If you ask America’s teenagers, YouTube star MrBeast is living the dream. He reportedly made $82 million in 2023 courtesy of his hundreds of millions of subscribers—but he’s warning his fans not to expect the same success.
Last year a study from survey specialists Morning Consult found that 57{44f8fb62c767d9a0e024bd2a609adf80ac0b081e02fd95d47dd066fb0a89173b} of Gen Z would become an influencer if they had the choice. They cited fun, flexibility and money as among their top reasons for this aspiration.
And while flexibility and fun may be a more attainable part of the package, earning a reliable living from influencing is considerably more difficult.
Which is why MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, urged his fans to think long-term when considering a career in content creation—especially if they were closing doors on other opportunities without adequate preparation.
“It’s painful to see people quit their job/drop out of school to make content full time before they’re ready,” Donaldson wrote on X. “For every person like me that makes it, thousands don’t. Keep that in mind and be smart plz.”
It might be easy for young hopefuls to get drawn in by promises of fame on platforms like TikTok and Instagram—after all, experts told Fortune some big-name creators can charge up to $40,000 per post. And that’s before you reach the lofty heights of Kardashian territory, with ‘momager’ Kris Jenner saying her famous daughters can charge six figures for a single post.
Unfortunately for the other hopefuls those sums will likely never be on the cards. According to social media marketing and management tool Hootsuite, an “unspoken industry standard” for influencer payment is $100 per 10,000 followers—plus any additional charges depending on the complexity of the post.
A quick look over the maths suggests individuals would need to have a huge following in order to make ends meet. After all, according to CEIC Data the average American’s monthly earnings for January 2024 was $4,713, meaning a person with 10,000 followers would need to post around 50 times a month to earn the average income.
And while Gen Z say they are making career moves based on social media—and insist it’s working for them—the business of content creation is also expensive, particularly on 25-year-old Donaldson’s scale. While some of his videos have obvious costs attached courtesy of titles such as ‘I gave away $2,700,000 in free clothes’ and ‘We built a town,’ MrBeast also previously said his content costs “millions” to make.
The Kansas star gave the insight following pressure from X users and the platform’s owner, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, to share his content on the site. Donaldson told Musk: “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it :/ I’m down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking!”
Eggs in different baskets
A look through Donaldson’s portfolio—married with recent events—may also provide a cautionary tale to aspiring creators.
As well as his wide-ranging philanthropic efforts, Donaldson has founded businesses MrBeast Burger, a virtual restaurant, and chocolate business Feastables. According to Business Insider, the endeavors are bringing his yearly earnings to between $600 million and $700 million.
Elsewhere, influencers Logan Paul and KSI are the faces of drinks brand Prime, while beauty influencers like Huda Kattan and Kylie Jenner have build huge cosmetics and skincare empires.
Having additional revenue streams may be something content creators are thinking about more pressingly since the U.S. passed a bill which may effectively ban TikTok in America.
As Thomas Walters, Europe CEO and cofounder of global influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy previously told Fortune: “If you’ve put years of effort into one platform and revenue stream it can be quite a difficult career decision to be put in.
“In some cases creators have their entire following on one platform, and those are the creators that we feel for in all of this, who need to think about diversifying away from areas where they might be potentially compromised in the future.”
