Charismatic, crazy and controversial, the Swedish Felix Kjellberg, became the youtuber most famous in the world. Known by the nickname PewDiePie, he was world renowned for Y on his YouTube channel.
The youtuber most famous in the world radiates irreverence, sympathy and intelligence. Both in his videos and in handling his work. It was not by chance that he reached such impressive numbers.
His channel continues to grow and reach new audiences, even after almost ten years of existence, reformulations and major controversies.
PewDiePie is part of a generation that grew up at a time when YouTube wasn’t that popular yet.
His channel developed and expanded alongside the platform, making the Swede one of its greatest icons. According to Felix, his career started on YouTube because he was bored, not because he wanted to become famous or rich.
A model for youtubers from all over the world
The relationship between PewDiePie and his platform has always been crucial to the community and has given rise to the “trend youtuber“. As one of the biggest names on the platform, especially in the gaming and vlogging niche, the relationship between PewDiePie and YouTube has always served as a benchmark and model for other channels.
The alliance has not withstood the recent controversies that have occurred on the channel and has suffered deterioration, but this has not affected the success of Félix among users.
Since 2013, PewDiePie has been the user with the most subscribers to a channel in the history of YouTube, with the exception of the platform’s own channels, such as YouTube Sports, Gaming, Music or Spotlight, among others. With more than 103 million fans, Felix has more than twice the number of followers than the user with the second highest number of subscribers, the Colombian HolaSoyGerman, with 40.6 million.
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In 2014, PewDiePie became the most viewed channel of all time, surpassing pop music phenomenon Rihanna. As of October 2015, the channel reached the mark of over 10 billion video views.
All this success earns Felix around $12 million a year.
Biography and history of the channel
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg was born on October 24, 1989 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The son of an IT director and a CEO, he had a normal childhood and was always passionate about video games.
In 2008, Felix graduated from Göteborgs Högre Samskola secondary school and, having obtained good grades, managed to enter the course of industrial economics and technology management at Chalmers Technical University.
In college, Kjellberg was invited to do an art exhibition with his drawings created in Photoshop. The show was successful and through it he earned money with which he bought a computer to work better with image production tools and make gameplay videos. So, in 2010, while still in college, Felix created the PewDiePie channel on YouTube.
In 2011 he dropped out of college to become the youtuber most famous in the world. Despite not receiving the approval of his parents, Felix worked with a hot dog cart to pay for the channel.
In one of his videos, PewDiePie says that being able to make videos was much more important to him than having to spend a few hours a day doing less socially valued work.
Still in 2011, Felix started chatting through Facebook with the Italian Marzia Bisognin, and after a few months saving money, the future youtuber world’s most famous man went to Italy to meet her in person.
After a few months of courtship and suffering from the distance, Marzia went to live with Felix in Sweden. She participates in several videos with PewDiePie and is an important part of the channel’s history.
The beginnings and dealing with fame
In 2012, the channel exceeded one million subscribers. So, Felix and Marzia moved to Italy. Living there, PewDiePie began to become really well known and bothered by his celebrity status.
The youtuber The world’s most famous man went through great turmoil due to unexpected visits from fans at his home. Therefore, the couple moved to Brighton, England, where they currently reside with their two pugs and also stars of the channel: Edgar and Maya.
The beginning of PewDiePie’s success was through the gameplay videos of the game Amnesia – The Dark Descent. This horror game was a big trend among gameplay videos in 2010.
Felix’s differentiator was the irreverent way he engaged with the game. He brought a comical and relaxed air to what should be tense and frightening.
Audience explosion and growth on YouTube
The fact that Felix has moved so many times and lived in so many countries was also decisive for the success of the channel. YouTube promotes channels on its home page and main sections locally, usually nationally.
Additionally, their disclosure algorithms also operate based on a channel’s ability to attract and retain audiences.
Thus, living in other countries, PewDiePie uploaded videos from different places, attracting ever-larger and more widespread audiences all over the world.
The fact that their videos are made in English also guaranteed a greater internationalization of their audience. As a result, it was increasingly promoted by the platform’s algorithms in different regions, thus securing larger audiences.
The gameplay format it also favored the growth of the channel, since it consists of simple, spontaneous videos, with little or no editing, so they can be published more frequently.
This model is conducive to users doing a “marathon” round of multiple videos in sequence.
Many viewers watch a game that is rebooted from start to finish, split between multiple episodes, for example. This generates excellent results in audience attraction and retention rates, further promoting the channel on the platform.
audience engagement
PewDiePie played fan-created variations of original games known as mods. Some of them were created especially for him to record his videos.
This earned him hundreds of uploads on his channel and an increasingly loyal community. His fans even actively participate in the process of creating the videos.
As the channel grew, Felix realized that his fans were looking for closeness and interaction, and he started the series Friday’s with PewDiePie.
In it, he published videos in more varied formats, such as vlogs and question and answer videos. In addition, she made challenges made by subscribers and also compilations with her best gameplay moments.
Felix calls his fan base the Bro Army, and often uses influence over his army to hold events and raise money for charity.
In all, thanks to youtuber most famous in the world, has already raised more than 1 million dollars, earmarked for various humanitarian causes.
channel management
With the success of the channel, in 2011 PewDiePie joined the * Machinima, the largest YouTube in the gaming sector.
* company that helps the user manage their YouTube accounts by requesting a percentage of their income from advertising.
Despite his fame, youtuber he was dissatisfied with Machinima’s network management.
As a result, Felix logged off the network, revealing that he intended to open his own network to help other YouTubers. In 2012, he joined another network, Maker Studios, which two years later was acquired by the most famous studio in the world: Disney.
Impressive prizes and numbers
Since August 2013, the PewDiePie channel has become the largest in number of being briefly surpassed in November and December of the same year by the Spotlight channel, also on YouTube.
Holding the position since late 2013, Felix won the games category award at the Shorty Awards that year.
In 2014, PewDiePie surpassed Rihanna’s VEVO channel to become the most viewed channel of all time. In the same year, Felix was invited to star in an episode of the series South Park. In it, the youtuber The world’s most famous made an appearance in live action, being shown on a computer screen as in his own videos.
Felix also gets hundreds of gadgets and games in the launch phase. Freebies are usually sent by big companies for you to advertise the products in their videos.
In early 2015, for example, PewDiePie started making unboxing videos of weird products from around the world. So, the company LootCrate —known for its boxes with surprise products— started sponsoring it.
In October 2015, the channel reached over 40 million subscribers and the 10 billion+ video views mark. In the same year, Felix won two more awards: Web Celebrity at the Teen Choice Award and a new Gamer award at the Shorty Awards.
Expansion of the PewDiePie brand
Also in 2015 and building on his success on YouTube, Felix created the PewDiePie Clothing brand.
Thus, it began to market fashion and clothing products related to its channel, such as t-shirts, hoodies or backpacks, among others.
His online store also has other products, which are often associated with irreverence, such as his fake self-help book: “This Book Loves You”, which contains images and phrases that are not motivational at all.
In the same year, PewDiePie even released his first game, titled PewDiePie: Legend Of The Brofist. The game sells for $20.49 on the App Store and Google Play, with over 500,000 downloads already.
The 28-year-old Swede was considered by Time magazine to be one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and that too in 2015, a year of tremendous success for the world’s most famous youtuber, in which PewDiePie made a profit of 70 million Swedish krona (US$8.1 million).
Changes
In early 2016, Felix began to notice that his gameplays were becoming repetitive and that there was increased interest from his audience in weekly vlogs.
Based on data he captured from YouTube, PewDiePie decided to redesign his channel’s schedule. He decided to release videos every day, with content that he previously only posted on Fridays, and moving on to making gameplays only once a week.
Marzia, after the success of her boyfriend in early 2016, created her own YouTube channel, which has more than 7 million subscribers: CutiePieMarzia. In it she publishes vlogs, fashion tips and videos do it yourself (DIY – Do It Yourself).
In addition to the videos, Marzia has a store where she sells a box of surprise products every month. The Italian also launched her own clothing line at the end of 2016.
In association with Network Maker Studio, PewDiePie launched his own network, called Revelmode.
According to the company’s YouTube page, the network focuses on original content creation, game development, philanthropy, business partnerships, and products…
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