If you’re over a certain age, the idea of Forbes.com publishing a list of 2016’s highest paid YouTube stars probably has you reaching for the Xanax. If you’re under a certain age, it probably has you reaching for your iPhone and tacking a sheet up in your dorm room to serve as a makeshift backdrop for the set of your new channel, which you are sure is going to be your ticket to stardom. And if you’re in that sweet spot in the middle, you might be trolling the list for eligible bachelors.
For the second year in a row, the financial mag’s ranking features overpaid pranksters, gamers, and other Internet stars. And nestled amongst this motley crew of YouTubers for the first time is LGBT activist Tyler Oakley. The cool $6 mil Oakely made in the past year earned him the number five spot on the list, next to fellow first timer Colleen Ballinger, a.k.a. Miranda Sings, star of Netflix’s Haters Back Off. That $6 million payday come not just from ads on YouTube and product integration, but from sales of the bespectacled 27-year-old’s book of personal essays, Binge, not to mention his recent deal with Ellen DeGeneres’s production company.
“[YouTube] is a place for people from all over the world to feel less alone,” Oakley says. “When I was younger and still in the closet, I couldn’t just google ‘coming out story’ to help me articulate what I was going through. Now, there are tens of thousands of first-person accounts that could help people make sense of their identities.”
In other words, it sounds like the market is close to saturated, and it seems unlikely that any of those thousands of YouTube diarists have a chance at making the same kind of chedda’ that Oakley takes home.
So, uh, does anyone have Tyler Oakley’s phone number?
Xzamilloh
I hope Tyler has invested well, because his channel has seriously fallen off, popularity wise, and subsequently, views-wise
DarkZephyr
@Xzamilloh: I like him but even if that so I don’t feel sorry for him because… $6 million. He doesn’t have a lot to worry about financially for a good long while as long as he is as you suggest, wise about it.
crowebobby
To quote Tom Cruise: “If I wasn’t worth it, they wouldn’t pay it to me.” I remember older people complaining about the vast sums being paid to “three-chord” musicians when rock-n’-roll was taking over. I’m 4 months short of 80 and from the amount of entertainment I get out of my favorite YouTubers, I say they’re worth anything they can get.
miserylovedme24
Whenever the subject of these YouTube “celebs” comes up, it makes me feel like I’m getting really old because I just can’t grasp the concept of why anyone cares about these people. lol Most of them are insanely annoying. I’m in my late 20s and I just could not care less about them. The only ones I understand at all are the talented musicians that have put out singles and albums.
Thad
I read “Binge” and liked it…so I can’t begrudge Tyler Oakley his wealth. Yes, it’s a different world today. But I’m old-school and actually read the printed book. From a library.