Fortnite streamer and gaming star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins earned almost $10 million in 2018, he told CNN reporter Dave Briggs.
The streamer also said he loses “tens of thousands of dollars” when he’s not streaming, and that he earns “a lot more” than $500,000 “on a good month.” Ninja’s interview was published on Dec. 31, which makes these values the most accurate to assess the streamer’s financial success in 2018.
Related: The most popular individual streamers on Twitch in 2018.
Ninja said most of the revenue he gets from streaming comes from ads, like the ones he rolls or the brands he shows on screen when he’s live playing the game. His monthly revenue also takes Twitch subscriptions into account, which vary between $4.99 to $24.99 per subscriber depending on how much each one chooses to pay every month.
Ninja is used to working in quantities of 10 million at this point. He became the first Twitch streamer to reach that number of followers in the platform in early August 2018, and has since amassed 2.8 million more. He also has 20 million YouTube subscribers and said he has 60,000 Twitch subscribers in a recent video for Wired.
Ninja’s earnings are a consequence of his ever-increasing popularity. He streamed Fortnite in Times Square for the ball drop on New Year’s eve, went to several TV shows in the second half of 2018, and shattered a Twitch concurrent viewers record on an individual channel when streaming with rapper Drake.
Ninja refrained from detailing how much he makes from every source of revenue he has today, but he said he has to be constantly streaming to avoid losing viewers, subscribers, and money as a consequence.
He told CNN he streamed nearly 4,000 hours of Fortnite in 2018.
Ninja’s earnings and popularity are still dependent on Fortnite’s popularity since it’s the only game he’s been streaming. Regardless of what the future holds for Ninja, he’s one of the most financially successful Twitch streamers of 2018.
