High Beems

Good morning. Did you see the MrBeast video giving away $400,000 of creator merch to kids in need? Would recommend watching for some great one-liners from 9-year-olds and a much-needed serving of joy.

–Hannah Doyle

Matthew Beem’s $30,000 Risk

Last month the YouTuber known for challenges and pranks published a video where he spent $30,000 building Logan Paul a car that (spoiler) he was never able to give to him.

“Every dollar I made went back into the channel but it became not enough,” Beem said. “I took out a personal loan for $30,000, risked everything, and failed at giving Logan the car but kept going.”

When he started working on the video two years ago, he had 17,000 subscribers and was making videos in a vlog style, featuring his friends. 

Fast-forward to today, he has nearly 1.5 million subscribers and recently quit his seven-year job painting cars to create on YouTube full time.

His first viral success was in July of last year, where he built a car for MrBeast. The following month he released a minecraft video, and has since averaged 220,000 new subscribers a month.

That’s why when MrBeast recently tweeted out performance numbers of a channel that he advised on, many speculated Beem was the creator in question. “That tweet isn’t about me but I do have a great friendship with MrBeast and study him daily,” Beem said. That’s evident from his fast-paced, high-energy videos with lean scenes and over-the-top challenges.

By the Numbers:

9 million → average views Beem’s channel gets per week.

$45,000 → how much Beem took out in loans to make his Logan Paul and MrBeast videos.

2x → how much he grew his audience in one week after posting a video on building the world’s largest minecraft statue.

Beem shared more about what he looks for when studying a YouTube video in our exclusive q&a at the end of this newsletter👇

Our Take

Finding a formula that works on YouTube is part art, part strategy. For Beem, it’s social hacking, where he packages videos around larger creators and trends that allow him to capitalize on those audiences. That, in combination with engaging storytelling and investing earnings back into the channel, has grown his audience dramatically over the last two years.

What Happens After You Write a Best-Selling Book?

London-based lifestyle and education creator Jade Bowler, known as Unjaded Jade, recently made a video on what it was like to achieve her biggest dream at 21, when she published a best-selling book. 

The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need was released last August and sold 10,000 copies in the first four months. It rose to #1 on Amazon in nonfiction, Book Notes, Books for Young Adults and Study Books. The book also became the #1 best-seller in UK bookstore Waterstones—even at the store’s Amsterdam location. 

“You can do something that looks amazing on paper, and yet still not feel amazing about it,” Bowler admits in the video. “I sometimes feel numb to success.”

Bowler is currently focused on her college schoolwork and uploading her usual content. “I want to keep striving for goals, but the success of them doesn’t feel the same necessarily”, Bowler said. “I’ve realized that I get more value from feeling like I’m being of service and creating a positive impact so I can inspire other people to do the same.”

Our Take

When you’re a young creator, it can be scary when big goals come to fruition sooner than expected. To be a creator for the long-haul, milestones like subscriber counts aren’t the destination. It’s the day-to-day experience of bringing your ideas to life and creating with the people around you.

Sponsored by StreamElements

Real World Change—In Real Time

When MrBeast and Mark Rober kicked off their #TeamSeas campaign, creators big and small rallied around the cause to help raise over $30M to clean up the oceans.

To fuel the excitement, some creators used the #TeamSeas widget developed in partnership with the team at Mercury by StreamElements to track campaign-wide progress.

This widget, located right in the YouTube description, updated in real-time displaying the campaign’s progress and encouraging viewers to support the cause.

With Mercury, you can display a variety of goals in your video's description or thumbnails—number of subscribers, YouTube channel members, Discord members, Patreon supporters and more.

Spice up your channel and stand out from the rest with Mercury by StreamElements.

Sway House Launches a Fitness Brand

Though it's been a year since any of its members have lived together, the TikTok creator collective has come together again—this time to launch Sway Fitness.

Started by Bryce Hall, Josh Richards, Blake Gray, Noah Beck, and Griffin Johnson, the brand’s first products are a pre-workout powder and energy powder. They’re sold on the Sway Fitness site and at GNC nationwide, just a few shelves down from PRIME.

Our Take

The Sway House brand IP still has value, even though it doesn’t function in its original way. We’ll be interested to see how Sway Fitness keeps these creators together, despite their careers going in different directions.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Jacksepticeye releases a biopic on his life.

• Twitch rolls out a program to guarantee creator pay. 

• Jarvis Johnson launches a merch line.

• Casey Neistat’s documentary on David Dobrik is premiering at SXSW.

• Denny's collaborates with Tiktok creators for its newest menu.

• TikTok is experimenting with 10-minute uploads. 

• Charli and Dixie D’Amelio partner with creator platform Lightricks.

Q&A: Matthew Beem

The following interview, conducted via email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When you study YouTube, what kind of things do you look for? What have you learned about storytelling?

I will watch other people's videos and take notes of how many times they say certain words or count how many cuts they have. 

I think people are on YouTube to watch stories unfold, not hear about them. So you need to capture the key moments and not just say “I wasn’t recording, but this happened”.  I love showing the events, building tension, and having a payoff at the end. 

What’s one of the most helpful things you’ve done in order to grow your channel?

I think titles and thumbnails are everything. I credit a lot to the packaging of the video. Also having a never-give-up attitude. Never for a second did it look like this would work until it worked.

What advice would you give to creators who want to take their channel full-time?

I worked 50 hours a week painting cars and never missed a weekly upload since I started in 2018. If you want YouTube to be your full-time job you should be working on it like a full-time job. I felt, like, for three years I had two full-time jobs. So just work super hard!