After YouTube faced a severe backlash from conservatives who claimed that their content was heavily suppressed by the video-sharing platform, a seven-year-old boy recently earned a staggering $22 million in 2018 alone from the channel that reviews toys and features him playing with them.
Forbes ranked Ryan of Ryan Toys Review as the first in this year’s list of 10 highest paid YouTubers in the world. Ryan, who jumped from eighth place last year to number one this year, surpassed a number of well-known names on the platform and even beat Jake Paul, a 21-year-old actor and YouTube personality who earned $22,500,000 this year.
The youngster beat Swedish gamer Felix Kjellberg – who is the most followed YouTuber with a whopping 72.5 million followers – and makeup artist Jeffree Star in terms of earnings this year. Ryan was once an avid watcher of toy reviews, according to his mother. His favorite toy was Thomas the Tank Engine. In a conversation with TubeFilter in 2016, the mother said: “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.”
Ryan’s channel, whose most popular video has a stunning 1.6 billion views, was also a way to share bits of his life with their extended family members, most of whom live outside the US, his father said.
After Ryan’s videos became popular, his parents opened his own line of toys. The line includes a Giant Mystery Egg, which is filled with different toys including slime, lights, and a limited edition squishy toy.
The videos also feature his father, who makes appreciative comments as his son discovers and plays with various types of toys. He said last year that most of Ryan’s viewers are children between the ages of three and seven. While the majority of his fans are located in the US, many live in the UK and the Phillippines. That said, Ryan’s mother quit her job as a high school chemistry teacher after she saw the ringing success with her son’s channel. The seven-year-old’s father works as a structural engineer, Daily Mail reports.
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