The Tom Ridgewell show: the 22-year-old making £10,000 a month from his bedroom on YouTube

 
Tom Ridgewood cartoon
12 March 2013

In a Putney street where houses sell for £1 million, a 22-year-old wearing a hoodie probably earns more than most of his neighbours. With one in four young people in the capital out of work, Thomas Ridgewell’s story is inspiring. Through his YouTube channel, Tomska, he makes up to £10,000 a month.

More than 320 million people regularly watch his short animated comedy sketches on Tomska and he has turned down job offers from Hat Trick Productions and the BBC. “For me TV doesn’t offer enough,” he says, spinning on his chair in the Apple Mac-filled office of the house he rents. “Not enough freedom and not enough money. I can see how a fixed number of viewers might be appealing but they’re offering me less money than I’ve got now. It’s more fun here. If I mess up in my house I won’t get fired, I can take risks.” And he has no problem getting watchers — the highest viewing figures for 2012 were 24.5 million for the Olympics closing ceremony, paltry compared with Ridgewell’s 320 million on Tomska.

He started by making videos by himself and now heads a team of animators making short films, sketches and cartoons. He has also translated his viewers into money by selling Tomska merchandise online and becoming a YouTube partner.

Google, which owns YouTube, says a million YouTube users are earning money from their videos, a greater number than are employed in the US television industry. Not all of them make as much as Ridgewell but Google says more than 1,000 people worldwide earn at least £63,000 a year from YouTube advertising revenue. “We help each other out, it’s a community,” says Ridgewell. “Some YouTubers get to a certain point and move to LA but London is the second biggest place for them to come. All of us are about the same age, so we all came here to collaborate.”

There was no question for Ridgewell about what he’d do when he left school. He was already making money from YouTube. “When it started my parents had no idea what I was doing. Then I began getting cheques and had to pay tax, and they realised it was a real job.” He has always been sensible with money and is saving to buy a house. On the shelf in his office, Ridgwell has an award from Marmite. “It paid me £100 to make a video in 2010. It got 80,000 views, so Marmite made me a trophy.” Since then he has made a lot more through working with companies and putting their products in his videos. “Increasingly corporations apply straight to YouTubers and say, ‘Can you put your product in for us?’ I’m fine with product placement. I like advertising as long as it’s done creatively and you don’t lie to the viewer.”

But it’s not all been fun. Ridgewell got into YouTube because of his friend Edd Gould, another video-maker, whom he met in a chatroom when he was a boy and still living with his parents in Cambridge. “Edd is part of why I got into this. I came to London after graduating from Lincoln University in 2011 because that’s where he lived. By then he was ill.”

Gould was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2004, aged just 15. He died last year, aged 23.

“I’ve kept Eddsworld going in his memory, alongside Tomska. Eddsworld is being used to fundraise.” So far Ridgewell has raised £19,551 for Clic Sargent, to provide entertainment for young people with illnesses on the ward Gould was on.

“I miss him all the time. When I make videos now I wonder about how he would critique them and help me make them better.”

Ridgewell doesn’t know what’s next in the YouTube evolution. “Everyone is on YouTube now. You’ve got to really work to keep up your game. ”

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