A seven-year-old boy is making $22 million a year on YouTube by doing every child’s dream job.
Young entrepreneur Ryan spends his days reviewing toys, and has become the highest-earning YouTube star by doing so. I bet you’re kicking yourself for not thinking of taking that career route when you were younger, aren’t you?
I know I certainly am.
The enthusiastic little boy helps to host family-run YouTube channel Ryan ToysReview, where he gets to play with all manner of toys and judge just exactly how fun they are.
You might kind of want to hate the seven-year-old for making more money in a year than you probably ever will in your whole life, but your icy heart will melt as soon as the opening to the video plays and you hear Ryan stumbling over his words as he introduces the show in an adorable voiceover.
According to Forbes’ annual list of YouTube stars who are making the most money, Ryan jumped from number eight all the way to the top spot in the past year, beating the earnings of runner-up Jake Paul by half a million dollars.
Before tax, from June 1, 2017 through to June 1, 2018, the youngster doubled his earnings from $11 million to $22 million.
I think the only thing I achieved between the ages of six and seven was getting my first adult teeth.
Ryan’s parents began shooting and producing their son’s videos in March 2015, and an episode of Ryan ToysReview is now released almost daily.
The video which shot Ryan to stardom featured the well-earning child opening up a box containing more than 100 toys from Pixar’s Cars series and sharing his opinions of them with the world.
The video raked up close to 935 million views, and now Ryan reviews his products to a whopping 17 million followers.
All parents are proud of their children, but Ryan’s parents must be over the moon that they gave birth to that little money-maker! Though to be fair, it must be hard to shop for his Christmas presents. What do you get a child who already has all the toys and all the money?
According to Reuters, Ryan has since spread his love of toys from the virtual world into the real world by striking a deal with Walmart to sell a toy line called ‘Ryan’s World’ exclusively in over 2,500 US stores and Walmart’s website.
As if his job wasn’t cool enough already, Ryan helped to select the toys and apparel that will be sold in his line.
In an interview with TubeFilter, Ryan’s mother explained how the little boy got into making videos, saying:
Ryan was watching a lot of toy review channels because they used to make a lot of videos about Thomas The Tank Engine, and Ryan was super into Thomas.
One day, he asked me, ‘How come I’m not on YouTube when all the other kids are?’ So we just decided — yeah, we can do that. Then, we took him to the store to get his very first toy — I think it was a Lego train set — and it all started from there.
It must be nice to be Ryan!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.