Why You Should Have a Brand: MKBHD Edition
Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD runs a tech-based YouTube channel. If you don’t know him by name, it’s this guy.
He is known for in-depth and straightforward reviews of the latest tech - from earphones to cars. He has also interviewed a bunch of famous people from not only tech. but all kinds of fields. He has 16.9M subscribers on his channel right now.
He started uploading videos when he was 15 years old. 14 years later, google searches about his net worth show it to be anywhere between $8M to $45M, so a good amount of change. So let’s find out how he earns that kind of money by simply talking about tech.
YouTube Adsense: In 2018, MKBHD revealed, by mistake, how much he was earning through ads. At that time, he was generating about $31K per month for his 16.5M monthly views. So the CPM (Cost per thousand views) comes out to be 1.86. That was in 2018. In 2023, his monthly views stand at 45.3M. Using the same CPM, his earnings from YouTube stand at 45.3M * 1.86 / 1000 = $84258 per month. So $1.01M a year.
Amazon Affiliate Links: MKBHD puts up an Amazon link below all of his videos stating “Tech I'm using right now:”. These products range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Let’s say 1 out of every 1000 subscribers buys using his links, with an average purchase price of $500 and his cut being 5%, his earnings would amount to 16.9M * 500 * 0.001 * 0.05 = $422.5K per year.
Podcasts: He hosts a podcast by the name of “Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast”, which is available on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. He posts 4 podcasts each month with 3-4 ads each. The average CPM would be around $25 for the ads. At only 200K listeners out of his audience, he would be earning 4 * 3 * 25 * 0.001 * 200K = $60K per month, meaning $720K per year.
Merchandise: He sells his own merch on his website. He wears his own merch in most videos as promotion. At a $30 average price on the website, let’s say 1% of the subscribers buy the merch and he gets a 40% margin, he would earn 1% * 16.9M * 30 * 40% = $2.02M.
Merchandising Partnership: MKBHD collaborated with dbrand.com to bring high-quality products to his viewers, without him needing to manage any inventory and only leverage his brand value. Estimates are he nets $100K per year using these deals.
Brand Deals: He basically partners with brands so that their products are featured on his channel. Now these deals would be irregular so it’s difficult to pinpoint a number, but you can guess, it would be a number well into thousands of dollars per month.
Creating a brand through years and years of pushing content takes hard work. But when that hard work is combined with a good business mind, you get paid big time. Marques Brownlee’s yearly income, not considering the brand deals, would be $1.01M + 422.5K + $720K + $2.02M + $100K = $4.27M.
Now these are income streams, so expenses aren’t accounted for in this number. And even this number won’t be the exact number obviously. But you get the gist, he rakes in a good chunk of money. Whether he is your favourite tech guy or not, he understands how brand value works, and he’s getting paid for it. Maybe it’s time for you to create a brand too, in whatever field you are interested in.
That’s it for this article. I did a similar article on Logan Paul, read that here if you want to. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. And do let me know if you want a specific topic covered!
P.S. You can read all my articles here.