Marques Brownlee makes quality tech videos.
Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) uploaded his very first tech review video to YouTube at age 15. Twelve years later, he’s still going strong, releasing new videos each and every week. With a whopping 13.5 million subscribers, how much money is he making these days? What’s his net worth? Read on to find out.
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The most obvious income stream for any YouTuber comes from Google AdSense. You know those annoying ads that are always interrupting your video watching? Yeah, well, the creator gets a portion of the proceeds. So, for Marques, back in 2018, he accidentally leaked his monthly earnings in a video he had uploaded—forgetting to blur it out.
At that time, he was making about $31,000 per month off of 16.5 million monthly views. Today, with over four times that many views, it’s estimated his AdSense earnings are around $131,000 per month. That’s about $1.5 million a year. Not bad.
Next, you got merch. Noah Kagan’s team believes MKBHD earns around $2 million a year selling his tech tees, which he wisely wears in almost every video he puts out.
Third, there’s merchandising partnerships. Marques, for example, teamed up with dbrand.com to promote custom cases (the matte black is sick) for iPhones and AirPods. Noah’s team listed this deal at a modest $100,000 per year. I would be surprised if it was that low, but we’ll go with it.
Fourth is brand deals. That’s when you collaborate with a company and feature them in your video. Marques makes approximately $1.8 million each year doing this. When behemoth businesses like Buick (yeah, the car maker) are teaming up with Marques, it’s not hard to see how the numbers get real big real fast.
Marques Brownlee reviews a camera mount, and it sure does suck.
MKBHD’s fifth revenue stream comes from good old affiliate marketing. You’ll notice, in his description below each video, Marques will link to the tech he’s using (or reviewing). If you click, you’ll end up on Amazon, for example, where you can purchase these products yourself. If you do, he gets a nice commission. Let’s call that an extra $350,000 per year.
Six: his podcast. Who knew? Apparently, Marques earns another half a million a year talkin’ tech with other gadget geeks who can’t get enough of MKBHD on YouTube, alone.
Total it all up and that’s around $6.4 million dollars a year in income. Remember, that’s revenue, not net profit. You’d need to take out business expenses, of which he probably has a decent amount at this point: office building, employees, independent contractors, utilities, software, tools, travel, and the list goes on. From there, you know Uncle Sam’s gotta get his. Finally, he’s got basic, day-to-day cost-of-living type stuff.
In terms of net worth, the internet seems confused. Other websites list Marques Brownlee’s net worth at anywhere from $1.9 to $12.5 million. Based on this excellent breakdown from Noah (embedded for reference below), we’d say it’s closer to the latter. What do y’all think?
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