The modern era of content creation exists largely in YouTube, Twitch, and other streaming services, and individual channels' budgets vary wildly. In an interview with Anthony Padilla, Jimmy "Mr Beast" Donaldson admitted that his channel is expected to spend roughly $3 million next month on video production.
Mr Beast joined YouTube in 2012, starting his journey with Minecraft videos. He said it wasn't until the past five years that his videos really started going viral, and the budgets for his videos has been growing rapidly, especially after he started #TeamTrees with a pledge to plant 20 million trees. "Honestly it's kind of terrifying," he said, "Once it goes up, once you have a $2 million month, and now make it $3 million. It's like 'can we afford that? We're good? We're good? I think we're good.'"
Last April Mr Beast's $250,000 Rock Paper Scissors tournament attracted 10 million views in just one day. A YouTuber like him with high membership and high engagement could easily make $500 per day on a video like that. Perhaps one of the best ways to understand how a single YouTuber can spend so much so quickly is to analyze the production cost of a video.
One video that came out last Thursday, titled I Adopted EVERY Dog In A Dog Shelter, had at least a $100,000 bill by the end of it. Mr. Beast and his crew spent roughly $30,000 on advertising, $3850 in adoption fees, and $70,000 on benefits for adopters including pet insurance, dog food, and $10,000 gift cards to PetCo (though it can be safely assumed those gift cards' cost to Mr Beast were closer to $5000 each).
Charitable contributions, such as Gearbox Software donating the profits from Borderlands 3 cosmetic items to charity, garner a great deal of attention and thus a lot of clicks, and it seems that Mr. Beast is sincere in his desire to make good things happen. When one of his friends holds up a bulldog with a gleeful grin on their way to the pet store, Mr. Beast says, "Just go ahead and adopt him. [...] It's obvious you love him."
It's obvious that Mr Beast has a conscience. While there are certainly videos made for the fun of it, such as shooting off the world's largest firework ($600k) or eating a $70,000 golden pizza, there are also videos that are a nod to the darker times we live in. He demonstrated what $1 million worth of food looks like, gave 20 unemployed people $10,000 each after interviewing them about how the COVID pandemic affected their lives, and even tipped a pizza delivery guy by giving him the house he had delivered to.
There may have been bumps in the road, like fellow streamer Tfue accidentally leaking Mr Beast's phone number, but at this point he's riding high. So whether the spending makes financially sound business sense or not, it definitely makes entertaining video, and people are going to continue seeking out content creators like this for the foreseeable future.
Source: Anthony Padilla