This year, the 8-year-old Ryan Kaji has earned $26 million through his YouTube channel, thus making him the highest-paid creator on the platform, according to a list published by Forbes magazine.
Ryan Kaji, whose actual name is Ryan Guan was also the video platform’s highest earner in the year 2018, with $22 million, according to Forbes magazine. Ryan channel is popularly known as “Ryan’s World”, which was launched by his parents in the year 2015 when he was only three years old, now the channel has 22.9 million subscribers.
The channel started with a segment called “Ryan Toys Review” which consisting of unboxing videos of the young star opening boxes of toys and playing with them.
Most of the videos in the channel have reached viewers more than one billion views and in total the channel so far has received almost 35 billion views since its creation, according to the data collected from the analytics website Social Blade.
Recently, the YouTube channel has to change its name after a consumer advocacy organization called Truth in Advertising has filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about its activities.
Truth in Advertising accused the channel of not clearly highlighting which of the videos had been sponsored, meaning which brand has paid for the video to feature their products.
The YouTube channel has also evolved with Ryan’s growing ages, now the channel offers more educational videos in addition to the toys.
According to the Forbes Magazine ranking, Ryan Kaji has surpassed the channel “Dude Perfect” which is run by a group of friends from Texas who attempts some impossible feats, such as launching basketballs into the hoops from the top of the buildings or out of helicopters.
In the earning rating, Dude Perfect came second but is up from third the year before, and earning $20 million between June 1, 2018, and June 1, 2019.
The third-place has been earned by another child star’s channel from Russia and the child star is Russia’s Anastasia Radzinskaya, who at the age of only 5 years has earned $18 million. Anastasia channels ‘Like Nastya Vlog’ and ‘Funny Stacy’ have nearly 70 million subscribers in total, with videos in Russian, Spanish, and English.
At the start of September, YouTube’s parent company Google has agreed to pay a $170 million fine, after the FTC accused the IT giant of collecting personal data from child YouTube users without their permission. According to the FTC, YouTube has used the platform in order to use the data and ensure that advertisers were able to target children.