You can have the best of both worlds with today's technology, and Felix Kjellberg, more popularly known by his handle "PewdiePie," can prove it. This Swedish web-based comedian and producer of short videos has just been named by Forbes as "YouTube's Top-earning Celebrity" for 2015 for earning $12 Million in the previous year.
Pewdiepie opened his YouTube channel in 2010 so he can upload and share his self-made video of commentaries and reactions as he plays video games. He was still at the university in 2010 but he eventually dropped out to focus on his YouTube channel instead, which is quite a huge risk to take and a move that was disapproved by his family. However, in 2012, he reached over one million subscribers and, in Sept. 2015, he excitedly tweeted about his channel receiving over 10 billion views.
Today we made history! 10 billion views! THIS IS INSANE. Thank you all so much! Kisses pic.twitter.com/L3Td2HMX4N
— Felix Kjellberg (@pewdiepie) September 6, 2015
Just who is this 25-year-old who earned roughly as much as Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart this past year and how does he make that ridiculous amount of money on YouTube? A simple answer to that is humor and ads. The long answer is that the humor he injects in his gameplay videos combined with the number of sponsored advertisements that show up on his videos multiplied by the number of people who have to suffer through the ads in order to watch more of Pewdiepie's content. Of course, ads aren't the only things supporting him because most of YouTube's celebrities expand their horizons by going into other industries such as film, television and publishing.
Speaking of publishing, Kjellberg is about to release his book "This Book Loves You" under the moniker Pewdiepie. While he calls his fan base as his "Army of Bros," he's now calling out for fangirls in the video he released Oct. 10 titled "How to: Get Fangirls" where he reads Facebook and Twitter comments suggesting how he can get fangirls to compete with two other YouTube celebrities who are releasing their books in the same month. Watch Pewdiepie's antics in the video below.
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