Seven-year-old rakes in R300m with YouTube reviews
Ryan loves toys and he loves the internet. He combined the two and the cash rewards have been immense.
YouTube reviews are big business. Whether you talk about phones, make-up, cars, clothes or books, there is an audience for you; and the bigger the audience, the greater the potential to earn huge amounts of money. Anyone who is familiar with the video-sharing platform knows how hard creators work to secure partnerships.
But even the most successful among them will surely feel a twinge of guilt reading about Ryan, the precocious seven-year-old behind YouTube channel Ryan ToysReview. In 2018, young Ryan earned $22-million (roughly R300-million) talking about and playing with toys on his channel.
Ryan, whose parents are often with him in his videos guiding him and showing their support, has parlayed his reviews into a range of merchandise, including his very own line of toys.
His partnership with children's content creator network pocket.watch places Ryan in an optimal position to reach a wide audience - not that the 17 million people who are already subscribed to Ryan ToysReview are not impressive enough.
In his most popular video, which has an incredible 1,6-billion views, Ryan opens surprise egg toys.
The unadulterated joy on his face as he runs around completing the challenges is surely one of the biggest reasons children and adults alike stay glued to his channel.
You may not be able to earn millions off your own social media videos, but Ryan's success does prove that everyone can benefit from nursing their inner child.