YouTube/Ryan's World/PewDiePieWhen I was eight, I thought I’d hit the jackpot when my pocket money got upped to £2 a week, but this kid is making a whopping $26 million a year.
The young YouTuber, Ryan Kaji, has topped the annual top ten earners list put together by Forbes, beating previous top paid star Felix Kjellberg (A.K.A PewDiePie), who only made $13 million this year.
Kaji’s channel, called Ryan’s World, started when he was just three years old (such a precocious toddler). His first videos were simply of him unwrapping toys on camera, but later the young star ventured into doing science experiments, music videos and even his own skits too.
You can watch one of his videos here:
The eight-year-old entrepreneur has his own line of clothes and toys as well with Walmart and Target and boasts nearly 23 million subscribers on his channel.
Second place in Forbes’ list was Dude Perfect, who made $20 million this year. Their content consists of five friends in their 30s — Coby Cotton, Cory Cotton, Garret Hilbert, Cody Jones and Tyler Toney — who play sports, perform stunts and break world records.
Dude Perfect actually has more than double the followers Ryan’s World does, with a huge 47.7 million following. The channel describes itself as ‘5 best buds just kickin’ it.’ I mean, I wish my best mates and I were worth $20 million.
Check out this video that got a ridiculous 39 million views:
Third on Forbes‘ list is another child star, Anastasia Radzinskaya. The Russian five-year-old made $18 million this year from her videos of simply playing with her dad. Cute, right? Anastasia’s channel is called Like Nastya Vlog.
The channel describes itself as (translated from Russian – thanks, Google):
Hi. See our Children’s vlogs and online life of a little girl who has already become popular on YouTube. The real life of our family and the brightest moments of life – we will definitely share this with you. And of course, a lot of entertainment for children, new toys and games for children. And the most important thing is travel. We will try to show you the most interesting places that we will visit ourselves.
I mean… I guess it does what it says on the tin.
Also featured in Forbes‘ top ten YouTubers are Jeffree Star, Rhett and Link, PewDiePie and DanTDM.
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Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.