Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast’s real name, posted one of his older videos on the platform on January 15. It was titled “$1 vs $100,000,000 Car!” on YouTube, and to date has accrued 216 million views on that platform.
In just a few days, the same video on X attracted 161 million views, according to Twitter/X’s on-post stats.
The post was intended as a test to see how much money Donaldson could make from X, having previously suggested it is not a viable platform for video content creators.
Despite making a hefty sum, Donaldson’s opinion on X does not appear to have changed.
“It’s a bit of a facade,” he wrote in a follow-up post on Twitter/X. “Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob higher than what you’d experience.”
A conservative estimate for Mr. Beast’s YouTube CPM, the advertising fees he receives per 1000 views, is $5, which suggests he may have earned upwards of $1,000,000 (or £848,000) from the original YouTube post to date.
MrBeast claims he plans to give away the $250,000 made from the Twitter/X repost to 10 of his followers, an overt act of generosity similar to those that helped propel him into the limelight in the first place.
The MrBeast channel currently has more than 234 million followers on YouTube. Forbes estimates his 2023 income at £64.5 million, more than double the takings of the three second-place accounts with $35 million. These include Rhett & Link, producers of the Good Mythical Morning YouTube series.
Elon Musk announced that X account holders signed up to the X Premium subscription would be able to receive a share of advertising revenue in July 2023.
According to Fortune, X brought in $2.5 billion in ad revenues in 2023, compared to $4.5 billion in 2021. The platform, previously known as Twitter, was bought by Elon Musk in October 2022 for $44 billion, equivalent to around £34.5 billion.
