Nine-year-old Ryan Kaji is highest-paid YouTube star yet again with nearly $30 million this 2020

Ryan Kaji, the namesake star of the multi-million YouTube channel Ryan’s World, continues to rake in record amounts of money, even topping his earnings last year to become the platform’s highest paid star for the third consecutive year.

Ryan, who has made a name and spawned an industry for toy unboxing videos, made $29.5 million (or about P1.4 billion) this year according to Forbes. This is on top of retail sales from his branded toy products estimated at $200 million. The value of his ongoing show at Nickelodeon, which started its third season last March, is also undisclosed but is believed to run into the millions as well.

Ryan started his YouTube channel in 2015 and has been making a killing through his YouTube channel since 2016, where he reportedly made $11 million and was the eighth highest-paid star on YouTube. By 2018, he topped the platform in earnings by making $22 million, a feat he repeated the following year by growing his pot to $26 million.

Ryan’s initial show “Ryan’s Toy Review” has now been renamed “Ryan’s World” and has now 27.8 million subscribers and 44.1 billion views to date. The family, along with a dedicated team, now runs eight more channels, including one in Spanish and another in Japanese.

Each show also makes use of a partnership with brands to push their merchandise to viewers, although a complaint lodged at the regulator Federal Trade Commission clipped this practice to an extent. The complaint stated that the show masqueraded sponsored ad deals as toy reviews to unsuspecting kids.