If you've been on YouTube recently you're probably familiar with the grinning face of James Donaldson, better known as MrBeast.
Donaldson has become one of the most successful YouTubers out there, drawing in a staggering 308 million followers on his account.
The YouTuber has built his appeal on his enormous giveaway videos, involving prizes worth staggering amounts of money.
Advert
These have included outlandish competitions, including one video where people had to stay in a circle, with the last one there being the winner.
Of course, at the end of each day the circle got smaller.
On another occasion the YouTuber even staged a Squid Game style competition.
Though it's important to note that in this version it was just a squib that went off when someone 'died', they weren't actually murdered.
Advert
Now, the YouTuber has opened up about how he found success.
As with anything, MrBeast started relatively small.
He shared that at first his brand deals would be in the region of around $5,000, which is pretty decent but a long way from the huge amounts of money his channel now turns over in giveaways alone.
Advert
As a way to get more views, however, he would film himself just giving the money away to a random person.
MrBeast told FULL SEND PODCAST: "So the first time I got a brand deal is 10 grand, well it's five grand, and I was like double it and I'll go give it away.
"So I literally I just gave away all my brand deals every single time I got one so I did that and the next time.
Advert
"I just literally, I would just do a brand deal give it away and then the next brand deal was bigger and I just did that for like two years straight."
The technique clearly worked for him, and he deployed it back when being a YouTuber wasn't quite so big of a things as it is now.
He said: "It's like that was like insane and people won't understand it's just a different time now, like it's cool to be a YouTuber now, it's like it's known we make money, how we make money everything.
"Back then you would have to like have f**king five-hour arguments 100 days in a row just to convince your mom that YouTube is a thing, you know, which you just don't have to do anymore.
Advert
"It was just a different time for us."