Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie is the king of the YouTubers. He’s a YouTube star with 9 billion views and Expressen, a Swedish newspaper, estimated that he made $7 million last year on advertising, a feat that is no longer an outlier in the burgeoning world of online stardom.
In the video Kjellberg described his 5 year career as a YouTube star whose entire oeuvre is dedicated to playing video games while others watch. His videos get over 5 million views per episode.
It is unsurprising that Kjellberg is doing so well. By getting in early and grabbing the valuable pre-teen-teen online market he and his team can easily grab millions of bored iPad browsers every day. It will be fascinating to see where folks like PewDiePie end up – whether the “mainstream” media will attempt to pre-empt or consume them when broadcast and movie moguls realize hot dog salesmen from Sweden are eating their lunch.