The YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is the biggest creator on the platform, with 239 million subscribers. But that doesn’t mean he pockets the cash he makes from his videos, which regularly rack up hundreds of millions of views.
Donaldson told the outlet he brings in between $600 and $700 million a year. He also recently made $250,000 from an old video he reposted to X, after months of CEO Elon Musk attempting to woo him to the platform.
But Donaldson claims he isn’t personally wealthy.
“I mean, not right now,” he told the outlet. “I’m not naive; maybe one day. But right now, whatever we make, we reinvest.”
Donaldson, 25, said he doesn’t even have access to his bank accounts, and that his mom is “the one who has access to the master bank account.”
Every video earns “a couple million” from ads and “a couple million in brand deals,” he told Time. But that all goes back into making more.
He also said that sometimes 12,000 hours of footage can go into making a video just 15 minutes long, so the costs can be massive.
In 2022, Donaldson said he was spending $8 million a month on his videos, totaling nearly $100 million a year, and his stunts have only gotten more ambitious and expensive since then.
Some of his latest videos include being buried alive for seven days, building 100 wells in Africa, and shredding a Lamborghini.
“I’ve reinvested everything to the point of — you could claim — stupidity, just believing that we would succeed,” he told Time. “And it’s worked out.”
