World's Most Popular YouTuber Makes $4 Million A Year
<img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53a328a9eab8eaf1196c412f-676-506/pewdiepie-3.png" border="0" alt="pewdiepie" />
Felix Kjellberg, the Swedish YouTube phenom better known as PewDiePie, is making roughly $4 million a year in ad sales, according to a profile of the internet star in The Wall Street Journal.
Most of Kjellberg's earnings are reportedly straight profit, coming from more than 27.8 million subscribers to his YouTube channel.
Last year, Kjellberg's PewDiePie channel became the most watched on Google's online video service, passing up internet sensations such as One Direction and Miley Cyrus.
And since last July, he has tripled his number of subscribers.
<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span>Kjellberg</span> is best known for posting videos of himself playing certain video games while narrating to the viewer. Kjellberg first created the channel in August 2009.</span>
<p class="p1">PewDiePie is a partner with and the top brand name of Maker studios, which sold itself to Walt Disney in a March deal that could eventually be worth nearly $1 billion.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span>
Kjellberg has said that his videos are encouraging developers to create games that others would enjoy watching.
<p dir="ltr">"It's cool to have this kind of influence, but at the same time it's kind of scary," Kjellberg said.
<p dir="ltr">Kjellberg attended college in Gothenburg, Sweden, but dropped out and sold hot dogs to get by.
<p dir="ltr">The original name for his YouTube account was PewDie, which is a combination of the "pew" sound of a laser gun and "die" for death. But, after losing an account password, he needed a new name, and decided to add "Pie" to the end of his name.
His most popular video, "A Funny Montage," has gotten more than 51 million views since it was posted June 4, 2013. (Warning: explicit language)
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