Honestly, MrBeast's income figures are simply astonishing. The guy has been leading the list of the highest-paid YouTubers on the planet for two consecutive years. In 2021, he earned approximately $54 million, and Forbes predicted that his income could jump to $110 million in 2022. That's how it is — the more money MrBeast has, the more opportunities for growth.

Forbes valued his net worth at $500 million, and that’s just the official figure. Interestingly, in 2022, Donaldson was even looking for an investor for a stake in his content studio. If that deal had gone through, the value of his main asset could have reached $1.5 billion. MrBeast himself says he’s not fixated on becoming a billionaire: “The chances of becoming a billionaire increase if you don’t set that as a goal. You just need to focus on making your company awesome.”

So how did he build this empire? Let’s start with the foundation — the content studio. MrBeast isn’t satisfied with just one channel. He has a whole network of projects: the main channel MrBeast with 142 million subscribers, Beast Gaming with 32 million, Beast Reacts with 22.5 million, MrBeast Shorts and MrBeast 2 with 21.5 million each, plus Beast Philanthropy with 12.6 million. All of this operates out of Greenville, a small town where Donaldson grew up. There’s a studio there, which is now being expanded into three major centers. About 50 people work at the studio — scriptwriters, editors, assistants. Many of them are his friends and family, the very people who believed in the project from the very first days of the channel.

But that’s only part of the story about how much money MrBeast has and where it comes from. Besides YouTube, he has MrBeast Burger — a fast-food chain that has grown to over 300 locations in the US and several abroad. He launched it in December 2020 with a giveaway in Greenville — on opening day, the car line stretched for 30 km. A brilliant scheme: MrBeast Burger operates as a virtual restaurant, orders are taken through an app, and dishes are prepared in partner cafes. Within three months of launch, over a million burgers were sold. In August 2022, they opened the first full offline restaurant.

Another source of income is Feastables, a snack line. MrBeast sells MrBeast Bar chocolates and MrBeast Cookies through online stores and Walmart. The launch in January 2022 was epic: a cash prize giveaway, a hunt for golden tickets in chocolates, a final contest with Gordon Ramsay, where the winner received a chocolate factory. According to Business Insider, Feastables sold over $10 million worth of snacks in the first few months.

That’s what modern business success looks like. MrBeast has proven that how much money a YouTuber makes depends not only on ad revenue but also on the ability to diversify income. The guy even gave a lecture at Harvard Business School. His approach is simple: make your company great, and everything else will follow naturally.