Markiplier

Mark Fischbach built his audience over more than a decade of horror and indie game playthroughs, and for most of that time his income looked like a typical large YouTube channel: advertising, sponsorships and merchandise. What makes his Forbes entry unusual is a film. Iron Lung, adapted from an indie horror game, was self-funded and self-produced, which means he carried the cost and the risk that a studio would normally take.

Forbes reports that the film played in 3,000 theatres across North America and took $50 million at the box office, with a 50/50 revenue split between Fischbach and the theatres. That puts his gross share at around $25 million before the costs of making and distributing the film — an unusually direct line from an online audience to cinema tickets, without a studio in between to take its cut.

The film is now sold to viewers worldwide on YouTube, and he continues to host two podcasts, Distractible and Go! My Favorite Sports Team. Forbes' $38 million covers all of this together for the twelve months it measured, and it does not say how much of the film's income falls inside that window rather than before or after it — so the page does not try to separate the film from the rest.

At about $1.20 a second, Markiplier's counter runs at roughly an eighth of MrBeast's. The comparison says less about popularity than about structure: MrBeast's figure is attached to a company with products in supermarkets, while Fischbach's rests on his own channels and a single, very successful bet on one film.