Getty Image / Julio Aguilar
After being goaded by Elon Musk into posting his first video to X, Mr. Beast revealed on Monday that he earned over $263,000 in revenue. Back in July, Mr. Beast revealed that it costs him over $3 million on average to produce each one of his videos so $263K is far from covering expenses but it appears to be a viable tertiary source of income for the #1 earner on YouTube.
However, after revealing the $263K in earnings Mr. Beast also shared that it “a bit of a facade.” He said advertisers “saw the attention it was getting and bought ads” on his video which appears to have artificially inflated the overall viewership numbers. The tweet below also shows a screenshot of his earnings (expanded on X).
MY FIRST X VIDEO MADE OVER $250,000! 😲
But it’s a bit of a facade. Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob higher than what you’d experience pic.twitter.com/nViVpZbWBb
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) January 22, 2024
Interestingly, this announcement from Mr. Beast comes after X CEO Elon Musk claims that X did “nothing to amplify his viewers.” Normally there’d be some measure of plausible deniability here but when Mr. Beast’s video was clearly appearing as an ad throughout X, it’s blatantly clear there were actions being taken to amplify the viewers to that video as it appeared in countless X feeds of people who don’t follow Mr. Beast.
The exchange between Elon Musk and one of the Tesla fan accounts was captured by ‘Best of Dying Twitter’ with a screenshot clearly showing the video appearing as an ad:
"Video will play after ad" pic.twitter.com/p1MxQWOMv9
— Best of Dying Twiter (@bestofdyingtwit) January 21, 2024
Critics of Elon Musk’s see this as the X CEO artificially inflating the numbers in order to bring on a ‘whale’ to post on X. Elon appears unaware that X was boosting the video as an ad.
For Mr. Beast’s role in it all, his video appears to have been seen 157.8 million times on X and he’s the beneficiary of endless exposure. He was also able to cash a $260K+ check which will only go up.
Someone once calculated how much Mr. Beast could earn on YouTube. That number came out to $97.4 MILLION in ad revenue. So while $260K is nice, it’s really nothing in the grand scheme of things to Mr. Beast.