https://nasacademy.com/blog/article/casey-neistats-net-worth-from-welfare-to-8-figures
If you’re a regular on YouTube, you probably know of Casey Neistat. He’s a dishwasher turned content creator who has dominated the creator space like no other. Through gaining insane popularity from his infamous vlogs and entertaining short films, Casey Neistat’s net worth is estimated to be $16 million.
Casey Neistat is one of the most well-known vloggers online, known for his creative films, public service-themed videos, and travel vlogs. He’s a filmmaker, co-creator of an HBO series, The Neistat Brothers, and is also a co-founder of the company Beme.
But Casey wasn’t always the wealthy, wise person we see behind the camera today.
Casey Neistat grew up in Connecticut in a lower-middle class family, separated by divorce when he was a kid. His dad was a restaurant salesman, and his mom often left Casey unsupervised to do whatever he wanted to do. He struggled to fit in with the right crowd, so, naturally, Casey grew up no stranger to danger or juvenile antics.
He was always a creative risk taker. But, growing up, the majority of Casey’s creative efforts were spent finding ways to cause trouble – like suspending jars of mayonnaise over railroad tracks so they’d shatter over passing trains or slather their windshields like sandwich bread – rather than making videos like he does now.
Casey was a stickler for doing things he couldn’t (and shouldn’t) do. And while these qualities still fuel his career today, he has a little more wisdom and foresight when embarking on any crazy adventures nowadays.
But this inherent, rebellious quality, and his passion for telling stories has allowed him to triumph over all barriers – personal or professional. And now, he has 12.4 million YouTube subscribers, 3.1 million Instagram followers, and an 8-figure net worth.
Casey’s rise to success was no easy feat. When he was 15, he got into a fight with his mom and he ran away from home. Then, not long after, his girlfriend got pregnant. So, he dropped out of high school at 17 years old to raise his now 22-year-old son, Owen.
But even as a teenager, with no money and little hope of any education to get him a solid career, Casey still managed to make a living. He lived in a trailer park, washing dishes for $8 an hour at a seafood restaurant, and, against his philosophy of accepting easy hand-outs in life, he even had to live on welfare for a while.
But there was a blaring light at the end of the tunnel when Casey took a life-changing trip to New York City with his son. It was here that Casey created his first movie.
He and his brother, Van Neistat, made a film of Owen going to the zoo, and they edited it all on one of those old, clunky mac computers (the very first Apple computer you could edit with). And in this moment, Casey found his passion.
Casey continued to make small movies, and this is how he found his voice through filmmaking. Film became his way of expressing himself and doing what he felt he was meant to do. So, after his girlfriend left him when he was 20, he retired his rubber gloves at the seafood joint, and moved to NYC to be a filmmaker.
He had no money and no plan, but he took a risk – and it definitely paid off.
Casey was told he “needed” to go to film school to have a career. But, instead, he just focused on creating – and that’s how he got his big break. He posted a video in 2003 called iPod’s Dirty Secret, where he went around painting a message all over the city about how iPod’s battery only lasts 18 months before you’re expected to purchase a new one.
He thought it was a scam – and he wanted everyone else to know it too.
This video started gaining Casey recognition as a creator, as an honest person with an interest in teaching people everything wrong with the systems they lived in. And of course, people loved it.
YouTube didn’t even exist yet, but Casey’s video still went viral. It got 6 million views and tons of press coverage within a single month.
This was the first of many informative videos he would go on to create, including his first YouTube video where he made an instructional video of when NOT to pull the emergency wire on a Subway, annoyed that it wasn’t made more clear by the transit system. And, his 2011 video where he purposefully rode his bike into various obstructions on bike paths in NYC to show they clearly weren’t safe.
Right from the start, this creator was educating the public on services better than the public services themselves. This is an incredible asset of the creator economy – leading people sometimes even better than the educated, professional “experts” can themselves.
Not long after Casey’s first video in 2003, people started showing interest in his other films. His work started getting screened around the world, and he was tasked with creating a series with his brother that was later sold to HBO for $2 million.
In mid-2015, Casey Neistat’s YouTube channel hit over 1 million subscribers – and his audience and net worth have been climbing ever since.
It is estimated that Casey’s Neistat’s net worth is $16 million.
With the millions of views Casey gets on his videos, it’s safe to say the ads on Casey Neistat’s YouTube channel seem to be responsible for a majority of his revenue.
As of writing, Casey has 1,064 uploads and it’s estimated that he gets a monthly average of 6.2 million views – making him anywhere from $23,000 – $381,400 a year from ad revenue on YouTube alone.
However, his subscriber growth has started to slow down, he’s posting slightly less over the past year, and his annual revenue from YouTube seems to have dialed back since 2020 (when he was estimated to be making up to $700,000 a year). But he has expressed wanting to pursue more challenging projects than vlogs, and has also been focused on raising his family.
From all of the expertise and following he’s built, whenever he does post on the platform, he still gets over 1 million views per video.
Casey Neistat’s net worth is also impacted by brand deals on his active social media accounts: Twitter (2 million followers) and Instagram (3.1 million followers). He’s worked with global brands such as Nike, where he created his famous “make it count” video and many more.
Based on the general estimate that influencers can get $100 for every 10,000 followers they have on Instagram, Casey could be generating at least $90,000 per post for Instagram brand deals. He’s even disclosed that, on a few different occasions, he has been able to make 6 figures for a single brand deal.
He’s also taken on other projects like co-founding the multimedia company Beme, back in 2014. Beme produced an app that was later sold to CNN for $25 million, but the project was canceled in 2017 when the app failed to compete. Still, this had a significant impact on Casey Neistat’s net worth overall.
Most recently, Casey has been generating income through being cast in a feature film starring Jamie Foxx and other popular actors, Project Power, that was released in 2020. And lastly, part of Casey Neistat’s net worth has also been supported by his merchandise line (priced at $25-$65 a piece).
Since his rise to fame, Casey has invested in a $3.7 million LA home, and continuously donates to charities and participates in charitable events as well.
Through every obstacle or sign telling Casey to stop – whether it be nearing poverty or being knocked out of bed from the plane crashes of 9/11 – he never stopped telling his story. He always did what he couldn’t do.
And by pursuing content creation, Casey Neistat’s net worth has skyrocketed, but it also gave him something even more valuable that he may never have gotten in Connecticut:
Being a creator gave him time with his son.
It gave him the freedom to travel and be with Owen – to build a relationship with him. This career allowed Casey to beat the financial and social barriers he always struggled with before that were keeping him from truly living his life.
When Casey had the chance to continue making films, he ended up returning to YouTube, because that’s what was most important to him: to create because he loved it. By entering the creator economy, being a leader, a teacher, and sharing his expertise, he built a name for himself. And now, he’s got three kids, a wife, Candice, and more freedom and life experience than he ever thought he would have.
And anybody can have that too – all you need, according to Casey, is “a phone, internet, and a good story.”
At Nas Academy, we believe creators are the best educators – and Casey Neistat is no exception. Casey has always inspired his viewers, encouraging them to do what they are told they can’t.
He’s even racked up enough experience to be able to sum up life in 27 seconds (a 27-second video with 9.5 million views), and he’s nailing it. This shows he’s clearly someone who has insight as a pioneer in the creator economy and has an immense amount of insight to give. Turning to online teaching to share his accomplishments would significantly boost his presence, and could potentially increase his net worth with an additional 6-figures a month in revenue.
It would be a great opportunity to translate his sought-after advice into some kind of monetizable course, and dedicate his time to sharing a more in-depth story of what he’s learned with his fans. It would be invaluable for so many creators out there and would be sure to bump up his immense net worth even more in the process.
Casey knows the inaccessibility of education for the average person; so, by creating a course, he would be able to give the leg up that he didn’t have, to people who are just like him. After all, the creator economy is all about connections and helping one another get to the top.
While practical vlogging and content creation skills are important, we at Nas Academy also see immense potential and value in adopting the right mindsets and perspectives as a creator, to really help you find success – and Casey Neistat is a prime example of this.
He sees the valuable life perspective that’s behind the content rather than just the profit or the skills. He sees the story – your story – and how telling that story can make your life even better. You just have to make a choice, and do it.
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