Challenges, money and YouTube. This is the formula for success of one of the most popular youtubers in the world, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast. If we add the followers of his six YouTube accounts -MrBeast, Beast Philanthropy, MrBeast Gaming, Beast Reacts, MrBeast Sharts and MrBeast 2-, this young American of only 23 years has more than 145 million fans. Throughout his professional career as an influencer, he has combined the creation of videos with business and solidarity initiatives through somewhat peculiar challenges.
His videos give off the image of a crazy young man blinded by fame and who doesn't know what to do with the money, but nothing is further from the truth. Behind the challenges and viral charity plays, such as burying himself alive for more than 50 hours or going through the same fast food service 1,000 times, hides a young philanthropist who says he wants to end world hunger. Without going any further, this year, on Thanksgiving, he gave out 10,000 free frozen turkeys to anyone who asked on the street. In one of his videos, he is seen giving $10,000 in tips to pizza delivery guys. But who is MrBeast? What were its beginnings? Why is he considered the king of YouTube?
Both young and old have ever seen a MrBeast video. Born in Kansas, (United States), this young youtuber is on his way to becoming the biggest content creator on the platform thanks to the incredible increase in followers in recent months. In eight years, his main channel has gone from 300 subscribers to 51 million. A figure that has increased thanks to the challenges it organizes in exchange for money, a lot of money.
One of his latest follies was the recreation of the tests that appear in the Netflix series The Squid Game so that 456 people competed for a prize of 456,000 dollars. The video of the contest already accumulates almost 180 million views on YouTube.
Jimmy Donaldson's beginnings on YouTube were like those of any YouTuber who one day decides to post a video on the platform to have a good time. One more hobby of a young man in full adolescence. In Spain we have cases similar to that of MrBeast, we are talking about Auron Play or El Rubius.
The first content posted by MrBeast was in 2012, when he barely had any subscribers. It wasn't until 2017 that he made the big leap thanks to a video in which he counted from zero to 100,000 for 40 hours straight. Yes, forty hours of recording. This absurd challenge allowed him to achieve his first viral hit. That video planted the seed of the MrBeast that we know today. Since then, the youtuber has made dozens of contents of the same style, in fact, he made another video in which he counted up to 200,000. He also read each and every word in the live English dictionary.
The philanthropist youtuber
"I want to feed millions of people every month, tens of millions in one day," MrBeast told The Associated Press. And it is that Donaldson has been combining humor with doing good. Last year he donated 100% of his ad revenue and sales. Each week she feeds nearly 1,000 Greenville households and after Hurricane Ida in Louisiana she provided more than 9,000 meals to victims. "Jimmy is teaching an entire generation to be kind and thoughtful, and I think that will have a massive impact on the future," Darren Margolias, executive director of Beast Philanthropy, told The Associated Press.
MrBeast turns all these solidarity actions into YouTube videos, which in turn end up becoming a viral hit. With this, MrBeast not only gets many clicks, but also manages to retain the audience, so the platform prioritizes its content. The key is people's reactions when they receive the money from Donaldson. As a viewer, you want to stick around to continue seeing the shocked and excited reactions of these people who are given thousands of dollars by MrBeast for no reason.
Solidarity causes with humor
The combination of humor with solidarity has led him to become the most highly rated influencer on YouTube. At first glance, it seems like an economically unprofitable business model, but nothing is further from the truth. Thanks to the spectacularization of these charitable causes, MrBeast manages to earn more money than he initially invests. The visits that his videos receive - between 40 million and 100 million - reward the money invested.
Speaking to the AP, MrBeast noted that from the time he started earning money at age 16 to now, he has reinvested everything he has earned. "A dollar a day became two and then three, until I realized I was making $10,000 a month, then $100,000, then $1 million," he says.
Among his latest charitable causes is #TeamSeas (EquipoMares in English). The objective was to collect more than 16 million kilos of garbage from the sea. To reach this goal, Mr. Beast and Mark Roberts launched a request for help to the rest of the community of content creators to invite their followers to contribute to the campaign.
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