MrBeast reveals he made 250,000 dollars from first X video

23 January 2024, 09:54

Twitter logo. Picture: PA

The YouTuber had previously said it was not worth posting new content on the site as creators only received a small amount of advertising revenue.

MrBeast, the world’s most popular YouTuber, has revealed he earned more than 250,000 US dollars (£196,600) from posting a video to X, formerly known as Twitter.

The American had previously said it was not worth posting new content directly to the Elon Musk-owned platform because creators only received a small amount of advertising revenue.

He has previously said not even receiving one billion views would make it worth his while to post videos to the platform.

However, he announced last week that he would post an old video to X as an experiment, because he was “super curious” to see how much ad revenue he could make from the post.

The post generated more than 155 million views, and MrBeast – real name Jimmy Donaldson – shared a screenshot showing it had earned him just over 263,000 dollars (£206,800).

MY FIRST X VIDEO MADE OVER $250,000! 😲

But it’s a bit of a facade. 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 pic.twitter.com/nViVpZbWBb

— MrBeast (@MrBeast) January 22, 2024

The test has been closely watched by many industry experts and commentators as X has publicly struggled to make money since Elon Musk’s takeover in late 2022, and has seen traffic to the site decline.

Mr Musk has also been caught up in a number of bitter rows with advertisers, with many withdrawing from the platform over concerns about some of the content which has been allowed in the site under the billionaire’s “absolute free speech” approach.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss has introduced a number of new features to the platform in an attempt to boost engagement, including new premium subscriptions and starting to share advertising revenue with content creators – a system other sites such as YouTube already have in place.

But MrBeast dismissed the earnings for his video as “a bit of a facade”, because of his own high profile, and suggested that other users would be unlikely to see similar returns.

“My first X video made over 250,000 dollars,” he posted to X.

“But it’s a bit of a facade. Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob (sic) higher than what you’d experience.”

MrBeast has 234 million subscribers to his YouTube page, and some estimates suggest he earned in excess of 80 million dollars (nearly £63 million) in 2023.

By Press Association