KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian YouTuber Alyssa Dezek, 12, recently made headlines after announcing that she has bought her first car – a vehicle with an estimated value of RM360,000 – to her followers on Instagram.
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According to mStar, Alyssa’s post prompted some users to criticise her parents for not helping to manage her finances.
The users felt that Alyssa’s income should be put towards other future investments such as her education.
Alyssa’s mother Suzanne Dezek responded to the backlash by saying that as a parent, she respected her daughter’s decision to purchase a vehicle for her own comfort.
“In my opinion, that’s her own money and she wanted the car so that she can use it to travel comfortably for work, such as shoots,” she said to mStar.
Suzanne claimed that she and her husband have already bought a home for Alyssa and her brother Aaron, who has also appeared in her videos. She said while Alyssa is actively involved in the local entertainment scene, her education is still a top priority.
“We also have savings for her to further her studies later,” she added.
Suzanne added that she and Alyssa’s father are not dependent on their daughter for income.
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Alyssa’s income derives from her YouTube channel where she has over three million followers, with videos that have garnered more than 300 million views.
Social media tracking site Social Blade estimated that Alyssa’s earnings could range from US$7,000 (RM29,942) to US$100,000 (RM427,750) per month from YouTube. However, the website explained that the number is just a “general feeling” and not meant to be taken definitively.
“We take a low CPM (cost per mile) value (US$0.25/RM1) and a high CPM (US$4/RM17), numbers that we found to be common from our partners and multiply them by the number of views the channel gets per day. This assumes that every view on the partner’s channel is monetised, which is usually not the case,” Social Blade said in its FAQ.
Alyssa’s YouTube career began in 2013 when she became known for posting song covers at just five years of age. Apart from YouTube, she has also released singles, appeared in various ad campaigns and also dabbled in acting.
Young YouTubers earning a significant amount of income from their platform are not uncommon. In 2019, Forbes reported that eight-year-old Ryan Kaiji was the highest-paid YouTuber with an estimated earning of US$26mil (RM111.21mil).
The report also mentioned six-year-old YouTuber Anastasia Radzinskaya, who has estimated earnings of US$18mil (RM76.99mil). Both of them were ranked higher than Felix Kjellberg or more popularly known as PewDiePie, who is one of the world’s most subscribed YouTubers.
-The Star