Swagg reveals seven-figure YouTube earnings during Warzone’s peak
YouTube: FaZe SwaggOne of Call of Duty’s biggest content creators, Swagg, has opened up about his earnings during the height of Warzone’s popularity. Revealing exact dollar amounts for his early years on social media, he reached seven figures when the BR hit the scene.
It’s no secret content creators earn a pretty penny. From Ninja spilling the beans of his Twitch revenue to relatively smaller streamers still taking home thousands a month, it can be a lucrative career if viewers turn up.
But what about when it comes to content creators in the CoD sphere? Well, we recently learned ex-pro player Parasite is doing quite well for himself, pocketing over $20,000 a month thanks to ad revenue on Twitch. But how does that stack up to one of the most popular influencers during Warzone’s most popular era?
In a refreshing breath of transparency, Swagg sat down with JSmooth and Matcrackz on their Join The Lobby podcast to discuss his earnings. Breaking his career down year by year, Swagg highlighted the “gradual” process to becoming one of the biggest names in the space.
YouTube: FaZe ClanReminding viewers of his journey on the internet, Swagg explained how he first began sharing videos on YouTube back in the Black Ops 2 era from 2012-2013. Similarly, during Ghosts, it was all just “casual posts, not really monetized.”
It wasn’t until 2014’s Advanced Warfare where he “started posting daily, just to try and grow.” The first set of income didn’t arrive until one year later when Black Ops 3 was in the spotlight.
“I was posting two videos a day,” he explained, still in college at the time. “I made $12,000 that year when I was 19.” In one particularly hot month, he walked away with $3,000 alone, a month that helped push him towards full-time content creation the next year, leaving college behind.
With 2016’s Infinite Warfare, Swagg stopped going to school and properly began growing his YouTube empire. “I made $65,000,” he revealed. Though he was quick to remind everyone “half of that’s gone” due to taxes.
From there, it was off to the races. During WWII in 2017, he made $123,000. A hefty chunk of that came from a six-month Facebook streaming deal that netted him $72,000 alone.
Next up was Black Ops 4, Swagg’s best year yet, cashing in $237,000 all up. Making it all the more sweet, he claimed to have made $84,000 of his total earnings during the game’s launch month alone.
“That was insane… I got so chunky,” he joked. “I was going to the steakhouse all the time.”
When Modern Warfare (the reboot) launched in 2019, however, and did so with Warzone in tow, that’s when Swagg truly hit his stride in the space.
“That’s when it all changed,” he said. “On YouTube alone, I made $1 million.”
Swagg discusses his YouTube earnings at the 17:22 mark below
That same year, Swagg also began his streaming journey on Twitch, so it’s safe to say he may have made another few million there from sponsorship deals, subscriptions, and the like. As the face of Warzone during its peak, he was pulling in tens of thousands of viewers day in, day out.
In revealing his earnings, Swagg hoped to illuminate the fact it’s not an overnight success story for most content creators. In his case, it was a “five-year” journey before the hard yards started paying off in lucrative ways.