Method, version 1.2

How the figures are calculated

This pilot contains public disclosures associated with named creators and founders. It is a selected sample of people who disclose revenue, and it says nothing about typical online earnings.

What the ranking means

Each person’s figure is the sum of selected, non-overlapping documented streams. Business revenue, personal earnings and business profit are labeled separately. The default list orders their numerical annual amounts, so use the amount-type filter for a more comparable subset. A company’s sales do not establish what its founder personally earns.

Actual annual reports, ARR snapshots and annualized monthly receipts are different measurements. They remain visibly labeled. An old report describes that old period · the report-year filter lets you narrow the cohort. A zero or an unknown stream is not silently replaced by a guessed amount.

Annualization

Exact source amounts and unrounded arithmetic remain in downloads. Display rounding uses $10 below $1K · $100 from $1K · $1K from $10K · $10K from $100K · $100K from $1M · $1M from $100M. Values describe USD · other currencies need a dated exchange-rate clue before joining this USD ranking.

Which streams can be added?

Prefer one coherent reporting period. A portfolio total overrides its underlying components. Revenue and profit from the same business are never added. Joint businesses are listed at business scale · ownership is not assumed to be 100%, and no arbitrary cofounder split is applied. Components from another month remain visible but excluded when an aggregate already covers them.

Marc Lou’s October 2026 product lines sum to his reported monthly total · his separate 2025 total is retained as an excluded historical observation. Pieter Levels’ portfolio range is annualized at its midpoint · X, book and merchandise clues remain excluded components. Investment appreciation is not treated as recurring operating income. His X breakdown has an unresolved arithmetic mismatch, which is preserved.

Sources and confidence

Page opened means readable page content was inspected. Search excerpt means a search engine exposed the relevant text but the source page was not fully accessible. Blocked means a permalink was retained through another source, without pretending the original was read. Founder disclosures and interviews are self-reported and unaudited. A second article repeating the same original claim is not independent corroboration.

Confidence rates how well the specific claim is documented · it makes no prediction about a future year. This pilot mostly uses medium confidence. Undated reports and a single two-week extrapolation are lower confidence. Published date, earning period and retrieval date are separate fields · a recent page update does not make an old earning period current.

People, profiles and photos

Use publicly disclosed real names or established public names. X is the primary profile link. Some creators use an associated brand account · those links are labeled on their detail pages. Public avatars are saved locally with source URLs and retrieval metadata. An illustrated avatar remains an avatar · no synthetic face is substituted. A photo shows identity only. Images remain the property of their owners · the pilot does not establish reuse licenses.

Channels and revenue types

Every stream carries two labels. Channel is who pays or distributes the money: X, YouTube, a newsletter, app stores, Gumroad, the person’s own SaaS or website, retail and so on. Revenue type is what is sold: platform payouts, SaaS, courses, sponsorships, affiliate commissions. Filtering by channel limits each row to the matching streams, so “X income” shows only money attributed to X, next to the person’s full documented total.

A stream whose source blends channels, such as “YouTube and courses”, is labeled Multiple channels and is not split by guesswork. If a matching stream is already covered by a portfolio total, the channel view still shows it but marks it “not in total”. Payouts with no established earning window are shown as reported and never scaled to a year.

Channel versus discovery source

Finding a report on LinkedIn does not mean LinkedIn paid the creator. X posts can describe software sales. A payment processor such as Stripe is a checkout rail · its money is counted at the product it pays for. Instagram and LinkedIn sponsorship revenue is attributed to paid partnerships or traceable sales · follower counts are never converted into income.

X program changes matter

The English X help page, checked 10 November 2026, says the older Creator Revenue Sharing program ended in September 2026 and directs users to Original Content Rewards. Historical claims retain their historical program context. Neither a two-week payout cadence nor a screenshot establishes that a particular payment covers exactly two weeks. Initial 2023 payouts were cumulative and are unannualized here.

MrBeast

Jimmy Donaldson’s profile maps media, food, licensing, analytics and financial-service ventures. The selected 2024 figures are approximate Content and Commerce division revenues reported from investor materials. Their approximate sum is a business-scale estimate, with no personal ownership allocation or consolidation adjustment. The media division includes YouTube and Beast Games · no verified YouTube-only annual split is invented. Forecasts, sponsorship rates per video, enterprise valuation, charity receipts and company revenue are not added together.

Limits and next steps

The pilot overrepresents English-speaking founders and transparent bloggers, includes old reports, and cannot establish total personal take-home income. Search excerpts can lose context, screenshots can be inaccurate, programs change and avatars can change. Refresh recent disclosures first, inspect original screenshots where accessible, record conflicting observations, and expand missing streams without converting absence of evidence into zero.