

The size of his audience has prompted courtship from companies looking to boost their platforms.

MrBeast, who has claimed his videos cost millions of dollars to make, is reportedly working on a deal for a show with a huge streaming platform.

He had previously posted the same video, where he tries out cars of differing valuations, on YouTube in September 2023.

It currently has over 215 million views on YouTube, where MrBeast makes most of his money.

Dave Wiskus, chief executive of Nebula, the largest independent premium streaming platform, said the performance of the video on X suggested that creators might not want to simply write off X as a platform for sharing their work, noting that even for MrBeast, making more than $250,000 was “not nothing”.

“If you’re a creator who can pull in any kind of numbers and if you’re already making the video and you can post it over there too, then sure, why not?” he said.

But he said he did not think less famous people would be able to bring in equivalent sums.

“This was a one-off from the biggest YouTuber on earth that got international media attention,” Mr Wiskus added.

“I don’t think another creator who pulls in 1% of those impressions is going to put in 1% of that money.”

MrBeast’s experiment is fairly unique.

Most creators would not attract anywhere near those viewing numbers, or indeed the global media attention that went along with it. As he said himself, the final sum his video earned him is not reflective of the experience for most of X’s users.

It will undoubtedly please X chief executive Linda Yaccarino, who joined the firm last year following a stellar career in advertising. She is said to have privately struggled with the reputation of X, so it will be encouraging for her to see that ads can still perform well on the platform.

The company’s owner Elon Musk visited the site of the Auschwitz death camp on Monday, following intense scrutiny of the way in which the social network handles anti-Semitic content on its platform. This is one of the big issues which troubles many of X’s users and potential advertisers. It is one which Mr Musk must continue to address both in terms of words and actions.

There are also rumours that MrBeast may be negotiating his own show with one of the large video streaming platforms. If this is indeed the case, his experiment on X is a loud signal as to just how much he is worth.