Altogether, the YouTubers collectively earned about $300 million in 2021-another record amount-up 40% from a year earlier, mostly propelled higher by increasing views on their YouTube channels and the ad revenue they generate from those videos. (More people than ever are on YouTube: The platform has close to 2 billion users now, a 40% increase in five years.) Around half their earnings come from that ad revenue. To pad their pay further, all these stars have branded merchandise lines. And they variously dabble in generating additional revenue from Twitch, Snap, Facebook, podcasts, NFTs-even hamburgers. A few have signed lucrative deals with Spotter, a Los Angeles startup buying up the rights to old YouTube videos. Thanks to that surge in views, his 2021 payday is almost double what last year's No. 1 brought in. (That would be the $29.5 million brought in by Ryan Kaji, who slips to No. 7.) Another attention-grabbing project from 2021: MrBeast Burger, an app and menu that lets fans order MrBeast-branded meals from 1,600 restaurants across the country that have partnered with him to fulfill the orders. MrBeast handles the marketing, pushing the burgers at his nearly 90 million YouTube subscribers. He and the restaurants then split the profits from the orders. So far, the operation has sold 5 million sandwiches. What started as the duo hosting a nerdy daily talk show, Good Mythical Morning, has grown into something of an empire with spinoffs and brand extensions, boosting their views and earnings on YouTube. One of their most successful efforts: Mythical Kitchen, a cooking series with a separate host, Josh Scherer. The two-year-old show already has 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube. Another initiative is their Mythical Accelerator fund through which they intend to invest $5 million in other YouTubers. (They made their first deal in 2021, contributing an undisclosed sum to up-and-comer Jarvis Johnson.) And in October, they satisfied a longtime fan request to drop their family-friendly act, hosting a two-hour, decidedly R-rated livestream, an event to which they sold 70,000 tickets for as much as $50 a pop. 5 | Unspeakable 6 | Nastya 7 | Ryan Kaji 9 | Logan Paul - Justin Birnbaum and Brett Knight contributed reporting. designer bags cyber monday