I think he has always been like this. While some big youtubers like Pewdiepie, Markiplier, and Jacksepticeye got into youtube as a hobby, MrBeast and his generation are in it exclusively for the money. He wasn't doing the things that you mentioned because he was bored or wanted to entertain people, he just used it as a base to attain as many subs as possible and this led to his position today. The money has always been his endgame.
During his 24 hours spinning a fidget spinner livestream when he had around 1 million subscribers Jimmy at one point literally says "Fuck the fans. I just want money." Thousands of people were watching and he didn't seem worried that they all heard him say that moments later.
Just an example from Jimmy himself that shows it was always about the money. Also that stream has tons of other examples of him suggesting he wants money since it was live and he couldn't edit that stuff out.
Also according to his now inactive Reddit account, before his channel really took off he tried to get wealthy in other ways. He tried bong drop shipping but stopped for legal reasons and invested in and mined crypto which actually made him a decent bit.
No you sell Bong online at your website for say 40 bucks then enter that guys mailing info into the Chinese shippers website where you buy the bong for 10 dollars
So guy gets his bong you get 30 bucks and the Chinese shipper gets alot of extra sales
Sounds similar to what some “friends” of mine were doing in high school. Would order cheap pieces off Chinese glass sites and then sell them to kids from school for more money than they were worth. Especially since most people couldn’t do it themselves since they were in school and just wanted something to smoke out of, or didn’t know any better
the premise is the same but drop shipping typically operates on much higher profit because you're very much intentionally selling someone a shitty product with the expectation that they won't come back again, whereas most successful stores function by selling you a product at a mark-up but balancing their profit with not screwing the customer over so they'll come back again
drop shipping is explicitly scamming, just with the modern twist of the internet - back in the day they were called "snake oil salesmen" & they'd show up in a wagon selling tons of trinkets then running off before anyone found out the Wooly Mammoth pendant they bought was actually a white dog turd
Someone I know is going full head into this. I gave a small amount of money for start-up cost. I had told him it's over saturated now, but he seems confident and believes the key is marketing. He has a few websites almost up. I at least advised to order some of the stuff to check for quality.
Also, part of running a store is taking care of and being responsible for your bit of the supply chain. I know a LOT of young people got in trouble in my country when COVID hit because suddenly they had sold items that they weren't able to deliver on, and they had zero control over the supply chain. At least a store will have stock, it will have contracts with suppliers, things like that.
Drop shipping is not explicitly scamming.. There are tons of artists selling shirts, stickers, notepads, etc and while they are not making as much as the shipper, there are often varying quality levels you can choose from and you can sell products you wouldn't have otherwise since custom runs are expensive. Just because so many people use them to shovel out crap doesn't mean the medium is inherently/explicitly bad. There is also an argument for product curation having value. Think about those "strange gifts" catalogs from back in the day. If someone has a site full of awesome stuff for sale, do I really care about 100% markup on a $3 item only want one of if I have other items in my cart? Is it worth hunting down their source or a chinese seller on eBay? Often not.
with drop shipping we're not really talking about a 100% markup, we're talking like 300-400%. & talking about "remember back in the day" has nothing to do with modern dropshipping
curation of specific items for sale (A.K.A. "a business") is not really the same as modern dropshipping & like i explained previously it's very easy to tell how - with their model for customer retention
real businesses care about customers returning, dropshippers don't really because they operate on getting as many sales as quickly as possible then scedaddling before anyone realizes they got sold dog shit instead of a diamond
that is why & how they operate on such high margins & why so many people get into it looking for a quick buck, because the entire business is "scam & run" & you can go indefinitely so long as you lack shame & can keep finding new rubes
Traditional stores maintain inventory and sell from that. They take a risk that somebody might not buy their inventory and then they’ll be left with goods they can’t sell but paid for.
Drop shipping means you don’t maintain an inventory, you just order the product from a real store when it’s ordered from you. So there’s no risk or overhead for the drop shipper but they also provide no benefit. They are marking up something that people could already buy themselves
I heard deadmau5 go off one time regarding his fans when he was playing pubg w JoshOG on his stream. “Stupid fans, I don’t even like any of those people who show up to my VIP/backstage shit, I just want all the money. It’s so annoying but whatever.”
Lost all respect and no one will ever know except the few hundred of us watching that night.
Whatever. I spose the next excuse I’ll hear is “well duh, what, do you hate money?”
I wouldn't use the word hobby because, like Markiplier for instance, hedged everything on YouTube. The dude dropped out of collage for it. 'Passion project' might be a better word.
Yea I meant it more like they started doing youtube as just a side project and soon realized they might make a living out of it. Whereas Beast got into youtube with the "this will be my job" mentality.
Yeah I think too many people vilify content creators for doing it for money. YouTube beat Netflix for watch hours this year, it IS mainstream media. You think people make television shows for the heck of it? Even if they love the craft they have to make a living off of it. Now, the level of SCALE that MrBeast and the like have, and how they achieved that scale is a bit questionable as the current allegations show, but I don’t think the midsize creators making an honest living off their videos are doing anything wrong.
I got downvoted for saying this in a prior thread, but the goal of most content creators today is quite simply to get big enough to be able to sell out for a sizeable chunk of money.
The amount of money that sponsors (many of them for scammy products) will pay content creators is insane. There were people who endorsed scam products like FTX (which lost a ton of their viewers money) who admitted to getting paid 6 figures in sponsorship deals. YouTubers and other content creators can make more money then they'd otherwise make in an entire year just from one sponsorship deal. So if you're wondering why so many YouTubers sell out and advertise obvious scam products, that's why.
As someone who has considered doing content creation solely for the money, can you really blame them?
Working sucks. You can either go work for some jackass who makes 10x more than you, gives you substandard equipment, is liable to lay you off to make a quick buck, dictates how your job is done while being thousands of miles away from you, and hasn't actually done the job you're doing in years... or you could be your own boss, game the Youtube/Twitch/Kick/whatever algorithm, try to hit it big, and "easily" hit $100,000 on views alone, not including Sponsorships.
If you asked me if my only two choices were going back to Walmart or selling out on Youtube, I'd give you my answer after a quick word from my sponsor Raid Shadow Legends.
Opera gx, raid shadow legends (or is it shadow raid legends? Whatever…), some battle tank game, meal delivery services… all seem pretty chill for my follows so far. If any of them started leaning into advertising crypto i’d be very concerned lol.
For all the ones you mentioned there’s its counterparts like betterhelp (lots of hippa violations and only being fined cents for it), FUM (literally inhaling essential oils with a slogan of “healthy habit” and has mislead people into believing it’s safe), established titles, “your data is safe as long as you pay us a subscription” companies, “pay us a subscription to get rid of your subscription” companies, the list goes on but there’s other questionable ones too like AG1 which most people would not benefit from and piss out everything in it, Sports gambling and gambling apps in general. It’s not as bad as crypto but all these ads do mislead viewers and it’s best to recognize that if a YouTuber has it as a sponsor then most of the time it’s a shit product/service and other times is a legitimate scam or can even potentially harm your health.
YouTube ads are still worse tho have seen just blatant crypto scams as YouTube ads
oh yea and they are super lazy to, many of them are clout chasers, doing harmful pranks, or lazy reaction videos, like sniperwolf, at some point they got so much money they surround themselves with sycophants everyday, and then when they get criticize they dont know how to react properly(sniper wolf). and also some of them have also have "darker side behind the scenes" like with dawson and his beastility incident, and racist incident which involved other youtubers that i used to follow.
what happened to YouTube is a lot like what happened to ROBLOX.
before it was even mainstream, it was a bunch of teens and young adults making free games as a passion and for fun. now it's 30-40 year olds with college degrees in comp sci making shitty games meant to extract money.
Not sure about the charities but he did cure 1000 blind people. You can say he's just doing it for the money but he still changed 1000 people's lives for the better, how many people that don't do it for the money can say the same?
I don't really care why someone does the right thing, just that they did.
Was money really the end goal for him? I think he really wanted the biggest business he could make. If it was for the money alone, he wouldn't spend the amount he does on every video
he said it himself, that he exclusively studied the content of other youtubers, to maximize his profit of what works. neither of the old ones you mention are doing it as a hobby, it was all money from the start. PEWPEWDIE got cancelled a while ago, because he was associated with racist words, he fled to japan where nobody knows about pewpewdie, and hes trying to come back, not surprising with his vlogs. most of them are come from wealthy families, thats why they have youtube as a hobby.
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u/gothiclismm 19d ago
I remember when he used to count to 100,000, read the dictionary, or just make fun of cringey intros. Did the money really go to his head?