Donaldson grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. He began posting videos to YouTube in early 2012, at the age of 13, under the handle MrBeast6000. His early ...
Jimmy Donaldson, the person the online world knows as MrBeast, is the biggest YouTuber on the planet - and with that popularity comes large sums of money.
The 25-year-old has branched out from video-making and now has his own fast-food chain, MrBeast Burger. It hit headlines this week when he sued the company behind the chain, claiming fans thought the food was "revolting".
But it's still YouTube that he is best known for. In November 2022, Forbes estimated he earned $54m (£42.5m) in a year from the platform, combining advertising revenue from videos and sponsorship deals. Since then, he has gained 60 million more subscribers on his main channel, taking his total 172 million.
And he has several other channels with tens of millions of subscribers, including one for philanthropy and one for video games.
It's unclear exactly how much money he actually pockets though. Donaldson has become known for putting the money he makes back into his ultra-expensive videos, some of which take millions to produce. He told a podcast in June that he reinvests "every penny I make".
It is this approach to content that might begin to explain why the American YouTuber attracts such giant audiences - because it allows him to raise the stakes.
His biggest video to date, with 472 million views, recreated the Netflix hit Squid Game in real life, including a $456,000 prize fund.
Contrast that with 2017, where his biggest videos included him saying "Logan Paul" 100,000 times over the course of 17 hours, and one where he tipped hundreds of dollars to pizza delivery drivers. Each received between 20 and 40 million views.
Outside of his videos, Donaldson is known for his philanthropy, as well as many business ventures. He has a licensed charity which functions as a food bank to feed communities across the US, and he has helped raise tens of millions of dollars to help the environment.
And in addition to MrBeast Burger - part of a venture he is now trying to back out of - he has also launched a range of snacks called Feastables, which he says are consistently selling out in the UK.
Getty ImagesMrBeast's brand deals
YouTubers can rely on ads to make up a chunk of their income - but sometimes that doesn't cover MrBeast's costs.
For example, Donaldson revealed to his Twitter subscribers in July that his latest video, which cost an estimated $3m to produce, had netted him $167,000 in ad payments after a few days. Even over the lifetime of the video, it would be unlikely to recoup the cost.
That's where sponsorship deals come in. For some content creators, this can make up even more of their income than ads themselves.
Lucy Edwards, a YouTuber with 705,000 subscribers - who became BBC Radio 1's first blind presenter in 2019 - told the BBC that much of her income comes through these brand partnerships.
"I am currently the face of Pantene, a shampoo and hair care brand, globally," she said.
"And then I also have more one-off campaigns quite regularly, possibly around four to five activations a month - we earn a minimal amount from TikTok and YouTube [ads]."
She tends to rely on much shorter content than Donaldson, with her most popular video lasting just two and a half minutes in length, but racking up two million views.
She said YouTubers like MrBeast could potentially earn more thanks to the length of his videos, which are typically between 10 and 20 minutes long.
"If you were a long-form creator, having post-roll, pre-roll, mid-roll ads, and your content is longer than eight minutes, you'll be getting a lot of ad revenue," she said.
"But all the brands also are wanting short-form content, so you've always got to have a balance of the two."
'When he uploads, people click'
Donaldson's videos can be hard to categorise.
They will typically involve a challenge, such as a video surviving hours in Antarctica, or big cash prizes - a $1m game of hide and seek, for example.
But his most recent video, in which a train is driven off its rails and into a giant pit, fails to fit that format.
Steven Bridges, himself a YouTuber with 470,000 subscribers, told the BBC it is Donaldson's creativity that has driven his growth: "I think the interesting thing about MrBeast is his absolute dedication to making what he considers the best video possible.
"When he uploads, people click. They know that when they click on a MrBeast video, there's going to be a heck of a lot of effort gone into making it really entertaining."
Allow Google YouTube content?
Bridges has reinvented himself on YouTube in recent years, moving from content around magic to card counting. His most popular video, showcasing a popular scam used to trick tourists in London, has been viewed 4.6 million times.
"It's really, really tricky to sustain a 10-year career on YouTube," he said.
"But MrBeast is just focusing on the one thing that really matters - putting the audience first and thinking: 'What can I give them that they're really going to love'?"
One of the big reasons behind Donaldson's success on YouTube might simply be his likeable personality - even when he overtook PewDiePie to become the top content creator on the platform, his rival simply congratulated him and said he deserved it.
But while Donaldson is the most-subscribed individual user on YouTube, he is some way off having the biggest single YouTube channel.
T-Series, an Indian music video publishing company, leads the way in that category with more than 246 million subscribers.
But with 172 million and counting, it would be a brave person who bets against Donaldson one day becoming the first YouTuber since PewDiePie to dethrone T-Series at the top.
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.jpg) MrBeast in 2023 | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | James Stephen Donaldson May 7, 1998 Wichita, Kansas, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Origin | Greenville, North Carolina, U.S.[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Education | Greenville Christian Academy | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | mrbeast | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Years active | 2012–present | ||||||||||||||||||
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Last updated: June 5, 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||
James Stephen "Jimmy" Donaldson[b] (born May 7, 1998), better known by his online alias MrBeast, is an American YouTuber, online personality, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for his fast-paced and high-production videos, which feature elaborate challenges and large giveaways.[11] With over 278 million subscribers, he is the most-subscribed channel on YouTube.
Donaldson grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. He began posting videos to YouTube in early 2012, at the age of 13,[12] under the handle MrBeast6000. His early content ranged from Let's Plays to "videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers".[13] He went viral in 2017 after his "counting to 100,000" video earned tens of thousands of views in just a few days, and he has become increasingly popular ever since, with most of his videos gaining tens of millions of views.[13] His videos became increasingly grand and extravagant.[14] Once his channel took off, Donaldson hired some of his childhood friends to co-run the brand. As of 2023, the MrBeast team is made up of over 250 people, including Donaldson himself.[15] Other than MrBeast, Donaldson runs the YouTube channels Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast 2 (formerly MrBeast Shorts)[16] and the philanthropy channel Beast Philanthropy.[17][18] He formerly ran MrBeast 3 (initially MrBeast 2), which is now inactive.[19][20]
Donaldson is the founder of MrBeast Burger, Feastables, and also a co-creator of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation that has raised over $23 million for its campaigns.[21][22] He also co-founded Team Seas, a fundraiser for Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup that has raised over $30 million.[23] Donaldson won the Creator of the Year award four years in a row at the Streamy Awards in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023; he also won the Favorite Male Creator award twice at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in 2022 and 2023. In 2023, Time named him as one of the world's 100 most influential people.[24] He has ranked on the Forbes list for the highest paid YouTube creator in 2022[25] and has an estimated net worth of $500 million.[26]
Early life
James Stephen Donaldson[b] was born on May 7, 1998[27] in Wichita, Kansas[28] as the son of Sue Donaldson.[29] He was mainly raised in Greenville, North Carolina.[30][31] He moved often and was under the care of au pairs due to his parents working long hours and serving in the military. His parents divorced in 2007.[30] In 2016, Donaldson graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a small private evangelical Christian high school in the area. He briefly attended East Carolina University before dropping out.[32][33] Whilst at Greenville, Donaldson played as an outfielder in baseball for a number of years.[34] After dropping out, Donaldson and his friends tried to analyze YouTube's recommendation algorithm and sought to deduce how to create viral videos.[35] Donaldson recalled during this time, "There’s a five-year point in my life where I was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality, studying the YouTube algorithm. I woke up. I would Uber Eats food. And then I would sit on my computer all day just studying shit nonstop with [other YouTubers]."[36]
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