Bradshaw's Blog

Everyone who dreams of making a fortune online uploading to YouTube, Instagram or TikTok is interested when someone with monetized content gives you a peek at how much YouTube pays them and True Crime With Alex just uploaded a video showing us how a youtuber, with 10,000-plus subscribers and 393 videos, is doing. Alex, based in Romania, has been uploading videos consistently for almost three years since August 2022 and she has been concentrating on the "True Crime" niche. Whether crime videos interest you or not, sticking with a niche like this is one of those things all those gurus spout off about (before they try to sell you their course you "have to have to make money online and be successful"), but it can work if you put in the work. True Crime videos can do well, and doing the research shows they pay fairly well if you attract the right audience or market. Just ask Ray William Johnson , who has been posting feverishly about True Crime in recent years with hu...

As of June 2025 there are currently 16 YouTube channels with at least 100 million followers. These are some astonishing totals especially when you consider that even ten years ago when Ray William Johnson's =3 channel hit 5 million subscribers many felt that the high water mark had been reached. Today Ray's channel has morphed into more of a "true crime" expose style channel and boasts a very respectable 18.4 million subscriber count. But Ray's days as "The Most Subscribed YouTube Channel" are long gone as today there are many channels which make his 18 million subs look like small fry. Not throwing shade his way as Ray likely appreciates being able to do his thing without the blinding glare he had to deal with circa 2010-2012. MrBeast's main channel just hit 20x Ray's current status and there are 15 others listed below that can claim to have at least 100 million subscribers with dozens more showing massive subscriber counts. The links b...

According to Ray William Johnson , it looks like the program he was showing to some television networks has been picked up by FX . Back in mid-March 2013, Ray's new channel Runaway Planet posted a video where Ray and his girlfriend, Anna Akana , discussed "pilot season" where actors and actresses go out for TV roles on new shows that are offered to the networks. Ray mentions having some disappointment with how he did last year and that he had a realization he should be pitching his own show. Which seems to have been successful with the recent announcement that it looks like Ray sold a comedy about his life to FX, a television channel available by cable and satellite owned by Fox Entertainment Group which is itself a division of News Corp. It may actually appear on a sub-channel of FX called FXX , which will be launched in early September 2013. FXX plans include featuring "original and acquired comedy series" of which Ray's comedy appears to be one. ...

Just noticed that Jenna Marbles has passed Ray William Johnson on the All Time Most Subscribed list with a massive 8,758,105 total to Ray's 8,690,622 subscriber count. Although you probably shouldn't put a lot of weight into subscribers numbers when you're comparing those Youtube channels floating around in the Top 100, this is actually quite an achievement for Jenna as her number of subscribers has exploded in the last year and a half or so. Ray William Johnson, of =3, YourFavoriteMartian and Runaway Planet fame was running away with the title of "Most Subscribed on Youtube" for quite a while until his recent troubles (of which I'll be blogging about shortly) and both Jenna Marbles and Ray William Johnson are getting smoked by Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla of Smosh , and their channel leads the way, closing in on ten million subscribers, a number which they should easily surpass before the month is out. The Good Morning America Interview But this is a...

Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article (by Emily Glazer) called Who Is RayWJ? YouTube's Top Star . In the article, RWJ is described as "a foul-mouthed performer working on his own to carve out a very lucrative business". Ray? Foul mouthed? The article goes on to say that he makes about a million dollars a year from various Youtube channels, selling t-shirts and all the other stuff he has available. According to the what Ray said to the WSJ in an exchange of emails (because he refuses to do in-person interviews) is that Youtube is "a hobby". Well Ray, we all have hobbies, but not to many that pay a cool $1,000,000 per year. Now I obviously don't have access to what Ray William Johnson makes just from Youtube but there are websites that are kind of accurate in projecting what those who are making money actually make. Personally, I don't care what Ray makes and I don't think it really is my business, but there are others who are d...

I spotted these videos making the rounds and thought it would be a good idea to share it with those of you who might have read the Bradshaw's Blog post I wrote called Swiftkaratechop And The Youtuber Interaction Downgrade about Swifty's video. For better context, you might want to take a look at his video to fully understand what both guys are talking about in their videos. So, after watching swiftkaratechop 's video called "Youtuber", another youtuber decided he needed to respond to what he felt were the criticisms raised by Swifty. His name is thegr8stever and I haven't been following him although he is now on my radar. He has 33,411 subscribers which is, according to him, "a small youtuber" especially when compared to Swifty's much larger following on the website. Actually, let's let thegr8stever speak for himself. He posted the following video and then Swifty responded with one of his own and then another from thegr8stever. Jus...

This video by swiftkaratechop (aka Matthew Brown) is a little surprising. SIDENOTE: Reviewing this years later, I've noticed that the video below has been moved to Swifty's personal channel ( Matthew Brian Brown ) and the video should be attributed to it's creator. I've read that there were "issues" concerning his old Swifty channel that caused him to temporarily give his friend control of it but the channel was later returned. But back to the blog post below which remains pretty much the same despite this intrusive sidenote business. Swifty's channel is not one I am usually subbed to, so it wouldn't ordinarily come to my attention so quickly unless someone emailed it to me or mentioned it on Twitter or elsewhere but one of the people I am subbed to (the lovely LenaDanya a talented artist who does fun videos on YT by the way) liked and commented on Swifty's video so it showed up in my own Youtube stream. I thought I would check it out and thou...

I just checked Youtube stats to see how the Top Ten Youtubers have fared with the potential loss of subscribers given the recent announcement that Youtube would be removing inactive and closed accounts from the total number of subscribers each channel has and it's not pretty. The totals shown courtesy of Top 100 on VidStatsX , which if you go to their website you will find out how many subscribers the top 100 lost - although VidStatsX's numbers update daily. Taking a quick look at the stats it looks like the channel that was hardest hit was machinima who lost close to 150,000 subscribers followed by Ray William Johnson who was hit with a loss of 138,629 as well as nigahiga who lost 125,169 subs. If you look at the Top 100 list everyone on it lost a portion of their subscriber base . I obviously don't know if your own channel has suffered a loss or not but the website does track the Top 2000 Youtube channel fairly accurately with the lowest listed having 63,500 subscri...

Picture from 2007 courtesy of Wayback Machine What were you doing in August 2007? Were you even on Youtube either as someone who watched the videos of others or were you one of the few who uploaded clips and got listed in this Top 100 from August 5, 2007? Look at the numbers these people had just 4 short years ago and compare them with the millions of subscribers that the Top 100 Most Subscribed have today and you can see the astounding growth this website has generated. How many of these channels do you remember and how many are still actively uploading videos? Each channel can still be found by the links provided unless they have been closed which is the case for some of them. Others just have not been updated in years. 1 smosh 148,992 2 lonelygirl15 97,821 3 esmeedenters 70,844 4 miaarose 68,787 5 WilliamSledd 66,743 6 HappySlip 62,098 7 thewinekone 59,781 8 LisaNova 59,764 9 CBS 57,144 10 BaratsAndBereta 54,542 11 JamesNintendoNerd 54,114 12 B...

According to the website myu2b.com , it looks like Ray William Johnson could be making as much as $2,000 each day from his Youtube channel. Really? 2K per day? Actually the numbers used to calculate what Ray "potentially" makes each day are imprecise. Don't get me wrong, Ray is probably making a great living these days through his main channel, but is he really making as much as $730,000 a year ($2,000 x 365 days equals 730K) just by posting videos onto Youtube? I don't know. Ray knows, and Youtube probably knows, and Ray's accountant and the taxman, too I guess. But how does the website myu2b.com come up with that figure? According to the website and what I've read elsewhere, the figure is based pretty much entirely on 2 factors - traffic to his channel and an average clickthrough rate on the ads. That is where the fuzzy math comes in. The daily traffic (views) is a relatively precise measurement, but the imprecision is the clickthrough rate. Anyone wh...

I don't know if this guy is deliberating copying Ray William Johnson's format or not (probably is my guess) but if you watch this following video from the Russian language channel called Adam Thomas Moran I think you can see a bit of similarity to Ray's Equals 3: With the quick cuts and the the host jumping around the screen intermixed with video clips, um, yeah. The video is entirely a RWJ clone with a Russian twist. If you look at the channel details, he lists Ray as his influence. And more importantly, he's getting subs, 69,787 to date, which makes him the most subscribed youtuber in Russia. And he's starting to get massive views: more than a million on the video he uploaded 3 days ago and over 2 million from the one posted on Youtube a week ago. He joined Youtube at the end of July 2010 and for the 21 videos he's uploaded he has over 25 million views. Makes me wish I knew how to speak Russian and had thought of copying Ray first. Next step is to get ...

Ray William Johnson just uploaded the first video to his new channel Yourfavoritemartian called "My Balls". It turns out it is a music channel (with Ray singing) and animation. If you haven't seen it yet, here is the video: What do you think? I watched it shortly after it was uploaded and then started reading the comments. Most are highly complementary but after getting past the die-hard fans declaring it the best thing they've ever seen (high praise indeed) you notice that there are comments here and there about it being disappointing. Actually, looking at the likes/dislikes, as I write this it is 4,095 thumbs up wth 789 thumbs down. That means about 20 percent disliked the video enough to actually dislike it which is quite substantial. Will have to see what the percentage is after those who are more casual Equals 3 viewers have had a chance to see it to gauge the overall opinion. As far as the music part of the video, it is a catchy little song and it is availa...

It was hinted at months ago and it looks like Ray William Johnson is finally ready for the big unveil. Back at the end of June 2010 Ray posted a video with his "Equals 3" theme song (complete with the dancing cat) with a "Coming Soon" promise. Now we get a similar video (see below) with a date for when we finally get to find out what this new project is all about. The channel is called Yourfavoritemartian and since the relase of that teaser video Ray's new channel has racked up over 173K subscribers all waiting (im)patiently for more details. All I know is that Ray loves his music, so I'm guessing something music based, but because Ray has been so darned secretive, not too many know anything about what type of content we can expect. You might notice that the channel is listed in the "musician" category on Youtube as well, so is Ray gonna be laying down some fat tracks? Coming from me that last sentence sounds incredibly lame, but we'll...

Here's the latest from Ray William Johnson where he highlights the proper way to store a horse, one bad-ass cat messin' with a couple of alligators and um, a new way to make a salad? All I can think of for the one with the horse in the back seat of that car is that is the ugliest child I've ever seen. And that cat taking on two gators? Why didn't someone rush in and grab that cat up before he became gator chow? Congrats on Fluffy whuppin' on the alligators but that could have ended so much differently. But you do have to give Chuck Norris' cat some credit. Or is that the dancin' kitty at the end of Ray's videos? As far as the carrot lovin' red-haired girl, the less said the better. Wrong on so many levels. If you want to see the Carrot Peeling Contest , there it is.

I don't think there is any personal animosity between Ray and Ryan and don't want to promote any ill feelings between the two. I've never asked one of them about the other (I don't know either personally) and I haven't seen any comment, good, bad or indifferent, made by either one about the other guy's numbers either. Both of their channels have their good and bad points, as well as fans who love everything they do. No doubt there are hundreds of thousands subscribed to both guys because they put out interesting content. All I'm saying is that there's nothing wrong with a little friendly competition. I don't think they will get into a pissing contest or anything (we used to have those at our family reunions. Grandma would always win, but that's a story for another time). I'm sure they are probably looking at each other's number of subscribers, but they're probably more worried about what they are going to post next week rat...

Here's the latest from Ray William Johnson , which I think is a good one. I think I've seen that first guy with the yellow socks - no wait, I've been that guy with the yellow socks. I thought for sure that the drunk dude at the subway station was going to fall directly through the subway car door, not some kind of weird ninja-gymnastic backflip over the bar. The little dude diggin' on the Bob Marley was a pretty cool little kid. The channel that uploaded the video is (not surprisingly) called babybobmarley333 and they've uploaded 2 videos so far and have 320 subs. The video itself has had 5.8 million views since it was uploaded September 11, 2010. Don't know if they'll be able to come up with anything to compare with it, but these one-shot viral videos rarely do. Take a look at the full video below. As far as the trick play video, I love the play and don't care if it was a "little illegal" or not. What is your opinion? Are you a die-...

Looks like meekakitty went on a field trip out to the country a few days ago and went horseback riding. I don't know what the fascination is with hopping on the back of a horse. I haven't had the chance to go horseback riding in a long time but it is one of the things you really need to do once in a while, especially if you live in the big city like Tessa. Love the shots of the horses as well. After watching the video you may be wondering "Who was that holding the camera?" and after hearing a few comments from the cameraman, it is obviously Ray William Johnson of the Equals Three show. Tessa and Ray have been friends for some time and she (along with TheWillofDC who used to be Ray's roommate) appeared frequently in Ray's daily vlog BreakingNYC last year. The horses looked great, especially the little baby right at the end, It looked like Meekakitty knew what she was doing and seems to ride very well. It's good to see her doing videos out of the hou...

And a farting iguana... Yup, an iguana farts in the tub. But it's the surprised rat that makes this a funny video from Ray William Johnson . It's like someone told Stuart Little that he was adopted and he turns to the camera with his jaw dropping in shock. The one video of the two "frat boys" looks totally fake, but still sort of funny, but it's the lizard in the tub letting one rip that made me make the face little the shocked rat. Who knew a lizard could produce that much stank gas? And what is your answer to Ray's Comment Question Of The Day? If you could be reincarnated as anyone, who or what would it be? Me, I'm thinking I'd come back as Chuck Norris (do I really have to say why?) or maybe the Old Spice Guy.

I don't know about you, but as a regular viewer of TheWillofDC 's Winners & Losers I like how Will did this video rather than his other recent videos with the green screen. That said, there were some interesting developments in the rankings of the Top 100 Youtubers this week and Will lets us know what's what. The big winner this past week was DieAussenseiter a German YouTube channel that moved up from 80th to 77th place on the overall Top 100. "DieAussenseiter" translates into english as "The Outsider". This does show the growth of the international scope of YouTube and other channels using languages other than primarily English should take heart and receive some motivation to keep working to make more videos and channels in their native languages - there are audiences in every country that want great content in their own language. Below is a Halloween video from DieAussenseiter. DieAussenseiter is made up of two German brothers: Alexander ...

Looks like Philip DeFranco has finally brought us the anticipated Fail Fridays where he points out a couple of the biggest fails for the week and viewers vote which one was the larger fail. Got it? Good. Personally I would have to say sleepwalking shotgun dude (Phil didn't say whether or not he survived) over the wacky waiter with the mega-death hot sauce . I just checked and they do have the stuff on Amazon so I'll put up a link to it if you are brave enough to grab some of that liquid fire. When Phil was talking about this story, my mind went to the dirtiest place and thought "bodily fluid" (a collective "ewwww" goes up from my readership) but it was just the hot sauce from a bottle variety. So, of the two fails, which do YOU think was the greater showing of total ineptness? Plus - what do you think about the State Farm sponsorship of the video? Me, I have no real problem with it, but some viewers may think "Phil, buddy, you sold out to the ...