YouTube creators now rank as some of the most influential voices in contemporary culture.
One of the UK’s richest and most successful YouTubers, DanTDM, has a reported net worth greater than many professional footballers.
The 31-year-old has turned his love of video games – and of breaking apart virtual blocks in Minecraft - into a cultural brand.
The online star, whose real name is Daniel Middleton, was the most watched YouTuber in the world at one point and currently boasts more than 27.7 million followers on his most popular YouTube channel.
While working in a supermarket, he began his online career with a channel for a trading card game, having always loved making “silly adverts or clay animations” as a child with a camcorder.
But it wasn’t long before he moved on to Minecraft, his commentaries on which would prove to be his golden ticket.
DanTDM’s channel, which began in 2012, went on to land 300 to 400 million hits a month at one stage.
For the uninitiated, he is most famous for posting videos of himself playing Minecraft and creating stories around it while voicing the characters.
His early success took him by surprise.
“I think I had a million subscribers. At that point I was gaining 10 to 20,000 subs (subscribers) a day,” DanTDM tells the BBC.
“And the views were just ridiculous. At one point, we hit the most viewed channel on the entire site.”
But how did a boy from Aldershot become one of the world’s most successful YouTubers?
“I was really shy at school. I would always just sit and listen rather than be someone that talks in front of people at school presentations.
“A lot of YouTubers are naturally introverted, but very creative. YouTube helped me to come out of my shell more.”
DanTDM started out with his commentary just as YouTube was beginning to grow and quickly became his very own production house, spending long hours building up his profile.
“I was in a lucky position where I started it at the right time. I found a niche pretty early on as well. And then YouTube just grew exponentially over that time. So a platform with that many eyes on it is going to make money.”
He explains that growing his channel was “a little bit addictive”.
“A good thing about YouTube is if something doesn’t work, you just don’t do it the next day. There’s no production schedule. You can just change what you’re doing on a daily basis. So it was really fun to try new things every day creatively. I love doing that.”
What was it like when he realised how much money could be made from his content creation?
“I wasn’t really using it [the money] because I was making videos, so I didn’t have time!” he jokes.
