If you google PewDiePie net worth you’ll get over 200,000 low quality results from websites which are mostly just copying each other’s estimates. Forbes estimated his annual income to be $12 million per year. The only person to really know the answer to this question is the 27-year-old Swedish YouTube king himself Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg. Also, I’m assuming his accountant and the Swedish government. The general consensus online from the prestigious journalism outlets that report “Celebrity Net Worth” ranges from $4 million USD – $12 million USD.
We had a professional MBA who specializes in digital advertising run some numbers for us and do what’s known as a “back of the napkin” estimate. With that being said, enter our MBA:
OK So first off we’re going to look at what is likely his primary revenue source. Advertisements from youtube.
He gets paid on a CPM basis. What this means is that for every 1,000 views, he makes X amount of dollars.
His primary channel PewDiePie has 3,055 uploads, 51,488,791 subscribers, and 14,105,195,147 total views since he started it. That’s 14 billion with a B.
His YouTube channel partners with Maker studios, what’s known as a MCN. Basically they help him get better ads for his channel.
We’re going to assume a very rough blended CPM of $3.50 over the lifetime of the channel. Too many factors to name went into this estimate.
Lifetime estimated money earned from youtube ads = $49,368,183.01
Hot damn that’s a lot Krona.
So next we’re going to look into brand deals. Felix does a great job of finding silly ways to do product placement. His channels are also obviously a perfect promotional vehicle for interactive entertainment like video games.
Most recently he’s been promoting socks with a Swedish company called HappySocks. It looks to be a licensing deal, and Felix is probably getting a sizable percentage of every sock sold. I really have no way of knowing exactly how many socks they sold, but they look pretty awesome, and I bet it’s a lot. I’m going to guess PewDiePie made $250,000 USD from this deal in 2016.
He once got in some trouble for doing a deal with Warner Brothers to promote the game Shadow of Mordor without proper FTC disclosure. This deal was probably worth about $125,000. He does a bunch of deals like this every year.
Those are just two examples, and there are many more. Going to shoot a rough estimated lifetime money earned from brand deals = $3,500,000
He appears to have a handful of custom affiliate relationships with companies such as gaming marketplace G2A and monthly subscription box service lootcrate. Every time someone who clicked his link makes a purchase, he gets a percentage.
I’d put the estimated lifetime value of these relationships at $1,500,000 USD
It wasn’t long before PewDiePie wanted to cut out the middle man and make his own games to directly monetize his audience. Recently his PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator app developed my Outerminds made it to the top of the app store, and we know for a fact it has at least over 10 million downloads. It was a paid app at first, but now the game primarily makes it’s money from In-App purchases. This app seems to have strong engagement thanks to PewDiePie’s devoted fanbase, and is probably making a lot of money. I’d bet the app made over $5 million in 2016. After the developers cut, PewDiePie probably gets 60% or $3,000,000 USD in 2016.
Now including other factors such as taxation and spending, I’d put PewDiePie’s current net worth in 2017 at $30 million USD. Higher than the other estimates.
Full disclosure this is a very rough estimate and could be way off. Net worth is a measure of someone’s total assets. It’s possible Felix’s great grandfather handed him down an ancient castle worth billions, or maybe he blew all his money on whiskey in 2016 and doesn’t have a dollar left to his name.
Also wanted to mention Felix’s history of charitable work, like the time he utilized his influence to raise almost half a million dollars for charity water. He seems to be a great guy and probably donates a good amount to charity privately as well.